+++ An ALFA ROMEO sports car is on the cards for later this decade, once the firm has reestablished itself as part of the mainstream luxury sector, and proven its financial credentials to its owner Stellantis. Alfa Romeo CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato confirmed that the brand is working on some one-off and limited edition projects and said he would be able to share more this year. He namechecked the Alfa Romeo Spider “Duetto” and T33 Stradale as reference points for future sports car designs, adding that he would never forget the heritage or passion of Alfa Romeo. “If I bring a good level of business, I’m sure that Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares and I will one day speak about some dream cars, because I have to support the storytelling of Alfa Romeo in the future. It’s not for tomorrow, but I would love to have a Duetto one day”. He continued: “For the moment, I’m oriented on value creation, on pricing power, on residual value, but at the same time, we are working on potential one-off and few-off projects. We have so many ideas. If you visit the Alfa Romeo museum, in 5 minutes you understand the potential of what we have in mind. I cannot present anything concrete for now, but I can tell you that I do not forget our past and our passion. I am focusing on the business and the elephant in the room is electrification. We have to have the right priorities on the table but at the same time, we are working in parallel on these projects”. The firm recently unveiled its first electrified model, the Tonale compact SUV, which is crucial for turning around its fortunes. Despite Alfa Romeo’s rich heritage in racing and sports cars, there has only been 2 sports cars this century: the handsome Alfa Romeo 8C and more recent Alfa Romeo 4C, both of which were only moderately well-received. There was much excitement when an electrified modern-day 8C was confirmed as part of the brand strategy announced in 2018 but that was later axed. +++
+++ ASTON MARTIN chairman Lawrence Stroll (left on the photo) has officially denied recent suggestions that he is searching for a replacement for CEO Tobias Moers (right) in the wake of a wave of staff departures and financial results coming in below expectations. Moers’ future at the firm was cast into doubt last month when Aston Martin warned it would miss its earnings target for 2021 by €18 million, chiefly as a result of delays to the Valkyrie hypercar programme. At the time, Bloomberg reported that Ford executive Steven Armstrong was a contender to take over the position, a report that was subsequently correlated by another source, but Stroll had said he was “absolutely not engaged” in a search for a new CEO. Now, billionaire Stroll, who led the consortium that took over Aston Martin in January 2020, has confirmed he has no plans to oust the ex-Mercedes-AMG boss from his leading role at Aston Martin. Asked about last month’s reports, Stroll told at the launch of the 2022 Aston Martin Formula 1 racer: “I have no idea where that comes from. Tobias is doing a great job. He’s staying here. He’s the perfect partner for me”. Having just appointed ex-Ferrari F1 boss Marco Mattiacci to lead Aston Martin’s branding activities (sales, marketing and advertising) Stroll said: “I need a partner who is really a CTO, which is Tobias. He’s the only CEO/CTO”. Another factor in the uncertainty surrounding Moers’ future is the recent departure of several high-ranking Aston Martin officials, including special vehicles boss David King, chassis developer Matt Becker, Q division director Simon Lane and chief marketing officer Peter Freedman. Stroll acknowledged that Moers “ruffled a lot of feathers when he came in”, but added: “Let’s be clear: I did not take over a healthy company. When a new management or ownership team comes in, you get transition. There’s a lot of people who didn’t want to step up to the level we wanted them to step up, and found it easier to leave”. He continued: “I never looked for a replacement for Tobias. I know it comes from those murmurings of disgruntled employees saying something”. Without naming names, Stroll said there is a “whole bunch” of those he would rather have retained, but added that while Aston Martin has lost “30-40ish” car people, it has hired 300, of which 176 are in senior engineering positions that didn’t previously exist. Stroll admitted that some ex-staff members didn’t get along with Moers because “he’s German and he’s hard”, but he added: “This company needed a little ‘German and hard’. He’s not going anywhere unless he wants to leave me, which he hasn’t told me. We have a great relationship and I was very sorry that lie was out there because I thought it was hurtful for Tobias. It put confusion in the company, which