Tuesday 25 January 2011

Motors - The Future of Seat

The Future of Seat 

The VW Group is an example of how a vast array of car companies can be under one umbrella and be extremely successful. With over 6.3 million cars produced in 2009 compared to Toyota’s 7.2 million and GM’s 6.5 million, the VW Automotive Group has risen to become a power house of the motoring industry and, according Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of the VW Group, they have the ambition to become the largest in the world by 2018.

And it’s not like the VW Group is a small, easy to manage group either, it has full, 100% share of 7 household names. These are:
Volkswagen, including the Commercial Vehicles arm,
Lamborghini,
Bugatti,
Bentley,
Seat,
Skoda,
and a 99.55%, so near-as-makes-no-difference 100%, share of Audi.

On top of all that, it owns 50% of Porsche, with a merger set to be completed this year, around 71% of Scania and recently acquired a 20% share of Suzuki.

As British Leyland has shown, owning and operating so many car companies who operate in similar areas of the car industry has it’s pitfalls. To date, of all the British names that went into the BL, around 40% of all British car manufacturers, only Jaguar, Land Rover and MG are left.

This is where VW had to be clever. The scale of the issue is immense, competing in VW’s own area is Audi, Skoda and Seat, all wanting their badge to go in the direction they want, price models as they wants and design chassis’, engines and bodies that will set them apart and this problem is where BL failed so spectacularly; the inability to juggle the wants and desires of so many car companies.

How ever, almost every marque that has fallen under the VW umbrella have thrived. VW has become almost a by-word for build quality, Skoda has been thoroughly transformed as a VW sub-brand, posting it’s best sales figures in it’s history in the last couple of years. Audi is able to match Mercedes Benz for perceived quality and class, Lamborghini has finally been able to put it’s reliability problems well and truly behind it and become hugely profitable, Bentley has turned itself into much more than a cheap Rolls-Royce and Bugatti has produced its first new model since production of the EB110 ended in 1995.

  However, Seat has been a trickier brand to get right. The problem is because Seat is a brand that is too strong to be a sub brand which has suited Skoda so well but lacks the perceived brand-quality of VW and Audi, so positioning Seat has been problematic. So what should VW do with Seat to turn it into something with purpose and direction of it’s own?

The answer to this can be found by drawing on Seat’s history. Seat has been involved in motor-sport and can trace that trend all the way back to the 1960’s and continued into rallying and more recently, World Touring Cars, under the direction of VW.

The problem is, none of this heritage transfers to the feel of Seat’s model range, you don’t know that Seat has been in the WTCC, in it’s current and previous form since 2002 and champions several times over and introduced Diesel engines into touring car racing. In short, Seat has no signature.

To demonstrate the problem, we look at Seat’s current model range:

Firstly, there is the VW Polo-based Ibiza, in various body forms. The Golf based Leon with the smattering of VW petrol and diesel engines. While both models have Hot-Hatch versions with the ‘Cupra’ badge and a black-fronted version with the Seat historical name ‘Bocanegra’. The problem is that even these hot versions are re-skins of other VW models.

In the case of the Ibiza; it is simply a VW Polo GTi, while the Leon uses the Golf GTi and a retuned Golf R engine for the Leon Cupra R and Bocanegra respectively.

The rest of the range is a rather anonymous collection comprising of the Altea mini-MPV which utilises the same platform as the Leon, as well as an Audi A4 based saloon and a large MPV which uses a stretched version of the Leon platform.

So like Alfa Romeo within Fiat, Seat wants to be a brand that focuses on sporty models but the demand of ensuring profitability prevents total commitment to this philosophy.

So what is the solution? Well in order for Seat to be able to breathe with the same design freedom as everyone else in under VW, it needs to differentiate itself, which means drawing on something that defines Seat. In this case, the WTCC is where you should look.

Mid-way through the 2007 World Touring Car Championship season, Seat debuted a version of it’s Leon touring car equipped with a 2.0l TDi engine. In the following season, the TDI Leon took both Driver and Manufacturer titles.

So Seat has not only a presence in production car racing but also, like Audi in Prototype racing, a history of pioneering Diesel engines. What am I suggesting? I’m suggesting that Seat moves away from away from selling models that simply sit in the price gap between Skoda and VW and bring something new to the VW Group stable, i.e. a focus on high performance cars, in particularly Diesel engined motors.

VW showed off the BlueSport TDI back in 2009, a working concept which, as you can see is a two-seat, mid-engined sports car that is designed to be VW’s version of a model that will also be sold by Audi, almost certainly with four-wheel-drive and a Porsche version that will feature a Porsche-designed flat-four engine rather than a diesel or traditional four cylinder engine.

