+++ The TT was a significant milestone in AUDI ’s history, capturing the public’s appetite for fashion-led coupes in the nineties before RS variants later down the line transformed it into a driver-focused sports car. While the TT was phased out in 2023, plans are afoot to bring it back. Audi’s CEO Gernot Döllner has described the TT as “an icon”, and new design chief Massimo Frascella has been tasked with creating a fresh model for the future. The heritage behind the TT name can’t be downplayed at a time when branding and history count for so much against Chinese start-ups: could that mean Audi revives badges such as the TT’s? “Yes, that’s thinkable”, said Audi’s CEO. “But we have a broad view on what’s possible”. Audi posted “challenging” financial results for 2024, with operating profit dropping 38 percent to 3.9 billion euro due to tough economic conditions and declining sales as key models were renewed. It also took a 1.6 billion euro hit for closing the Q8 e-Tron factory in Brussels. Nonetheless, new sports cars are absolutely in the company’s medium-term plan, revealed Döllner: “I believe Audi should have a sports car, for sure”, he told. “That’s part of the brand DNA, and we have to find the right way, timing wise, to integrate it into our portfolio”. Within the wider Volkswagen Group, Porsche is leading a project dubbed C-Sport, and is due to unleash pure-electric replacements for the mid-engined 718 Cayman and Boxster next year, based on the group’s new Scalable Systems Platform (SSP). Expect lightning performance to eclipse the MG Cyberster’s, using a fresh electric sports-car architecture, which Audi could tap into. The rear and all-wheel drive components could be a very sporty basis for a spiritual successor to the TT, unless Audi wishes to reinvent the TT as a four-seat GT car. “If you’re talking about real racing cars for the track, to me the only way until now is combustion engine or hybrid”, said Döllner. “But if it’s more for everyday use on normal roads, I would definitely see a transition to the electric era. Long term, there will be a place for fully electric sports cars, not for the track but for crossing the Alps or having fun on a country road. Rapid recharging (in the time it takes to stop for a coffee) is also essential, he added. The Audi won’t be short of performance: SSP can accommodate a mix of e-motors packing up to 1.000 hp. It can also feature an 800 volt architecture for super-fast charging speeds. Battery sizes haven’t been determined, but we can expect comfortably more than 400 miles of range in the next-generation TT, which should be one of the lighter SSP cars to go into production. Döllner believes the TT was a car that unleashed Audi’s progressive ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ philosophy in the design space, and that’s a battleground he wants to win back. “If you look at Vorsprung Durch Technik in design, we are working hard on becoming the brand that is relevant when it comes to car design”, he said. And recruiting Frascella from Jaguar Land Rover (where he played a key role in shaping Range Rover’s modernist, clean look and laid the groundwork for Jaguar’s new electric design) is a critical pillar of Audi’s new transformation. Döllner was asked why he had headhunted the Italian. “It’s his focus and really minimalistic view on car design. Massimo tries to optimise as much as possible, to take everything away that you don’t need. I think it’s a unique talent to have such a view on vehicle design, to try to work with as little as possible to reach as much as the imagination allows”. I expect Frascella to pay close attention to Audi’s back catalogue, looking to the original TT to inspire the new sports car. Expect a wider, more planted stance, but a similarly rounded shape as a nod to the first generation. Modern flourishes such as digital door mirrors, flush door handles and a clean side glasshouse, could all feature on the new car. Frascella joined Audi in June 2023 and it’s likely his first big design statement will come with a concept at September’s IAA Munich Motor Show. The electric sports car market hasn’t gotten into full swing yet, and the MG Cyberster is the only real contender