Rants on Volvo-Geely deal

So it's now official - that Volvo Cars (Volvo Trucks is an entirely separate and independent entity) have been sold to the Chinese of Geely for USD 1.8 billion. What a dramatic turn for a brand founded in 1927 as a spin-off from Swedish bearings giant SKF (still remains one of the largest bearings maker today). The early young Volvo was then led by Assar Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson, guided by the pragmatic logic that cars are driven by people, and thus the main guiding principle for Volvo must be to protect lives. Many of the very basic features that we take for granted in today's cars were pioneered by Volvo. True, there are many car makers too boast of significant innovations in the area of safety - but there is one clear difference. Volvo's advancements in safety were not made in anticipation of tightening regulations or their trends, but Volvo's own data collection from a team of engineers that spent decades collecting and analysing real world accidents data. Seatbelt reminders, front and rear were present since the 240 series of the 1980s, long before European legislation required them to.

In 1998, the Volvo Group decided to sell its less profitable cars division to the Americans at Ford Motor Co, as part of Ford's then so-called Premier Automotive Group (PAG) which comprised of Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin - a move which a decade later would proved to be a bad decision. PAG was a financial black hole for Ford and a disastrous "lost years" for these illustrious brands.


From left : CEO of Volvo Cars Stephen ODell, Chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Li Shufu, Chief Financial Officer of Ford Lewis Booth.

March 2010 would be another turning point in the brand's history as the company once again changed hands from the Americans to Chinese. Li Shufu, the chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group have assured investors that Volvo's existing plants its traditional heartland of Sweden will remain and new Volvo plants in China will not make them redundant. And he has also assured the market that it will be business as usual for Volvo, still led by their current team of management. Contrary to popular perception, Chinese companies are not that dumb to spend billions to purchase foreign car brands only to have them run to the ground by incompetent management inexperienced with managing a global car brand.

But for Volvo fans - the appeal in Volvo cars is the philosophy behind their design. Unpretentious, functional, environmental friendly but not in a hypocritical Prius kind of way, family friendly, safe not because how EuroNCAP tests says so but safe in the real world when driven by real people on real roads, robust and reliable (at least up to the 240 series). Though these are the very reasons why Volvo lost market to BMW and Mercedes, in a market that increasingly wants more bells, whistles, pomp and splendour. Old Volvos just refuse to die easily and their owners loved them so much that they don't see a need to change them often enough!

The concern should never be about crappy quality Chinese built cars. In fact, with additional capital injection the new generation Volvo cars built with Chinese money could be the most sophisticated ever with even higher levels of quality. What should be a valid concern, at least in this author's own opinion is that Volvo will be turned around to become an Audi or BMW or Mercedes. It's not difficult to understand this because this is where the market is going and this is the direction Geely has to take Volvo to if it wants to make money out of it. Not many appreciates functional, sedate looking Volvo sedan with babies and parents friendly designs. People want large heavy teutonic German cars with loud designs - think of the latest BMW models.

Volvo, being a very European-centric company is a company largely built on the post-enlightenment European philosophy of tolerance, reason and humanity. Humanity, that key word that separates Swedish and Chinese culture. The respect for values of humanity is what motivates Volvo to pursue their goals of safety. China has no history of a strong worker's union and an even poorer record of respecting fair treatment of individuals, particularly the working class. Which is an irony for a nation that once prided itself with the ideals of a classes society. With a cheap base in China, it is difficult to see how will Volvo's traditional Trollhattan in the long term, Li Shufu's initial promise and rhetoric aside. What will happen when Li eventually steps down?

With a resurgent China, I doubt the Chinese, including Geely, will again let white men tell them how they should conduct their businesses, in respecting people and the environment. This is not just an ego issue, but a cultural thing and a historical legacy drilled into Chinese students.