If Seat were to take away the BlueSport and let it’s own famously whacky designers give it a distinctively Seat look, VW would be able to spread design and development costs even further and be able to price the VW version slightly higher, broadening the scope of the car.

Secondly I would have Seat take the Audi TT TDi and allow Seat to offer it as a front wheel drive version, something Audi refused to do.

This would give Seat two top end models that could be priced to give the Mazda MX-5 some real competition across it’s entire price point, rather than just at around £25k as the VW version of the BlueSport is expected to be priced.

I understand the need for ordinary models to keep the sales figures up, and, as with Alfa Romeo, Seat would need ordinary models such as the Altea and Alhanbra MPV’s and the Exeo saloon.

However, Seat is ignoring the serious motor-sport credentials of the Leon and in particular the talents of the TDI touring car. Currently, the Cupra R is difficult to distinguish from the rest of the range, and the Bocanegra is only separable by the deep black nose and for a company who prides itself on the madness of it’s designers, this situation is a little tame.

I would firstly take the idea of the Golf R; a unique Golf due to the fact it is the only Golf to utilise four-wheel-drive. In the case of the Leon, the top Cupra models should have almost a complete re-skin to really separate them from the necessary conventional models. Finally, I would add a third Leon Cupra model: A Cupra TDi to really push the success Seat have enjoyed with the Leon in touring car competitions. These changes to the range would allow Seat to show off it’s tradition of high performance production car racing.

It would also allow Seat to escape from the tag of simply selling re-badged VW’s. Badge engineering is nothing new, and nothing to be discouraged, Skoda is a transformed company because of rebadging. And while Seat would need to continue using VW base platforms for the Leon, the amount of extra development required to create a high performance and good handling diesel engined Hot-Hatch would ensure Seat’s technical ability would be fully demonstrated.

Seat also has a case for being allowed to produce some more original models as it owns it’s own factory in Martorell, Spain which currently produces all Seat models aside from the Alhambra, and so Seat is able to tailor the production facilities to it’s own particular needs. With these alterations to Seat’s model range, the brand would be able to continue it’s decent sales figures and add some really distinctive models that will really play on Seat’s history of being involved with high performance cars and will offer VW a reason to really push high performance TDi engines to try and claw back some of the advantage BMW diesel engines have over almost every other manufacturer.

In addition, Seat does really need these changes, while the cars are being sold, the company has never been in profit under VW, and while it doesn’t need the level of transformation that Skoda and Lamborghini have enjoyed under VW, Seat has been a member of the VW group since 1986, and for VW to hold on to the company for that length of time, it obviously doesn't consider Seat a liability.

MD

Review - 2006 Nissan Micra 1.2 Initia

Nissan Micra Initia


Ok we’ve been busy recently testing several models. The first one, as you can see is the Nissan Micra. Specifically the 2006 1.2 litre ‘Initia’ spec car in three door format.
While this is a new test, this generation Micra is in the process of being replaced with what we feel is a rather ugly, overly cheap looking Chinese manufactured model that has a very anonymous look to it. This, the third generation of car to carry the Micra name has a very cute look to it, with shades of the VW Beetle in its side profile.

Whatever you may think of the looks, they are distinctive and interesting, with the high headlights, wide hips that travel along the cars flank to the headlights. We weren’t keen on the looks when the car was released in 2003 but with the BMW MINI and VW Beetle demonstrating that cute is cool, the little Micra has a modern look, perhaps more modern than when it first appeared. At least it isn’t dull or boring although the looks probably appeal far more to women than guys.

As always, the first thing to address is why this model? Well the Initia isn’t the bottom-feeder model and so can hold some reasonable value. The Initia cost around £8,500 when new and can return around £4,500 today with average 10,000/year mileage. It also had a reasonable engine, a 1.2l 4 cylinder that can hold its own in all the tasks the average driver might require and the car could be spec-ed up with alloy wheels, metallic paint, electric sunroof and air-con while a single changer CD-Player was standard.

With the small car market being packed with competent competitors, the Micra needed to have some advantage over its rivals. Knowing they couldn’t beat Ford or MINI on handling, the Micra went for the easy route of cheap, well equipped cars that are in high demand, so its cutesy looks and decent equipment level for its age and price bracket are a huge advantage in standing out for the cheap car customer. The only real omission compared to brand new cars is air-con as standard and iPod/aux port.