right now. Alpine will join the segment soon, however, with its electric A110, while Lotus is looking to build an Emira-sized EV based on last year’s ‘Theory 1’ concept. The TT’s closest rivals will come from within the VW Group, though, because the Audi is expected to utilise the same platform as the upcoming pure electric replacements for the mid-engined 718 Cayman and Boxster. Although the Porsche pair will offer high performance at a high price, it sounds as if Audi is keen for the TT to stay true to its attainable philosophy. That probably means that the production-ready TT won’t arrive until 2027 at the earliest, on the new SSP electric architecture. This is also set to be used by the next Skoda Octavia and Volkswagen Golf and will deploy hi-tech software co-developed with US electric car pioneers Rivian. As the petrol-engined TT did, its all-electric successor will cost less than the Porsches. +++
+++ The BENTLEY Continental GT is easily capable of 100 kph without the V8 barking into life. This part-electrified Conti is a mere appetiser for what we’re about to see, as I was one of the first people outside Bentley to set foot inside its brandnew, 3 billion-plus euro electrified car factory. Deep in the new campus, engineers are busily installing equipment enabling prototype production of Bentley’s first BEV (battery-electric vehicle), which will start just 8 weeks from now. Referred to as the ‘Luxury Urban SUV’, the BEV will be a little shorter than today’s models, wear an imposing body immediately recognisable as a Bentley and be luxuriously trimmed by the company’s artisans. But their work will incorporate new hi-tech materials and cutting-edge ways of working, including AI and Autonomous Guided Vehicles to transport the car bodies. This is the perfect distillation of Bentley’s vision for its ‘Dream Factory’, a place where heritage and modernity intersect. And where a cutting-edge electric-vehicle line lurks within the site’s oldest building, A1, constructed in 1938 to build Merlin aero engines with World War II looming. Andreas Lehe, Bentley’s towering board member for manufacturing, meets us at the end of today’s Continental and Flying Spur assembly line to share the company’s vision. “It might have been easier to knock down all the old buildings and build them new,” he says. “But it was important for us to secure these old buildings and integrate new technology and cars into this heritage”. To meet him, we’ve rushed through the existing wood shop, trim shop and final assembly, but along the way we’ve picked up some key insights into how the process is changing. Bentleys are famed for their wood veneer trims, 6 paper-thin layers currently mounted and baked onto aluminium substrates. Three new injection-moulding machines stand to the side, ready to create different-sized substrates for the new BEV. They’ll be made of plastic, to save a little weigh and boost sustainability; they should come from recycled sources and be reused at the end of life. And because they’re opaque, Bentley could backlight the trim according to customer tastes. Instantly it paints a picture of a BEV cockpit with a deep-rooted, delightful but hi-tech ambience. Apprentices are already being trained to master the injection-moulding process in pre-production phases, so the quality will be top notch by 2027, when series production is in full flow. We discover the trim shop harbours similar modernisation when we walk the shop floor, as 50 customers do each month. While many still favour leather and wood, some already choose sustainable microfibre ‘Dinamica’, and Bentley is experimenting with upholstery made with squashed and pressed bamboo for the Urban SUV. I also spy a black box casting infra-red light as it moves over a leather hide. This is a Homiro scanner, which uses AI to spot imperfections and can outperform the human eye; just like software trained to diagnose skin cancers. I’m not sure whether to be awe-struck or fearful for the job implications, a trend far from restricted to the car industry. I’m partially reassured by a new sewing line in construction at the building’s end, with a good old-fashioned café area proving the workers will be humans not robots. Production