If you think Volvo will stay chaste and out of the grips of the Chinese, abandon all hope. The Chinese are coming to take away your Svenska flikka away for good. Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping is on his tour of Europe. This weekend, he will arrive in Sweden. (Read More…)

Despite their huge drive to wring every last drop of mileage out of the ICU, with new direct injection engines and idling stop function for all cars, Mazda will not stand around idle while the rest of the world is hyper to jump on the hybrid bandwagon. In 2013, Mazda wants to introduce a midsize hybrid. And out of what hat did they pull that Flemish Giant of a rabbit? As predicted by our resident sage Cammy Corrigan, the essential gadgetry comes courtesy of Toyota. (Read More…)

I’m running out of gratuitous tie-up pictures, so let’s celebrate the good news with a video: The Nikkei [sub] sends us the news that Nissan and Daimler “are in the final stages of negotiations to obtain stakes of less than 5 percent  in each other.” This comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that Daimler and Renault will exchange shares. With Nissan joining the couple, the tripartite axis will be perfect. No Italians this time. (Read More…)

Car researcher Edmunds sees an exceptionally strong March rebound in U.S. car sales. They expect new vehicle sales to come in 31 percent higher than March 2009.  The most muscular comeback kid? Would you believe it, Edmunds expects sales of the already counted out Toyota to explode in March. They also see the Detroit 3 solidly overwhelmed by the furriners, Ford’s heroic efforts notwithstanding. (Read More…)

I fell in love with Chrysler back in 1991. Really. The LH sedans were the first four door cars I ever wanted to buy. Sports car looks. 214 horsepower. Of course they were just in the developmental stage back then with only a Viper or two out in the real world. I didn’t care. As I studied more of Chrysler’s other show cars of that time and reflected on the company’s restructuring measures (I was an industry wonk even then), I smelled the opportunity of an 18 year old’s lifetime. I bought 260 shares of Chrysler at just over $10 a share. Two years later I thought LH stood for, “Lordy Hallelujah!” as I spent my newfound fortune on babes and booze. Make that one babe who thankfully became my wife, and a laptop computer.

2009 was a great year for China’s auto makers with a record growth of 45 percent that propelled the market to 13.6 million units and gave it unassailable #1 status. It wasn’t all roses for everybody. For China’s Brilliance, joint venture partner of BMW, 2009 was downright rotten. (Read More…)

To many today, the French automaker Panhard (pronounced panAR) may be unknown or rapidly slipping into obscurity. But the story of this once renowned firm, one of the very earliest pioneers of the automobile is remarkable and more relevant than ever. It developed a distinguished series of ultra-efficient two-cylinder cars in the post war era that culminated in this tasty 24TC of 1967, the very last Panhard. It reflected the French approach to automobile making perfectly: innovative, eccentric, stylish, and all to often, out of the mainstream and financial success. But Panhard’s efforts were always highly memorable, advanced, and foreshadowed the cars of today and the future. Before long, we may all be driving updated versions of small, ultra-light and super-efficient 850 cc two-cylinder cars like this.  And if this delightful and sporty coupe is anything to go by, it may be something to actually look forward too. (Read More…)

There’s not much doubt that this is the rarest find Curbside Classics, at least so far. And there it was, right under my nose, on Main Street. In fact, it’s so rare that I didn’t really recognize it at first. I’d caught a glimpse of it once before, in the back of a typical used car lot in Springfield, Eugene’s blue-collar neighbor. Given its location, size, shape, and paint job, I initially thought it was some kind of amusement park ride car, or a former Shriner-mobile. Or at best, some kind of garage-built sports car special from the fifties. I drove on, but made a mental note, and on my next sojourn to the inspiration for Homer Simpson’s hometown, I decided it was worth a quick stop and closer look. What I found totally blew me away: a Panhard Dyna Junior Roadster. (Read More…)

A Chinese friend just called me up. Claimed I would know a lot about cars. Asked whether he should invest his hard-earned Renminbi into an Audi Q7 3.6, or a Mercedes ML300, or a BMW X5-3.0, or a VW Tourareg V8?

What do I know. Of course, I didn’t tell him that.

My reputation as a know-it-all foreigner is at stake here. You know, China, all about face. So I’m asking the best and brightest of the Best & Brightest: What should I recommend? Serious, snark-free advice, please. Obviously, this guy has money, and I don’t want to end up on his wrong side. I would suffer a serious quanxi deduction if my advice turns out as bogus.  No other brands, he’s fairly set on these Teutonic choices.

Ah, the tangled web of automotive high finance. Victor Muller, CEO and largest shareholder of Dutch automaker Spyker Cars said “oops” (or Dutch words to that effect) and reduced his voting interest is Spyker from 34.3 percent to 26.8 percent.

Why? It just dawned on Muller (or his CPAs) that with more than 30 percent he would have had to make a buyout offer for the rest of the shares. After having gobbled up Saab through complex dealings involving Russian money of dubious provenance, being forced to buy out the whole company because of some silly law wasn’t a high priority for Muller.

Rules are rules, so what’s a newly minted tycoon to do? (Read More…)

After long hand-holding and necking, Daimler and Renault finally seem to progress to third base. The Financial Times reports that the French and the Germans “are in the final stages of wide-ranging strategic partnership talks that would involve the German and French car makers taking ‘symbolic’ minority stakes in each other.” (Read More…)

When we wrote yesterday that GM’s „car of the future,“ to be shown at the upcoming Shanghai Expo, “looks more like an overgrown Segway scooter,” we meant it in jest. Turns out they are serious. It IS an overgrown Segway scooter. (Read More…)

It’s nice to see someone still deeply in love with their pristine eighties time-capsule 300ZX. It’s hard for me to put my finger on it, but it’s always been a bit difficult to muster any warmth for Nissan’s Z cars after they turned the truly remarkable original 240Z into an ever more porky and ugly caricature of itself. The 300ZX was an attempt to ditch the over-wrought original styling cues for a clean new look, but by then the ZX was severely tainted by image issues, the price of its success. (Read More…)

Opels head shop steward Klaus Franz is mightily mad at Opel’s CEO Nick Reilly. Reilly told the London Times that the Ampera, Opel’s counterpart to the Volt, may be built in the Ellesmere Port plant in the UK:“The chances are quite good that the Ampera will come to Ellesmere Port as it is close in production terms to the Astra and will share many components,” Reilly said. In the meantime, Berlin cues Roberta Flack’s “Killing me softly” as a prelude for Opel’s funeral. (Read More…)

Terrence Steven McQueen was born to a stunt pilot father and an alcoholic mother on this day in 1930. His father left them both halfway to Steve’s first birthday. In the ensuing years he would find a home on his Uncle’s farm in Indiana, be moved to Indianapolis and L.A. where he was shipped off to a Junior Republic by an abusive stepfather, lumberjack, be a Marine guard for President Harry Turman’s yacht and become the highest paid movie star in the world.

(Read More…)