Hundreds of years ago when the Middle Kingdom was the strongest civilization in the world while Europe was largely a barbaric land rife with religious wars, tensions between serfs and land owning princes, rulers who still believe strongly in powers of sorcery and spirits, and accuse odd women of being witches. The Middle Kingdom was an orderly empire with strict codes of conducts at imperial courts, judiciary system with many scholars and great poets and had already sailed around the world, it already has market places with standardised currency and scales and Chinese merchants sailed around the world, while Europeans thought the Earth was flat. The Chinese thought white men how to make paper, use compass to navigate their ships, gunpowder. About hundred years later the white men returned with their steam ships and used gunpowder in guns and demanded that Canton be completely opened for trade with European products that the Chinese have no interest in. When they refused the white men introduced opium, and when Chinese rulers tried to stamp out opium the Europeans destroyed the imperial Summer Palace with their cannons and thousands of years worth of art and history gone. Later they imported a philosophy from a particular German guy named Karl Marx, and ended up putting a man named Mao at the top. 50 million died in the "Great Leap Forward."

Western analysts are saying this and that about the Geely-Volvo deal, that buying brands is a short cut and that China will not able to bring the brand further, etc etc. But now China has woken up from its almost century old slumber and healed old wounds from the traumatic Cultural Revolution. This time, I don't think the Chinese are going to pay much attention to what the white men are saying. In fact, Li believes that he is "unleashing the tiger of Volvo" that has long been caged.

Related link : 2010 Volvo S60 and Geely's Bid for Volvo

Cosmic Radiation and Toyota's sudden acceleration link

Many have suggested Toyota's problem of sudden acceleration and more recently, stalling engines of Corollas and Matrixs are coming from the vehicle electronics, a charge which Toyota have strongly denied and even hired an independent consultant to verify their claims (which has so far proved that the company is right). And to make matters worse, some of accelerator pedal recall fix did not solve the problem. Toyota's explanation was that these fixes were not done properly. The latest explanation now comes not from Toyota, but from anonymous tips sent to NHTSA suggesting that the source of the problem is cosmic radiation - and mind you these are not your average blogger and forum user spewing rubbish, but physicists and mission critical system engineers as well as academicians.

The reason Toyota's commissioned independent testing came out negative - they say is because they are not looking at the right places. Present automotive and even consumer electronics only conduct EMI (electromagnetic interference) testing as per required by US FCC and their equivalent bodies in Europe and Japan. This usually involve the usual high energy signals from radio / cellular / power transmission as well as coupling (inductive and capacitive) from nearby circuits / motors. The aerospace and orbital satellite industry, by nature of their operating environments have long included test against cosmic radiation to protect against solar flares and seasonal spikes in cosmic rays. An extremely costly test but this is what many of these experts are proposing to clear any doubts of "ghost in the machine." The test involves putting the vehicle in front of a particle accelerator, and mind you these machines are not found in your everyday Radioshack or hobbyist store but only in premier universities and very high end government funded labs.

Like all electronic components, the level of integration these days is staggering. Decades ago we used to have separate micro-controller units (MCU) for separate functions; transmission, engine, body and chassis, infotainment, climate control etc etc. But these created a secondary problem - hundreds and hundreds of metres of wire looms. These soon added a lot of weight to the cars and made trouble shooting almost a nightmare for technicians. I know of a Mercedes-Benz technician who cringes at the sight of a W140 S-class that comes in. Later model vehicles benefited from multiplexed cables that greatly simplified things. Separate units of MCUs were integrated into a few common ECU. Some models feature even higher levels of integration and used SoC (system-on-a-chip) and SiP (system-in-a-package) design, but the most common these days are application specific field programmable grid arrays (FPGA) due to their obvious cost benefit. Controller Area Network (CAN) are now chapters of technical service manuals for many models.


But with greater levels of integration, with more transistors and circuitry packed nanometres apart, there is an increasing challenge to prevent rogue transient noise signals. As the device clock speed increases, sensitivity to cosmic radiation induced single event upsets (SEUs) in memory chips increases dramatically.

A more detailed technical explanation can be found here and here.

