XE Launch

YouGov’s poll in the Scottish referendum destroyed any hope Jaguar might have had about front pages and TV news channels. Exploits on or above the Thames presupposed Monday would be a slow news day and it was not. Spectaculars may be great for a management’s morale but good cars don’t need them. Three E-types at Geneva and lunch for press at a lakeside restaurant were enough in 1961. More attainable than a Ferrari, more charismatic than a Rolls-Royce, racier than a Mercedes-Benz the E-type stamped its image on a generation. The Mini made it big with a day’s press testing on a military test track at Chobham.

To be fair it’s not easy nowadays to make much of a new car. You can’t break a story in style. They are so conformist. The new XE looks so much like the XF and XJ it may pass un-noticed. As a family rendition it’s great. It is what the X-type should have been, yet perfectly good though it was, failed at. With a starting price of £27,000 XE takes on the 3-series BMW. It has advantages including being largely aluminium (Jaguar is careful to call it “aluminium-intensive”) and the F-type’s wishbone front suspension and integral link rear promise good handling. It is the most aerodynamic production Jaguar, with a Cd of 0.26. The quick S has an 8-speed automatic.

Unfortunately there is not much new about XE that you can see unless you count “The signature J-Blade running lights; another instantly recognisable Jaguar design element. In the rear lights, a horizontal line intersecting a roundel is a powerful styling feature inherited from the iconic E-type.” The aluminium and the Ingenium engines will be great but the helicoptering and the costly VIP endorsements reveal a collapse of confidence. Winning Le Mans used to be enough to get attention and reassure customers. Now Jaguar puts on stunts and made a great deal of working with “multi-platinum” (whatever that is) singer songwriter Emeli Sandé to create what it called a FEEL XE track, inspired through social media. Fans were asked “What makes you feel Exhilarated?”

Emeli premiered the new track live on the Thames as part of what Jaguar called an exclusive 45-minute set on a floating stage in the middle of the river. Three hundred guests watched from another boat and there was a projection-mapping spectacle on County Hall. “To create a truly stunning setting The London Eye, County Hall and Shell Building were turned red, while a series of red flares were launched along the river to turn the skyline red during the performance.”

BMW and Mercedes-Benz introductions are by comparison low-key. Audi would think it inappropriate. Their cars speak for themselves.

There’s nothing new. Jaguar flew the XE to Earls Court by way of Tower Bridge (left). Ford did the same 44 years ago (right) celebrating its millionth Cortina with a 2-hour flight to a new owner in Ostend.

From next week it's a whole new Dove Publishing. http://www.dovepublishing.co.uk

Footballers' cars

Earning £31,000 a week you could buy a new Range Rover every fortnight. Yet fifty Premier League footballers are having to borrow the money. Oracle, which describes itself as a luxury finance broker, says players use Oracle Finance as a tax-efficient way of buying supercars. The broker’s insight into super-rich sports stars’ buying habits shows most of them go for Range Rovers. The average Premier League player, according to Deloitte’s annual review earns £1.6 million; the top clubs’ combined salary bill is over £1.78billion. Manchester City’s wage bill alone is £233million. Ahead of the start of the Premiership season this weekend Oracle names football stars’ top 10.

Range Rovers win. Oracle Finance managing director Peter Brook says: “We looked back at our records over the last five years and weren’t surprised the Range Rover was top. We can’t say which footballers use us because of client confidentiality, but we work with some of the biggest names in the footballing world and have helped hundreds of players, managers and agents fund their dream cars.”

The top 10 most popular are:

1 Range Rover 28

2 Bentley Continental GT 26

3 Range Rover Sport 24

4 Audi Q7 21

5 BMW X5 18

6 Porsche Cayenne 16

7 Lamborghini Gallardo 13

8 Ferrari 458 8

9 Maserati Gran Turismo 4

10 Aston Martin DB9 3

Mr Brook said: “Bentley was extremely close to taking the number one spot in our Premiership poll with the GT, but it’s clear SUVs are a favourite with footballers. Our clients like their cars to be luxurious with high-up driving positions, which is why they prefer 4x4s to out-and-out supercars. Few cars offer all that like a full-fat Range Rover.”

I drive Range Rovers (top and bottom) at Land Rover’s testing track, Eastnor Castle and (middle) on the 1970 press launch at Goonhilly tracking station.