I didn’t need”. The current priorities for Aston Martin include heavily updating its line of front-engined sports cars, fulfilling customer orders of the Valkyrie hypercar and continuing on a 5-year strategy aimed at rising through the F1 ranks to become a championship title contender in 2025. Stroll confirmed earlier reports that the hiving off of luxury EV division Lagonda has been put on ice while the company focuses on these goals. Aston Martin’s front engined sports cars (the Vantage, DB11 and DBS) will be so heavily updated in 2023 that Stroll said they will be more like “all-new cars”. Chief among the upgrades for each will be revamps for the suspension system, engines and gearboxes, and crucially, completely overhauled interiors. “Finally, Aston Martin gets touchscreens”, said Stroll, confirming that the cars will do away with the ageing Mercedes-Benz-derived trackpad system they have used since launch. Under the terms of an earlier agreement with Mercedes, Aston Martin could only deploy technology in its own cars that had been used in Mercedes models for 3 years. “How can you have an Aston Martin that sells for €300.000 with 3-year-old technology? It is a silly thing the previous management agreed to”, said Stroll. He added that while the systems will be brought into line with the latest technology on the market, Aston Martin will differentiate its platform from that of Mercedes with “our own faces, our own voices, a proper English accent”. It is all part of a move to ramp up sales of its front-engined sports cars to 4.000 units per year, Stroll explained. “That is the true consumer demand”, he said. An early stage of Stroll’s turnaround plan for Aston Martin centred around reducing the company’s output to meet demand, rather than building for wholesale. He said the company has only built cars to order since April 2021, and sold 400 more cars to retail customers than it did to wholesale last year. Hinting at how radically evolved the new cars will be, Stroll told: “You’ll be very impressed with the all-new ‘front-engines’ next year. There’s no similarity at all to the current cars”, he said, but added that there will be “some carry-over” at the rear end. The updated trio, Stroll said, will be “what those cars should have always felt like”. Importantly, he confirmed any engine changes won’t extend to a removal of the DBS’s 5.2-litre V12. The Vantage and DB11’s twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 is likely to be uprated in line with AMG’s most recent offerings. A reveal is expected around the end of the year ahead of sales beginning in 2023, although it remains unclear whether Aston Martin will launch all 3 models at once. +++
+++ The global CHIP SHORTAGE that has curtailed car production over the past 12 months will ease by the end of this year as supply normalises, according to consensus within the industry. However, there’s plenty of pain for new-car buyers to work through in the next few months as order banks continue to grow and manufacturers keep their focus on more profitable models. It should have been a golden year. As economies recovered from the pandemic, customers with greater spending power than usual clamoured for new cars. But reduced supply from global chip fabricators put the kibosh on that, forcing car makers to choose which models to make, which customers to satisfy and even which technology to keep and which to remove. “Last year, we spent a lot of engineering and management resources solving supply-chain issues, rewriting code, changing our chips, reducing the number of chips we need”, said Tesla CEO Elon Musk last month. “It was chip-drama central”. Manufacturers should have made another 9.6 million cars last year, estimated analyst company LMC Automotive. LMC prides itself on accurate production forecasts but was forced to make cut after cut on its prediction of a better 2021 after a woeful 2020 as the impact of the chip shortage bit harder. It has estimated that the worst hit was Ford, which it reckoned lost 1.26 million units globally, followed by the Volkswagen Group at 1.15 million and General Motors at 1.09 million. In Europe, sales were down 1.5 % from a pandemic-hit 2020 and by a whopping 26 % from the 2018-2019 average, according to LMC. This year, however, LMC calculates that the production volume lost to the chip crisis will be halved to 4.8 million, as car makers get their hands on more of the micro-computers that control all manner of elements in the car. “Demand is still outstripping supply, and that’s particularly acute in mature markets like Europe and the US”, said LMC managing director Pete Kelly earlier this month. Customers are going to have to wait some more. “Right now we have the biggest order bank that we’ve ever had. If there were