Volvo gets Chinese citizenship
The Chinese Zhejiang Geely Holding Group
has announced that it has “signed a definitive stock
purchase agreement with Ford Motor Company to acquire 100
percent of Volvo Car Corporation and related assets
(primarily intellectual property).”
Geely and Volvo
The price was a (relatively) inexpensive
USD $1.8 billion to take over the Volvo Car Corporation and
the deal was signed off by Li Shufu, Chairman of Zhejiang
Geely Holding Group, and Lewis Booth, Chief Financial
Officer of Ford Motor Company.
This was an important deal, with Li
Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology of
the People’s Republic of China and Maud Olofsson, Swedish
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Enterprise and Energy
at the signing in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The ‘new’ Volvo Car Corporation will
operate under the guidance of new COE and ex-Volkswagen
Group of America CEO Stefan Jacoby.
Geely says it will maintain Volvo’s
existing manufacturing facilities in Sweden and Belgium, but
will look at new Chinese facilities to build Volvo cars for
the fast-growing Chinese market.
The sale of Volvo sees Ford now with just
its own brand, having sold off Aston Martin to an Arab-led
consortium in 2007 and Land Rover to the Indian manufacturer
Tata Motors in 2008.
It is currently being indicated that
Volvo will continue as a separate company with its own
management team based in Gothenburg, and with a new board of
directors.
Considering Ford paid USD 6.45 billion in
1999, it has not been a great investment for the US
automaker. There is, however, no truth in the rumor that the
new company will be called Wolwo.
Toyota
also looking to expand horizons
Toyota Motor Thailand, which already
exports four models to ASEAN and Australia, is hoping that
it can export its passenger cars to a wider market, similar
in make-up to the countries receiving the Vigo pick-up,
currently more than 100.
Toyota currently manufacture over 500,000
vehicles a year (cars and pick-ups) and the prospects look
good to top 600,000 units this year.
Autotrivia
Quiz
Last week I asked what car did Bob Lutz
and Carroll Shelby put together? It was my all-time favorite
muscle car, the Dodge Viper. In its final form it delivered
500 bhp from its V10 and had a reported top speed of 190 mph
(around 310 kph) and sub-4 second zero to 100 kph. Dodge
claim excellent brakes as well as the grunt, but I have to
say that the one I drove was the model with brakes optional
as if nobody had ticked the box to get the (optional)
retardation!
So to this week. Let’s stick with US
muscle cars and who produced the 675 bhp, 427 cu. in. engine
and put it in what car? Clue: 1965.
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be
the first correct answer to email [email protected]
Good luck!
Mazda
continues its rise in market share
The big mover in the Thai new car buying
scene has been Mazda, with an increase in sales to the order
of 240 percent in the first six months of 2010, compared to
the same period in 2009.
Popular Mazda2
The six month figure of nearly 17,000
units was boosted by the sales of the very popular Mazda2,
which contributed 11,500 to the total. The new Mazda3 is
also a very popular vehicle, but supply problems has kept
the sales of this model lower than had been hoped. With the
Mazda3 being built in the Philippines, there is pressure
upon Mazda Japan to also build the Mazda3 here in Thailand,
alongside the Mazda2. With the Free Trade Agreement with
Australia, this would mean greater profits, with the
Australian Mazda2 already being built at the AutoAlliance
plant on the Eastern Seaboard, and the expansion to
incorporate the Mazda3 would certainly make good business
sense.
KIC will be finished on time?
The Korea International Circuit (KIC), is
currently nearing completion and the claims are that it is
set to host the F1 Korean Grand Prix from October 22 to 24,
and has now unveiled its official emblem - “an eloquent
combination of national tradition and high-octane
excitement,” says the press release.
KIC flowing flag!
The design is inspired by the Korean
flag, or ‘Taegeukgi’, and incorporates motorsports’ most
recognizable symbol, the chequered flag.
The ‘Taegeukgi’ incorporates the four
Taoist philosophical ideals of harmony, symmetry, balance
and flow, and its swirling treatment on the KIC emblem
depicts both the energy of motorsport and the flow of the
circuit. I ask you, who dreams up this stuff?
