How to have some fun in £65 Million of Aston martins, and then the boss turns up.

• Aston Martin sports cars appear in film for the first time at St Athan in Wales
• New film celebrates marque’s 104-year history with £65M of Aston Martin cars
• Work underway on redeveloping site into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility

The Aston Martin Vulcan was the first car to turn a wheel at the site of the British luxury carmaker’s second UK manufacturing plant at St Athan in South Wales recently, signaling the start of the redevelopment of the former MOD site into a state-of-the-art facility.

The appearance of the Aston Martin Vulcan though was just the start of an incredible celebration of Aston Martin’s heritage, which brought together 28 very special Aston Martins with a combined value of £65 million in a film produced to celebrate the transfer of ownership of the three super hangars at St Athan.

The vast, empty hangars offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase Aston Martin’s 104-year history in the only way its drivers knew how. Aston Martin Racing’s World Endurance Championship (WEC) drivers, Darren Turner and Nicki Thiim, along with Aston Martin Chief Engineer Matt Becker, had plenty of room to manoeuvre a stunning selection of Aston Martins. That is, until they got caught by the ‘boss’ Aston Martin President and CEO, Andy Palmer.

Enjoy the glorious sights and sounds of Aston Martins from the A3 to the DBR1, the One-77, numerous Vantages, Rapide S and of course the Aston Martin Vulcan, as they spread their wings at St Athan.

Lotus Cars aims for new SUV to be launched in 2018, along with profits and US re-entry.

British sports car maker Lotus Cars will be profitable again by 2017 after years of losing money, CEO Jean-Marc Gales said. The former PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and Daimler executive has implemented measures to cut costs while improving the automaker’s product lineup since he took over Lotus in May 2014. 

But Gales said the company will not launch all-new cars until its new China-built SUV debuts in 2018/19 as he focuses on boosting sales and cashflow.

Lotus will increase sales in the short term by making changes to the current three-car line-up, Gales said. The company has added an automatic transmission to its track-focused Exige two-seater, which is close to passing the entry-level Elise as the company’s top-seller. 

Gales expects 40 percent of Exige sales to be models with the automatic transmission.

The company also unveiled a facelifted version of the flagship Evora coupe at the Geneva auto show in March that will spearhead the brand’s return to the U.S. market.  The Evora was the only Lotus model sold in the U.S. but was dropped for the 2015 model year because it no longer met federal crash standards.

Lotus has redesigned the Evora to meet U.S. standards and moved the mid-engine coupe further upmarket to better compete with the likes of the Porsche 911 and Audi R8. A convertible version is due next year. Gales expects the U.S. to be the Evora's biggest market.

Supplier squeeze

Gales said Lotus has stripped 10 percent from the costs out of producing cars and he plans further cut costs by switching suppliers. “We are going through our whole supply chain, gradually replacing smaller suppliers with larger ones, reducing costs and improving quality,” he said.

Last September Lotus said it was cutting 225 jobs from the 1,250 workforce at its headquarters here. The final figure was 260, Gales said.

Gales has also scaled back the work of the company’s consultancy, Lotus Engineering, a separate arm of Group Lotus that contracts engineering services to automakers and suppliers. “It used to account for half of Lotus revenue 10-15 years ago. Now it’s 10 percent,” he said. “It was a conscious decision to focus the engineers flat out on the development of our road cars.”

Gales said he does not expect the engineering side of the business to grow again until after three to four years.

Lotus said that its wholesale vehicle sales were up 55 percent to 2,015 in the financial year to the end of March 2015, from 1,403 the year before. Gales said he is targeting annual sales of 3,500 by 2016.

Lotus’s sales growth has been boosted by an expansion of dealerships. Gales aims to increase Lotus dealerships to 200 by the end of this year from 174 by the end of March.

He said that losses have been “massively reduced” in the year to the end of March compared to a loss of 65.6 million pounds ($100 million) for the year ending March 31, 2014. The year before Lotus lost 159.4 million pounds, according to figures released by the company.

Gales says that the company will show a profit in the financial year ending March 2017. “It’s something we haven’t done consistently from the car side in over 20 years,” he said.

Gales’s ambitions for Lotus are more modest than those of his predecessor, former Ferrari executive Dany Bahar, who had planned to boost Lotus's annual vehicle sales to 10,000, a similar volume to Ferrari. Bahar was fired in 2012.

Nick Gibbs

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Aston Martin mulls opening a new facility in the USA, near to Mercedes to cement their recent partnership.

Aston Martin is considering a U.S. factory in Alabama to be near its industrial partner Daimler, the British sports car maker's CEO Andy Palmer told a U.K. car magazine Autocar.

