Hybrid and electric cars and the return to… the past

Electric Cars
We now have got used to reading about hybrid and electric cars. We also begin to know more about it, about the declared potential and also the real ones. We are told that the future of mobility is the electric car, the hybrid car is the transition and having doubts about this means being a retrograde polluter. Notwithstanding reading about hybrid and electric cars and their performance it really seems...

FIAT Electric cars (the ones from the old days)

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It is said that Fiat falls behind in programs of models’ innovation, specially about electric and hybrid vehicles. It is said that this is one of the reasons, which led the company – for a long time now known as FCA, the name Fiat only refers to the brand – to the fusion with the PSA group. It’s possible. Fiat has faced tumultuous events since 2000 and the choices taken under...

What do Toyoda, Fehrenbach and Vettel have in common? The good sense!

Toyoda, Fehrenbach, Vettel
In recent weeks, the statements of three people considered – rightly – serious and followed have gone almost unnoticed. Akyo Toyoda is President of Toyota and also President of the Association of Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Franz Fehrenbach is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bosch, one of the leading manufacturers of automotive components. Sebastian Vettel needs no introduction It...

Covid 19. At the recovery, will the transport system be the same?

Corona virus
I don’t want to be one of those, too many, who pontificate how the Covid 19 will change the world. Allow me, however, to express a couple of considerations about how, at the end of this stage of restrictions, our behaviour and those around us will change. Let’s start from the car and its use. Until yesterday, the general policy of governments and local administrators was to discourage the...

The world in electric is revolutionizing the nautical too

It seems there is no doubt, they way we’ll move in the future must be electric; convinced or not, everyone is going in this direction. Legislators, media, car dealers and marketing offices have started down a road, which seems with no return but, if you think it involves the automotive field only, you are wrong. It seems the yachting sector and the commercial shipping have made the same choice. Autonomy...

Covid 19 and the famous nautical victim: Evinrude

It is certain that Covid 19 will have a heavy impact worldwide on the single habits and on the economy of companies. It is early to delineate its boundaries and consequences but the first effects are emerging in all sectors. In the world of the nautical industry, the first victim of Covid 19 has been announced, and it isn’t an insignificant name. The Evinrude brand of outboard motors –...

Turin and the art of coachbuilders (1946-1980)

First of all Massimo Porta is an “old” friend: I met him during the army service – 45 year ago more or less – and we did many things together. For this reason, I can talk about his book “Turin and the art of coachbuilders (1946-1980)” without any fear of being biased. Massimo Porta is neither a writer nor a designer and he has never worked in an automotive company. In...

Self-driving even at sea

While the route of cars with self-driving proceeds towards trials, agreements and insurance and legislative formulations, nautical and commercial shipping fields move in the direction of Self-navigation. The boost, again, comes from the Northern Europe, in the specific from Norway, the same country which sees the market of electric cars goes up of 31% for registrations in 2018 (over 40% if we include...

Vintage car, historic car and “old car”…what’s the difference?

F_8V 1952-1954
For those who approach the historic automotive field not everything is easy to understand. According to the common sense you may thing that a Fiat Uno thirty year-old will always be only an old car, a Lancia Aurelia B20 or a Jaguar E type (the one of Diabolik) are, instead, collector’s cars. But it’s not so simple! To face the complex world of the historic motoring it’s better to...

50 years ago, the project which motorized Russia

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It is never easy to assess the importance of an event that happened fifty years before, especially when it refers to automotive history. But the collaboration agreement signed between Fiat and the Soviet Ministry of industry for the construction of a car plant in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (URSS), and which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, deserves to be remembered. On...

Body shop mechanic and car manufacturers, bewitched by boats

mercedes-AMG cigarette
It is nothing new that designers and coachbuilders of the automotive field have focused on boats project, in particular on large yachts. Giugiaro has created partnerships with shipyards as Cranchi and Abbate and has signed a project about a new Baglietto long 48 metres, Antalia, in 2007. Norman Foster (McLaren F1) has signed projects of some futuristic yachts that are been admired – or at least observed-...

Dusseldorf: cast a glance over nautical world.

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The Dusseldorf Boat Show, which took place during the last week in January, declared the 2016 boating season opened. About the organization of the Exhibition and the attendance figures there is not much to say! The organization is always excellent, a bit rigid (german), but surely efficient and focused on the visitors’ and workers’ needs . Numbers definitely describe it as the first and foremost...

Automotive factories, back to the roots?

Fiat-509
We must get over it: the automobile, as we lived it, will disappear. Today we look with curiousness at former cars, which actually were carriages to which had been applied an engine, in a few years we will look at recent cars as something incredibly old. We have grown – we who are not so young anymore – with the myth of the horse power and the sportsmanship, then we knew the qualities of...