Commented Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO)
Chief Executive Officer Yung Cho Chung, “The Yin and Yang
elements of the Taegeukgi represent perfect balance and give
our emblem a local aesthetic, while the modern design
reflects our technologically-advanced new motorsport
facility, the only one of its kind in the country and set to
become the heart of the sport in South Korea. The emblem
will be a symbol of motorsport excellence here.” The
official website is at www.koreangp.kr.
All that this says to me, is that they
haven’t finished any of the buildings or track surface yet,
and are working round the clock, but needed to send out some
sort of press release to counter the mutterings of being
behind time.
Even if they do get it finished in time,
with the track having been designed by Herr Tilke, the
master of the impossible to pass tracks, I am not convinced
that this will be any better than his other masterpieces
such as Bahrain or Valencia.
Engine
Swaps
The American hot-rodder brought the
concept of engine swaps to the world. Sure there had been
‘brave’ people in the UK that had taken a post-war Ford 8
engine and replaced it with a Ford 10 engine, but nothing
like America where an A model Ford four cylinder was
replaced with a V8, and not always a Ford, as the 350
Chevrolet was a very popular engine with the hot-rodders.
MG TC racer
I have some experience in engine swaps,
where my first was to transplant an MGA engine and gearbox
into an MG TC. This was done under the house with a borrowed
arc welder and minimal tools.
The engine came from an English
fiberglass kit car called a Rochedale Olympic, which a chap
had imported to Australia. The Rochedale met its end in a
fire, and I ‘inherited’ the engine and gearbox.
The MG TC engine had thrown a conrod
earlier, and its block was held together with Araldite. It
was not in the best of shape. That’s an understatement.
Borrowing a block and tackle, we slung a
rope over the beams of the house and managed to pull the
original motor and gearbox from the TC without too much
difficulty. MG TC’s were not known for complex engineering.
Two engine mounting bolts at the front and a strap under the
gearbox and it was out.
Step 2 in the engine swap procedure was
to hoist the MGA units and slide them into place, and see
what lined up and what didn’t. Everything didn’t. In fact
the steering column went straight through the distributor
housing!
However, we were young and enthusiasm far
outweighed any engineering problems. If we tilted the motor
to one side and physically set it off-centre, we could
probably get enough clearance between the distributor and
the steering column, so it was time to manufacture engine
mountings.
Now if we had a fabrication shop at our
disposal this would have been easy. But we didn’t, and step
3 was anything but easy. Borrowing an arc welder and
scrounging some angle iron, the intrepid engine swappers
began. The house wiring was obviously not up to the job we
had in mind for it, as every time I struck an arc the house
lights would dim and the television picture would shrink and
disappear. Fortunately I had hot-wired it into the
neighbor’s house, as we could not have afforded the extra
electricity bills. The dedicated engine swapper knows no
boundaries to follow his desires.
Eventually we had cobbled together front
engine mountings and began to make the gearbox mounts. Since
the engine was tilted we had to fabricate two mountings (a
short one and a long one) to allow the engine/gearbox to sit
skewed in the chassis. (We just hoped that the universal
joints had enough angle to cope with the offset.)
The final problems were getting the water
into and out of the engine and connected to the radiator, as
the hoses were in the wrong place for the MG TC versus an
MGA. Very long rubber concertina hoses got us over that
problem, though these days you would just get the
inlet-outlet pipes on the radiator changed over. It also
needed some new fuel hoses from the pump (mounted on the
bulkhead in MGTC’s) and the dual carburetors, and that
almost completed the job. Next up was re-routing the
electrics for the distributor and finally, getting the
exhaust hooked up and directed towards the rear. Actually
that worked out very well, using the exhaust system that had
been in the Rochedale Olympic.
My first engine swap was a success. Well,
not a total success, as under heavy acceleration, the engine
still moved, knocking off the distributor cap each time. A
rework of the engine mounts, and removal of any rubber fixed
that.
The end result was that I had a ‘classic’
MG TC which went like the clappers of hell. Shame I ended up
falling off the side of a mountain one night, but that is
another story.