free supply, I think the industry would be booming”, Kia UK boss Paul Philpott told in January. “People have money to spend”. Kia and its sister brand Hyundai were actually among the big winners last year as they navigated chip shortages better than rivals. The Hyundai Motor Group was Europe’s biggest gainer last year, selling 1.02 million Hyundai, Kia and Genesis cars, up 21 % on the year before to put it ahead of the Renault Group, according to data from European automotive lobby group the ACEA. Toyota also did well, boosting sales of Toyota and Lexus cars to 760.178, up 9.6 %. Hyundai Motor sales should return to pre-pandemic levels this year, vice president Gang Hyun Seo said in late January, predicting a return to normal chip production in the third quarter of the year. The chip crisis has also been navigated well by the Chinese car industry in general. “China light vehicle production is starting to outpace retail sales, indicating the industry there is getting a grip far more than US and Europe”, said Kelly. That’s filtering through into good supply for SAIC-owned MG, whose average British monthly sales grew throughout the year to reach 30.600 in total, putting it above Citroën, Renault and Honda. The crisis was manageable if you were able to shuffle chips between brands in a wider group, prioritising high demand and high profit sectors, such as SUVs, and ignoring the entry models. Luxury brands linked to wider groups (such as Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce) all posted record sales for the year. Entry-level trims or models, meanwhile, were hard to come by. “We’re consciously not allowing customers to order lowest-value derivatives”, said Jaguar Land Rover chief financial officer Adrian Mardell recently. The trouble for JLR was that it’s all pretty high-value. “We have little margin of manoeuvre between mitigation between lower-end cars and high-end cars, because we only have high-end cars”, said CEO Thierry Bolloré on the same call. JLR said it has a huge 155.000 order backlog amid the chip shortage, with orders for the Land Rover Defender currently at 37.000. Finding another source for chips was “much more complicated” when you rely on sophisticated chips, Bolloré said. However, the chip supply affected all types of chips, even the “very boring” ones, explained Musk. “Like the little chip that allows you to move your seat back and forth. That actually was a big problem”, he said. The problem was exacerbated by strong demand for all kinds of chips, according to a recent survey of chip producers and consumers by the US Department of Commerce. It found that demand was 17% higher from 2019 to 2021 as consumer goods ranging from cars to mobile phones and video-gaming equipment packaged more chip-hungry technologies. “This semiconductor shortage is the result of a significant mismatch in supply and demand”, said US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, adding that the number-one issue was insufficient capacity in fabricator plants. That’s now being tackled as a matter of urgency by Europe and the US, who want to reduce dependency on Asia for its chips. The European Union even introduced the European Chips Act in order to subsidise local development of chip plants, with Intel one manufacturer indicating that it’s on board. That new capacity won’t come through this year, but providing there are no new complications (a new Covid-19 variant, for example), car supply should return to some kind of normalcy by the end of 2022. “The toilet paper problem” Musk reckons that part of the chip problem has been hoarding. Just like people hoovered up essential items in the early days of the pandemic, some companies did the same with chips, he claimed. “I think there’s some degree of the toilet-paper problem”, he said in January. “There wasn’t really a tremendous enhanced need for ass-wiping; it’s just people panicked”. New chips that can do more and reduce the overall chip count will solve the problem going forward. “The next chip can do the same thing with less diarrhoea”, Musk said, perhaps pushing the analogy a bit too far. +++
+++ DELOREAN is promising to make a comeback in 2022, announcing a new startup-style framework in partnership with Italdesign and a key figure in another recent automotive revival. While this new teaser doesn’t show us much more than we saw the last time Italdesign and DeLorean hinted at the project, the details have been refined slightly. Most notably, the “DMC” (“DeLorean Motor Company”) logo from the nose is now absent. While a series of “continuation” DMC-12s has been planned for years, this project focuses on what might come next for the long-dead automaker, namely an all-electric future model. To that end, Delorean has entwined itself with Joost De Vries, whose most recent automotive entanglement was the revived Karma Automotive. Like any EV startup, I view DeLorean’s efforts with healthy skepticism. But what better choice for a futuristic EV than a car whose powertrain was replaced by a highly efficient fusion generator? Too bad Marty McFly traveled forward to 2015 and ruined the timeline for the rest of us, eh? Or maybe Marty was just here stealing Tesla’s “falcon door” design, since Tesla fans are already coming out of the woodwork to declare the design a ripoff. It’s OK; most of them weren’t even alive in 1985. +++