director Andy Hobbs then sweeps us along the straight GT line, where 96 stations all running to a strict 10-minute schedule finish the painted bodies-in-white. The bigger Bentayga, on a separate line, has fewer stages, but with more than twice the time taken at each. The electric future will be far less rigid, as Andreas Lehe explains. Block A1 covers a vast 30.000 square metres and, when Bentley’s electric transformation is complete after 2035, should be home to five model lines under one roof. It’s an assembly line where Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) will tow bodyshells from one assembly station to the next, on circuitous routes not unyielding lines. That allows Lehe and his team to plan assembly in ‘S’ configurations, leaving plenty of space for preparation areas and storage racks. It is extremely adaptable. “If you combine all cars in one line, you get more or less stable production over the whole time, because when one car is running down, another is increasing”, says the manufacturing chief. “Our general plan is to integrate all the cars in this new line, step by step, car by car. If you have three lines running in parallel, you always have to ask ‘what’s the volume, how many people, what’s the impact?’ It’s much better to balance this in one assembly line in future”. This is the 4-dimensional chess played by Lehe and his predecessor Peter Bosch, as they remake Crewe for the future. I’m told there’s a big floor mat of the site, covered in Velcro pieces representing each of the buildings to scale. Executives stand around and discuss moves, seeing at a glance the impact on site production flow. “Site planning]is definitely like a jigsaw puzzle”, agrees Lehe. The AGVs can be programmed to follow any route and they’ll lift Urban SUV bodies up and down by responding to digital signals identifying an assembly stage or even individual workers. Such pinpoint ergonomics should help prevent injuries. Digitalisation will also put an end to each car’s identifying spec being printed on low-tech paper taped to it: each car will have digital identifiers, allowing the tooling to be automatically set to the correct torque levels or assembly patterns. But what will they be assembling, what defines an electric Bentley? “Ultimately, the drivetrain is not the most important part for the customer”, responds Lehe. An EV’s huge torque and superior refinement will be trademark Bentley, but the manufacturing boss believes the key thing will be to offer sufficient range and convenience. “You don’t need an 1.300 km range! I think 600 km and charging stations available to charge fast. Bentley customers don’t want to wait”. A knockout cabin will also be crucial. “Interior is one of the areas which is important for us as Bentley. From a quality perspective, I think we offer one of the best luxury-car interiors. And we want to secure this real craftsmanship into the future”. The Urban SUV is based on the Volkswagen Group’s PPE (Premium Platform Electric) architecture, which also underpins the Porsche Macan Electric and Audi Q6 e-Tron. It will get their air suspension and rear-wheel steering, boosting manoeuvrability for its urban habitat. Knowhow is also shared across the group brands: Lehe’s manufacturing team meet their Audi counterparts monthly to ensure the electronic architecture is running smoothly. Software can make or break a new car: the Macan and Q6 were more than a year late because of issues at VW’s programming arm, Cariad. I head out to see the new buildings in a redevelopment that began five years ago when Pyms Lane, the public road through the site, was closed after a lengthy consultation. My guide is head of site planning Andrew Robertson, who joined in 1999 to install the first Continental GT line. He drives us in an electric vehicle (sadly not the Urban SUV, but a golf kart). First, we trundle down Sunnybank Road between the 2 paint shops. To our right is the huge new facility, a vast white rectangle 22 metres high. Set to paint its first car in October, the hi-tech shop will allow a broader array of colours and finishes (including two-tone and pinstriping), and slash energy consumption with a low-bake process at half the 160˚C norm.
