



By N2H

Saturn

Saturn was created in 1985 as a response to the success of the Japanese automakers in the United States market, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of GM, and later on became the replacement for Oldsmobile after Oldsmobile was discontinued and scrapped out of pure fiscal reasons. If anyone remembers or knows about the early space program they will know that the Apollo Missions used the Saturn V rockets to make it to the mood – it is for this rocket that the company takes it esteemed name.

Saturn started with 99 people in 1982 that would create the new company, these 99 came from other areas of the automotive industry and were put together to create a new kind and style of company that would be more buyer friendly. Thus they came out with Saturn, and stationed it initially in Tennessee until 2007.

2009 Saturn Sky

One of the developments from this melding of minds was the first company wide policy of no-haggle amongst the GM owned automobile brands. Following the formation of this policy sales have been strong and vehicles are usually sold at the MSRP price, whilst customer satisfaction ratings remain high, in fact some of the highest in the entire industry. The car manufacturer has also won several awards related to their environmentally friendly policies and their lack of polymer based products for the sides of vehicles, specifically on the paneling on many of their vehicles.

In 2005 the first non-polymer based side-paneled vehicle was the Saturn Relay, a minivan that was recently discontinued for an upcoming redesign in 2008 with even more eco-friendly materials along with much of Saturn’s other Original Stock. So far the products that Saturn manufactures are based on what they called the Z body, a platform with a standard Saturn engine, a 1.9L which was later replaced by other engines by outside sources in 2002. Recently some fiscal issued have plagued Saturn with some vehicles being poor sellers, and thus they had to can both the Ion and the L series.

Tags: Car Brands, Saturn

Related Posts:

5 Things You Don’t Know About The Saturn Car Company

Scion

Lotus

Saturn Sky 2dr roadster 2.4 T Technical Specifications

General Motors (GM)

| 0 Comments

TVR

Founded by Jack Pickard and Trevor Wilkinson in 1947 TVR was at first named Trevcar Motors, and later was renamed. One of the first manufacturers to used a reinforced by glass plastic based frame body over a tube styled steel internal framework TVR proved to be a sporty car. By the latter end of the 50s the cars used a 4 cylinder motor to power the 100 horse car, and most of these were sold in the English markets. During the first two decades, due to stringent tax laws that made selling vehicles less profitable, TVR offered many of the cars as a kit car model rather than a manufactured vehicle – however this was ended after the government caught on in the 70’s.

During the 60’s an American car dealer had a striking idea, and that idea lead to one of the cars actually being named after him. Jack Griffith took a 4.7 Liter V8 engine out of his car, at the time an AC Cobra, and then mounted it into a TVR car. Thus the TVR Griffith was born. Throughout the latter 60’s TVR used many engines before finally settling back in on a Ford engine that was capable of almost 130 horses, and easily modified for more. However in the 70’s more picking and choosing for engines came about, and many vehicles had several to choose from.

During the 80’s the company began to focus again on the power and performance of the mighty V8, moving away from smaller V6 based technology and engines so that more performance could be injected into the frames of the TVR Cars. This brought capacity from 3.5L to 4.5L almost instantly and gave the car a surge in horsepower. During the 1990’s they continued with V8’s, using Rover as a supplier and then modifying them until they eventually developed and tested their own engine designs, which culminated in a light weight alloy based V8 engine that could run as well as a traditional, but was a much lighter solution.

TVR TVR

Recently in 2004 the company was bought and thus was now owned by a man named Smolensky, a Russian who intends to keep TVR in GB. However in 2006, due to declining sales, staff was cut and production was scaled back, and a new factory was to be chosen because the lease on the old one was up, and it lacked the adequate resources for more modern technologies. Later last year it turned out body production would be outsourced to Italy, and later a year ago this month Smolensky split TVR into three different companies. Current affairs are still in much turmoil.

Tags: Car Brands, TVR

Related Posts:

No related posts

| 0 Comments

Ultima

Founded in 1992 Ultima Sports is a sports automobile manufacturer which builds cars in England. It was founded by ted Marlow and has been slowly building up its reputation with two models of vehicles. Right now the two offered are the GTR and the Can-Am; however they have mostly been sold as unassembled kits. The user must buy the kit and then construct and complete the vehicle himself in order to use and drive it, although an inconvenience it is the only way currently that markets outside of the European theatre can purchase and use the cars.

Currently the engine that the car uses is a Chevy Small Block V8 which is heavily modified by a third company and can be capable of up to 640 horses. Recently a new engine has been developed that can reach upward of 720 horses and has a 0-100 mile per hour speed rating of just 9.4 seconds.

The Ultima flagship model is the Ultima GTR that is sold as either a kit or as an assembled vehicle. The vehicle is a two door coup with a mid engine, and has the heavily modified Chevy V8 inside, however builders are able to use a large variety of transmissions and engines on the vehicles. It is possible to also go from 0-60 within 2.6 seconds with the optimal conditions met. In fact it has gone from 0-100 in 5.3 seconds, and has gone from 100-0 within 3.6 seconds. Being able to stop that quickly is a major plus for any high performance vehicle.