But there one bit that I can't find any explanation to - so why is it that only Toyota vehicles are affected? Most of the electronic components at Toyota are supplied by the usual Japanese suppliers of Denso, Fujitsu and Sharp, and like all major suppliers they don't just supply to one company. So is it a packaging issue?

But in any case, many major automotive electronic suppliers are looking closely at the development of Toyota's congressional hearing. Because it could spark a knee-jerk reaction of governments enforcing more stringent regulations on automotive electronics - just as when the US government made tire pressure mandatory as a result of the Ford Explorer-Firestone tires fiasco, though it was very clear that a large majority of the fault lies in American drivers not taking responsibility in checking their tire pressure and tire thread depth.

But it needs to be said these are not insurmountable technical challenges. Fighter jets, commercial airlines and even space shuttles have been employing mission critical electronic control systems with no issue. The problem, a more practical problem, at least in this author's opinion is that the automotive electronics industry have not learned to implement proper and rigid project documentations standards. This is especially true when components are shared with multiple models and carried over into the next model change with minor modifications. If the guy who wrote the first code is no longer around, all the best to the next guy in figuring out what do each line of codes do. Very often, the only guide they have are the comments left by the original coder. The aviation industry would have none of these rubbish, especially when you are dealing with things missile launch control and targeting system.

Peugeot to launch upscale sub-brand.

Yesterday, Peugeot announced that the company will create a new upscale sub-brand under the name hors-série. I know when I first read it, my first reaction too was - horse what? The main idea behind the move by Peugeot is to attract more affluent buyers to the brand as well as to their higher margin upscale models. Peugeot's sister company Citroen too have recently revived the illustrious "DS" badge with a similar motivation behind. The first hors-série model would be the RCZ pictured above.


Citroen DS3

According to PSA/Peugeot-Citroen's brand boss Jean-Marc Gales, there are three price points in the European market: low cost, mainstream and more distinctive. PSA does not have low-cost models while both the Peugeot and Citroen brands cover the mainstream area. The DS and hors-série car lines will expand PSA's coverage into the more distinctive segment.

Hors-série is a French word that means cars built out (hors) of mass production (série). And no, they are not going to translate this into other language for overseas market and the Hors-série brand will be used throughout the world where PSA intends to sell their Hors-série models.

Monsieur Gales mentions that VW uses the German word Das Auto as its tagline in many non-German speaking markets.

Personally I am not sure if that is such a good idea. And I don't think VW's tagline is a very good example too. The French are known to be very proud of their Gallic heritage , culture and most of all, their language. Remember that the mighty Romans took 7 years to bring the brave Gauls, ancestors of the modern day French, into submission. Until today, the French Foreign Legion Légion étrangère is still regarded as the toughest elite armed corps in the world. Enough about history and now that we understood the background and cultural context behind this, let's go back to automotive marketing.

VW did not have a very consistent marketing tagline. It is quite obvious the the tagline "Das Auto" (translates into The Car) does not even sound distinctively German (to a regular man ignorant of European culture, let alone language) to begin with. At one time, VW of America operated with the tagline Drives Wanted. While in Europe the company stuck with Aus Liebe zum Automobil (translates into "for the love of cars"). Even after explaining the meaning of Das Auto, most of the general public are likely to still be confused, probably asking so what about this "The Car." I understand where is VW coming from, they created cars the defined an entire generation in Europe - the Beetle, the Kombi, Golf GTi Mk1. But the general public is not very interested in history, let alone automotive history. They want to buy from an established brand but are not interested in your classic models that petrolheads raved on and on about.

Audi's Vorsprung durch Technik is an exception. Can't really pinpoint why but maybe its the universal ability to link the word Technik with technology. And that magic word, technology, is far easier to click with the lay man's mind than "The Car." And Audi certainly have the credentials to live up to the tagline, Le Mans winnning TDi racers, quattro that revolutionised world rallying, aluminium space frame construction, etc etc. But it is still a rare exception.