The engine is a naturally aspirated, all aluminium, 1240cc, 16v DOHC In-line 4 cylinder engine coded CR12DE that was a development of an old CG coded engines that were revised for this generation Micra. Being all aluminium was a surprise to us, most cheap cars make do with cheap but heavy iron block/aluminium head combination. It develops just over 78bhp at 5,600 rpm and 81 lb/ft of torque at 4,000rpm. This means the 957kg Micra is good for 0-62mph in 13.1 seconds, which while it’ll never set the world alight, is far from bad in a car that cost under £9,000 when it was brand new. The car has a top speed of 104mph, perfectly adequate for a tiny little car.

The brakes comprise of perfectly adequate disc brakes at the front, drums at the rear. Don’t ever be afraid of this set-up on small cars, the brakes will stop the car just fine and keeps costs down. In fact, the Fiesta we’ve been using as a benchmark has the same set-up. the Micra was never going to explore new areas of handling, but this little car doesn’t do badly. The steering is really light, the wheel responds to every input you care to provide. At launch, the Micra had electric power steering. While that has become the standard system, at the time many cars still used hydraulic assistance and so the Micra had a huge deficiency in steering feel compared to its rivals but today it’ll provide no less than its immediate cheap car rivals.

The standard McPherson strut front suspension, torsion beam rear setup is a pleasant surprise, it’s a reasonably stiff arrangement that does well to keep body roll to a minimum. Couple that with that light feeling, fast responding steering set-up and you can start to see how this little car might give a fair amount of half decent entertainment.

You realise the logic of this set-up when you start to explore its in-town credentials. Nissan built this car to be a nipper city beast. The turning circle is frankly tiny; 9.2m which means it can turn full circle on a normal two-wide road without needing to stop and find reverse. Suddenly the overly light steering and well contained level of body roll makes total and utter sense. This little thing was put on this Earth to absolutely conquer the urban crush.

And it does. The engine is fairly eager, pulling well despite the rather limp-wristed sounding 78bhp. In fact today it’s a very powerful engine. In the endless pursuit of fuel economy, engines have lost all power. A 2010 Ford Fiesta Studio that is equipped with a 1.25l engine has to get around with a frankly insultingly pathetic 59bhp! With a 0-62mph time of 16.9 seconds and a top speed of 94mph, the little Micra looks like a Ferrari to the Fiesta’s, well Fiesta. Now the more observant of you will notice that we’ve just compared a mid-low spec Micra to a Bottom Feeder Fiesta. True, but even the original 1.0l version of this generation Micra had 64bhp so we aren’t being too unreasonable when we say the Fiesta’s state of tune is pathetic.

So can this little budget run-around get a clean sweep? Well yes, it can. Unlike the gutless Fiesta, the Micra can do motorway jaunts happily, in fact it has rather decent motorway manners, quiet and comfortable and well behaved. Road and wind noise are kept low enough so you can just about hear the engine gurgling away happily ahead of you. The noise is informative too, rather than just being a pest. This means you can hop around the city ahead of everyone else, jump on the motorway to go conquer another city and then B-Road it home and arrive happy and comfortable and the car won’t have let you down anywhere along the line. As we’ve said though, it’ll never set new standards or explore new realms but it won’t let you down or disappoint you.

As you might expect, the interior is pretty basic. However, the reason you ever bought a Nissan, in fact the only reason you ever bought a Nissan was build quality. We’ve never heard of a poorly built Nissan before, although that might change with the new 4th generation Micra. While the interior materials aren’t fantastically outstanding, they aren’t bargain bucket levels of quality. The stereo is obviously a cheap item, with nothing better than ‘Nissan’ on its facia. The whole dash unit feels solid and well put, in fact it makes genuine, solid build quality seems so easy. It makes us wonder how Nissan can get the interior, the easiest part to do a shoddy job on, of a cheap super-mini spot on and yet companies like Mitsubishi, Kia, Hyundai and even Vauxhall can’t get the materials right.

Kit wise, the Micra is in places, fantastically well equipped and in other areas, as spartan as its new price suggested. The radio is a single changer CD-Player as standard and the car comes packed with brilliantly useful cubby holes and storage places. The glove box is excellent; the face belies its cavernous capacity. It not only has two slots in the main body, but also a fixed slot for smaller items. Our standard camera, sunglasses, sat-nav and road atlas kit were lost into the huge space. There is a small, open cubby hole behind the gear stick, a cup-holder/storage bin fold out unit at the bottom of the centre console and another big cubby hole on the top of the centre console. Two phones and a charger also disappear quite nicely into that.

