1969 Volkswagen Type-3 Squareback on 2040-cars

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Bentley Bentayga bodies to be built in Bratislava

Volkswagen's plant in Bratislava, Slovakia, has come a long way. After getting its start in 1971 by subcontracting the production of Skoda-branded vehicles, the plant was purchased by VW in 1991, where it was quickly put to further good use as it began producing Volkswagen Passat models for export. More recently, Bratislava has become a bastion for SUVs, assembling the Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne, in addition to the VW Touareg. Color us unsurprised, then, to learn that the Bentley Bentayga, which will be built atop the same large SUV platform as its cousins from Audi, Porsche and VW, will also be used for at least part of the production of Bentley's first SUV. Surely, though, one of the hallmarks of the Bentley brand is that its cars are handmade in England. Won't the Bentley-buying populace feel slighted by production in Slovakia? Not to worry. As is the case with the Porsche Cayenne, all that will be produced in Slovakia is the Bentayga's body. According to a report from Automotive News, bodies for the Bentayga will be shipped from Bratislava to Crewe, England, where they will be finished into fully operational vehicles. In order to accommodate the additional work, VW will reportedly invest 500 million euros into the plant in Slovakia and hire hundreds of workers.

United States drivers buying fewer Mexican-made cars

Crossovers and pickup trucks are not only growing in market share, they're also more profitable than cars. A crossover on the same platform as a sedan retails for thousands more, despite similar components. It's one of the reasons we've seen automakers rapidly shifting production of their sedans and hatchbacks to Mexico, where cheap labor preserves the thin profit margins on these inexpensive vehicles. But as the market continues to shift in the United States, Mexico is getting burned by its lack of product diversity. The country's auto exports, which are heavy on cars, suffered a 16-percent drop last month, Automotive News reports. In total, year-over-year exports fell from 233,515 to 197,020 last month, while year-to-date exports are down by 7.4 percent, from 922,029 to 854,118. The number one culprit? America – which usually accounts for 75 percent of Mexico's exports – and its appetite for crossovers and pickup trucks bolstered by cheap gas prices. While Mexico does build some light truck models – AN specifically calls out the Ram 2500, Honda HR-V, GMC Sierra, and Toyota Tacoma as export leaders – the vast majority of vehicles rolling out of its factories are sedans and hatchbacks. In fact, the three biggest drops in Mexican exports came from companies whose south of the border factories only build cars – Ford (Fusion/Lincoln MKZ and Fiesta), Mazda (Mazda3), and Volkswagen (Golf and Jetta). Mexican Automotive Industry Association President Eduardo Solis told AN the export shortfall will likely be sorted out sooner rather than later, thanks to a pair of new factories – a Kia car factory and an Audi SUV plant – that are coming online by year's end. The two facilities will add around 100,000 vehicles to the country's export totals, which Solis said should leave the industry on the verge of breaking another export record in 2016. But how sustainable will these record-breaking years be? Slapping an "Hecho en Mexico" sticker on a new German SUV won't be enough to change the fact that Mexico's product mix is tilted too heavily towards body styles that are not growing in volume. Mexico's record-breaking export years probably aren't at an end, but we'd argue they're certainly under threat. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Omar Torres / AFP / Getty Images Plants/Manufacturing Ford GMC Honda Mazda RAM Volkswagen Truck Crossover SUV Mexico

The VW emissions carnage assessment with an upside

Bombs cause destruction. Even if they're intelligently guided and pinpoint, there's always collateral damage. The strange Volkswagen brew, which is still spontaneously combusting in plain sight, will result in aftershocks for years. And the professional end of the corporation's top leadership will not be the only casualties. Blows are striking shareholder confidence, the residual value of the cars involved, consumer confidence, and the German economy itself. A hard rain's going to fall elsewhere, too. Here are just four damage assessment areas. The High-Compression Past and Low-Compassion Future of Diesels Despite European and especially German manufacturers' high belief that diesel engines were a way to light-duty automotive salvation, VW's scandal started the last nail in the fuel's coffin. Regulations both in the U.S. and in Europe for particulates and nitrogen oxide (NOx) are getting much harder to meet, and this is at the very core of VW's deception. Even with the high-cost exhaust after-treatment systems, sky-high fuel pressure, and sophisticated electronics, the inescapable NOx realities won't be washable by technology in an affordable way. German engineering pride will have to work a real miracle to meet these looming regs and the stain of VW's scandal did the whole diesel movement no favors. Perhaps not so ironically, the E.U. adopted more stringent emission standards this year, which closely mimic the U.S. Tier 2, Bin 5 figures phased in for 2008. Indeed, when VW announced it was able to meet the stringent US NOx emissions standards in 2009 for its diesel engines without urea injection as an exhaust after-treatment, it was a particularly high point of engineering pride for the company. No other manufacturer had figured out how to do so. One Honda official at the time remarked that they had simply no idea how VW was achieving this feat and Honda couldn't come close. Well, neither could VW. On a macro scale, European cities are also starting to face government fines for air quality violations. This is forcing those cities to find various ways to cut smog-related causes like tailpipe emissions. In fact, Paris has gone to the length of restricting car use on a sliding scale when smog persists, while electric cars are free to roam. France's longer and larger plan is banning diesel fuel for light-duty transportation entirely. But why was there a frothy focus by the European manufacturers on diesels in the first place?