John E. Herlitz, an automobile designer who styled a signature     American muscle car and left his imprint on many notable          Chrysler Corporation models of the late 20th century, died March  24 in Naples, Fla. He was 65.

The cause was complications of a fall in his winter home in Naples, a son, Kirk Herlitz, said. Mr. Herlitz also lived in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Mr. Herlitz made his reputation with the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, which brought a touch of class to the “pony car” segment, a genre of sporty compact cars started with the Ford Mustang, with long hoods and short rear decks.

His Barracuda replaced designs that were only mildly successful, starting with an awkward 1964 fastback based on the Plymouth Valiant economy car. In contrast, the Herlitz Barracuda was clean and largely unadorned, with a wide body and a hunkered-down stance that hinted at the considerable power available to customers who checked the right boxes on their order forms.

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This is easily the coolest robotic-wheeled-thing I’ve seen in a while. The Segway RMP (Robotic Mobility Platform) has four “wheels,” though that’s probably not quite the correct word for them. They’re actually Mecanum wheels, which are designed to move in any direction—similar to the wheels on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers—but in this case by using a series of rollers attached to the wheel’s rim.

According to Wikipedia, the rollers have an axis of rotation at 45 degrees to the plane of the wheel, in a plane parallel to the axis of rotation of the wheel. That means the wheels can not only move forward and backward, but they can also move side to side. Makezine.com reports that the RMP should be able to support up to 400 pounds and could cost in the neighborhood of (gulp) $50,000. For more on the new Segway design,

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I missed covering this tidbit of information last week while I was traipsing through Europe, but some interesting information emerged when GM released their March sale results. GM has been making an awful lot of noise about their two-mode hybrid system with lots of announcements about all the vehicles the system will be installed in. What they aren’t bragging much about is sales. That’s because there isn’t much to brag about. In fact it appears that the sum total of hybrid sales for all models offered by GM in the first three months of 2008 was 843. That is not a typo, it’s 843. Unlike other manufacturers, GM has never broken out sales of hybrid models from conventional versions. Perhaps this is why.

During the same period Ford moved 5,225 Escape and Mariner Hybrids and Toyota sold…well let’s just say Toyota sold a whole lot more than that. While GM has made plenty of auto show announcements about hybrids and they run lots of print and TV ads promoting their green-ness, they haven’t really done a lot to promote hybrids on the lot. Perhaps they don’t actually want to sell that many because the cost is so much higher and they don’t want to lose all that money. Or perhaps customers just don’t really want a hybrid full-size truck. Perhaps, as Troy Clarke told us at the Chicago Auto Show, they were holding them back for captured fleet testing until they were sure everything was right. Have any of you readers actually tried to find a hybrid at a dealership or tried to buy one? Let us know about your experience.

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From next year onwards the Tesla Roadster will no longer be a U.S. only model as the company has confirmed it will start selling its all-electric car in Europe in just over 12 months. Tesla had always planned to make its Roadster a global model but with the U.S. dollar falling sharply against the euro over the last two years and Europe’s strong concerns about global warming and its eagerness for sustainable motoring company bosses sped up the export program.

Furthermore, rules for homologating a new car for sale across Europe will be simplified in April next year and will allow Tesla to introduce a special limited edition model ahead of its original scheduled launch planned for later in the year. This special limited edition will sell for €99,000 for a fully loaded car, to be delivered in 2009 shortly after the rule change takes effect. Tesla’s first planned event in Europe will be at the Top Marques Monaco on the 24th of this month and will be followed up later in the year with the establishment of sales and service facilities.

Original: Last week we reported that Tesla was speeding up its export program to take advantage of the weak U.S. dollar, and now the electric car company’s CEO has confirmed the roadster will be sold in Europe by the third quarter of next year. Although the Tesla’s chassis is manufactured in the UK by Lotus, most of its hardware, including the expensive batteries, is put together in California. This makes exporting the car to Europe very lucrative for Tesla.

Speaking with the Financial Times, Tesla boss Ze’ev Drori revealed final pricing for the roadster in Europe would stand at €100,000 ($156,000). By comparison the car sells for just under $100,000 in the U.S., but Drori is confident Europe’s higher fuel prices and shorter average driving distances makes the car much more appealing for Europeans than it is for Americans.

Key markets include Germany, France and the Netherlands, as well as countries such as Norway and Denmark, which offer generous tax incentives for low-emission cars. The UK will miss out initially as there are no plans for a RHD version in the short term.

Tesla has already racked up 1,000 firm orders for its electric roadster but with production limited to just 250 units per month there will be significant delays for the car unless capacity is increased. To cope with the extra demand, Drori revealed Tesla will establish another factory for finishing cars in Europe

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For the environmental conscience of the style-conscious elite, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s finally a more suitable alternative to the Toyota Prius. The bad news is that it’s arguably no better looking. But like moths to the limelight, the big names have flocked to the new BMW Hydrogen 7. After being adopted by such stars as Cameron Diaz, Will Ferrell, Jay Leno and Placido Domingo, the latest of the rich and famous to receive the keys to the luxo-enviromobile is none other than His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The monarch of the tax-haven Mediterranean principality took delivery of the Hydrogen 7 at the Ever Monaco environmental exposition in Monte Carlo, where Prince Albert proclaimed, “I monitor very carefully, in the automobile sector in particular, the development of new technologies”. Hmm, guess that means the crown prince reads Autoblog – or our sister-site Autoblog Green, which reported this particular piece of news previously – on a fairly regular basis then. Welcome to the site, your highness.

Unfortunately this means that with only 100 examples of the car being offered to the public, that’s one less for the rest of us. Press release after the jump.

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The answer to this question can be found in the ForeSee Results Automotive Website Satisfaction Index, which commissioned a study of automotive websites and how well they fulfilled customers’ needs.

Backed by the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) methodology, the report concluded that Honda’s website ranked the highest among customers, while Nissan’s came last. Incidentally, Nissan.com domain name belongs to a computer retailer currently being sued by the automaker for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and cyber-squatting. Nissan’s current home page is listed under NissanUSA.com.

The research focused on 6 sites, taking into account market predictors like brand loyalty and purchase behavior. Each automotive website was rated on the ACSI’s 100-point scale with the industry aggregate standing at 78. Here is how individual sites scored on the satisfaction index.
* Honda.com: 80
* Chrysler.com: 79
* FordVehicles.com: 79
* Chevrolet.com: 77
* Toyota.com: 77
* NissanUSA.com: 76

The study also found that Honda.com does the best job leveraging the website to get visitors to buy a vehicle or visit a dealer. Chevrolet.com, FordVehicles.com, and NissanUSA.com were tied for being the least likely to influence customers to purchase a vehicle. Visitors to FordVehicles.com were the least likely to visit a dealer.

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Our sources indicate this rendering from OmniAuto.it is very close to what Audi’s upcoming Q5 will look like. Although this looks like a photograph on an Italian web site, it is really a rendering that looks nearly identical to the Q5 spy shots we showed you in February. When it debuts later this month at the Beijing Motor Show, expect the engine to be a longitudinal (north-south) mount, to allow a variety of powerplants including V8 and TDI derivatives.

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