A catalyser in the chimney will stop any solvents escaping into the atmosphere. Crewe became carbon neutral in 2019, thanks to 46.000 solar panels mounted on roofs that generate 10 megawatts on a sunny day and also by buying green energy and gas. Linked by an air bridge to move materials, the current, near 50-year-old paint shop stands on the opposite side of the road. This will be decommissioned once the new facility is perfectly painting the BEV, becoming a storage area for bodies-in-white shipped in from Volkswagen factories in mainland Europe. Next stop is the Integrated Logistics Centre, where construction workers suspended in the air busily enclose a side. It looks colossal but is actually less than half the size of the BEV building it neighbours for speedy supply. Taking inspiration from Amazon warehouses, ‘autopickers’ will whizz along rails in the ceiling before descending into columns to grab crates of parts. Again, the whole thing will be fully digital and supersede the existing store. Good old-fashioned forklift trucks will be needed to shift the Urban SUV’s battery packs though. Imported from Bratislava, Slovakia, they weigh 570 kg and harbour 95 kWh of usable energy in the Macan; it remains to be seen if Bentley will expand on this. Maybe we’ll find out in another inconspicuous, white building on the north-eastern corner of the site: the Engineering Technical Centre. “The new BEV is in there,” confirms Wayne Bruce, our PR minder. “And that’s why we’re not going in”.0 Sigh. Crude prototypes wearing a butchered Porsche Cayenne shell have already been spied; the real body will venture out testing towards the year’s end. Meanwhile chassis development, electrical and trim engineers ( “most disciplines”, reckons Robertson) are working their magic. “There’s a Bentley-fication process. We borrow group technology but make it ours”, says Bruce. Appropriately, our tour culminates at the BEV assembly line. The surroundings feel similar to the other lines; no surprise given Bentley’s determination to preserve the original walls and roof. But the floor, marked with heavy plant tracks in the construction dust, is brand new. “There’s a reason for that: the AGVs”, explains Robertson. “Carrying the cars will generate fairly high point loads. So this fibre-reinforced concrete is the flattest and strongest I’ve laid in my career”. I peer down the 300-metre-long hall in the hope of finding out more, but can’t make out what equipment they’re fitting. I can certainly hear it, though: the sound of drilling shrieks in our ears. How does this differ from the Continental GT line Robertson helped to fit 25 years ago? “The AGVs and the control systems”, he replies. Equipment will be wirelessly connected to the internet, enabling automated tool settings and pinpoint diagnostics and analytics. I’ve seen the future of Crewe. Andreas Lehe reckons the transformation is the most ground-breaking development since Volkswagen bought Bentley in 1998. “For me, it’s at the very top”, he says. “And the most important part is to secure the future of Bentley. For 85 years, Crewe has been Bentley’s home. So it was clear to make this investment into Crewe. It’s a commitment from our side to the region and to our heritage: for the next 100 years, we want to build all our cars in Crewe”. +++
+++ Perhaps it’s a tired trope to say so much of East Asia is in the future. But it really does feel like CHINA is living in a tech-utopian world only fantasized about in novels and movies. I’ve been to China twice now, and each visit has never felt like I had enough time. Electric cars on every corner, superfast charging infrastructure, battery swapping, and dozens (if not hundreds) of reasonably priced EVs. It’s sensory overload, to be honest. Last year, I went to the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, only the second after the country reopened following strict Covid-19 lockdowns. I wanted to see just how advanced its auto industry really is. I went back a few months later to see and do even more. Across those 2 visits, I drove more than a dozen cars from 7 different brands. I got some seat time on China’s actual roads, got some experience with battery swapping, and EVs of every price range. So are China’s EVs the real deal? Yeah, they are, and I expect we’ll see China up its game even more when we return next week for the Shanghai Auto Show. China has made incredible strides, particularly within the past 5 years, as its EV and tech companies have moved in lockstep to become the darling of consumers in and out of China; to the chagrin of American and European tech and car companies, of course. It’s not exactly clear how the rest of the world can push back, especially America. The conditions of subsidies and policies to create China’s EV boom are damn near non-replicable under systems of government that aren’t so unilateral. However, it’s important to understand just exactly what’s going on on the other side of the world. Whether or not you agree with China, its brands, or how consumers globally are reacting to them. I got to see how things have advanced in a year. As the rest of the world gets mired in politics and gets nervous about an all-electric future, we’ll head to Shanghai to report on what’s in store for 2025 and beyond. What happens from there is up to the rest of the world. +++
