TTAC Commentator SexCpotatoes writes:

I lost a car this past weekend. No it wasn’t stolen…worse, it was totaled sitting outside my mechanic’s shop.  Let this be a lesson to 18 year old kids everywhere: Don’t Text, or call & drive or you will lose control, spin around and wreck into a car with the passenger side of your early 90’s Dodge Caravan, losing your cell phone out the window.  If you chose to leave the scene, the State Highway Patrol will track you down.

The only good thing is that he had valid insurance.  My frame is bent because it pushed the bumper over, so I’m pretty sure the insurance company is going to write the car off.  Which I had JUST (literally) had the shocks replaced with KYB G/2 Gas-A-Just shocks, two new front window motors put in, & the door lock actuators that had given up were on the list for being done early this week. So I guess I’ll never be getting throttle responsive LED strips put in the opera lights like I was thinking of doing if I ever got the money.

I’m writing Piston Slap to see if anyone has any tips for dealing with the kid’s insurance company.  I maintained this car in top mechanical shape, even replaced the rear tail lamps with LED’s and installed a sequential turn signal kit.  Sure it had about $500 or so worth of rust repair needed, but it was a great car. The insurance company is probably going to low-ball me.  My mechanic said they should offer me about 3-4 G’s, but on a ’91 Grand Marquis with only 114,000 mi.? I’ve got other people at work telling me I’ll see $5-700 offered, max.  There are only 3 cars within 300 miles of me for sale on AutoTrader.  If I expand the search to 500 mi. & include ever car of this body style ’88-’91 the avg. price works out to $2900 regardless of mileage.  EBay doesn’t have any ’91s for sale but their range of sold prices is $452-3988 (which makes the average $2225.) NADA & KBB wholesale numbers are not promising.

So I ask you, Sajeev and the Best & Brightest, any advice?

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Hot summer. Hot deals. Time to clear out the lot for the 2011 models. Bloomberg figures that July sales broke all records since last August’s short-lived cash-4-clunkers frenzy. Eight analysts, polled by Bloomberg’s, predict a July SAAR of 11.9 million.

Real numbers will be released tomorrow, and TTAC will be there for the blow-by-blow.

In the meantime, all indicators are in the top band. (Read More…)

In the market for a new Toyota Corolla? Now is the time. Your friendly Toyota dealer will lease you a well-equipped Toyota Corolla for just $189 a month for three years. With a little shopping around, your monthly payments can be below $150. This may be a great deal for you. “For Toyota, the deal could be a financial disaster,” reports an aghast Freep. “To keep customers coming to its showrooms amid a series of embarrassing recalls, Toyota has been offering some of its best leasing terms in years.” (Read More…)

It’s that time of the month again, and welcome to another episode of Chinese Numerology. As it has become a TTAC tradition, the China Automotive Technology & Research Center jumps the gun again with an off-the-wall number. Shameless Bloomberg prints it and reports that “retail deliveries of cars, sport-utility vehicles and multipurpose vehicles rose 15.4 percent last month from a year earlier to 822,300, the China Automotive Technology & Research Center said in a statement today. That compared with 10.9 percent growth in June.” No, it did not. The CATRC is known for pretty good safety research and for awfully wrong numbers. You can safely ignore them, along with the rest of that Bloomberg tale. (Read More…)

Red light cameras are becoming less popular among municipal leaders in California. On Monday, the Yucaipa city council voted unanimously to cancel its photo enforcement contract with Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia. The previous week, Costa Mesa officially pulled the plug on its automated ticketing machines.

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When you hear “McLaren” mentioned during Formula One races, do you sometimes want one? Now you can. Street legal. And a steal for only $280,000 MSRP. To make that dream possible, McLaren group has taken on £40 million ($63m) worth of loans from HSBC to finance the construction of a new factory in Woking, Surrey.  The new factory will be the home of McLaren’s new super car, the MP4-12C (catchy name!). McLaren is forecasting to build 1,000 units in the first year of production, but within five years, McLaren is hoping to be building 4,000 units per year. One of the main selling points of the MP4-12C is the fact it’ll be able to get to 124mph in 10 seconds. It even has air brakes, implements usually used to bring jet fighters to a stop. (Read More…)

With all the hubbub over Volvo, it’s easy to forget that Geely already owns a foreign carmaker: Managnese Bronze, the company that makes London’s iconic black-cabs. Well, Geely doesn’t “own” Maganese, they hold a 19.97 percent share. That is about to change. (Read More…)

