Don Lee thinks he can make money with Fiat and Alfa Romeo at a vacant showroom next to his dealership. The big question:

How long will it take?

“I think there’s a decent business case if you take the long view,” says Lee, president of Lee Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep in Westbrook, Maine.

Among the short-term concerns: Initially, Fiat will have just one model — the Fiat 500 minicar, scheduled to arrive late this year. Service revenue will be only a trickle at the beginning.

The Alfa Romeo brand will arrive in 2012, but it likely will be 2014 before the full Alfa lineup is in place.

And Chrysler Group gave no guarantees last week, at a meeting here with 400 prospective Fiat dealers, that those who sell Fiat also will get Alfa — although Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has said they probably will.

On the plus side, Chrysler predicts healthy gross profits of up to $1,500 on each Fiat 500. Each dealership will get a large market area, and Fiat and Alfa should lure young customers to Chrysler Group dealerships.

So for dealers with capital and patience, the business case is attractive. At the beginning, though, it’s less so.

Go-slow strategy

Chrysler cleared one big hurdle with dealers last week by telling them they could start slowly and ramp up to a full dealership.

“To get there, some dealers are going to have to take it slower,” said Chrysler spokesman Ralph Kisiel. “They’ll have to offer a separate showroom but go beyond that as more product becomes available.”

The company did not issue specific requirements for showrooms and other items. Rather, Chrysler wants dealers to submit their best proposal for the Fiat franchise.

The go-slow approach surprised some dealers, who thought Chrysler was going to ask them to invest in a full, separate dealership right from the start.

Chrysler will choose 165 Fiat dealerships at first. Many will be in urban areas where the 500’s small size and miserly fuel economy will come in handy. The 500 is a retro-styled, two-door hatchback that is five inches shorter and about 300 pounds lighter than a Mini, a car often cited as a rival.

Chrysler has set Sept. 22 as the deadline for dealers to apply.

Got empty Saturn space?

Last week the company said a showroom of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet would be sufficient to start. Chrysler said dealerships with the Project Genesis Millennium design would work because that design has a separate used-car building where a Fiat showroom could be located. Dealerships that recently lost Saturn or Hummer franchises also would work.

Chrysler is asking for free-standing showrooms “of a reasonable size,” said Michael Maroone, COO of AutoNation Inc., the nation’s largest dealership group. “They’re not huge showrooms,” he said. “And I think over time there would be requirements to build a service facility, but not necessarily initially. I think you could do some commingling early, but ultimately I think it’s going to be different.”

So far, Maroone likes what he hears. “Based on the number of outlets, we think it’s a viable business,” he said. “The real key is the fact they’re only going to authorize 165 dealers initially. That allows people to both protect their margins and serve customers and be a little bit more aggressive.”

At the Detroit meeting, Chrysler talked about first-year Fiat 500 volumes of 50,000 cars, growing to 78,000 annually by 2013. That would mean sales would average 472 per dealership if the dealership count stays at 165.

But some dealers doubt Chrysler’s estimate on grosses of up to $1,500 per car. Lee says the number might be “a little optimistic.” But if Lee gets the franchise, he’ll be the only game in town in the Portland, Maine, area and won’t have to worry about competitors undercutting him on price.

Bill Golling, owner of Golling Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., says the arrival of a small car like the Fiat 500 will bring a new type of customer into Chrysler dealerships, which are used to selling minivans, Jeeps, pickups and large cars.

“If gas goes to $5 a gallon, it’s stand back, Irene,” says Golling, who says he probably will apply for a franchise.

Italian cachet

But the Fiat franchise is about more than selling a cute small car that sips gasoline. “There’s an understanding that there will be a re-entry of Italian cars in the United States,” says AutoNation’s Maroone. “They’re looking to create a separate culture in the stores and have a unique retail experience.”

Maroone says he went into the Aug. 30 presentation as a skeptic but emerged ready to apply for several franchises.

The chairman of another dealership group does not share Maroone’s optimism: “The Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge dealers are so weak, I don’t know how they can dilute it with all these extra brands and product. … If you look at small cars, even Minis are being discounted now.”