+++ FORD has appointed top Tesla engineer Alan Clarke to help progress the firm’s move to EV-only production by 2035. Clarke joined Tesla in 2009 and has held several roles at the Electric Vehicle firm, including senior design engineer, senior manager of new programmes engineering and, most recently, director of new programmes engineering. The 35-year-old played a key role in the development of the Tesla Model S, overseeing the design of the car’s battery enclosure, suspension, steering and exterior door handle mechanisms. He also contributed to the development of the Tesla Model X drivetrain. In addition, Clarke led programmes as chief engineer for the Tesla Roadster prototype, developed vehicle architecture for the Model 3 and Model Y and contributed to engineering on the Cybertruck prototype. He revealed the move on LinkedIn and will now work for Ford in its advanced electric vehicle development. Over 700 people have responded on LinkedIn, including Ford CEO Jim Farley. “Welcome, Alan! Great to have you on the team”, Farley said. There were also comments from Tesla employees, among them Anders Bell, senior director of engineering at Tesla, who said: “You have made a huge impact at Tesla and it was a privilege working with you”. Clarke is the second high-profile Tesla executive to move to Ford in the past 12 months, following the firm’s hiring of Doug Field, a former Tesla engineer. Field was previously president of special projects at Apple, overseeing the development of the tech giant’s anticipated electric, self-driving car. At Tesla, he led the development and production of the Model 3. +++
+++ Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz dominated the premium market again in 2021, accounting for 56 % of global premium market sales. Beyond the German trio, market analysis company Jato Dynamics lists 27 other car brands trying to match their success, including Lexus and GENESIS . Not all have achieved success, most notably Nissan’s premium brand, Infiniti. It had big plans but went largely unnoticed, and while it still exists in some global markets, it’s long gone from Europe. Nissan really wanted to take on Toyota’s luxury brand, The brand, whose name comes from Luxury EXport to the US, lost ground early in the 2010s, but its successful dedication to hybrids has enabled it to bounce back. Like Toyota, Lexus is now heading into the world of fully electric cars, with Lexuses shown as part of Toyota’s vast 16-model EV concept reveal in December. Last year we saw the arrival of what could be the biggest threat to Lexus, though: Hyundai’s newcomer, Genesis. Its saloons and SUVs have already impressed, and it has its first electric car coming this year. It only really started trading in September, with its biggest seller so far being the GV70 SUV. The way that many people interact as consumers has changed during the pandemic, and this could benefit Genesis’s direct-to-customer approach. It uses a combination of showrooms that it calls Genesis Studios and online tools, but will it survive where Infiniti couldn’t? Andrew Pilkington, director and regional operations manager at Genesis UK, is confident that the brand has a very different business model. “We’re not talking about sub-premium, we’re talking about a premium product, a premium price product and excellent value for money”, he told. “We’re talking about a luxury experience where we put the customer at the centre of the business, not actually putting the car at the centre of the business”. Making the customer the focus rather than the car is a different strategy to many rivals, and Pilkington is confident that 2022 will be a strong year for Genesis, which is the top premium player in its home market of South Korea. “I think that 2022 is a really important, pivotal year for us in terms of the Genesis brand, with electric vehicles and greater awareness of Genesis and the Genesis difference, so that’s our key opportunities in 2022”, he said. It will also be a key year for Seat’s premium brand, Cupra. It has a bit of a head-start, having been a name on Seat’s sportiest models for years, but it’s now a brand in its own right, and a spokesman for Cupra told us that it sits between the