Aston has had expressions of interest for a new factory from U.S. states and from countries around the world, including the U.K., Palmer told Autocar. 

"It is not decided yet but clearly with our arrangement with Daimler it would make sense to look closely at the possible synergies of working close to them in Alabama," he told the magazine.

Daimler builds Mercedes SUVs at the Vance, Alabama, factory. Daimler has a 5 percent stake in Aston as part of a deal to supply the UK company with high-performance engines and electronic architectures.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that Aston has held talks with officials in several U.S. states about a factory to build its first crossover, which would be based on the all-electric, all-wheel-drive DBX concept unveiled at the Geneva auto show in March.

The production DBX could be based on the new Mercedes GLC unveiled as a concept at the Shanghai auto show earlier this month, reports have said.

Aston aims to boost annual vehicle sales to 15,000 from 4,000 last year. The company has limited room for growth at its only factory in Gaydon in central England.

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Volvo announces that it intends to spend Half a Billion Dollars on a brand new USA facility.

Volvo Cars to build new factory in US

• Volvo Cars becomes a truly global car maker with industrial presence in its three key continents
• Industrial investment of around USD 500 million in a new car plant
• Underlines Volvo’s commitment to the US market

Volvo Cars announced today that it is to build a brand new manufacturing facility in the US, fulfilling its ambition to be a truly global car maker, investing around 500 million dollars in a new plant and underscoring its long term commitment to the US market. 

The company has drawn up a short list of potential locations and full details of the location of the new factory and the size of the investment will be announced at a later date.

The move means Volvo is now a global car manufacturer with an industrial footprint on all three key continents. It has two factories in Europe, two in China and the future plant in the US, which will be part of the Americas region that was announced in January. These developments form part of Volvo’s transformation that has been ongoing since 2010.

The transformation plan involves the creation of a global industrial footprint, the complete renewal of Volvo’s product range over the next four years, the introduction of a new modular vehicle technology, the development of world-first safety technologies, a new design language and a range of class-leading connectivity services.

“Volvo Cars cannot claim to be a true global car maker without an industrial presence in the US. Today, we became that,” said Håkan Samuelsson, Chief Executive and President. “The US is an absolutely crucial part of our global transformation and today’s announcement makes it perfectly clear that Volvo is in the US to stay.”

Volvo Cars has been doing business in the US since 1955 and this decision to invest in the US highlights Volvo’s long term commitment to the US market. The new plant also means Volvo will be able to meet and ultimately exceed its volume targets in the US, where it has a medium term ambition to sell 100,000 cars a year. It will help accelerate the introduction of build-to-order in the US as well as being an integral part of Volvo’s global manufacturing footprint, serving the US and export markets, and also help limit the impact of currency variations.

“The US Volvo dealers are delighted with this announcement,” said Chip Gengras, chairman of the Volvo dealer council in the US. “It clearly illustrates Volvo's long term commitment to the US market.”

The new plant will create new jobs, providing security for its employees and their families. Car plants are also known to have significant multiplier effects on their local areas, injecting funds into neighbourhoods. As such, the new plant provides a boost for the economy of the state in which it is located. 

Volvo’s US revival comes alongside strong growth in China and Western Europe. With plans to increase sales on all three continents, Volvo will be able to meet its medium term sales and profitability targets and clear a path towards even stronger growth in future. 

Toyota may approve first Mexico car plant in weeks, reports say

Toyota Motor Corp. is finalizing plans for its first passenger-car assembly plant in Mexico that could be approved by its board as early as next month, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The plant would make the popular Corolla compact sedan and begin production in 2019. Based on recent investments by rivals, including Volkswagen, a new assembly plant would represent an investment of over $1 billion for Toyota.

A green light for the plant would signal an end to a three-year expansion freeze imposed by President Akio Toyoda, who has blamed aggressive expansion a decade ago for contributing to quality lapses and a 2009 recall crisis.

Toyoda last year asked planners scouting for a site in Mexico to hit “pause” and review the rationale for the project, executives familiar with the matter said then. He urged executives to squeeze more production from existing factories.

Toyota is the last mass-market automaker without a major production hub in Mexico, which has lured car makers and suppliers through its low labor costs and tariff-free access to the U.S., Toyota's largest single market. The automaker has a plant in Mexico's Baja California that produces the Tacoma pickup, but it has no passenger-car plant.

Last year, Mexican officials pitched half a dozen potential sites for a new plant, and Toyota executives have zeroed in on a site in the central state of Guanajuato, two people with knowledge of the deliberations said.

