End of big-engined Holden is nigh

I took a spin in one of the last big-engined Holden Commodores the other day, the SSV, writes Brian Byrne.

With the imminent closure of the GM-owned brand's Australian manufacturing operations in October, this is the last of the rear-drive power saloons for which Holden is famous.

The Commodore name will continue, but as a FWD European built version of the next Opel Insignia. And it won't have the 6.2 V8 with 583ph that the car I drove has.

Super fast, super noise, and a pussycat in traffic, the Commodore SSV has only been sold in Australia and New Zealand.

Ford closed its Australian manufacturing operation last year, and Toyota has just announced its closure of the Adelaide plant it owns, next October, marking the complete end of the Australian car industry.

The picture above is a special edition of the most powerful Commodore to be built before the Holden plant closes. With 636hp on tap, it's the GTSR W1, of which just 300 units will be built because of the number of engines that will be available to Holden tuner HSV.

And they have all been sold already …

GM drops Chevrolet in Europe

General Motors is dropping its Chevrolet brand in Europe, to concentrate efforts on its Opel and Vauxhall brands, writes Brian Byrne.

The move is seen as a success for strong lobbying from the German Opel brand, which has been a struggling loss-maker for GM for years.

The Chevrolet business will be wound down by the end of 2015, according to GM. The Corvette will remain on sale in limited outlets, and a push to grow Cadillac in some markets will be continued.

Most Chevrolets sold in Europe have been sourced in Korea, in the GM operation formerly Daewoo.

It has been difficult to differentiate similar models from the two brands, especially Opel's bread and butter Astra, as premium and budget offerings.

More PSA-GM cooperation in vehicles

The next Opel Zafira could be built on a Peugeot-Citroen platform, in the latest news of cooperation between the German and French car makers, writes Brian Byrne.

Speculation that the 2017-due new Zafira might be a joint venture followed news this week that Opel will build small MPVs for all three brands at its Spanish plant in Zaragoza.

One is expected to be the next Citroen C3 Picasso, currently produced at a Peugeot-Citroen factory in Slovakia.

The Zaragoza plant currently builds the Opel Zafira and Corsa, and will take on the Mokka next year, a GM Opel vehicle currently built in Korea.

An investment in a 7 percent share in PSA Peugeot-Citroen by GM underpins the cooperation between the two companies, which has already involved savings in purchasing and logistics.

Both operations have significant issues with manufacturing overcapacity.

EV makers in battery recycle moves

The prime mover carmakers in the electric vehicle thrust are working out ways to cut the costs of the batteries that will power them, writes Brian Byrne, and one way is by recycling for use in the general power grid.

Both Nissan and GM have announced partnerships with this in view. Underpinning the idea is the fact that even after their projected 10 years of life, lithium-ion automotive batteries will still be capable of storing between 50-80 percent of their original electrical capacity.

The used batteries can be hooked up in bulk to renewable energy systems such as wind-power farms, storing surplus generated electricity for use at peak times.

It's a long-term project, as such used batteries won't become available in serious numbers for several years. But that suits the developing alternative energy source industry which will grow gradually as fossil fuels become scarcer and more expensive.

Nissan, whose all-electric Leaf will have its first deliveries here next year, has partnered with industrial conglomerate Sumitomo; GM, ready to launch its Volt extended range EV in 2011, has hooked up with ABB, a major supplier of equipment to the electric grid.

Saab to be closed

The Saab motor company is to be wound down by its owner, General Motors.

The announcement this afternoon, just two days after the brand celebrated its 60th birthday, follows the failure of talks to sell the company to the Dutch sports car company Spyker.

A previous attempt to sell it to a consortium led by the Koeniggsegg carmaker had also failed.

GM says it will be wound down 'in an orderly manner'.

On Monday, Saab announced it had sold to Chinese carmaker Beijing Automotive (BAIC) all rights to the current 9-5 as well as some technologies from the current 9-3. BAIC plans to start production of its Saab-based own brand of cars as soon as 2011.

A new generation 9-5 unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show will not now be built as a Saab, though it may find its way into another GM brand, possibly Cadillac.

Saab was originally created as a division of the Swedish Aeroplane Company, which had been established in 1937 for the express purpose of building aircraft for the Swedish Air Force. In 1949, as a diversifying from its reliance on aircraft, the Saab 92 was put into production. The 2-cylinder, 2-stroke car later became the 93, its engine with a third cylinder.

A wagon variant, the 95, was added in 1959 and would remain in production for the next 20 years. The decade also saw Saab's first foray into true performance cars with the Saab 94, the first of four Saab Sonetts.

The Saab 99 in 1969 established the brand's styling for the next 20 years and it was also the company's first turbocharged model.

In December 1989, General Motors announced it had bought 50 percent of Saab's automobile division for US $600 million with an option to acquire the remaining shares within a decade. The new generation Saab 900 in 1994 used the same platform as the Opel Vectra and helped the company declare a profit in 1995 for the first time in seven years. In 2000, GM purchased the remaining shares of the automobile division, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary.

In 2005, as part of an attempt to establish the Cadillac brand in Europe, GM produced a 'Caddyised' variant of the 9-3 as the Cadillac BLS. It was unsuccessful in its purpose.