Lee, the Maine dealer, would like to know more about Chrysler’s own product plans because he doesn’t want products in his own showrooms competing with one another.

“I just hope they’re not going to make a mistake and start selling Fiats that have a Dodge or Chrysler badge on them,” he says.

The company has announced no plans to sell rebadged Fiat 500s, but it will sell Dodge- and Chrysler-badged compact cars based on Fiat platforms.

Lee hopes he will learn more when he goes to hear Marchionne address dealers Sept. 14 in Orlando and see Chrysler’s lineup.

Says Lee: “What I need to do is evaluate whether it’s worth investing in a Fiat franchise vs. acquiring a different franchise I would put in my facility.”

Source [AutomotiveNews]

Ford dealers begin taking orders today for the 2011 F-150 SVT Raptor pickup, featuring a larger standard engine and more seating capacity.

For starters, all 2011 Raptors will come standard with a 6.2-liter V-8, rated at 411 hp and 434 lb-ft of torque. The 6.2-liter engine was an option on the 2010 Raptor, while a 320-hp 5.4-liter V-8 was the base engine. The change gives the Raptor an additional 91 hp. Ford says the 2011 Raptor will tow up to 8,000 lbs., making it suited as a support and chase truck, as well as a race truck.

The iron block, aluminum head V-8 in the Raptor is a tuned-up version of the unit used in Ford’s Super Duty pickups.

The other major change for the Raptor is the addition of a SuperCrew cab option. The SuperCrew cab adds 12 inches to the truck’s wheelbase and overall length.

The Raptor is 7 inches wider than the standard F-150, due in part to triple-bypass shocks from Fox Racing.

The front suspension consists of a coil-on-shock, double wishbone independent setup with aluminum lower control arms and forged-steel uppers.

The rear gets a Hotchkiss-type live axle with leaf springs and outboard shock absorbers.

The pickup will roll on 35-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain TA/KO 315/70-17 tires.

The Ford powertrain team did extensive durability tests on the SVT Raptor, including a 62-mile hot-weather loop in the desert that simulates the Baja 1000. Engineers also put the 6.2-liter V-8 through hundreds of additional tests that most Ford engines will never see.

Inside, the Raptor gets a 4.2-inch LCD screen added to the instrument cluster. The monitor, adopted from the Super Duty gauge cluster, shows everything from off-road and towing performance to steering wheel angle and drive mode. The menus are navigated with a five-way button on the steering wheel.

Pricing for the 2011 F-150 SVT Raptor hasn’t been released yet, but the 2010 model had a sticker price starting at $41,995 so we expect the cost of the 2011 model to be similar.

The trucks will be available in dealerships late this year.

Source [Ford]

Carbon Motors was formed in 2003 with the intent to provide a purpose-built police cruiser to compete with other cop cars built from existing civilian vehicles and saddled with the accompanying compromises. Last year, the company took up residence in a vacated Visteon factory in Connersville, Indiana, and announced plans to spend $350 million updating the 1.8-million square-foot space for its purposes. Carbon’s car is known as the E7 for now, although the company calls that an internal code name and will reveal a more intimidating moniker closer to production, which it says will begin in 2012.

A Purpose-Built Police Cruiser

In addition to the diesel BMW powerplant, which puts out 265 hp and 425 lb-ft of torque in various civilian-market Bimmers, the E7 is said to boast an aluminum space frame with a perfect 50/50 distribution of its 4000 pounds between the front and rear axles. At 200 inches long, 78 inches high, and 64.2 inches wide, it is within a couple inches in every dimension of the Ford Taurus, which last week was announced as the replacement for the long-serving Crown Victoria as Ford’s police cruiser. However, the E7’s quoted head- and legroom far surpass the Taurus’s snug interior measurements, which is quite a siren song for utility-belted public servants.

Another unique feature on the E7 is its rear-hinged back doors—which police officers will most certainly avoid referring to as “suicide doors”—said to ease ingress and egress of uncooperative perps. Additionally, Carbon says the E7 will pass the horrendous 75-mph rear-impact crash standard, an officer-protection benchmark otherwise met by only the Crown Vic and its Taurus replacement.

