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.

Britain’s Autocar magazine has the first spy shots of the first rolling prototype of the Rolls Royce’s new small car. It has been dubbed the RR4 until they find a suitable name for the new vehicle.

Autocar reports that the new model will carry on with the Phantom’s design language, from the thick C-pillar to the suicide rear doors. But the new model is significantly shorter and lower than the Phantom, which will inevitably lead to speculation that it’s based loosely on BMW’s 7-Series sedan. We’re not saying, we’re just saying. Engines are to include the Phantom’s 6.75-liter V-12 and potentially, the 400-hp, 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 found in BMW’s M3. Also surprising is the magazine’s report that a diesel Roller might even be under consideration.

Rolls Royce is boosting capacity in Goodwood to build the new car, and prices in Britain will be around £175,000. While some can’t imagine it selling for the equivalent $300,000 in the U.S., an on-sale date on Rodeo Drive and an on-sale price remain to be seen.

Click here for Autocar’s full story and more photos of the Rolls-Royce “RR4″

The first production Lotus Elise-based, $98,000 battery-electric Tesla Roadsters will be exported to the U.S. from Lotus Engineering in March, now that Tesla Motors has received all regulatory approvals to import the first production Tesla Roadster (“P1”) for sale. Initially at a limited rate pendng the supply of a redesigned single-ratio transmission, series production is scheduled to begin on 17th March.

Transmission problems have delayed series production, and early production units will be equipped with an interim transmission that meets durability requirements but limits acceleration to 5.7 seconds from 0 to 60 mph. Tesla Motors engineers have designed a permanent solution for mass production that supports the original specification of 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds.

The planned solution is said to offer some very positive benefits. Instead of a complex two-speed transmission design, Tesla will achieve the original performance goals with a more simple one-speed unit paired with a higher rated Power Electronics Module (PEM.) The existing motor will be modified to have advanced cooling capabilities to handle the additional power. The permanent transmission unit will be engineered to handle the higher torque of the powertrain.

This should also provide better efficiency, lower weight, equal or better range, better thermal performance and quicker quarter mile acceleration due to the elimination of the need to shift gears.

Early production will proceed at a “limited rate” and then ramp up to full production when the permanent powertrain solution is production-ready later this year. The upgrade from the interim solution to the higher power, permanent solution will be provided to Tesla buyers free of charge when available later this year.

The Detroit Free Press reports that Tesla Motors had been granted a three-year exemption from federal U.S. airbag standards for the Roadster from federal regulators. Its contract manufacturer Lotus Cars and other small car manufacturers have struggled to meet a 2006 federal rule requiring air bags that vary their deployment based on a passenger’s size.

The Elise was granted an exemption from the rule in August 2006, after Tesla had decided to build the Roadster off the Elise, but while Lotus is assembling the Roadster in England, Tesla had to seek its own waiver for the car to be eligible for sales in the United States.

A statement reported by the Detroit Free Press but not on the NHTSA’s website said Tesla has had operating losses of $43 million from 2002 to 2006, and that denying the request for an airbag waiver was “likely to put Tesla out of business in the U.S. and potentially worldwide.”

The NHTSA estimated that the three-year waiver would cover 3,825 Roadsters, including 625 this year and 1,600 in each of the following two years.

For more information, go to http://www.teslamotors.com.