VW Beetle Hot Rods

VW has had a bit of problem selling the Beetle to male customers and despite launching a New Beetle specifically targeted at guys, was not particularly successful.

This may change the perception of the Beetle as a "cute" car:

On closer inspection, they are not the newer versions of the Beetle but rather modified versions of the popular model.

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Leko - the Ikea car

Is Ikea planning to branch into automobile manufacture?

A microsite for the mysterious Leko suddenly appeared linked from the Ikea France site. It features a rotating car covered with cloth and a designer called Christophe Grazs talking about it in French. I have no idea what he's talking about but I can probably get my brother-in-law to tell what he is going on about.

It has generated a fair amount of interest but seems a lot of people are not taking it seriously.

I hope they are not going to ask their customers to assemble it using an Allen key.

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Nobody has heard of Proton

I was quite surprised to find out that among all my PhD friends here at the Warwick Business School, there's only one guy who has heard about Proton, Malaysia's national car company.

A friend who's quite knowledgeable about cars told me that at one time there were a number of Proton cars on UK streets - mainly the Proton Persona (the Proton Wira). We do see some of them around in Coventry but I have never seen any of the newer models including the Gen 2, Savvy, Satria Neo or even the Impian. From my friends' reactions when I tell them about the company and the fact that it owns Lotus, Proton cars UK is obviously not doing a good job with it's marketing. From what I learnt from my sources in Proton, they want to concentrate on the domestic market which is what they should have been doing. I guess that strategy comes at a price. I am not sure about other foreign markets but when it comes to branding, Proton has a lot of work to do in the UK.

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