Picture from

The Land Rover 65

ebook £8.04 on Amazon

A new Auto Union

Germany’s Manager Magazin asserts that VW might buy Fiat-Chrysler. Ferdinand Piëch wants to re-create Auto Union and combine the VW brands Audi, SEAT and Skoda with classics like Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Porsche. Along with Fiat and Chrysler it could make over 14 million cars a year, consigning Toyota and General Motors with about 10 million into second place.

In the 1930s four rings signified the creation of the first Auto Union, the amalgamation of the motor industry in Saxony. DKW, Horch, Wanderer and Audi joined up to weather financial storms following the Great Depression and face intervention from the emerging Third Reich. The State Bank of Saxony, the Allgemeine Deutsche Credit Anstalt (ADCA) and the Commerzbank of Berlin were midwives at the birth of the Auto Union.
Wanderer was the oldest, established in 1885 at Chemnitz. In 1899 August Horch set up at Cologne-Ehrenfeld, moved in 1902 to Plauen in the Vogtland, then in 1904 as a public company eastwards to Zwickau in Saxony. Third ring DKW also had roots in Chemnitz from 1904 when Danish entrepreneur, Jörgen Skafte Rasmussen established Rasmussen & Ernst GmbH in an empty textile works at Zschopau in the Erzgebirge. In 1914, as the Zschopauer Maschinenfabrik J S Rasmussen, it did military work, experimenting with a large, and as it turned out unwieldy, steam vehicle the Dampf Kraft Wagen (DKW - Steam-Power-Vehicle).

DKW persevered with motorcycles, making a primitive car in 1928, then at the 1931 Berlin motor show made a breakthrough with the first front wheel drive production car three years ahead of Citroën. FWD was novel, it was cheap, and DKW was good at it. Innovation did not bring prosperity however, and DKW was obliged to take a shareholding in Audi, making Rasmussen chairman. But by 1932 car sales in Germany had halved and DKW suffered from Rasmussen's expansionism. To make things worse, the Hitler regime planned a state-sponsored car to go on sale to the German Volk at a seemingly impossible price to savers of political tokens.
Amalgamation was complicated and it took nine months to agree terms and acquire funds. Headquarters were at Chemnitz, the Zschopauer Motorenwerke raised its share capital from 4.5 million Reichsmarks to 14.5 million and the new Auto Union AG bought the fourth ring, Wanderer, leasing its factories.

DKW's contribution of share capital was Rm10 million, Horch brought Rm500,000, Audi Rm2,500,000, and Wanderer Rm15,730,000. The new combine had a staff of 4,500 and factories at Zschopau making motorcycles and 2-stroke engines, Zwickau (cars), Berlin-Spandau (wooden body frames) and Siegmar (cars and steel bodies). Auto Union was a major player in the German motor industry alongside Adler, BMW, Opel, Daimler-Benz, and Ford. Meanwhile the cause of all the angst, the Volkswagen, was slow making its appearance.
Ferdinand Porsche’s consultancy made a submission to the Ministry of Traffic in Berlin for a car selling for Rm1500, with a fuel consumption of 8l/100 kms (35 mpg), a top speed of 100 kph (62 mph) and a weight of 650 kg (1433 lbs). Hitler and Porsche met in April 1934, at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, together with Jakob Werlin, Mercedes-Benz dealer in Munich and an early member of the Nazi Party. Werlin carried weight, joined the Mercedes-Benz supervisory board, and went on to be inspector-general of the industry.

Hitler sanctioned the VW provided it could cruise the new autobahns at 100kph, obtain a fuel consumption of 7l/100 kms (40 mpg) and sell for Rm990. A contract was drawn up under which Rm200,000 was set aside for a prototype and a production run of 50,000. The effect on the established Saxony car makers was profound but in 1935 Volkswagen was inaugurated. State intervention had been inevitable and the Auto Union’s marques Horch, Audi, Wanderer and DKW were broadly complementary. Horch made premium big saloons and tourers, Audi was distinctly middle-class. Wanderer had a solid array of good family cars and DKW lively cheap two-stroke economy models.
An urgent task was to forge the group’s identity and it took up a German state subsidy to build a 16-cylinder car designed by Professor Porsche, inaugurating a momentous period of grand prix motor racing. Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union overwhelmed all opposition in a demonstration of German technical pre-eminence, a triumph for the Reich’s propaganda machine under Dr Joseph Goebbels.

