thegriffon

Done: http://www.euroncap.com/tests/opel_vauxhal...sa_1997/12.aspx http://www.euroncap.com/tests/opel_vauxhal...sa_2000/23.aspx (final year of European production)

The C2 is an updated version of the Corsa Classic similar to the Brazilian Celta.

Gee, will you look at the panel gaps on that thing.

You mean like this: http://www.toyota.co.th/red/th/model/camry/camry_home.htm "Asian" Camry aka Toyota Aurion in Australia.

I can see a great use for it with the number of people in grey/black cars who refuse to turn their lights on in the rain or twighlight. Just because they can see other people doesn't mean anyone can see them . Hello, you're in a car the same color as the road, obscured by rain in the air, on the windows and on the wing mirrors. How do you think anyone can see you without lights? V2V communication cannot come soon enough. I'll still think you're a b—y a—e, but at least I won't pull out in front of you.

The Versa isn't in this segment, it's an entry compact rather than a subcompact.

If they are smart they will persuade Proton to transfer Lotus to VW, merge Lotus Engineering with Porsche, and use Lotus as the basis for the Audi R6, R4 and microboxster.

To kill Lotus of course.

He/She had probably had to put the camera down and just hold on.

The IIHS offset test resulted in an "acceptable" rating, quite a bit better than two stars, and closer to four stars. It scored much higher in the IIHS test than the Kia Rio, which does get 4 stars under Euro NCAP, and the Aveo itself gets 4 stars under Euro NCAP for child protection (no other car scores higher). GM was expecting much better.

The BS6 is an old model, already redesigned for the Chinese market. Why they chose to export the old model instead of the new one is beyond me.

Or bendy, like jellyfish.

It's not a bad car, but the wrong size for the US market, as is the Mazda6, which you'll note is also more popular with rental fleets.

Company cars (as opposed to trucks) are often defacto retail purchases by consumers—the company simply picks up the tab as part of the salary package. Daily rental is the area most companies are trying to reduce—not only are profit margins low, but they hurt residuals on all sales. Commercial fleet for trucks and vans is highly cyclical, and can be dramatically effected by external economic conditions—thus the downturn in construction affecting the market for trucks at the moment. If new housing starts improve noticeably, truck sales will temporarily boom, no matter what the price of fuel.

Good to see the Express nearly matching the Econoline in retail sales. Fleet sales of the HHR aren't too bad when you consider it's the only compact SUV sold in a cargo-specific version. A similar reason explains the high fleet sales for the Caravan and Uplander. I'm surprised so many Highlanders go to fleet sales—even more than Equinox and more than twice as many to daily rental. The Edge's numbers don't look so good when you see almost a third go to fleet sales, and far more to daily rental than the Freestyle, for some reason the latter more popular with commercial buyers. Some scary numbers: nearly 80% of Avengers have gone to daily rental. OMG!! nearly 70% of Grand Prixs go to daily rental—the G6 sells 5 times the volume in retail sales! More Chrysler/Dodge LX cars go to daily rental than Impalas. The Grand Marquis has nearly 5 times the retail sales of the Crown Vic. Not surprisingly very few luxury/prestige cars go to fleets, especially daily rental, except: Mercedes C-Class 15% Volvo S40 37.5%!!! Cadillac DTS 27.4% (no surprise there) Lincoln Town Car 58.5% (there are retail buyers?) Volvo S80 and Infiniti M35 15.3% each Audi A6 17% (although more than 7% are commercial fleet-i.e. company cars) Sales of most sports cars to daily rental in the last 6 months can be counted on one hand. The exceptions are the MX-5 and Corvette (still less than 2% each), the 350Z (less than 3%), and the Chrysler Crossfire—more than 70% to daily rental!!!

possibly one more.

The long version of this release has much more information, and many details you may be interested in: http://auto-report.net/?p=441 Video

The Liberty is also unibody. Land Rovers and Mitsubishi's Montero are unibody as well. Unless you're sharing a platform with a pickup (or keeping the basic design of an existing frame) there is no reason why you wouldn't design a new SUV on a unibody architecture.

While the smaller Chinese companies, and especially SUV and pickup manufacturers, have been producing knock-offs based on decades-old Japanese designs, the larger and better-funded Chinese automakers have been spending what must be billions of dollars hiring the major European design and engineering firms to produce their own new models—Pininfarina, Italdesign, Porsche, Ricardo, AVL, FEV etc. have all been involved in designing the new generation of Chinese vehicles. Chery for one has had an enormous engine and transmission development program, larger than almost every Japanese, European and American automaker combined (they had to practically start from scratch after all). Hence the deal to supply Fiat, at least in the short term, who had been depending on GM and neglected gasoline engine development.

Liuzhou Wuling Motor is the current supplier for the majority of SGMW's engines, most based on the Suzuki F- and G- series, as are almost all Chinese engines under 1.5 L.

California

That many?

Opel/Vauxhall already have Eco model variants which are equivalent to Bluemotion—basically just an aero kit for an already high-mpg engine/transmission option.

Bear in mind that GM will be designing a pickup-based midsize SUV for Chevrolet in any case. The only question is whether they will build or sell it in North America.

No.