mass market and the traditional premium segment. That makes it more premium compared with Seat than actually premium, perhaps. Electrification is key to its future agenda and the imminently arriving Born electric hatchback will go up against some strong electric rivals, not least of all others from within the Volkswagen Group, such as the closely related Volkswagen ID 3. Another brand that is tackling the premium challenge is Stellantis’s DS, born out of the Citroën stable and again one that’s premium in its segment. Jules Tilstone, managing director of DS in the UK, told that the brand has a clear purpose within the Stellantis group to bring in premium customers that otherwise would be looking elsewhere. Tilstone is adamant that growth will come this year, especially with its plug-in hybrids and EVs as it heads towards becoming a fully electric brand from 2025. “In the first quarter of 2022, we will build on this success and double our range, starting with the DS 9, our E-segment saloon and new flagship for the brand, closely followed by our C-segment hatchback, the DS 4”, said Tilstone. Felipe Munoz of Jato Dynamics is of the opinion that DS is a brand still trying to find its identity, saying that while the idea is good and it’s well positioned in markets such as China, in the UK it might not have the image to really gain traction in the premium market. When it comes to premium, image can be everything. Buyers in the premium segment can be fiercely loyal, as evidenced by the sales for Audi, BMW and Mercedes, but is there space for others? Some brands have been rumoured to be eyeing up Europe. Honda has Acura in the US, but it’s unlikely that would ever cross the pond. Then there’s Lancia, but a spokesman for Stellantis told us that DS ticks its premium box and there are no plans to bring the storied Italian brand to all European countries. Chinese giant Geely already has Volvo and Polestar, but it could be looking at launching some of its other brands here too, such as Zeekr. There’s a huge amount of brand loyalty in the premium segment, and while many of the car makers are keen to get in on the act and use the higher profits available to offset the increased costs of electrification, it’s not an easy nut to crack. For any premium challenger to succeed, it needs to have a strong angle. Lexus has its hybrids, Volvo has its safety and Tesla is the cool kid on the electric block. Any newcomer really has their work cut out for them. +++
+++ LEXUS previewed its Electrified Sport late last year amongst a gaggle of other EVs the company says is coming by 2030. However, photos of the 2-door sports car were in short supply back then. That changes today. Now, you can see the battery electric sports car in all its glory with a number of images from different angles, in a fresh batch released by Lexus. Unfortunately, the new images are not accompanied by new information. This means we’re still dealing with the same set of details Lexus provided a couple of months ago. The EV is predicted to have a 0-100 kph time in the mid-2-second range, and its total range is going to be greater than 700 km. The latter part of that spec breakdown is reliant on the use of solid-state batteries, so we’ll just have to wait and see if that tech comes to fruition by the time this sports car launches. As for the photos, I’m just as entranced by this Lexus as I was before. It’s meant to revive “the spirit of the iconic Lexus LFA” and its 2-door coupe body style with the extra-long hood is certainly working in my eyes. I can’t be sure how much of this concept’s design will reach production, but if the final car looks like this, it’s going to be a stunner. Lexus’ recent track record on 2-door luxury sports cars has us thinking positively, too; just look at the LC 500 as proof. More details on the car and its timing are likely a long way out at this point, but at least there are some pretty pictures to look at in the meantime. +++
+++ MERCEDES is putting the finishing touches to the all-new CLE Coupé and CLE Cabriolet ahead of a planned unveiling for the new 2-door models, codenamed C236 and A236 respectively, in 2023. Due on sale shortly before the 6th generation E-Class saloon arrives next year, the CLE has been developed as a replacement for 6 Mercedes-Benz models: both the coupé and convertible versions of the C-Class, E-Class and S-Class. The move comes as Mercedes consolidates its R&D spending on conventional combustion-engined models in favour of expanding its line-up with dedicated EQ-badged EVs such as the new EQE saloon, EQE SUV and EQS SUV; all of which are set to hit showrooms within the next 12 months. The first stage of the consolidation plan was carried out in 2020 when Mercedes ended production of the S-Class Coupé and Cabriolet. Since