Optional E7 equipment includes the usual selection of red and blue wig-wag lighting, bulletproofing in the front passenger compartment (perhaps the logic is that, if the fellows in back are important enough to spring, they are dangerous enough to expose to the crossfire), a head-up display, an automatic license-plate recognition system, a 360-degree audio/visual surveillance system, and a LoJack stolen-vehicle tracking system.

Wide-Ranging Criteria

According to Carbon, the BMW powertrain will be good for 0-to-60-mph sprints in 6.5 seconds, with the quarter-mile passing in 14.5 at 98 mph. According to our experiences in a 3800-pound 335d with an identical powertrain, that quarter-mile claim is likely spot-on, although the 0-to-60 is likely a little conservative. Handling could be similarly impressive, with cornering grip being quoted at 0.85 g. Perhaps more important to most departments will be the claimed “250,000-mile durability spec,” although we’d guess that depends on the frequency with which the car is subjected to the eight-inch curbs that Ford says its Taurus cruiser can smack at 40 mph with no ill effects. And that 75-mph rear-impact test is probably a one-time deal.

If you’re thinking—as we are—that a BMW-powered vehicle with an aluminum spaceframe is going to break the bank for struggling municipalities, Carbon says no. The company claims that its pricing will be competitive with the cost of existing police vehicles that must be upfitted from retail versions to meet police requirements. Firm pricing will be released sometime later this year. Until then, we’ve got a “donkey show” queued up.

Specifications

The Shinari concept, which roughly translates to “resistance to being bent,” will serve as a the basis for Mazda’s new design language, and many of the styling cues will make it to future production vehicles. That means that the Shinari will essentially affect the design of every vehicle coming from the Japanese automaker for the next several years. An important car for Mazda? You bet.

The creation of the Shinari Concept starts with Ikuo Maeda, Mazda’s global head of design. Maeda was the chief designer of the RX-8 and the Mazda2 and has been with the company for nearly 30 years, but his connection with the brand goes back even further than that. His father, Matasaburo Maeda, headed the design of the first generation RX-7 back in the 1970s. Mazda runs in the Maeda family’s blood and there’s no one more qualified to define the look of Mazda’s next generation vehicles.

While Maeda has had an influence on Mazda design in the past, 2010 is the first year in which he’s had full control. The Shinari Concept represents the first styling concept under his new design theme, KODO, which replaces the controversial Nagare them from the past several years. While the Nagare-styled cars were represented by wavy, flowing lines, a trait that looked great on concepts but was tough to implement on production cars, KODO is more of an organic style that still takes cues from the natural world, but in a much more solidified and powerful sense.

Maeda describes KODO as form with a soul, or bringing form to life, with the three key terms defining the theme being speed, tension and alluring. “There are few products of industrial design that can be compared to living entities which convey energetic motion and which invite affection,” he says. “It is this intrinsically emotional appeal of the car that I wish to express when creating Mazda cars.”

Source [Yahoo]

Henry Ford certainly made things easy when he stipulated that customers for his rugged Model T could have any color they wanted, so long as it was black. Today’s car buyer faces a vastly more complicated decision-making process when choosing the paintjob for his or her new vehicle.

There’s no way of knowing whether Mr. Ford would have approved of the eight colors currently available with the 2011 Fiesta SE subcompact sedan. Our guess is “Tuxedo Black” might have won his approval—although “Lime Squeeze Metallic” would probably have cost someone his job.

Things only get more complex the higher up the automotive food chain you go. The $330,000 Bentley Mulsanne luxury sedan is available in more than 100 exterior shades. Customers can also order a customized color, should they so desire. During this year’s New York Auto Show, a Bentley representative described the company’s recent efforts to color-match everything from 1950s kitchenware to gowns worn by royalty.

We’re here to present today’s most popular car colors, some dos and don’ts when it comes to choosing a paintjob, and a peek at the hottest colors coming in the future. Along the way—aided by science and industry experts – we’ll attempt to debunk a few common myths related to car color.

Can you be charged higher insurance rates for a car with a bright paintjob? Do police really prefer ticketing red cars? Keep reading to find out…

Do insurance companies charge higher rates for bright colors?