A delegation of Toyota executives recently spent a week in Guanajuato and remain in talks with local government officials over a potential plot of land that would give the automaker a big enough footprint to expand in the future, a source said.

"We are always evaluating our production capacity in Mexico, and in North America generally, to keep it in line with local market demand, but no such decision has been made at this time," Toyota spokesman Itsuki Kurosu told Reuters.

An official at Mexico's economy ministry had no immediate comment on Toyota's plans in the country. A spokesman for Guanajuato's economic development department declined to comment.

The Mexico plant would produce a new generation of the Corolla, which will also be made at a factory in Japan, people with knowledge of the company's plans said.

Toyota said it sold close to 340,000 Corollas last year in the U.S. alone.

Mazda Motor Corp. opened an assembly plant in Guanajuato early last year, which will also produce vehicles for Toyota under an agreement between the automakers. In June last year, Daimler AG and Nissan Motor Co. announced plans to build a new small-car joint-venture plant in Mexico at a cost of $1.4 billion.

The wave of new investment by automakers has brought hundreds of Japanese auto parts suppliers to Mexico over the past few years. Auto production in Mexico doubled to more than 3 million vehicles a year in the five years to 2014.

Toyota's Corolla plant in Blue Springs, Miss., which opened in 2011, was the automaker's most recent assembly plant to come on line in North America.

With production capacity in Mexico, Japanese automakers avoid the risk of a stronger yen cutting into profits on exports and minimize the risk of a disruption to sales from events like the labor dispute that slowed trade through the U.S. West Coast earlier this year.

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JLR changes mind on North American plant in favour of a low cost European one.

Jaguar Land Rover is looking to add production in Austria or Turkey instead of in the U.S. as the automaker seeks to boost its manufacturing capacity, a report said.

JLR had been considering opening a factory in the U.S. South, reports said earlier this month. Executives now favor lower-cost factory developments in Turkey and Austria rather than in North America, the Birmingham Post, a newspaper based near the automaker's UK headquarters, said today, citing highly placed company sources.

JLR has undergone a revival since it was bought by India's Tata Motors from Ford Motor in 2008 and is expanding production outside its UK home base. The company opened a factory in China in October and plans to begin production in Brazil next year.

JLR is reluctant to further expand production in the UK where it has three factories because of high wage costs and recent pay disputes with trade unions, the Birmingham Post said. "It is likely that Europe is currently ahead of America," a source told the paper.

JLR has doubled its volumes under the Tata ownership. The automaker targets global vehicle sales of more than 500,000 this year after delivering 462,678 last year.

JLR said it is working on ways to expand to increase production in markets outside of Britain but declined to comment on potential new factory locations.

"No decision has been taken on future manufacturing locations. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to increase our manufacturing footprint in the future, primarily in markets with growth potential and customer demand," a JLR spokeswoman told Automotive News Europe.

Peugeot to build fourth plant in China to boost output beyond one million per annum.

DPCA laid the cornerstone for its fourth plant in Chengdu, China today to support its sales growth in China.

Attending the ceremony alongside Carlos Tavares, Chairman of the Managing Board of PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Xu Ping, Chairman of Dongfeng Motors, were Grégoire Olivier, Executive Vice President Asia of PSA Peugeot Citroën, Liu Wei Dong, Deputy General Manager of Dongfeng Motors, Jean Mouro, Executive Vice President of DPCA, Qiu Xian Dong, General Manager of DPCA and representatives of Sichuan province and the city of Chengdu.

With total capacity of 360,000 vehicles a year at full ramp-up, DPCA’s fourth plant will build Dongfeng Citroën, Dongfeng Peugeot and Dongfeng Fengshen-badged vehicles, primarily for the SUV and MPV segments. The first car is scheduled to roll off the line in late 2016.

DPCA’s current production base comprises three plants in Wuhan,which are running on two shifts for total potential capacity of 750,000 units a year. With the fourth plant, production capacity will be lifted to more than one million units a year in 2016. This is a major step towards meeting the Back in the Race plan’s objective of selling one million Peugeot and Citroën vehicles in China in 2017.

Last 28 March, Dongfeng and PSA Peugeot Citroën signed a global strategic partnership with the objective of selling 1.5 million vehicles by 2020.

In the first nine months of 2014, DPCA sold 518,000 vehicles in China, an increase of 30% in a market up 11%. DPCA’s full-year objective is to sell more than 700,000 vehicles in China.

Commenting on the ceremony, Carlos Tavares declared:“Construction of the Chengdu plant is a key step in PSA’s development in China, which is the Group’s largest market. This plant will allow DPCA to keep pace with its fantastic sales growth.Our joint venture is expected to sell more than 700,000 vehicles in 2014.”