JustBritish

Almost three quarters of UK consumers would buy British if given a £100,000 budget to spend on a new car, according to new research from online insurance company swiftcover.com.

Sweeping aside their German and Italian rivals, British marques emerge as unanimous favorites amongst UK car buyers, with 69 per cent claiming they would opt for a British brand if they had the money to do so.

Topping the ‘Dream Car’ list with almost a quarter of the votes is Aston Martin (24%), followed by Range Rover (19%), Bentley (16%) and Rolls Royce (10%). German and Italian luxury marques faired badly by comparison – with just one per cent opting for a Lamborghini, 9 per cent for a Ferrari, 9 per cent for a Porsche and 2 per cent for a Maserati.

The top ten swiftcover.com “Dream Cars” for 2008 are:

1. Aston Martin 24%
2. Range Rover 19%
3. Bentley 16%
4. Rolls Royce 10%
5. Porsche 9%
5. Ferrari 9%
7. BMW 6%
8. Mercedes 4%
9. Maserati 2%
10. Lamborghini 1%
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Aston Martin could co-operate with Daimler AG’s Mercedes on ventures ranging from engines to new models, the British luxury carmaker’s majority shareholder, Kuwait’s Investment Dar, said on Tuesday.

Adham Charanoglu, business development manager for Investment Dar, which bought Aston Martin from Ford Motor Company last March, said it had held talks with Mercedes and with LVMH’s Louis Vuitton and PPR’s Gucci on branded merchandising.

Charanoglu told the Reuters Islamic Finance Summit that plans to overhaul Aston Martin merchandising had yet to be finished but included opening new centers dedicated to the marquee — made famous by James Bond — in the UK, the Gulf and possibly the U.S.

Any brand development would need to be at the top end of the luxury market, with opportunities stretching from apparel, owners’ events and track racing to real estate, Charanoglu said, adding Aston Martin’s merchandising revenue would rise from $100 million in 2006 to more than $300 million by 2009.

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From today’s “Financial Times Limited” come another story about the hopeful return of MG to the market.

China’s Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) hopes to begin producing the MG TF roadster in Nanjing in May and at its plant in Longbridge, UK, within three months of that date, a senior executive said yesterday.

But SAIC admitted the car’s long-awaited relaunch could be delayed again as it grapples with quality issues and rebuilds tooling bought in 2005 from bankrupt MG Rover and shipped to China by Nanjing Automobile (NAC), with which SAIC merged in December.

“We want to begin production of cars at Longbridge as soon as possible, but the first priority for us is the quality of the product,” Chen Hong, SAIC’s president, told the Financial Times yesterday.

“If we launch the product on the UK market and don’t have sufficient quality to meet customers’ expectations, we damage the brand.”
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Classical Drives has some great news for us super car fans: Proteus is coming to the US.

For those of you that don’t know, Proteus is a British car manufacturer that makes exacting replicas of the legendary C and D type Jaguars. These cars are not fiberglass knock-offs, they have all aluminum bodywork that is hand formed much as the originals were.

If you have a fetish for the great racers of the ’60s, you have got to check out these beautiful machines. Drool away.

Popularity: unranked [?]