Achieving Singularity: One Ford on Display in Frankfurt
On December 2, 2008, at the height of intense government scrutiny, Ford submitted a business plan to the Senate Banking Committee in charge of investigating the troubled financial situation surrounding the Big Three domestic auto manufacturers.
The plan was called “One Ford – One Team, One Plan, One Goal.” And that goal was “an exciting viable Ford Motor Company delivering profitable growth for all.”
To get there, One Ford was supported by four key pillars:
- Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing model mix
- Accelerate development of new products our customers want and value
- Finance our plan and improve our balance sheet
- Work together effectively as one team, leveraging our global assets
So, what does One Ford have to do with Frankfurt? Well, it’s been just shy of three years since Ford boss Alan Mullaly presented that plan to Congress, and these days, three years is about the time it takes for a new car to come to market. Since auto shows are all about the new cars, trucks, and sport utilities covered in point number 2, now is a good time to check on this crucial part of the One Ford plan. Is the Blue Oval designing the kinds of vehicles it promised?
The short answer: Yes. Ford’s Frankfurt offerings are but a European-flavored slice of Ford’s global pie, but one look at what the company is doing with the Focus range is heartening.
Marching Through Frankfurt: Design Thoughts on the 2011 Frankfurt Show
The 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show is without question the biggest auto show in the world, in terms of distance hiked. We’re talking more than 2,000,000 square feet of convention floor space spread out in at least 11 buildings (though Audi built its own, separate 12th building, and there were tons of tiny SEMA-style shows tucked up into the rafters). Point is: Wear sensible shoes. One poor booth babe from Mazda had to march a bunch of us journalist types from one hall to another and got her spiked heel caught between cobblestones, thrice! The upside is all that marching leads to cars. Lots and lots of cars. Here are some thoughts on some of what I spied.
2011 Frankfurt: State of the Audi Union
Inside the spectacular Audi Ring temporary hall at the IAA I sat down with Peter
Schwarzenbauer, Member of the Board of Management of AUDI AG Marketing and Sales, Sebastian
Mackensen, Head of Sales and Marketing for the Americas AUDI AG, and Johan de Nysschen,
President Audi of America to get a snapshot of how things are going and what’s coming in the
next few years from the four-ring brand. In a nutshell, sales are steadily increasing, up
17% on a year-to-date basis relative to 2010, and the company expects to end up with an
additional 100,000 sales over last year’s 1.1 million. China will overtake Germany soon,
with 300,000 sales there expected in 2011 (their LWB A6 is the big seller). Profits are also
on an upswing thanks to a richer mix of C and D cars–the A8, for example, has tripled its
market share (to 12%) since the new model arrived–and that’s with just one engine. So what
do we have to look forward to in the months/years to come?
2011 Frankfurt: Upstairs at the IAA – Just Say Yo, Yo
Because most of the A-list cars at the 2011 Frankfurt show are sprawled out on the first floors of nine halls spread out on about as many acres, most journos never venture up to see what’s upstairs. What’s there is mostly a mash-up of SEMA tuner stuff and SAE show supplier stands, but in between you can find nascent or far-flung bit-player car companies that can have some cool stuff.
That’s how this Russian upstart pronounces its name, which is simply a Cyrillic letter that looks like a lower-case e with an umlaut on top. This so-called “nëw symbol of Russia” plans to begin production next year of a hybrid crossover cleverly named “Crossover,” and a commercial vehicle called Furgon. But at the center of their display was a show-stopping design for a fastback four-seater, called [yo] 7. Unlike the Chinese, these Russians aren’t copying anybody on the engineering or design fronts.
Designer Andrei Trofimtchouk was schooled in Belarus and these are his first automotive designs. The 7’s doors cleverly slide backward and up, curving over the roof and crossing like an insect’s wings. When closed they leave one helluva B/C-pillar blindspot, but hey, it’s a concept, right?
Frankfurt 09: One Of The All Time Greats?
The roll-call of upscale new production cars unveiled at Frankfurt was unprecedented: Rolls-Royce Ghost, Bentley Mulsanne, Aston Martin Rapide, Ferrari 458 Italia, Mercedes-Benz SLS, and spider versions of the Lamborghini Reventon and Audi R8 V10. Any two of these would have made any auto show memorable.
