Will Audi A1 production sprout up in Brussels?

According to a story circulated today by Reuters, Audi is to build its new A1 compact in the VAG Brussels factory that is to lose Golf production next year because of falling sales. According to Reuter’s informant, identified simply as ‘a source familiar with the matter’, production will begin in 2009 at the rate of 100,000 units a year. If this is true, Audi will have got its partner out of a scrape: the last thing Volkswagen needs at the moment is a damaging confrontation with an angry and potentially militant workforce.

Now that Audi boss, Martin Winterkorn, has been confirmed for the big seat on the Volkswagen-Audi board, I suspect there will soon be other examples of Ingoldstat’s emerging primacy.

Rumoured to resemble the R-D6 concept, will Jaguar's new XF survive the Dearborn shuffle?

It is reported today that, in an effort to drag itself away from the brink of bankruptcy, Ford is putting together a re-financing package that should create a cash and credit input of some 38 billion dollars. Assets to be leveraged for the secured portion of various loan packages totalling 15 billion dollars are said to include Ford Motor Credit Co. and Volvo. No mention has been made of Jaguar, Land Rover or Aston Martin.

That sounds to me as if the three British companies do not figure in the long-term plans of Ford’s new CEO, Alan Mulally. I wonder if Jaguar will be given a chance to launch its new S-Type replacement, the XF, which was announced today, before the company goes under the hammer?