JustBritish

Planning for the 10th Annual Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance is underway. This is one of the most prestigious events on the East Coast, and 2011 is shaping up to be know different.

This year they will again host events at two different venues. As in last year, the two different venues will be on two separate weekends. The Savannah Speed Classic will be held Friday, October 28 – Sunday, October 30 on Savannah’s Hutchinson Island at the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. This is a sanctioned event of the Historic Sportscar Racing, Ltd (HSR). The remainder of the Motoring Festival’s events will take place again at the Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn on Saturday, November 5 and Sunday, November 6. With the two locations split between two different weekends, volunteers are encouraged to work and experience both venues.

To find out more about volunteering for the fantastic event, please go to volunteer information page.

Lotus CEO Dany Bahar is eying a possible sale or spin-off from Malaysian parent Proton. When he quit a top marketing job at Ferrari in fall 2009 to become chief executive of Lotus Cars, 37-year-old Dany Bahar already had considerable knowledge of motorsports and brand-building — but little experience in running a car company, even one as small as Lotus.

Now 39, with 20 months under his belt at the helm of the tiny British sports car specialist, Bahar has embarked on an ambitious program to greatly expand the Lotus product portfolio, reposition the brand as a premium competitor to Porsche and boost annual sales volume to 6,000-8,000 cars by mid-decade, with about one-third of those going to the U.S. market.

He also thinks the time may be right to separate from Malaysian parent Proton, which has owned Lotus since 1996.

At a private roundtable with journalists last week, Bahar said he believes a company the size of Lotus cannot develop cars that meet emissions and crash regulations on its own — it has to be linked to a larger global automaker, such as Toyota, through either an alliance or even a sale. Alternatively, the company could be spun off, floated and publicly traded.

In the meantime, Bahar is positioning Lotus as what he calls a premium sports-car maker rather than a luxury one like Ferrari. Porsche’s positioning and model range (except for SUVs) is the target, in pricing terms, models and quality, if not volume. That said, Bahar’s mid-decade sales target for Lotus of 8,000 cars could rise in the longer term.

For this full story, please read the complete article at Edmunds Inside Line.

The company, which only two years ago attempted to seek Government support as global car sales collapsed, said pre-tax profits rose from £15m last year to £1.1bn in the year to March 31. The increase has been driven by a huge rise in Jaguar and Land Rover sales in China and emerging markets, where the middle classes see the British cars as a status symbol.

JLR sales rose 51pc in the year from £6.6bn to £9.9bn, which was also aided by new models such as the Jaguar XJ and favourable foreign exchange rates. “Jaguar Land Rover is now a strong, profitable and innovative competitor in the premium car industry,” said Carl-Peter Forster, chief executive of JLR’s parent company Tata Motors.

Indian company Tata bought JLR from Ford in 2008, but initially suffered heavy losses as the recessions struck.

Read the more of the complete story at The Telegraph.

A tie up between British car maker Aston Martin and Italian design house Zagato sounds pretty tasty, doesn’t it? Having said that, it isn’t the first time that these two work together. If you have a long memory you might recall they first worked together with the DB4GT Zagato. 19 of these supercars were built, and Stirling Moss rode one to third place at Goodwood in 1961.

But this is 2011 and the new model is a complete stunner which would have even Sir Stirling purring in admiration 50 years on from the first car produced by the two companies. It is called the Aston Martin V12 Zagato and is based on the V12 Vantage car. The CEO of Aston Martin is called Dr Ulrich Bez and he said that the Zagato design is a “perfect complement” to the Aston Martin expertise.

There is going to be a “strictly limited run” of road going versions of this little beauty. There will also be a racing model competing in the Nurburgring 24 hour event.

The cool looks hide a 6 litre V12 engine with a performance of 510 bhp. It isn’t clear how many of these cars are going to be made but we won’t be holding our breath for more than 100 of them. How much will one cost you? Expect it to be not far from a hefty £200,000. Not one for taking the kids to school in then?

Would you spend so much money on a supercar like this if you could? If so, why?

Land Rovers began rolling off the assembly line Friday at the British brand’s first plant in India since it was bought by the Indian car giant Tata Motors. Parts are still being manufactured at Jaguar Land Rover’s plant in Liverpool, England, but Land Rover Freelander 2 SUV’s are now being built in the western Indian city of Pune.

India offers Jaguar great opportunities to build cars for less, Carl-Peter Forster, chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Motors, told reporters. “Clearly, India can be a very attractive sourcing base, an opportunity to source increasingly high quality but lower cost components not only for India operations but for overseas operations,” he said. Forster has already indicated that Indian engineering will also play a role in the design of Jaguar Land Rover engines.

Tata bought Jaguar from Ford in 2008 for $2.3 billion. As part of that transaction, Tata Motors entered into a series of contracts to buy vehicle components and technology from Ford. Forster said those contracts begin to expire around 2015. He intends to renew them, but would like to engineer new engines in-house, combining the expertise of the group’s engineers in India and the U.K.

Auto expert Shapur Kotwal said that India’s premium car market was expected to grow strongly in the next five years with more people able to afford expensive cars.

“It’s an aspirational thing that we had grown up in the society where we had got only Marutis and before that only Fiats and Ambassadors,” said Kotwal, naming some relatively cheap Japanese, Italian and Indian cars. “So it’s natural that we want to have the best; we have been starved of good cars.”

The folks over at Formula1 have an excellent interview with the Chief Technician of Team Lotus, Mike Gascoyne. Last season Team Lotus claimed the honors as the best of the new teams. This season – in their second year – they want much, much more. The extensive upgrade they brought to last weekend’s Spanish round certainly saw them take a step into the midfield on Saturday, and though they struggled somewhat in the Barcelona race, Gascoyne is certain, given time, they can fight with the likes of Force India and Williams more regularly. Speaking exclusively to Formula1, Gascoyne discusses the team’s driver line-up, the prospect of 1.6-litre engines, their Renault and Red Bull relationships and their ongoing quest for that elusive first point… read the full interview here.