then, it has also ushered in a new version of the C-Class exclusively in 4 and 5-door guises. The basis for the CLE is this newly introduced, fifth-generation C-Class, which sits on Mercedes’ second-generation MRA platform. Dimensionally, the new CLE slots between today’s 4.686 mm long C-Class Cabriolet and the 4.826 mm long E-Class Cabriolet, lining it up as a direct rival to the 2-door derivatives of the Audi A5 and BMW 4 Series. The latest photographs of a heavily disguised CLE Cabriolet prototype undergoing coldweather testing confirm earlier reports that the new model will feature its own unique styling, with a racier profile and more muscular appearance than the C-Class, alongside which it’s due to be produced at Mercedes’ factory in Bremen, Germany. As with the outgoing C-Class, E-Class and S-Class Cabriolets, the new open-top model receives a multi-layered fabric hood. Similar to that used by the existing E-Class Cabriolet, it’s designed to stow at the rear of the cabin under a plastic tonneau cover. Prototypes of the CLE Coupé have yet to appear in public, but insiders have told that it has a pillarless roof design in keeping with the existing E-Class Coupé. Inside, the CLE adopts the cabin architecture of the latest C-Class, including a dashboard featuring a standard-fit digital instrument panel and a portrait-oriented infotainment touchscreen of up to 11.9in. Finer details, including aspects such as the shape of the air vents, are said to be shared with the new E-Class saloon in a bid to give the CLE a suitably upmarket positioning. As with the new C-Class, the CLE will be offered exclusively with longitudinally mounted 4-cylinder engines in both standard and AMG models. In keeping with Mercedes’ plans to do away with manual shifters, all models will have a 9-speed automatic gearbox. Milder versions will get rear-wheel drive, with the more performance-oriented models set to run Mercedes’ 4Matic 4-wheel drive system. Alongside conventional petrol units, the new coupé and cabriolet will offer at least one petrol-electric plug-in hybrid unit, including a turbo 2.0-litre 4-cylinder petrol engine and electric motor system claimed to develop more than 500 hp in a range-topping AMG CLE 63e 4Matic+ model, set to reach showrooms in 2024. +++
+++ Electric cars and the stick shift have yet to cross paths; every single EV sold new in America is automatic, most using a single reduction gear. TOYOTA is betting that some drivers will want to continue rowing their own gears as they go electric, and it has invented a system that simulates a manual transmission. The patent application was filed in Japan in August 2020 and published in the United States in February 2022. It describes a technology that relies largely on software to make drivers feel like they’re shifting a manual transmission; the system includes a “pseudo-clutch pedal” and a “pseudo-shifter”, among other components. In short, the software is programmed to control the electric motor’s torque output in a way that mimics driving a combustion engine. First is short, second is longer, third is as well, and so on. The computer analyzes data like the car’s speed and the accelerator pedal’s opening angle to make the experience more realistic, according to Toyota. Engineers included a shift reaction force generator that adds feel to the shifter, otherwise operating it presumably wouldn’t be much different than pressing a window switch. There’s no word yet on how many “gears” the system has, though the patent application notes that drivers can select different shift patterns, and there’s even a reverse lock like on many cars equipped with a manual transmission. As for the clutch pedal, it works just like in the 1990 Corolla you drove in college: it needs to be pushed in before a gear is engaged or disengaged. It will be interesting to see where Toyota takes this technology (keep in mind that a patent filing is never a guarantee that the feature it describes will reach production) and whether there will be any demand for it. And, while it’s too early to tell which car(s) this system could end up in, Toyota has a lot to choose from: it’s planning on releasing at least 30 battery-powered models by 2030, including a sports car. Several factors explain why no one has launched an electric car with a manual transmission: demand for stick-shifted cars is tiny at best in America (and dropping annually), and most EVs are equipped with a single-speed transmission that doesn’t need to be shifted. However, Ford tried to lure manual enthusiasts into the fold when it unveiled the Mustang-based Lithium concept at the 2019 edition of the SEMA show. The design study was powered by a 900 hp electric drivetrain linked to a 6-speed manual transmission — a real one, too. +++