Did we say last Thursday that the sale of Volvo from Ford to Geely „could close as soon as next week?” Did I believe it? Did I live in Chine for six years? Honestly, there was an element of surprise when, this Beijing afternoon, my inbox made that noise and there was an email from Ford, titled “Ford Motor Company Completes Sale of Volvo to Geely.” The deal is closed. Volvo is Chinese. (Read More…)

One can always count on the Japanese to be first with a precise sales count for the preceding month.  New car sales in Japan rose for the 12th straight month in July, up 15.5 percent compared to July of the previous year. Customers bought 333,403 units in July, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association told The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

The Korea Times reports that the Seoul Central District court has ordered the union of a subcontractor of Hyundai-Kia to remove a picture from the walls of the union headquarters. A court order? To take down a picture? Why? (Read More…)

In TTAC’s recent Chevrolet Cruze review, tced2 made a very interesting point:

Why does “globalization” always mean the work is done everywhere but America? Isn’t America on the “globe”?

Another interesting comment, this one from alexndr333:

So, welcome to 2010, Mr. Baruth, and watch as GM operates like the other big boys, pulling its international talents together to design, engineer and build a small car for us Americans.

I’ll stand by my previous statements here. My definition of an “American car” is one with major engineering input from the United States, assembled in the United States using a majority of United States-sourced parts. Anything else — whether we are talking Fiesta, Corolla, or Cruze — isn’t quite good enough. When I buy Allen-Edmonds shoes or a Hickey-Freeman suit, I expect full US assembly and I expect to be notified of non-US content in the product.

So, my question to the B&B is twofold. First: Are you interested in purchasing an “American car”? If so, what is the working definition you use for that phrase?

This week’s road trip is a special journey through a much-loved American tradition: NASCAR. We’re going to be driving through the South, some lush, beautiful country full of hospitality, great barbecue, and rabid loyalty to the local citizenry’s sponsored stock car of choice. This is a much longer trip than last week’s – we’re going to hit eight states – so plan accordingly, i.e. a case of beer per person per day. Only to be drunk after the day’s drive is complete, of course. (Read More…)

Yes, there were abortive attempts to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries (you want ketchup with your freedom?) There were calls for a boycott of all things French, including French mustard, excluding French’s Mustard (and maybe the Statue of Liberty.) Nevertheless, I think deep down the Americans secretly admire the French. With their lavish welfare system, generous benefits and their willingness to strike if someone so much as asks them to work an hour outside of their contract, who wouldn’t want to be French?

Hell, in the UK we wish we could be like them. If we were we might still have some global companies in our ownership, instead of selling out to the first bidder. But as Peter Schiff (who I’ve mentioned before) said, the party is over, we have to stop paying ourselves these lavish benefits, allow the free market to function and stop being lazy. In the UK, the government is going on a massive austerity program in order to balance the books, Italy pushed through a huge €24b cost cutting plan and even Spain just managed to push through a €15b budget reduction plan by a majority of just one vote. France hasn’t made a cost cutting plan of their own. It’s almost as if the current economic turmoil doesn’t apply to them. French benefits have survived recessions before and they’ll survive this one, right? Well, don’t be so sure. It seems that the French may be coming around to the rest of the world’s thinking, and the message to change their ways is coming from an unlikely source. General Motors. (Read More…)

If you want, and if you don’t feel discouraged by Ed’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, you can go to your friendly GM dealer and pre-order the 2011 Volt for an MSRP of  $41,000 (before a $7,500 federal tax credit). A 36-month lease costs $350 a month, with $2,500 down. Bring a cot, we are given the impression that there are long lines at the dealerships. GM’s spokesman David Darovitz told Automotive News [sub], that based on customer reactions, GM expects demand for the Volt to exceed the 10,000 units it will build between its launch and the end of 2011. (Read More…)

For more than a year, I had been on my very own propaganda mission in China (and I’m still here in Beijing to tell it.) I had urged Chinese parts manufacturers to go overseas and to buy parts houses at firesale prices. By moving closer to the customer and up the value chain, by turning from contract manufacturer to marketer, the Chinese manufacturers could realize much higher profits. By turning from contract supplier to systems house, they would be about 5 years ahead of the technology curve: A systems house is tied into the development of a car. The Boschs, Magnas, Federal Moguls of this world harbor more secrets than a Tom Clancy novel. A year ago, I wrote in China’s Gasgoo: “While the idea of buying a foreign car brand for cheap is good, the practicable choices are limited. So it’s back to buying foreign parts companies. There will be many bankrupt foreign parts companies this year to choose from, all quite cheap, most with an established presence and manufacture in China.”

Someone seems to listen, finally. But maybe a little late … (Read More…)