Neither BMW or Mercedes-Benz uses German words in their tagline outside of Germany. The Germans are known for their logical and methodical ways, and this can clearly be seen in the way they name their cars. They completely side step cultural and language barriers when selling their cars overseas by giving all their cars alphabet-numerical names. A 5-series is as easily said by a Chinese buyer as well as an American as is a German. So is an E-class. Arabs too won't have any issue with numbers and alphabets. A more premium sub-brand with alphabetical names like M, or AMG or S-line or RS-line would be far easier to remember. To make things more puzzling, all of Peugeot's model line-up have names made up of numerical combinations. So you would expect that the reason in doing so was partly due to language.

When Hyundai launched the Tucson SUV locally, the company had to run a radio ad campaign educating people how the Tucson name is pronounced. Non-Americans would not think of the old Spanish outpost in the desert of Arizona at the mention of Tucson. Most people here still call it "tuck-son." When you need to teach people how to pronounce the name of your product rather than doing the actual act of selling. That's never a good start.

Related link : Peugeot SR1 Concept with removable wrist watch

A front wheel drive BMW. Loyalists will scream and froth in their mouths

Last year, in this post FWD vs RWD, we said that BMW would eventually rethink their RWD only philosophy and look into FWD premium cars (aside from MINI). Couple of days back BMW confirms that it will be building a sub-1 series model with FWD components shared with the MINI. I always never understood why some people choose to equate premium with RWD.


Looks like Audi's upcoming front wheel drive A1 model has ruffled some feathers at Munich. The A1 was premiered recently in Geneva, with star Justin Timberlake present. Many who were in the recent Geneva show commented that the show stand of A1's unveiling by Justin Timberlake attracted the most crowd. I guess the spell is finally broken. Premium does not equal RWD. Justin Timberlake was recently choosen as Audi's brand ambassador. Confirming a rumour that began in Nov 2009 when Justin was spotted by paparazis in an Audi A5 as well as a Q7, which in the American Hollywood context, is really quite an unusual choice.

Mukhriz : Perodua is as Malaysian as it gets

Looks like Daihatsu's outpost in Malaysia, Perodua, is going on a PR overdrive to convince the public (and the government) that it is a truly bona fide Malaysian car company, and thus deserves every bit of protection enjoyed by Proton. Last month, Perodua proudly annonunced that the company is planning to export auto parts to DMC's plants in Japan. Yesterday, two more news hinting at the same objective again made the headlines. The first was Perodua's intention to increase the value of its local parts procurement from the current MYR 3 billion to MYR 4 billion. Next they invited Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry Mukhriz Mahathir for a line-off ceremony of the 200,000th Viva.

The article had to even include a comment from Mukhriz,
When asked if the criticism by certain quarters that Perodua is little more than a 'rebadge company’ (ie it only puts its badge on a model that is from another company) and therefore should not enjoy privileges like Proton, the Deputy Minister said he disagreed with such a perception. He declared that Perodua models are 'as Malaysian as it gets’ because they have a very high percentage of parts which are purchased locally (up to 90% for the Alza) and the cars are definitely manufactured locally.

He noted that while Perodua’s R&D activities were different from those of Proton, he was confident that Perodua would advance in its R&D capability in coming years as it takes time to acquire the skills. Nevertheless, MITI would continue to support Perodua to help it continue to grow and establish a strong footing in the industry.

Prior to this, there have been rumours that the government intends to revoke national car privileges enjoyed by Perodua. At one time, certain factions of the motoring press have also highlighted the issue. But with Mukhriz's latest comment, Perodua can now bury any criticisms and lobbying from certain quarters to revoke trade protections / incentives currently enjoyed by Perodua.