Disappointingly there is no Air-Con as standard, something even in 2006 we were coming to expect from all but the most basic of basic cars, but in truth that is the only black mark we’d deal out.

The seats are also a pleasant surprise. They are in no way sporty, lacking almost any major lumbar support to hold you snugly in the seat yet they are comfortable in the city and on the motorway. Adjustment is easy and solves any discomforts you may get, a major importance as they can cause a numb backside if you’re not being well supported by the seat back.

The headrests aren’t so good, serving almost no purpose, adjustment isn’t easy or simple to work out and they don’t offer any support or comfort which means they simple irritate.

The rear bench disappoints slightly too. The headrests offer slightly more function and the seats themselves are perfectly acceptable for short stints but the Micra’s Beetle-esc form means rear headroom is cut considerably. If you’re over 6 foot then you will find you can’t put your head back properly. The centre rear seat only has a lap belt but that is to be expected and the Micra isn’t the sort of car that needs or is expected to regularly carry five.

The boot is pretty sizable, if a difficult shape. Standard capacity is 371 litres, perfectly capable of getting enough junk for two people to go camping. The seats do split fold 60:40 as you would expect and that boosts luggage capacity to 584 litres, and the straight sides of the car means you can make good use of this enlarged space, although the seats don’t fold fully flat.

The boot lid creates a little problem, the boot itself looks pretty sizeable, but again as with rear passenger head room, this is cut slightly but the curved roof line, reducing some of the useful space available. The only real point of contention is the luggage rack which is nasty cheap; it breaks easily and is probably the item of least quality on the whole car.

However it isn’t all doom and gloom, as you can see there isn’t much intrusion from the rear wheel arches and what intrusion there is, doesn’t affect the useful boot space available which is flat, despite the car having a full size spare wheel, none of that useless space-saver rubbish that just irritates us. All in all, above average levels of luggage room.

The metallic paint on our test car was an optional extra, though most colours available were metallic. There was Air-Con available if the buyer stumped up £600 and this remained an option on all the models garnished with the 1.2l engine.

Again, the 14” steel wheels/plastic caps on our car was the standard set-up, although Nissan did offer rather fetching 14” alloy wheels. Driver and passenger airbags, child seat attachment, the CD-Player, ABS, Alarm & Immobiliser, electric windows and, as mentioned, a full size spare wheel were all standard kit, a pretty decent spec list for an £8,500 car.

As we’ve said, Air-Con, fully electric tilt/slide Sunroof, alloy wheels and metallic paint were the optionals.

And finally, as usual, it’s time to throw some more figures and stats at you all; running costs. If this review so far has peaked your interest and you’re thinking about getting the Micra rather than a brand new super-mini, then you’re probably cross-fingered we don’t say the engine drinks petrol like crazy. Well fear not, because this little car is more than able to hold up to the newer opposition quite comfortably.

The Fiesta Studio model we mentioned earlier, with its insulting 59bhp can achieve 51mpg on the combined cycle, a pretty decent feat and does beat our little Micra, however it isn’t the crushing you might expect. The Micra is able to achieve a very respectable 47.8mpg combined. The Fiesta does have a range advantage of about 25miles more than the Micra, but in this age of uber-frugal attitudes, we honestly expected it to be 50miles+ extra. The 7 year old engine isn’t totally outclassed on CO2 either, emitting 139 g/km compared the Fiesta’s 127 g/km. This means the 3.8 seconds longer it takes the Fiesta to reach 62mph, it’s just 4mpg more efficient and just 12 g/km of CO2 cleaner.

The Micra does gain points back against the modern Fiesta, firstly in the weight department, weighing in at 957kg compared to the Fiesta which tips the scales at 966kg. As well as this, the Micra is rated at Insurance Group 2, while the Fiesta, Group 3. It is only one group, but it does mean the Fiesta is likely to be more expensive to insure.

So basically, what we’re getting at is that your £11k odd Fiesta is not really any better than a fairly basic Micra that was released in 2006.

As we’ve mentioned, you can pick up Micra Initia 1.2’s from about £3,200 ranging to £4,800, our half spec-ed test car is today worth about £4,000, hardly a bank-breaker. We’d definitely recommend spending a bit more time, effort and cash on one that has Air-Con, you will miss it if it isn’t there. As for the rest of the range, we’d avoid the 1.0l’s as the 1.2l that replaced it is more powerful, has a far better torque figure and is just as good on fuel. There was a 1.4l and a 1.6l but the best (and most expensive) model was the 1.5 DCi, hence the reason that the 1.2l models are our pick.