That list is about equal to the list of signification mainstream production cars revealed at the show. Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi all decided exhibiting wouldn’t be worth the cost and stayed home, contrasting with the ever-rising confidence of the Korean Hyundai-Kia combine, which debuted several fine compacts including the new Hyundai Tucson/iX35.
Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said 10 percent of his cars would be pure-EVs by 2010, and showed four concepts related to 2011 production models. Rivals disagree on timing and take-up: VW brand boss Ulrich Hackenberg, a respected engineer, unveiled the attractive and highly plausible e-Up! EV, but said the batteries wouldn’t be production-acceptable until 2013. He predicted an EV market share by 2020 of; “1.5 to 2 percent maximum.”
Some of the majors are following Tesla and making electric supercars to prove the technology. The Mercedes electric SLS and Audi e-tron are serious proposals for 2013. They won’t be cheap, and like the Tesla they’ll inevitably under-deliver on their stated range if you drive them as their performance invites, but they’ll be fun while they last, and might just deliver gas-heads to the EV cause.
Car of the show was BMW’s Vision EfficientDynamics hybrid, for its looks and its technological promise. A 1.6-liter three-cylinder diesel engine delivering the performance of an M3 sounds fine by us. BMW says its technologies are well into the testing phase, but not production-ready. Getting them to the showrooms will be a brutally expensive.
The technology race is heating up, and the price of entry is high. It’s still unclear how many of the world’s auto companies can pay to play.
Frankfurt Show: Light at the End of the Tunnel?
For example, Frankfurt 2009 is giving the world the first glimpse of the new Bentley Mulsanne, the new Rolls-Royce Ghost, and Ferrari’s 458 Italia. Less glamorous perhaps, but no less important to their companies, are debuts such as the Ford C-Max, Renault Fluence, Citroen C3, Opel Astra, and Hyundai ix35, aka Tucson. Frankfurt 2009 also marks the launch of the BMW X1 and 5-series Grand Turismo, the Audi R8 Spyder, and the new Jaguar XJ. By any measure, this is a great show for important new cars.
BMW sales and marketing chief Ian Robertson led a marching band and giant birthday cake onstage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the original Mini. BMW’s lovingly crafted homage to Alec Issigonis’ iconic small car has sold 1.5 million units worldwide since its launch in 2001, achieving record sales last year, and tracking close to 2008′s numbers this year. The United States is now Mini’s single largest market.
Ferrari sales for the first half of 2009 are only eight percent down on the same period last year, and brand revenues (licensing and retail) are actually up 22.7 percent, so CEO Amedeo Felisa was perhaps justifiably upbeat about the prospects for the new 458 Italia, which arrives in the United States in June. “We talk about market segments,’ he said in reference to a question about the Ferrari California’s impact on the car, “but in some markets that is not something customers even think about. They will buy it simply because it is the new Ferrari.” Meanwhile, some 61 percent of California buyers are folks who’ve never owned a Ferrari.
The guys on the Opel stand seemed upbeat, too, perhaps because there seemed to be some certainty about the sale of GM’s embattled European operation, which has consistently struggled to make money. Conspiracy theories about the apparent stalling of the sale were shrugged off by one insider, who said the delay was caused by the New GM board wanting to get a clear understanding on what it was the company planned to sell, and why. Others acknowledged that the complex deal, in which GM will sell 55 percent of Opel to Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International and Russian bank Sperbank, and give workers 10 percent of the company – with the German government contributing over $4 billion in aid – could create difficulties at a management level, “but it’s nothing we can’t work out.”
Opel’s all-new Astra is a good looking, and competitively priced, Golf rival. And the production Ampera, the Opel version of the Volt, is better looking than the Chevy original. GM design chief Ed Welburn didn’t argue, but pointed out that the Chevy version was done first, and that Opel’s design graphics are more sporty. We’ll see a more refined version of the Volt at the Detroit Show in January, Welburn promised, and not in that pale green metallic we’ve seen since Day One.
As always, Frankfurt is an auto show that’s truly vast in scale. Like Mercedes-Benz, BMW now has an entire building – Halle 11 – all to itself, and its stand includes a perimeter track mounted halfway up the wall, on which real cars periodically lap the building. After the doom and gloom of the shell-shocked Detroit Show in January, and a somewhat subdued Geneva Show in March, it’s nice to see a little showbiz back in the car show biz.