The critics see protection given to Perodua as a very poor allocation of tax payer's money as they see it as a blatant subsidiy for the largest and richest car company in the world (Toyota Motor Co., which in turn owns Daihatsu Motor Co.) to sell its cars under a different badge at substantially lower prices against other competitors. Why does Japan and the largest car company in the world needs to be given subsidy to sell their cars here, albeit with a different face and badge? When prudent development policies would suggest that we use the resources to instead build grass root industries (i.e. parts manufacturing) and develop the necessary skill base - the combination of these two elements would create what economists call a multiplier effect that would have yielded far more benefits to the country and could even opened up doors of opportunity for other related industries, i.e. aerospace, locomotive, power generation etc etc., rather than to narrowly benefit a select few government linked organizations.

Mukhriz thinks that the company is Malaysian by virtue of its parts procurement and the minimal development work done here. Going by Mukhriz's argument, is Ford of America a Mexican company given that FoMoCo buys so many Mexican parts and even imports cars made from Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement? State troopers, and other Federal agents should junk their Ford Crown Vics and use the more American Toyota Camry instead. Red necks in the mid-West should stop cursing at Asians, junk their Ford F-150 and get a made in America Toyota Tundra instead, just remember to check for serious rust though or your fuel tank might decide to hop along the road. But wait, Ford could be Indian too. FoMoCo developed the Figo model solely for the Indian market, and will be built at the company's plant in Chennai, said to be the most advanced in the region. It is of course built mainly from Indian made parts. So Ford has to be Indian. On second thoughts, I think blue oval could be Australian....I remember Aussie taxi drivers swear by their Aussie made Falcons.

Is Toyota an American company? TMC argues that the company contributes so much to the American economy and makes so many vehicles in the USA that some of its models are more American than that of Ford or GM. Is Toyota also a Thai company given that the most of the world's Hilux come from Thailand, plus the Hilux Smart Cab variant is developed entirely in Thailand by Thai engineers. The engines are made in Thailand, the steel plates are stamped in Thailand. So surely Toyota is a Thai company right?

VW of China procures almost 90% of its parts in China. All their major suppliers have plants in China, with VW being their largest customer. VW sells more cars in China than it does in its home country of Germany. The VW Lavida is developed purely for Chinese drivers, and is made in China using China made parts. So surely VW is a Chinese brand and we should tell the Chinese government they can be proud of that and there is no need to develop their domestic brands and Geely can forget about buying Volvo for its technology.

OK I think readers get the drift now and you can see how ignorant are Mukhriz's comments. In the age of the Internet he still thinks everybody is stupid. The point is not just about where are the cars and parts made but where are the profits sent to at the end of the day. And Proton's profits don't get sent back to Japan.

In this interview, Perodua's new MD Aminar Rashid Salleh said "Monetary incentives aside, the business proposition makes sense for Perodua’s principal because Malaysia hosts the largest production facilities for Daihatsu Motor outside Japan, says Aminar." Of course it made sense, we are the only ones stupid enough to give them money to build cars here, while the rest of the world thinks that Daihatsu's miniboxes are rubbish. Even the Chinese consumers, and they have seen a lot of crap there, shun Daihatsu products and DMC shut down its Chinese office in 2009. Just how bad must you be to have to decide to pull out of the fastest growing and largest car market in the world when everyone else is trying to get in? The Vietnamese, and they don't get a lot of sophisticated machinery there, too are not interested in Daihatsu cars and DMC pulled out of the Vietnamese market in 2007.

Perodua's bosses have mentioned many times to the press of how proud they are of the fact that the Japanese at DMC are very surprised that the Myvi still sells so well despite being the oldest model in its product line-up. It even outsells its Japanese domestic market cousins. I find that hardly inspiring, but rather a pathetic statement coming from a company that shouts its market leadership in a market that is almost given to them on a silver platter. These sort of juara kampung mentality is what got Proton into this mess almost a decade ago when it was led by Tengku Mahalel, who proudly announed that his company is Asia's answer to BMW. Will the Myvi still be selling so well in a level playing field? And how different is the current Perodua mentality compared to the fumbling Proton a decade ago? Remember that the locally made Myvi clone, the Daihatsu Sirion, exported by Perodua only sold in tiny numbers in Indonesia. As for Perodua's own badged Myvi exported into Singapore, well the numbers are so low that hardly anyone bothers to tabulate them. Easy success fosters complacency and misplaced arrogance.