+++ Back in the dark days of the 2008 financial crisis, Rahm Emmanuel, then an advisor to Barack Obama, famously said “never allow a good crisis go to waste”. Tariffs are a crisis for automakers, but one in which NISSAN sees an upside. “We have an opportunity, I think, with this tariff thing”, says Vinay Shahani, Nissan USA’s head of sales and marketing, in an interview at the New York Auto Show. “We’re very fortunate to have a robust industrial footprint in the United States, at Smyrna (Tennessee) and in Canton, Mississippi, and I think the opportunity to really push and really leverage some of these models that we build in the United States”. Nissan has built cars at Smyrna since 1983 and currently produces the Rogue (its best seller; X-Trail in Europe), Pathfinder, Murano and Infiniti QX60. At Canton, it builds the Frontier and Altima. Nissan makes plenty of popular, affordable models like the Sentra, Versa and Kicks in Mexico, and imports things like the Armada and Z from Japan. But, the cars it makes in the US represent a good chunk of its total sales here. Shahani says that Nissan is shifting more Rogue production from Japan to the US to keep Smyrna humming along. And soon, Nissan will have a new-generation Rogue with a long-awaited hybrid powertrain, including a plug-in variant. Nissan’s had a tumultuous couple months, with on-off merger talks with Honda that went nowhere, and its old CEO replaced amidst the failed merger and rough earnings. But it is not all bad news. New boss Ivan Espinosa has injected some vigour into the company, and in the US, its sales are strong. Through April 1, it’s up 5.7% year-over-year, and its broad range of affordable models is enjoying a larger move towards cheaper cars in America. “Just look at the positioning of the Kicks”, says Ponz Pandikuthira, Nissan USA’s head of product planning. “It is a completely different car from the previous generation, but with the same price position, starting at $21-something, going up to $28,000. Sentra, end of life cycle, but still selling at a top-notch rate, and you’re going to see a new Sentra this coming year”. Cars were already expensive before tariffs, and most indications point to prices rising further still over the coming months. Pandikuthira says that it’s critical Nissan makes big improvements with new generations of its affordable models, without big price increases. It’s something that’s already working out well. “We’ve hit that sweet spot as an accessible brand”, he says. “There’s a big opportunity in the marketplace for these vehicles under $30.000”, Shahani adds. “We have 6 cars that start under $30,000”. Both Pandikuthira and Shahani think Nissan’s products are strong right now and they emphasize the value of having a line-up that includes everything in between a sub-$20,000 Versa to an $80,000-plus Armada; except for a new Xterra and GT-R they both want badly. But, they acknowledge that they haven’t done a good enough job marketing this fact, and boosting some of the strong models already in the line-up, “diamonds in the rough”, as Shahani terms them. “I think over time, we lost a little bit of our mojo”, Shahani says. “What attracted me to the brand the first time that I worked here, we were an underdog, cool, irreverent, fun Japanese brand. And I think we’re getting back to our roots now”. Over the next year or so, we’ll see a lot from Nissan. There’s the aforementioned Rogue and Sentra, lots of hybrid models, and the Leaf being reborn as a compact crossover. And in the longer term, both Pandikuthira and Shahani are pushing hard for a new Xterra. It’s not an easy road ahead, but they may be able to take good advantage of this strange moment. And don’t forget there’s a sort of historical precedent here: when the 1973 fuel crisis hit, it was Nissan (then Datsun) along with other Japanese automakers that took excellent advantage of a trend towards more fuel efficient cars, with American automakers forced to play catch-up. If the movement towards affordable cars gets bigger, Nissan’s not in a bad place right now. +++