Now Automotive News Europe reports: "The simple deal logic is straightforward," London-based analyst Arndt Ellinghorst of ISI Group wrote in a note to investors. "Chrysler - better Jeep and Dodge - could fix VW's US problems; Alfa could replace the ailing Seat brand; Fiat Europe is basically the 500 product family plus LCVs. Latin America could be sold, potentially to a Chinese buyer."
Both Piëch and Martin Winterkorn, VW chief executive, are on record as showing interest in Alfa Romeo. VW had $24 billion in cash to play with at the end of March, so a takeover would be manageable. Everybody denies any such thing but Piëch, the obsessive and brilliantly successful 77 year old grandson of Ferdinand Porsche gets his way more often than he doesn’t. If VW bought the 150-strong Agnelli-Elkann dynasty's 30 percent controlling stake in Fiat-Chrysler it could be $5 billion or $6 billion richer and even keep Ferrari to bring a regular $475 million pocket money every year.

Top: Mid-engined masterpieces, Auto Union racing cars by Dr Porsche.

Audi adopted Auto Union’s four rings.

Number 1 surmounts the bonnet of an Audi Front.

Horch made some spectacular cars

DKW Sonderklasse. Front wheel drive, 2-stroke and one of my first ever test cars, borrowed from the factory in Düsseldorf in 1956. My first drive at the Nürburgring.

Workaday Wanderer W24 with Auto Union rings

Publicity pictures

Scanning images for a new edition of Dove Publishing’s Audi book, which goes back to the early years of the 20th century, shows the heritage of NSU, Horch, DKW Wanderer and Audi. What pictures. Take “The greatest motorcycle factory in the world” (above) in 1930. The enterprising Dane Jörgen Skafte Rasmussen came to Saxony as a student and aged only 25 in 1903 set up Rasmussen & Ernst GmbH, boilermakers. The firm bought an empty textile works at Zschopau, and profits between 1914-1918 led to making motorcycles in this vast factory with chimneys and grandiose offices.
The 1922 Audi Type K was a 4-cylinder 3.5 litre 14/50 with an aluminium block, pressed-in liners, a ball-action gearshift and four wheel brakes. A dignified car Sebastian Vettel would approve its radiator motif, a figure 1 indicating Audi’s place in the world.
Horch went for the premium market in 1922 with its 10/35 4-cylinder engine designed by Arnold Zoller (1882-1934). Probably better remembered for his supercharger, Zoller also designed an astonishing 1464cc 12-cylinder 2-stroke racing car. The block was cast in one, the cylinders in two rows, each pair with a common combustion chamber. All the inlet ports were on the left of the engine, exhausts on the right, superchargers on top. Unfortunately it all proved too much for their inventor who died before the cars were properly developed.
Paul Daimler (1869-1945) designed this twin overhead camshaft for Horch, shown in Berlin in 1927. Gear-driven camshafts, 8-cylinders, the 3.3litre was the first in a series to secure Horch’s prestige.


Wanderer (below) was more middle-class with the 1926 W10 6/30, a modest 1551cc 4-cylinder. Its appeal was helped by a new electro-plating facility for bumpers and radiator. Side-mounted spare wheel wrapped in tidy cover.


Publicity caption for the 1971 Audi 80L (below) says “…rear part of Audi models redesigned so that it appears broader and appeals more to public. It can radiate charm and grace.” Car manufacturers’ publicity pictures. Phds have been compiled on less.

e-everything


e-mails, e-books (like Dove Publishing produces), and now e-ethanol and e-diesel. You can see now why Audi is racing e-tron quattro R18s (above at Bahrain). It is serious about alternatives to fossil fuels and for the first time I can remember it looks like a practical proposition. Audi e-ethanol and Audi e-diesel are made by combining salt or waste water with waste CO2, sunlight and microorganisms. They are making the stuff in a factory in the New Mexico desert with Audi's American fuels specialist Joule. It is an astonishingly simple process. Genetically modified microorganisms in pipes of brackish water react with CO2 and sunlight, producing ethanol and diesel-range paraffinic alkanes. It needs no biomass. I never really believed in the idea of growing vast crops of that anyway. Now Audi e-ethanol works in petrol cars with only minor changes and e-diesel will work in TDI clean diesels with no modification. Audi says production is “imminent”.