Few months ago, one of the fastest growing Chinese car maker BYD intends to make Malaysia its hub for right hand drive model assembly and export, with Berjaya Group as its local partner. But the deal won't be able to proceed until the Malaysian government grants a "manufacturing license" to BYD. But we all know that this is very likely to hit the wall. BYD's F0 model is a loose copy of the Toyota Aygo that competes directly with Perodua's offerings. It is very popular amongst Chinese youths. The Japanese at Perodua and Daihatsu, plus the folks at UMW will lobby hard to protect their interest, and competition from China is certainly not in their interest. This could be a sticky point in the coming ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). Unless Malaysia opens up its market to Chinese cars (many of which are small capacity models), the world's largest car market will remain closed to us. Is Perodua going to remain so proud of their export of autoparts to Japan, which is now behind USA, Europe and soon to be overtaken by India as well? Without access to China via ACFTA, Proton's export hopes could be affected. Perodua, on the other hand cannot export to any market without Daihatsu's approval as it does not own the intellectual property of the vehicle. So much for being a Malaysian car huh, one that cannot even be exported without seeking consent from the Japanese.

It is disappointing to know that the government, along with the general public conveniently forgets that besides Proton and Naza, the next most Malaysian car company is the Tan Chong Group, which have been manufacturing cars under the leadership of locals long before Proton or Naza came into being. Back in the 50s, the founders of Tan Chong rode around town in bicycles to sell Datsuns. But of course, Tan Chong got almost no assistance from the government, for very obvious reasons. It's a similar story with Cycle and Carriage, until it was bought over by British controlled but Hong Kong based Jardine Matheson Group.

Footnote : Perodua is 73% owned by UMW group (38%), MBM Resources Bhd (20%), Permodalan Nasional Bhd (10%), and Daihatsu (M) Sdn Bhd (5%). The remaining 27% is owned by Japanese parties — Daihatsu Motor Japan (20%) and Japanese trading house Mitsui group (7%).

Perodua itself doesn’t manufacture vehicles but it owns 49% interest in PACB, the manufacturing arm, in which Daihatsu and Mitsui control 51%. In essence, Perodua controls the domestic distribution arm while holding a minority, but still substantial, interest in vehicle manufacturing.

Vios Minor Change 2010 shots

A follow up to the 2010 Vios Minor Change post. Credits to autoincar.com for posting them up.

Launch in main ASEAN regional markets of Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore is expected to be between April - June 2010.

Germans remained indifferent about Toyota's woes

In the recent Geneva Motor Show, executives from BMW and Mercedes were asked if Toyota's Lexus recall issues would lead to Mercedes-Benz and BMW trying to grab sales from Lexus in the United States.

“I will not, and I mean that seriously. It's not what we do. At the end of the day they are still a good company."
Ian Robertson, BMW's sales and marketing chief.

"That's not the way we do business." Joachim Schmidt, Mercedes head of sales and marketing.

Adopting predatory tactics could sometimes backfire, and car companies with a long history in the industry knows this all too well. It appears that more "noob" companies in the global arena, or ones who seem to never learn from history are the ones adopting predatory marketing to capitalize on Toyota's woes.

Hyundai was one of the first to launch first strike when it announced USD 1,000 incentive for Toyota trade-ins. GM and Ford participated too. Hyundai embarked on a marketing blitz, which culminated in their 8 Super Bowl spots, many of them which kept banging on Hyundai's quality. But very soon after that Hyundai had to issue a recall involving 46,000 Sonatas in South Korea and 5,000 in USA (of which 1,300 have already been delivered). The recalls were caused by defective door locks. Between Dec '09 and Feb '10, the Korea Transportation Safety Authority recorded 123 complaints from the Sonata YF, 49 from gearbox and electrical, 45 from wheels and driving problems and 11 from engine while the remaining others were not revealed in detail. The YF generation Sonata was intended as a model that is supposed to radically push the company's brand image further upwards.