Driving the Volt

As part of a marketing plan for its Volt plug-in hybrid, which is slated to go on sale by the end of 2010, GM has been taking the unusual step of allowing journalists to drive test vehicles. Here's the views of one of them, from Technology Review.

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Restructuring for GM

The world's biggest car company has gone into a bankruptcy protection procedure which will result in it being 60 percent owned by the US government.

General Motors (GM) will cut a number of brands and nameplates in the US in the procedure, known as Chapter 11.

A new company called New GM will come out of the measure with the ability to be profitable on sales of 10 million vehicles a year. GM has been making massive losses on sales that last year were 16 million.

The surviving brands will be Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. Current GM operations outside the US are not affected by the process.

Meanwhile, General Motors Europe has secured approval for a €1.5 billion bridge financing agreement with the German government based on the partnership with Magna, which will allow sufficient time to finalize the partnership agreement. With this available financing, the European operations are isolated from any financial impact by GM’s situation in the US.

Opel/Vauxhall assets have been pooled under Adam Opel GmbH, with the majority of the shares of Adam Opel GmbH being put into an independent trust (the balance to remain with General Motors), while final negotiations with Magna proceed.

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Fiat mulls new car company

Fiat is considering setting up a new car company which would incorporate its own car brands and the GM Europe ones, along with Chrysler.

The move, reported in Automotive News Europe, would hinge on the Italian company succeeding in buying in to the European GM brands, which the American giant wants to hive off in order to get US Government investment.

Fiat has already come to agreement with ailing Chrysler to take a 20 percent stake in the American carmaker, as part of a restructuring plan.

If Fiat succeeded in achieving a merger with GM Europe brands, which include Opel, Saab, and Korean-built Chevrolets, the combined annual sales could reach over 6m units, the figure that Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne says is needed for survival by car firms today.

That's a similar figure to VW's annual sales.

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Ireland moves on electric vehicles

The Irish Government's plan to have 10 percent of vehicles on Ireland's roads run on electricity by 2020 was apparently boosted last week by an agreement between the State, the ESB and Renault-Nissan.

The agreement underpins a promise to have such vehicles running in significant numbers within two years.

However, the much-hyped agreement is short on specifics, and as yet comes under the 'Memorandum of Understanding' status.

Although lauding Nissan-Renault for 'answering the call' of the Government to take part in its aspiration to the 10 percent target, Energy Minister Eamon Ryan said the State's intentions were 'not product specific'.

Nissan-Renault is already working on similar projects for the Israeli and Danish Governments under its participation in 'Project Better Place'.

Under this, it will provide Danish customers with 100 percent electric vehicles to European standards in 2011, providing zero-emission mobility while at the same time offering driving performance similar to a petrol engine.

Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, has created an advanced lithium-ion battery pack that both meets the requirements of this electric vehicle and can be mass-produced.

For the ESB, Padraig McManus said the company will roll out a suitable charging network.

There was considerable reaction to the Irish Government announcement. Green Machines, one of the founders of the ETLG (Electric Transport Lobby Group), said the agreement 'removes one of the main barriers to the uptake of electric vehicles in Ireland'.

"Up to now many of the county managers we have approached have presented us with a chicken and egg answer," said company MD Robert Nolan. "Why should they put in points if there are no cars while potential purchasers would say why buy when there are no charging bays? Today this dilemma has been taken out of their hands."

Green Machines offers scooters, cars and vans operated by electricity rather than directly by fossil fuels.



Mitsubishi Motors Ireland is putting a small electric car prototype on test trials in Ireland at the end of this week for two months. The iMIEV (above) is based on Mitsubishi I city car, which normally has a 600cc petrol engine. meanwhile, Mitsubishi globally has doubled its production capacity for the iMiEV to 20,000 units a year by 2011.



Quick off the charging point was Green MEP candidate Senator Deirdre de Burca, who is driving out on the campaign trail with a Smith Edison van supplied by Electric Vehicles Ireland, of Tullamore, Co Offaly, which is the national distributor for Smith Electric Vehicles. MD David Mullen said Ireland has created the 'right environment and the right Government support' to be a global leader in electric vehicle adoption.



At a global level, the planned Chevrolet Volt, which will have an Opel equivalent in the recently shown Ampera concept car (above), is 'stil on track' despite GM's financial woes. These are so-called extended range vehicles, which will have a petrol engine on board to charge the battery for longer than commuter trips.

Chrysler, which is also working on extended range cars, has just signed an agreement with A123Systems, a US-based battery supplier, for advanced Nanophosphate lithium ion prismatic battery cells, and jointly developed battery modules and battery packs. If a proposed link between Chrysler and Fiat goes ahead, this could also see the technologies 'reversing' into Fiat in Europe. Brian Byrne.

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Corsa-based SUV considered

A small SUV like Fiat's Sedici could be built on the platform underpinning GM's Opel Corsa, according to reports in Automotive News.

It could be marketed under different brands in North America, Europe and even emerging markets such as Russia, India and China.

Sales of small SUVs in Europe rose 63.6 percent in 2006, mainly due to sales of the Sedici and its sister model, the Suzuki SX4

Any such GM equivalent would be built in Thailand, India and Mexico. The annual global production target is 200,000 units. BB.