The virtue of these new fuels is in the simple and relatively cheap way they’re made and the materials to produce them are renewable. There is no need for crop-based biomass synthetic fuels have before, so a refinery doesn’t need to be near habitable or arable land. It is being made in the New Mexico desert (see below)and has the same chemical properties as bioethanol produced from biomass. You can blend up to 85 per cent ‘Audi e-ethanol’ with only 15% fossil-fuel petrol for cars running on E85 fuel.


Audi and Joule are starting to make sustainable and pure e-diesel fuel. Petroleum-based diesel is a mixture of a variety of organic compounds, e-diesel DERV is free of sulphur and aromatics and easy to ignite due to its high cetane value. Audi and Joule have had a partnership since 2011, Joule protecting its technology with patents, for which Audi has exclusive rights in automotive. Audi knows how to make the fuels work in engines, and is developing them so that they can be brought to market.

Makes sense. Audi has sometimes looked eccentric in racing. It has competed at Le Mans 14 times since 1999, made the podium every time, and won 11. In 2012 it made history by winning with the pioneering hybrid diesel Audi R18 e-tron quattro.


Audi R18 e-tron quattro #2 (Audi Sport Team Joest), Tom Kristensen (DK), Allan McNish (GB)at Bahrain

Audi Range Review


Audi overtaking Mercedes-Benz is no surprise. Before the end of the year Audi will be second in world sales of premium cars behind BMW. It’s no reflection on Mercedes-Benz, the most aspirational brand after Rolls-Royce or Bentley. Its medium and high-priced cars are beyond reproach but it has failed to match the smaller Audis or mid-range and Mini BMWs. Audis are so well made, the range so wide and so professionally presented to seem unstoppable.
Executive spaceship: Audi A8 L
My classic-in-the-garage is a BMW – I like rear wheel drive and there is nothing like a straight-six for perfect smoothness – but an Audi range review this week was a revelation. I have driven Audi press cars for years, invariably complaining about road noise. This time the cars had winter tyres and were decibels quieter. You could appreciate all their finer points without getting irritated about low-profile tyres that are only fitted to look better in pictures.

Mercedes-Benz sold 1,136,525 of its splendid first-rate cars in the first 11 months. This was up 7 per cent and in November better than Audi. Sales of Audis rose 18 per cent to 1,190,110, and it looks as though it will end the year on 1.3 million against Mercedes’ 1.27 million. However BMW, including Mini and a handful of Rolls-Royces, has sold more than either. In the 11 months it has done 1,510,862, more than in the whole of 2010.

Audi is best in breadth. It has no weak models. Mercedes’ smaller cars don’t do well and although the BMW 1-series is doing better now it was disappointing on launch. Audi’s A1 is more than a match for anything; so much so that we have thought about replacing Ruth’s Puma with one if she thinks it worth the premium over a VW.

Accordingly I tried two A1s, a 1.4 TFSI, 185PS S line S tronic, not quite the base 99g/km one we could use without paying the London Congestion Charge, but we have been tempted by some good dealer deals. This A1 had a technology package at £1375, DAB radio at £305, a Comfort Package with acoustic parking and cruise control at £605, BOSE surround sound £690 and fancy alloys at £410. With delivery at £590 it looks a lot at £25,160.

A 1.6 TDI S Line of 99g/km costs a basic £17,220, but once again it was so laden with extras that it came out at £22,545. There is no Road Fund licence and it did have the feel of a much larger car but it isn’t quite bargain basement. Ruth’s jury is still out.

Audi makes changes subtly. The newest ones don’t look a lot different from the old ones. Cosmetic changes have been kept to a minimum, a corner tweak on the grille, different LED patterns on the headlights, grey instrument dials with white pointers and you can get some sat-nav refinements such as Google Earth that works in 3D or aerial photographs. Powertrains are usually carried over, which means seamless gearshifts and quiet engines. I usually ignore paddle-shifts. They’re pure affectation. S-tronic gears almost always does the job better than I can, and since I brake automatics with the left foot I drive more precisely than I would pretending to be snatching pole ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Audi interiors are well proportioned and superior. There is no faux woodiness. I used to love walnut veneers and suchlike but now I guess it looks pretentious unless done with real craft skills at Crewe or Goodwood. Nobody can match it and everything else risks looking ostentatious. Revel instead in comfort and security. Tried an A8; a touch gloomy inside but what space. I could happily live with an A7 or S5 Sportback now that they have refinement and quietude to match their good balance and swiftness.