Five for Friday: Five Thoughts About the Auto Industry for August 19, 2011

The Frankfurt Motor Show is almost upon us, which means that concept car photos and details are beginning to trickle onto the Internet. This week, Kia published photos of a provocative four-door concept car that makes use of the sloped roof “coupe” styling so popular in high end European circles, in addition to smooth, rounded body work that wouldn’t be out of place in an Aston Martin brochure.

Kia has already publicly discussed the introduction of the Kia K9 sedan, a full-size luxury vehicle that would be far and away the most expensive member of the Korean automaker’s lineup. Is the world ready for an aspirational Kia, or is the company overreaching as part of its current product renaissance? If Kia can offer performance and comfort that is similar to rivals such as Lexus and Audi without asking buyers to dig too deeply into their pockets, the brand might be able to carve out a small niche amongst budget-oriented long-distance commuters and frugal luxury seekers.

If you don’t make your car payments, eventually someone will come to your house and repossess your car. If you’re a car company and you don’t pay your suppliers, then eventually someone will come to your production facility and repossess…anything they want, really. This is the case with Saab’s jilted suppliers, some of which have been waiting months for payment on parts and services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which have now turned to the Swedish Debt Enforcement Agency in order to get what’s coming to them.

According to an article published by The Automotive News, Saab is facing over 100 claims from a panoply of suppliers tired of sitting on their hands while the automaker scrambles to find a financial lifeline in a desperate attempt to remain solvent. Saab has not been willing to discuss the details of its debt recovery situation with the media, but the official collections process can last as long as three months – a period that might extend past Saab’s continued existence.

The Honda Ridgelinehas not enjoyed a level of sales success warranting more than evolutionary changes over its short and unremarkable lifespan. The Ridgeline is in fact due to leave production after the 2012 model year, and while Honda has been coy about its plans for a potential mid-size pickup replacement, Autoweek has posited that the brand might be looking to go even smaller and tackle the compact truck market as an encore.

In its look at future Honda products, Autoweek predicts that the Honda CR-V could be the next platform to be plundered as the basis for a small pickup truck. A front-wheel drive compact truck would seem to make more sense than a larger mid-size model like the Ridgeline, as a unibody design limited that vehicle’s towing and hauling to a level not quite as impressive as some of its full-frame competitors. With few true compact trucks remaining on the market, a fuel efficient runabout with decent cargo space could be a winner for Honda.

M purists might want to skip this section, as I’m about to discuss the new M-tuned diesel-powered BMW 5 Series that the boys from Bavaria will be bringing to market early next year. Although The Detroit Bureau has altered its original story with a caveat that official confirmation of the program has yet to be actually given, all sources are pointing to a high performance, tri-turbo diesel engine under the hood of a model that will be called the BMW 550dM.

In terms of power, the BMW 550dM will most likely offer up at least 500 horses and a staggering 650 lb-ft of torque. All-wheel drive will also be in the picture as standard equipment, in order to better harness the vehicle’s power. The 550dM would be the only Euro-sourced performance diesel car sold in the United States - should it actually make it across the Atlantic - and it would give BMW an impressive and reasonably fuel efficient feather in their M division cap were it to be embraced by American drivers.

Although battery-powered editions of the Ford Transit Connect utility van have been available for quite some time, compact car fans hoping to get a taste of the gasoline-free lifestyle in the form of an electric Ford Focus will have to wait a little bit longer. The 2012 Ford Focus was supposed to debut with a battery-only model alongside its traditional gasoline-powered counterparts, but Ford has announced that only California and New York will see limited rollout of the highly anticipated vehicle. The 17 other markets that had been identified by Ford as part of the first wave of electric Ford Focus sales will have to wait until the second quarter of 2012 before the vehicle becomes available there, too.

Is Ford taking a more cautious approach to electric Ford Focus sales as a result of the tepid response by consumers towards both the Nissan LEAF and the Chevrolet Volt? Or does the change in schedule point towards potential issues with the Focus’ electric drivetrain that were discovered late in the game. Either way, Ford Focus buyers in California and New York will certainly enjoy as much attention as they can stomach from Ford engineers and management as they carefully monitor the first few examples of the battery-powered vehicle to actually make it into customer garages.