When you are a Chinese car company, especially one that is mostly government owned, reporting profits is not one of your prime objectives. As long as you don’t lose money hand over fist, as long as you provide jobs for many people, as long as you grow in market share and influence, having money left over is sometimes just a (taxable) nuisance. But in times like these, it’s unavoidable. And it doesn’t hurt your stock when you are a publicly traded company. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, better known as SAIC, has announced that their net profit for 2009 jumped 900 percent from the previous year, reaching a record of nearly $1b ($966m, to be exact.) (Read More…)

It’s that time of the month again: In the first days of the month, market observers in China eagerly await the GM China sales number. GM usually is first to report. What’s more, GM is the canary in the (ooops) Chinese coal mine, a very good indicator for the overall market. Looking back at March, that canary happily tweets that GM’s March sales in China, including Wuling vans, accelerated 68 percent to 230,048 units. Shanghai GM’s sales of Buicks, Chevys, and a few Cadillacs rose 89 percent annually to 86,967 units. That according to Associated Press. This is another record Middle Kingdom month for GM, the 15^th in a row, and it indicates a March surprise for the Chinese market. (Read More…)

Well, this looks very familiar to me. Take that as a (rare) hint, if you like. Time to recognize our winners of the last Clue, wich was a two-fer. tklockau was the first to guess both the Prelude and Colt. But let’s recognize hotdogmaki for the first Prelude ID; and Shoichiro B. Hara as the first Colt recognizer. Congratulations, and happy guessing.  Sorry about the lateness.

Since we’re hanging out in the seventies with Ford, I remembered this truck I shot a couple of weeks ago. It sports the Free Wheelin’ decor package, that was quite the hot item in 1978. The splashy graphics made their way across a whole palette of Fords. It’s been quite awhile since I saw one. You? Hey, let’s go free wheelin’… (Read More…)

The literal answer is that it’s not the very last vehicle built at NUMMI. A red Corolla had that honor, but this is the very last Tacoma to be built by the UAW. And with that, the grand experiment between GM and Toyota is over. Could anyone have guessed way back in 1984 that the joint venture would eventually fall victim to a GM bankruptcy and Toyota overreach? Perhaps a few, but then who can say  what firm, or even what industry, will be busying NUMMI’s production floors 26 years from now? The times, they are a-changing.

We no longer have the dubious honor of leading this category. We’ve been down that road before, and we know it’s a dead end.

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Edmunds [via Earth Times] has released its monthly “True Cost of Incentives” list, and GM tops the list, followed closely by Chrysler and Ford. Good thing Sergio Marchionne narrowly avoided “getting pulled into an incentive war.” That Chrysler’s sales couldn’t beat last March’s numbers even with these incentives tells you everything you need to know about the state of play in Auburn Hills. Oh, and how is GM’s incentive “leadership” supposed to jive with marketing boss Susan Docherty’s insistence [via the WSJ [sub]] that GM is reigning in its incentives? Who knows. Meanwhile, Ford’s impressive 2010 numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt in light of the Blue Oval’s continuing dependence on spiffs and fleet sales (speaking of which, fleet numbers are up 64 percent at GM, and Ford had a 30 percent-ish fleet mix in March[ via FT]). In fact, Toyota’s much-vaunted move towards incentives seems to not only have helped its sales, it may have also scared Detroit back into some nasty old habits.

Hyundai has announced that its Equus luxury sedan will launch with a “multimedia tablet” (widely speculated to be an Apple iPad) instead of an owners manual. Not only would a tablet be easier to navigate (in theory) than a giant manual, it would also allow owners to schedule maintenance right from the car. Is this the end of the owner’s manual as we know it?

Honda’s sales bounced 22 percent, as the normally incentive-adverse firm broke out financing, cashback and lease deals to keep up with Toyota and GM’s incentive war. Accord and Civic were 23 and 4 percent, with 29,120 and 22,463 units respectively. Odyssey, Pilot and CR-V all broke the 10k mark, with Pilot growing sales the most (48 percent). Fit was down slightly from last March’s recession-fueled sales, managing only 4,670 units. The Insight sold a pathetic 1,652 units.