Conclusion


So what can we say? Well, surprisingly, the Micra Initia gets a thumbs up. We expected it to be stodgy and slow and useless when actually it is anything but. Of course it is nowhere near a MINI or Ford in the handling department but it holds its own and is a fantastic city car, manoeuvrable, a tiny turning circle and competent with a frisky little engine that makes the whole car feel fun and eager and yet still perfectly suits the needs of a good city car.

Add in its competent motorway manners, well designed luggage and storage spaces, cute looks and respectable interior and equipment levels as well as its surprisingly competitive running costs and you may start to think, as we did, that the £4k price tag that was estimated for our test car is a fine bargain for what is a genuine all-rounder super-mini.

If you’re in the market for a city car or a super-mini, before you go and look at a nice, shiny new Fiesta, Polo, Fabia, Corsa or any of the overly cheap Korean’s, take a peek at this little gem Nissan snuck into the market back in 2006.



Nissan Micra Initia
Engine: 1240cc, 16v DOHC In-line 4
Power: 78bhp @ 5,600rpm
Torque: 81 lb/ft @ 4,000rpm
0-62 mph: 13.1 seconds
Top Speed: 104 mph
Fuel Economy: 47.8 mpg combined

Monday 24 January 2011

Motors - Mazda MX-5 MkIV

Mazda Mx-5 Mk IV 

Mazda is one of my favorite brands. I’ve owned several and the company has stallwarrtly stuck to technologies and ideas that everyone else has long given up on, the Wankle Rotary engine and the sports car.
Recently the company had appeared to be breaking. The RX-8 had been axed with no word on an RX-9. They had begun talking to Toyota about buying their hybrid drivetrain and the MX-5 had been cutting a very lonely and exposed figure as the only conventional sports car left. Toyota’s FT-86 is likely to become a hybrid and VW announced a diesel sports car.


However Mazda have made several announcements that allowed me to breathe again. Firstly they ARE working on an RX-9 and it WILL be a rotary, possibly a turbo charged version of the Renesis generation rotary engine.
This meant that just the MX-5, with it’s conventional engines and drive train was left to ‘fix’. The worry is worse when you consider the fact that the engines used in the MX-5 are a little poor on fuel economy and efficiencies. Terrible, in fact. Could it be that the evergreen MX-5 was about to be killed off by the Green Brigade?

No. Actually. Mazda have announce that there will be a fourth generation MX-5. Firstly it’ll be styled using the ‘Nargare’ design language that is based on wind and water flow and inspired the fully working, Furai rotary racing car.
It’s safe to assume that the Mk IV MX-5 will use 1.6 and/or 1.8 litre versions of the Sky G engines due in 2012/13. This and the Sky D Diesel engines are going to reduce emissions by 30% by 2015 over the levels in the current generations of petrol and Diesel. Short story: The Sky D will utilise two stage turbo charging. Both engines will use ultra low friction components, direct injection, and highly efficent piezo-electric injectors as well as being matched to Mazda’s SKY-Drive, the dual clutch gearbox being developed by the company.


So how does this help the belegured MX-5? Well from what we know, companies who are playing catch up are generally getting the dual clutch gearboxes right. They help enormously with efficiencies when in Auto’ and are perfect for performance cars as well.
If the Sky G engines turn out to be as efficent as Mazda claim they will be, and they have claimed the Sky gen engines will be well under the current emissions level for tax exemption, then the MX-5 will continue to be the sports car everyone can own.
Brilliant. All sorted then, right? Not quite. There is one other problem with the MX-5. Weight. The Coupe/Convertable 2.0l Sport model sits at a rather portly 1132kg, the Mk II weighed in at just 1040kg.However, fear not because Mazda have realised this and have set out to fix this as well.

In an effort to get back to basics, Mazda have looked at the original Mk I MX-5 and dug out the original 1000kg target weight, dusted it down and handed it to the design team. A tall ask when you consider the current car has all the mod-cons you expect in a more luxury car; sat-nav, climate control, traction control, multi CD-Changer, that heavy tin-top etc.
But seeing as how the MX-5 is still a massive seller, the effort will surely be worth it. The old-fashioned, out-dated model of the traditional sports car may yet survive in the form of the MX-5, a car the brought the tradiontional sports car model back.

And what will it look like? Well we don’t know yet, but this is a rendering produced for Autocar on what it could look like. Rather striking wouldn’t you agree?









MD