AD #2471 – Audi Pioneers New Paint Process, Car Brands with Highest Loyalty, Cadillac Cancels Subscription Service

On today’s show…Tesla has the highest brand loyalty in the business…Audi is pioneering a new painting process to customize cars…and Lincoln turns to a symphony orchestra to come up with the warning chimes in its cars. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.

This is Autoline Daily the voice of the automotive industry.

LINCOLN PARTNERS WITH ORCHESTRA TO CREATE CHIMES
Warning buzzers and chimes in cars are usually obnoxious. But Lincoln decided that a soothing and melodic approach better suited its philosophy of quiet luxury. So it partnered with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to create chimes in the new Aviator that provide alerts for about 25 features in the vehicle. Here’s symphony members recording the chime if you left the parking brake on. Here’s the chime if your door is ajar. This is a hard warning for taking critical actions. We commend Lincoln for making warning chimes something of a musical performance.

CADILLAC CANCELS SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE
Cadillac is going to cancel its subscription service. That was the lease program that charged customers $1,800 a month to choose any Cadillac they wanted, whenever they wanted. Cadillac didn’t say why it’s stopping the service, which is called Book by Cadillac. But here’s our Autoline Insight. Either not enough people signed up for it, or it turned into a logistical nightmare. No doubt Cadillac had a bunch of cars sitting around doing nothing, just waiting for a customer to schedule them. And we bet that Cadillac is not the first to deep six their subscription service.

HARVICK WINS AT TEXAS
In racing news over the weekend, Kevin Harvick dominated at the Texas Motor Speedway, leading 177 laps in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford. His only real battle? Having to survive two late-race restarts. Harvick now joins Joey Logano to compete for the Championship title.

Audi has a new paint process to customize cars and that’s coming up next.

AUDI PIONEERS NEW PAINT PROCESS
Audi has a new paint process that will allow customers greater individualization of their vehicles. They call it partial matting. A template is placed over a painted part, then put under vacuum and sprayed with a fine powder of crushed glass. This removes a tiny amount of the clear coat and roughs up the surface enough to make it stand out from the painted part. Audi says this pattern of crosses on the sideblade of a special edition Q2 only took about a minute to do. And everything from lettering, logos or photos can be displayed on the sheet metal. Audi also says it’s the first manufacturer to use partial matting in volume production.

CAR BRANDS WITH HIGHEST LOYALTY
Subaru owners are extremely loyal to the brand. When it comes time to buy a new car 72.1% of them go back and buy another Subaru. And Ford owners are right on their heels. 72% of them buy another Ford. But Tesla has the highest owner loyalty in the business, according to Experian. Over 80% of the people who buy a Tesla, go back and buy another one. Automakers know it’s far cheaper to keep existing owners than it is to conquest new ones. So loyalty has a big impact on profitability.

LAND ROVER SALES SOAR WHILE JAGUAR SLUMPS
Last week we reported that Jaguar Land Rover posted one of the biggest sales increases in the U.S. market. Well, the credit really goes to Land Rover, because sales at Jaguar fell nearly 12%, while Land Rover had a blowout month. The only Land Rover model that was down was the Velar, and it only lost 9 sales compared to a year ago. As for the rest of the line, the Discovery was up 30% while the Range Rover Sport was up a mind blowing 87%. Here’s what really stood out. Sales of Jaguar’s SUVs, the F-Pace and E-Pace are going nowhere. As for the I-Pace? Well, the electric SUV is only just hitting the market. They sold 5 of them last month.

Ford went with an aluminum pickup truck. Chevrolet did not. And we’ll tell you why coming up next.

GM’S PICKUP WEIGHT SAVING STRATEGY
Ford made a big splash when it decided to go with an aluminum body for the F-150. But when it came time for GM to re-do its full-size pickups, it decided to take a different approach. On last week’s Autoline After Hours, Tim Herrick, GM’s Full Size Truck Chief Engineer talked about their strategy.

(The AAH preview is only available in the video version of today’s show.)

You can watch that show on our website or you can find it on our YouTube channel. And then join us this Thursday when we’ll have Mike O’Brien, the head of product planning for Hyundai Motor America in the studio with us. We’ll ask him to stare into his crystal ball and share what kind of products customers will want in the future.

But that’s it for today, thanks for watching and we’ll see you tomorrow.