Ultima Ultima1

The vehicle can, if needed, be pushed to 1000 bhp. The frame is built to withstand and handle that kind of massive power and that kind of brute force. It is by far one of the most powerful performance vehicles manufactured by a small car company. On the Top Gear program which is very popular in England the car was able to beat the test track and set an all time fasted vehicle record, by completing the track in a minute and 12.8 seconds.

Tags: Car Brands, Ultima

Related Posts:

2008 Nissan Altima – Perfect for Tuning

| 0 Comments

Toyota

Toyota was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda in Japan, and today is one of the most successful car manufacturing companies in the world, along with being the second largest. Furthermore, as GM might be the largest, Toyota ranks above GM for net worth and also for its sales, with revenue that outpaces GM, along with total profit and kept profit. As a spinoff company of the old Toyota Industries, Toyoda produced his first automobile in 1936 called the AA. His father, the head of Toyota Industries, helped to back his son’s research and development and allowed for the manufacturing.

Toyota has several company brands that it uses, such as Scion, Lexus, and its own name. During the Second World War the company was dedicated to production of Japanese military goods such as the military trucks used across the Empire. Because of the need for mass production the trucks were very easily assembled and extremely simplified in design. The Toyota manufacturing facilities were spared by the Japanese surrender, coming down to the wire – had the Japanese waited the allied command would have bombed the Toyota facility and surrounding infrastructure.

As soon as 1947 Toyota began again to produce domestic vehicles and continued to do so ad infinitum. During the 50’s they entered the U.S. market, well ahead of other Japanese auto makers of the time, and using developed techniques learned from the American automotive industry they soon began production of automobiles at comparable rates. With growing sales and obvious marketability Toyota opened a new R and D department in 1962, and along with that Automobile number 10,000,000 was also produced.

Toyota Girl

The 1960’s proved to be a stunning decade for Toyota and Toyoda. Because of the economical cars produced at the time in the late 60’s with their high fuel efficiency when the oil crisis hit the U.S. market Toyota became a primary seller of small and highly efficient vehicles with a larger market share driven to it by the high fuel prices. Along with Toyota of course, came Honda and the others who were also skilled in the economy car that could run with good gas mileage. At the end of the 1980s, in 1989, Toyota launched its first foray into the luxury car market with Lexus – and it was successful. Along with this Toyota began to produce SUVs and also established Scion, along with the famed Hilux/Tundra truck line. Today Toyota continued to develop new technologies and has many prototype and concept vehicles to show every year.

Tags: Car Brands, Toyota

Related Posts:

Toyota Supra Turbo Technical Specifications

Drive high with Toyota Highlander

Toyota Yaris Tuning

Toyota Supra Tuning

Toyota Corolla Tuning

| 0 Comments

Tatra

Tatra manufacturing company takes its name from the mountains nearby and was founded in 1850 as a really long name that no one who speaks English and doesn’t know other languages would ever be able to pronounce. It began as a wagon and carriage manufacturer and later on produced a motor based vehicle, the first of its kind in central Europe, in 1897. In 191 it changed its name to its current name and is today regarded as the third oldest manufacturer of automobiles in the entire world. Only Peugeot and Daimler are older.

The first Tatra car was the Type A Tatra, and was capable of 40 kilometers per hour. Following this was the – of course – Type B. Can you see where this leads? A B C D etc… Well the type B had a central motor and was barely produced. Following this a new design was made, scrapping the old ones, and thus in 1905 the Type S was born. World War One of course greatly affected the production ability, considering the Czech were invaded by the Germans. Not until after this war did the Tatra come again.

During the time between the Second World War Tatra built cars that could be considered as streamliners, along with those that closely resembled the famous Ford model T. Focusing on luxury during the 1930’s Tatra was known for having technically advanced and luxurious designs. In fact the Tatra 777 car, which was a rear mounded V8 vehicle, was the first “in-production” truly streamlined car, with a drag of only 0.212 – which in itself is a great number that cars today have a hard time obtaining, even those designed to be as drag-less as possible. It is also Tatra that designed the first beetle-like car, and after the War Volkswagen was forced to pay damages to Tatra for intellectual property violations.

Tatra Tatra

After that, in 1946, the company was nationalized under the communist rule and continued production of its famed vehicles. During the 70’s new design improvements allowed for new vehicles, including the T613. However after the fall of communism and the orders plummeting to nothing Tatra discontinued the 613, and then in 1999 abandoned cars completely.

However in 2003 it began to produce a small number of trucks, followed by a slowly increasing demand. Last year they hit 1600 vehicles and this year they are on pace to build at least 2.5K. Tatra may not be finished entirely just yet.

Tags: Car Brands, Tatra

Related Posts:

No related posts

| 0 Comments

« Previous Entries

Recent Articles

Archives

Saturn

TVR

Ultima

Toyota

Tatra

Tags

Random Articles

Car Resources

CTC Network