Archive for March, 2010

 

It was 25 years ago this Fall when the Chrysler Corporation shook up the automotive industry by introducing a trio of small vans, dubbed minivans, for its Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth brands. The Chrysler Town & Country, Plymouth Voyager, and Dodge Caravan were instant hits, helping Chrysler to carve out a new automotive segment and defining the term “people hauler” in the process.

Today, Chrysler still leads in this important segment, offering two models: the Dodge Grand Caravan and the Chrysler Town & Country. Both minivans seat seven passengers and are powered by a 4.0L V6 engine that is paired with a six-speed automatic transmission. The transmission, new for 2009, is the first of its kind: the only six-speed automatic available on a minivan.

The new engine-transmission pairing has given the automaker a needed boost, by providing best in class fuel economy of 17 mpg city and 25 mpg highway. “Chrysler and Dodge minivans continue to lead the segment,” said Larry Lyons, Vice President – Car and Minivan Product Team, Chrysler LLC. “With an improved 4.0-liter six-cylinder engine and a minivan-first six-speed transmission, no other minivan has better fuel economy. We optimized both the engine and the transmission to give our customers the fuel economy they want, and the power and responsiveness they expect.”

Chrysler has managed to hold firm in the minivan market even while Ford and General Motors exited the segment. The Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna are its chief competitors, but Chrysler still holds 40% of the market, with the Dodge Grand Caravan continuing as the best selling minivan on the market. Since it was first introduced, Chrysler has sold more than twelve million of its minivans.

When it comes to passenger safety, the Chrysler and Dodge minivans are at the top of their game, receiving five-star crash test certification for front and side impacts. Both minivans have been technological leaders down through the years, by offering Swivel ‘n Go seating, minivan-first dual DVD players and uconnect studios SIRIUS Backseat TV with family programming channels that include Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network Mobile, and best-in-class aerodynamics, Cd of 0.33.

For 2009, a third version of the Chrysler minivans is now available, the Volkswagen Routan, a vehicle which shares the same platform, engine and transmission as its Chrysler and Dodge cousins. However, the Routan uses a unique suspension and the minivan has its own interior and exterior to help differentiate the model from its American competitors.

(Source: Chrysler LLC)

 

 

What do the top tour professionals play?

Callaway: Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Annika Sorenstam

TaylorMade: Kenny Perry, Sergio Garcia, Paula Creamer

PING: Angel Cabrera, Lorena Ochoa, Hunter Mahan

Titleist: Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson, Adam Scott

From Driver, fairway woods, irons to putters, you can view the golf set rankings. Now go ahead:

It is an exhaustive process to rate golf equipment, Callaway drivers or TaylorMade irons. The rankings come out from four weighted criteria: 1) performance (40%), 2) innovation (30%), 3) look/sound/feel (20%), and 4) demand (10%).

Drivers

According to the price, drivers can been split into gold and silver winners.

Three of the gold winners in the over $350 category are the Callaway FT-9, PING Rapture V2 and the TaylorMade r7 Limited.

No one is better than Callaway at using multiple materials, said the judges about the FT-9. Players like the look, balance and carry of the PING Rapture V2, which has a similar look to the PING G10. The TaylorMade r7 Limited has movable weights and features an Ozik shaft. Some said it produces the best feel of any club on the market.

Gold winners in the under $350 category included Adams Speedline, Callaway Big Bertha Diablo, PING G10 and TaylorMade Burner. 

Irons

For the part of playing ability and interests, there are three categories: game improvement, super game improvement and players irons.

Gold winners in the game-improvement category included Callaway X-22, PING G10 and TaylorMade Burner. Callaway X-22 led in the Demand category, which is an assessment of reputation, interest, intrigue and excitement. The PING G10 is a long-time category leader, and the TaylorMade Burner irons really shined, leading in three of the four judging categories: performance, innovation and look/sound/feel.

TaylorMade also had a gold winner in the super game improvement category: the Burner Plus, which features an oversized clubhead and hefty offset to help get the golf ball in the air.

In the players irons category, Titleist AP2 claims the title, along with TaylorMade Tour Preferred, Callaway X-22 Tour, Callaway X-Forged and PING S57 models, four among the total of six gold winners.