Sailing by sea or living on the sea? The debut of Overblue, the crossover

Overblue 44
Among the innovations at the Boat Show of Cannes and Genoa it couldn’t go unnoticed a “strange” boat, which could be similar to a house boat at a cursory look. Actually, at a second look even a layman realized that Overblue it’s not a simple houseboat but that have behind a very innovative concept and a lot of design work. We were lucky enough to meet the designer of Overblue, the architect...

Seventh commandment: you shall not steal (the outboard motor…)

outboard motor
The theft of outboard motors, as well as that of small boats, dinghies and water motors, isn’t a recent phenomenon but in the last years it has become more frequent and organized. Ports and marinas, yacht clubs and associations, retailers’ sites and stores are increasingly “visited” by thieves. The outboard motor it’s an object easy to remove and transport, with a high intrinsic value and...

Total Ecology: Am I dreaming or am I serious?

Arcona 380 Z
Shipyards, which manufacture super fast and super motorized boats, advertise ecological solutions and environmental protection often unlikely. As it happens in the Automotive sector, also in yachting it is hard to find real alternatives in terms of consumptions and pollution and often the solutions adopted – see the electric motor – for now remain debatable because of efficacy and confined to marginal...

Fiat 600, the car is no more a dream

Fiat-600
According to young people – those of the “2.0” generation, the automobile is an item taken for granted such as the television, dishwasher, internet, smartphone and social network. The car, as modern object of desire, at least for the lucky ones, means to desire not a simply car but “that” one. But for those who were young in 1955, when the Fiat 600 was presented, the automobile was more than...

Dusseldorf boat show, uber alles

Dusseldorf Boat Show
Dusseldorf boat show, January 2015 ! I can’t find a better title; firstly thanks to the organization, it was so efficient! You get the impression before entering: both if you arrive by public transports (train and tram railway reserved) and by car (organized parking lots with the shuttle service included in the price which leads you to the entrance that you prefer). You enter and find clean facilities,...

FIAT 600 – Italian family gets in the car

Fiat 600
We saw, in the first post, how Italy of the first ’50s was a developing country even if with several structural contradictions. From one hand It was a society looking for new life styles -– including mobility – thanks to a growing GDP and a large scale demand of modern products which led to new needs (refrigerator, televisions, washing machines), and on the other hand a Nation lacking...

Sixty years ago, Fiat 600

bozzetto Fiat 600
At the Geneva Motor Show Fiat presented the “600”, it was the 1955. Let’s skip for now the technical details about the car and try to observe the world of the 1955, far sixty years from now and which seems a geologic era. It was the year in which were born Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Kevin Costner, Ornella Muti, Michel Platini, Alain Prost, Susanna Camusso, Enrico Mentana, Pierferdinando Casini,...

FCA: business plan or image campaign?

Alfa Romeo 4C
The five-years plan recently announced by the FCA President John Elkann and the CEO Marchionne has been commented, criticized and evaluated (in a positive and negative direction) by the Stock market. It certainly has had a wide media space, has generated great expectations among workers but also among consumers and potential Customers. To me this is a good advertising campaign for the Group and in...

Car and boat, two worlds very close

boat
Cars and boats, apparently two worlds very distant, in particular from a commercial point of view. I think this because I use boat for passion while I work with the car. Later on I was at the other side, working in the nautical field, when the joke became a job so I discovered… the other world. Some years ago – six/seven not so much – the world of yachting seemed the automotive one but...

The car and the boat: who chooses and who decides

Barca
I take a cue from Elena Alberti’s interview, CFO of Penske Europe, in particular the paragraph where is dealt with the subject of decision maker in the car purchasing. Alberti declares that notwithstanding the 42% of purchasing is, in fact, made by women, it is still the family man who makes choices. To support the thesis, she tells also her own story, indeed she chooses color and model of the car...

Old Europe, if you’re there knock once

Europa
Coming back to Italy after a couple of weeks spent in different European continental countries and Northern ones, I realize that during that time I never heard about Marchionne. And this is not because in the rest of the Europe nobody speaks about cars – Fiat as well- about the crisis of the sector, staff redundancies and factory closures…. But perhaps it is a bit less pressing the identification...

When the eastern wind…

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I have already had occasion to say that the world of the automotive and the recreational marine one are very close. In general, the world of boating retraces the same choices and pathways of the automotive… ten year later. Over the years in the automotive there are been manufacturers’ realities characterized by low cost connotations. To Asian manufacturers -mostly Koreans- who first pointed to...

Fiat “buys” in the USA, a hundred years of history

Fiat in USA
Fiat looked at the USA since the business foundation in 1902 by Senator Agnelli and in 1909 with the building of a factory. The acquisition of Chrysler by Fiat, made official in the first days of January, has had wide media coverage, even if with different interpretations. How much of this acquisition will be positive to the Company, and to those who work in it, to Turin and Italy we will see in the...