+++ New car sales in RUSSIA are falling off a cliff. Data from the Association of European Businesses (AEB) shows March 2025 sales down a whopping 45 percent compared to the same month last year, with automakers selling just 83.000 vehicles last month in the country. Sales for the quarter are down 26 percent, to 254.000 units. According to the AEB, a lobbying group of foreign investors in Russia, this is the country’s third-worst sales contraction in the past 10 years. Sales fell 59 percent in March 2022, a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, and 36 percent in early 2015 during the country’s financial crisis. Things sound dire this time, though. Alexey Kalitsev, the association’s chairman of the Automobile Manufacturers Committee, said “the continuation of the current trend may lead to a crisis in the industry, which will require urgent support from the state”. According to Kalitsev, buyers believed “some previously departed companies would return to the Russian market”, which has not happened, only “increasing the volume of deferred demand, which in the future may lead to growth”. The industry can’t survive if this trend continues, though. Many global automakers exited the Russian market or ceased operations there after the country invaded Ukraine. Ford, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and others took a range of actions to distance themselves from the country, including paying workers to quit, selling assets, and ending production. Sanctions against Russia also hurt its domestic car industry, putting further financial strain on these companies. +++
+++ SUBARU is planning to offer performance models in its future full electric line-up, which could include new sports cars in the vein of the Impreza STI and BRZ. The brand gained a huge cult following for its rally-honed performance machines in the early 1990s, and also enjoyed success with the BRZ sports car that was launched in 2012 as a twin to the Toyota GT86. In recent years the firm has focused its efforts on rugged SUVs, and has withdrawn all of its performance models from Europe due to emissions regulations. But speaking at the unveiling of the new Trailseeker at the New York Auto Show, Subaru Europe boss David Dello Stritto said that “there are plans to bring back the sportiness in Subaru”. While he declined to elaborate on specifics, he added: “If you ask me to sum up what Subaru means for customers in Europe right now, it’s three letters: SFT – Safe, Fun and Tough. Those values are why our customers in Europe are loyal and keep coming back to us. “But there’s a fourth pillar I’ve been missing to sell in Europe for the last 10 years and that’s P, for Power and Performance. Ask the average person what Subaru means and they’ll say STI. You can’t disassociate this from Subaru. So we need to bring sportiness back to Subaru. Right now, we couldn’t do it: Europe says you can’t, because you have a GPF [Gasoline Particulate Filter] that can literally choke your engine”. That issue won’t be a problem for electric cars, and Subaru is already looking at what it can do in the electric performance sphere having shown off the radical, 1.085 hp STI E-RA in 2022. Dello Stritto said: “With an EV you’ve got the power and performance, and you’ve got an all-wheel drive system. We’re working on more sporty models, and electrification allows us to do this. Let’s face it, it’s nice to have that prospect of a future WRC STI: super-fast, gold wheels, blue colour. This is what we want, at the end of the day”. Subaru currently has a partnership with Toyota to jointly develop electric cars: its first EV, the Solterra, is based on the BZ4X and the new Trailseeker uses the same jointly developed platform. While Subaru is due to start producing its new EVs from 2028 onwards, the partnership with Toyota is set to continue, raising the prospect that the two firms could share a platform for a future sports car, as they did with the BRZ and GT86. Toyota has already shown off a future electric sports car concept in the form of the FT-SE. The Japanese brand is also developing a new 2.0-litre engine that would help hybridised GR sports cars so they can be sold in greater numbers in markets such as Europe where emission regulations limit sales. Asked if this relationship could help with the development of a future Subaru performance car, Dello Stritto said “of course, yes”, although he declined to comment if that would be with technological development or a full model. +++
+++ Reuters reported with unnamed sources from Tokyo today that TOYOTA is considering producing the next version of its top-selling RAV4 in the U.S., saying the Japanese automaker wants to expand RAV4 production at its massive assembly complex in Kentucky, which already produces some RAV4s sold in the U.S. But here’s where math comes into play: the RAV4, which dethroned the Ford F-150 as the nation’s topselling nameplate last year with 475.193 deliveries, is too big of a global sales hit to consolidate all its production in Kentucky. In 2024, Toyota produced 373.510 RAV4s in North America that were sold in the U.S.; about 79 percent of which (293.602) came from its plant in Canada. In addition, Japan produced 58.368 RAV4 plug-in hybrids, the RAV4 Prime, in 2024, about half of which were sent to the U.S. The rest, roughly 150.000, came from Georgetown, which was about a third of that plant’s overall 2024 vehicle production of 435.631. So really, even if Toyota wanted to move heaven and earth to bend to the will of the White House, it can’t, or it will give up sales. So expect the RAV4 to stay at all 3 plants, though the mix is likely to be adjusted. +++