It sounds silly, but the idea of paying higher insurance rates for a brightly colored car has been around for years. Let’s finally put it to rest. It’s not true and, according to insurance industry experts, it never has been.

“I’ve never heard of a company that does” charge more for a certain color, says Jeanne Salvatore, Senior Vice President Public Affairs at the Insurance Information Institute. “They’re looking at theft records and safety records…make and model, and expense to repair.”

“It’s a myth,” says Luz Correa, Public Affairs Specialist for State Farm Insurance in Metro New York. “[Car color] is not something that goes into a rate.”

What are the most popular car colors?

“The most popular color in North America for the past three years is white,” says Nancy Lockhart, Color Marketing Manager for DuPont Vehicle Paints. “We’ve also seen that, globally, black has gained in popularity.” Lockhart credits growing consumer interest in metallic and pearl-coat finishes with boosting the appeal of these two colors.

According to DuPont’s annual “Color Popularity Report,” silver remains the most popular choice worldwide. However, more shocking colors are making inroads. “We’re seeing a rise in purple globally,” says Lockhart. “Orange has also been a color space that has really taken notice the last five years.”

Emerging markets like China and India will soon influence car color palettes here in North America. Michelle Killen, Exterior Color Designer for General Motors, predicts a distinctly rose-tinted future. “A trend that is starting to make its way here from China is the use of “pink” or “fuchsia,” says Killen. “You are going to start seeing this used more in North American and European markets.”

Killen says she relies on “everything” when studying the next must-have colors. “I use fashion for the “what’s hot right now” and for longer term or further into the future I like to use trend sites.” Furniture, product design and architecture all influence the colors GM offers, says Killen. “We are still seeing orange as a “hot” color space. Orange has really become a staple in exterior paint design.”

Can color add or detract from a car’s value?

The simple answer is yes, especially if you plan on holding onto your car long enough for it to attain classic status. “Everybody talks about Resale Red,” says Mike Fairbairn, a founding partner at RM Auctions Inc. Red is perennially popular with buyers but, according to Fairbairn, not all colors are so lucky. “The other conventional wisdom is that you can’t sell green.”

Fairbairn advises owners—specifically those in the classic car world—to think carefully when choosing a color. “Choose a period color that people would consider iconic for that model.” A color should also apply to the type of car, with darker hues working well with formal luxury vehicles like a vintage Rolls-Royce.

For some makes and models, color can add enormous value. When it comes to 1960s-era muscle cars, Fairbairn says the whole vehicle is valued according to what color it was when it left the factory. “God help you if it was hideous green,” says Fairbairn with a chuckle. Whether the owner likes it or not, the car is more valuable in an unattractive but entirely original color scheme.

Fairbairn explains that buyers of certain classic Chrysler muscle cars, for example, will pay up to “one third more” for cars finished in wacky period colors like “Plum Crazy” purple. No wonder Chrysler brought back some of these lurid hues for its modern lineup of vehicles, including the Challenger coupe.

“Chrysler understands that there’s a strong emotional bond drivers can have with their cars, and color takes that feeling and personalizes it,” says Jim Parker, Head of Chrysler’s Exterior Color & Trim Studio. “Think about it; the color of a car can really make or break a great design.”

“When we developed the new Challenger tribute colors, we went back in our archives and found the original color standards that were developed in the late-60s for these wild colors,” says Parker. These Challenger tribute colors have included “TorRed,” “B5 Blue” and, of course, “Plum Crazy.”

“We’re topping off the 2010 model year now by introducing a limited run of new Furious Fuchsia, a tribute to the outrageous 70’s color Panther Pink,” says Parker.

Do certain colors attract police?

In today’s era of radar and laser detectors—not to mention soulless speed cameras—the easy answer is no. Most police officers will explain that if you’re speeding, you’re going to be pulled over no matter the color of your car. But could law enforcement subconsciously be focusing on brighter colors, and red in particular?

They might be, at least based on research conducted by Dr. Mark Changizi, professor of Human Cognition at 2AI Labs. An evolutionary neurobiologist, Changizi’s online biography details his studies as a means to “grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel and see as we do.”

Source [Automotivenews.com]