Putters

Arguably, there’s no golf club more important than the putter, two main categories: blade putters and mallet putters.

Gold winners in the blade putter category over $200 included the Odyssey Black Series I #6, TaylorMade Daytona TP-KIA MA and Titleist Cameron Studio Select, which led in three of four criteria: performance, look/sound/feel and demand.

In the blade putter category under $200, top picks were the Odyssey White Hot Tour 1, two PING Anser models and the TaylorMade Daytona.

Gold winners in the mallet putter category included the Odyssey Black Series I 2-Ball, PING iWi Craz-E and TaylorMade Itsy Bitsy Spider. And leading mid-mallet putters were Odyssey, Titleist Cameron and MacGregor models.

 

 

Top Ten golf brands in hand

 

China’s such a big country, the current economic status is to enter the world as early as seven. China’s auto industry produced 4.4 million motor vehicles in 2003, who has become the world’s fourth largest car producer. But China has not a world-renowned automotive brand at all, which is not match the economic status today. None of our car brands is a worldwide brand, even the worst of our brands in the domestic influence is so limited, the current domestic auto market is further being swallowed by foreign car manufacturers. Here, mainly analysis the current status of the own brand and how to create a big global brands.

Some scholars believe that the brand can be sustained much longer than the company’s specific products, they recognized that brand is a more long-term company’s principal assets. Therefore, when our country is making famous in the automotive brand, we should look at the world, and we should have the global automotive brand Daizo strategic vision and courage.

20 years ago,  the idea that was to use the domestic market to exchange for advanced technology, so that China’s national automotive industry to catch up with international advanced level. After 20 years, China has finally produced the world’s third largest automobile market, the number of National Automobile self-made business has grown up from more than 10 to over 120, auto industry become one of the important industry for stimulating national economic development. China’s own brand car did not move toward the world only, but also lost most of the domestic market. China Steam brand has fallen into a “marginalized”, “de-China” dilemma!.

Look from the latest Chinese automobile and world-renowned automobile brand value rankings In 2004, the top three of Chinese automobile brand value is: monoxide (28.978 billion yuan), SAIC (18.389 billion yuan), Dongfeng (8,945,000,000 yuan ). the top three of World-renowned automobile brand value: Toyota (22.67 billion U.S. dollars), Mercedes (21.33 billion U.S. dollars), BMW (15.886 billion U.S. dollars). We can see that the Chinese auto brand value is far below the world-renowned brand through the comparison above, there’s a difference of disparity. Therefore, there is still a long way to go for creating China’s own brand car world.

The disadvantaged of own brand has attracted wide attention, but most concern is the intellectual property rights with Chinese trademarks, not the concerns and thinking for brand value. this is an important reason for China’s auto enterprises to ignored or even give up their own brands. At present, the introduction of CIS corporate identity system is not few,  but the introduction of BIS brand identity Strategy is extremely scarce.

But unfortunately, like Chery, Geely, Great Wall these emerging domestic car companies,while they are creating their own brands, they profoundly awareness the importance of brand strategy. Because it is original, they can create a new brand freely, which is favorable conditions that state-owned conglomerates and joint ventures do not have. However, they also face their own problems, the product is too new, yet to be market and customer testing. If people quickly forgotten as yolio and qiyun such products, don’t they understand the brand? If the product does not exist for a long time value, it is not brand strategy.

But now, many manufacturers are also feeling somewhat helpless when they insist on support of self-developed own-brand. Self-development is currently facing some of the biggest problem: First, there are not much support from state’s policies; the second: It is now many companies did not dare to talk about self-development, but not a lack of sense of responsibility, the reasons also due to appraisal system and accounting system. Third, at present, China’s consumer culture, consumer psychology and consumer concept have malformations, for example, many consumers do not want to see Chinese characters on cars, it is necessary to know that the characters in the land of China is not a shame.

In short, it should not be so anxious in the development of own national brand of motor vehicles. This requires the generation or even the next generation efforts. Although own well-known brands still has a long way to go, I believe China will have an even number of world-class well-known car brands in the near future.