BMW had some major issues with the nikasil lined engine blocks in the 90s, while Mercedes had a very high profile issue with the W168 generation A-class that failed the Elk / Moose test. The W211 generation E-class and their derivatives also had issues with the Brake-by-wire controls which Mercedes found it to be so problematic (680,000 units recalled) that it was removed entirely from the later year models. Those who have been in the game long enough know that when others fall, it is best to keep quiet and learn from the mistakes of others. You never know when you'll be at the receiving end. It is a very simple philosophy that parents would teach their children, one that has real applications in the business world as well.

Hyundai is a new kid in the top-5 car makers club and is understandably very eager and ambitious. But its antics are viewed by the old boys as that of a noob. Quality consultants have expressed their concerns that Hyundai's effort to ramp up quality is by increasing quality inspection gates. Which of course goes against Toyota's principle's of quality. Increasing inspection gates reduces a plants throughput, increases per unit cost and does not solve the root cause of the quality issue in the first place. It is a countermeasure, not a solution. Even if one choose to discount Toyota's long renowned expertise in quality due to their recent problems, W. Edward Deming, the man who thought GM (which didn't listen) and Ford as well as post-war Japan (both which listened) on quality would have agreed that quality cannot be inspected, it has to be built in.

Hyundai's effort to close the quality gap is taking up a lot of time as well as costing significantly more, and is only viable in the short term due to favourable currency exchange rates. Hyundai is also expanding itself very rapidly, not too dissimilar from Toyota in the 90s, although the company still have a far narrower product range compared to Toyota. But we have seen how Toyota tripped itself over by stretching themselves too far. The irony is that Toyota's drop in quality can be traced right up to the point when the company started shouting quality in its commercials, in the late 90s. Ideals on product quality is best left to be spread by owners and the general public, exactly the way Toyota sold its quality values in the old days. Lexus's tagline of "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" might seem hollow now. As Lexus sales volume increases to match that of established players from Europe, Toyota is finding it hard to keep to their promise of pursuit of perfection.

Of course the Germans harbour intentions to grab sales from Toyota's Lexus! You can bet your pint of Paulaner. But they don't shout their intentions blatantly in their promotions. They use indirect means, like increasing ad expenditure and improving brand presence, which is the strategy used by VW of America. Never will they offer incentives / promotions specifically only to Toyota owners. That only serves to devalue their brand. A cheap trick. The Germans know this part of the game well, but it appears to be lost to the Koreans. There is a German word for taking pleasure at the misfortune of others, Schadenfreude. It's in their vocab. And it is a big no no in German corporate culture.

The correct world's first removable wrist watch-car clock

With reference to an earlier post about the Peugeot SR1 Concept, anonymous reader "luxury watch aficionado" pointed that Peugeot was not the first to offer a removable luxury clock. The honour goes to Bugatti's 16C Galiber Concept, which features a Parmigiani made removable Reverso Tourbillon clock that can be worn as a wrist watch. The price? A cool USD 150,000.

This particular bit info was not very well publicised because the 16C Galiber Concept was never presented to the general public. It was only unveiled at a closed event in 2009, at Bugatti's spiritual home at Molsheim, France, where Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean Bugatti built the company almost a century ago.



Bugatti's clientele won't bother to read car magazines. And the idea of rubbing shoulders with dirty peasant folks who actually flew to Geneva on commercial airlines to look at the latest models is certainly absurd to them. Instead they go to red carpet private parties, in their private jets. Which is why Bugatti gave major motor shows the pass and unveiled the 16C Galiber Concept at a low keyed event to celebrate Bugatti's centenary celebration. The Galiber Concept is set to go into production by 2013, after the Veyron 16.4 is retired. The price? A cool USD 1.44 million, at that's the base price.