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Toyota was determined to get the momentum back in its sales with incentives, and it did the trick. Sales jumped 41% over last year. Both the Toyota brand and Lexus shared the gain equally: Toyota brand up 41%; Lexus up 42%. Those are raw unadjusted numbers, as TTAC prefers. Until I get my calculator humming, the highlights here are adjusted for DSR, which means they are lower than the raw ones: Camry: +35%; Corolla: +28%; Prius: +27%; Venza: +36%; Rav4: +108%; Highlander: +113%; 4Runner: +140%. Just like the good old days!

Lexus’ ES 350 was up 15%; the RX up 26%. Full chart after the jump: (Read More…)

Chrysler managed to buck the up market very successfully in March. And it’s missing its stated and essential sales targets. With 92k units sold in March, Marchionnes’ 1.1 million goal for 2010 is slipping further from reach by the month. The lowlights: HD Ram trucks are up 20%! Jeep eked out a 3% rise. Challenger is up 50%. And the Sebring is crawling back from the abyss with a 69% spike. Minivans are split: T&C up 30%; Caravan down 32%. The all-important Ram pickups are still sagging, down 8% in March, and -18% YTD. The full ugly details after the jump: (Read More…)

Hyundai and KIA combined for an 18 percent sales increase last month, moving 77,524 units between the two brands. Hyundai saw less dramatic increases, up “only” 15.4 percent over last March. Accent (4,233) and Elantra  (8,225) sales were weak compared to last March’s recession fever, but big jumps in Sonata (18,935), Santa Fe (9,548) and Tucson (3,084) volumes kept the momentum going. Sorento (9,156) and Soul (5,106) led KIA’s volume, with Forte (4,830) softening and Optima (3,633) actually gaining. Meanwhile, the fact that other brands were binging on incentives, trying to meet the Koreans on value, means this performance is especially impressive. At least it will be when we have March’s incentive numbers. Full sales numbers after the jump.

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March is shaping up to be the biggest month in car sales since Cash for Clunkers ended, and Ford isn’t being left behind [official release in PDF format here]. The firm’s sales rose 43 percent last month, matching February’s performance and setting another record for sales since 1984. Ford brand sales led the way with a 45.6 percent increase, while Lincoln climbed 18.9 percent and Mercury rose 26.2 percent. Focus hit 19,500 units, a 57.5 percent increase, while Fusion sales grew 79 percent to 22,773 units, an all-time record for the nameplate. Escape flirted with the 20k mark as well at 19,182, while F-Series hit 42,514, a 30 percent increase. Explorer even saw a 78 percent bump to 5,907, and a 53 percent bump in fleet sales sent over 10,000 Econolines out the door. Lincoln sold 450 more MKZs than it did last March, otherwise only the Town Car and Navigator were up (modestly). Milan carried the Mercury brand, up 71 percent to 3,897 units. Grand Marquis and Mariner sold 3,532 and 2,482 respectively. Though Ford had a great month sales-wise, its luxury brand situation continues to be one hot, steaming mess.

Today, we were following Automotive News [sub] as they were filling their developing table of March 2010 sales. With all precincts having reported, the final number is +24 percent. But remember: We are comparing with the worst of carmageddon. At least, it looks like we are slowly turning the corner.  However, the Chinese are way ahead of US. Data after the jump … (Read More…)

Dang! Daimler thinks of “moving several key divisions from Berlin to its headquarters in Stuttgart to cut costs,” reports Bloomberg. There goes another source of inside intelligence: One just had to hang out at the bar of the Hyatt next to the Daimler Quartier at the Potsdamer Platz, and when there was absolutely no info to be written for TTAC, a few drinks later, we had some. The flip charts in the conference rooms of the Hyatt also were fertile grounds: They always forgot to remove their scribblings. Where will we get future sales strategies from now on? Ah, the good old times …. (Read More…)