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Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Hyundai i20

Hyundai's second-generation i20, designed at Hyundai Motor's Design Center Europe in Rüsselsheim, Germany, is the first to feature the firm's new small-car platform. Hyundai claims this allows sufficient flexibility to make the (as-yet unrevealed) interior the most spacious in its class. As for the exterior, the distinction between what is a Kia and what's a Hyundai becomes ever-more blurred.

Video: Road & Track presents The Five Minute Car Design with Tom Matano

Tom Matano – designer of the Mazda MX-5 and executive director of industrial design at Academy of Art University – is the subject of Road & Track's second ‘The Five Minute Car Design' video feature. The R&T crew headed to Matano's design studio and asked him to create his ideal sedan in just five minutes before destroying it at the end of the film. This latest video is the second in the series, which started with Ian Cartabiano from Calty Design in California design and destroy his ultimate sports car.