TTAC Commentator Craigotron writes:

I recently moved from Wyoming to Washington D.C. (and I grew up in northern Michigan) and have been tasked with preparing a brief five point “Winter Driving Tips” article for a local news outlet feature. I was asked since I’m the resident automotive enthusiast and my winter driving credentials (I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything that hasn’t been RWD…) here are pretty good; this is the first warm place I’ve lived in… well… ever. They thought I’d be a good person to help prepare the neighborhood for the next Snowpocalypse.

I’d love to ask the best and brightest for some input. I’m making sure all the obvious stuff is there: keep up on maintenance, understand how your car works, jumper cables, keep your tank full, kitty litter. What would you add to the mix?

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German new car sales pierced the previous year line for the first time this year. In December, Germans bought 6.9 percent more cars than in December 2010. However, this is more due to a moderate December 2009 than to an overly strong December 2010. For the year, German new car sales are 23.4 percent below 2009. (Read More…)

The city council in Washington, Missouri no longer believes that red light cameras have a positive impact on safety. Members voted 6 to 2 on Monday to allow the automated ticketing contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to expire, and Mayor Sandy Lucy agreed to draft a letter to the for-profit company making it clear that the council has no interest in ever bringing the devices back.

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GM China’s 2010 sales numbers did not disappoint. They expected more than 2.3 million cars for 2010 sold in the Middle Kingdom,  they got more than 2.3 million. 2,351,610 units, to be exact, up 28.8 percent compared to a very strong 2009. to a record in 2010. GM is the first global automaker to sell more than 2 million vehicles in China in a single year. And here is the breakdown: (Read More…)

When it comes to new cars, trucks and buses, Japan’s can look back at the first sales increase in seven years. Sales rose 10.6 percent in all of 2010, powered by the generosity of the Japanese government. The country will remember 2010 with woefulness. This year, the sales will be down hard. After 14 months of government-induced growth, Japan cut the buying incentives last September, and the market keeled over.

December sales gave a preview of sales not to come: Sales were down 28.3 percent in December, according to data provided by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association to The Nikkei [sub]. These numbers do not include mini (“kei”) cars and trucks.

Japan’s total new vehicle sales including minicars rose only 7.5 percent in 2010 from the previous year to a total of 4,956,136 units, the Mainichi Shimbun reports. The total was dragged down by the poorer (sales-) performance of the small cars. Mini vehicles sales rose only 2.3 percent to 1,726,420 units, the Japan Mini Vehicles Association said.

The way the incentive program was set up, it had an immense pull-forward effect. The program had a cash for clunker component, but that was hardly used. Japan doesn’t have the number of old cars like the U.S.A. or Europe. The extra cars bought in 2010 will be sorely missed in 2011. Compared with an artificially high 2010, Japanese domestic  2011 numbers will look very ugly.

You’re 20 years old. At least for this exercise, you have been able to implant your current wisdom into that once wonderful body of yours. You hit the jackpot! Well, sort of… A genie popped out of a bottle of Colt 45 and granted you the chance to relive your life from that 20th birthday forward. Except there’s a catch. You must live out the next 60 years of your life drinking malt liquor and sporting bad hair.

Actually, it’s not that bad. You can buy only 1 new car for the next 20 years of your life. Tough break huh? The car you choose must be owned and maintained by you, and only you, for the next 20 years. Why? Don’t ask questions. This genie’s been stuck in a malt liquor bottle for decades and it wouldn’t grant you a wish without messing with your head at least a little bit.
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On the surface, GM had a fairly passable 2010, as the newly-public automaker posted a 21.3% volume increase for its four core brands. In contrast to Toyota’s humbly grateful tone, GM’s VP of US Sales Don Johnson sounded a distinctly triumphal note, arguing

Our sales this year reflect the impact of GM’s new business model. The consistency of results that we achieved demonstrates the focus on our brands, dealers and customers, and how we compete aggressively for every sale, every day.

And on a superficial level, the argument certainly seems to ring true, as Buick (+51.9%), Cadillac (+34.7%), and GMC (+31.7%) were the three most-improved brands in the business last year in terms of volume. GM also delivered more vehicles than any other automaker last year, with 2,215,227 vehicles sold. Great success, end of story… right?

Wrong.

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President Obama has been busy signing a number of bills into law today, including the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, which, according to the Congressional Research Service

Directs the Secretary of Transportation to study and report to Congress on the minimum level of sound that is necessary to be emitted from a motor vehicle, or some other method, to alert blind and other pedestrians of the presence of operating motor vehicles while traveling.

But that’s not all. Once the SecTrans determines the minimum standard for alerting blind pedestrians to a vehicle’s presence, he is required to

initiate rulemaking to promulgate a motor vehicle safety standard

(1) establishing performance requirements for an alert sound that allows blind and other pedestrians to reasonably detect a nearby electric or hybrid vehicle operating below the cross-over speed, if any; and

(2) requiring new electric or hybrid vehicles to provide an alert sound conforming to the requirements of the motor vehicle safety standard established under this subsection.

Let’s hope Secretary LaHood takes the time to read David Holzman’s treatise on the topic before setting anything in stone. Read the whole thing here.

Toyota’s December sales [PDF here]dropped 5.5 percent compared to last December, capping a rough year for the largest foreign automaker in the US market. Toyota ended 2010 with a total sales volume of 1,763,595 units, down 6,552 from last year’s pre-recall performance. But despite holding volume basically flat and suffering the industry’s second-worst retail market share loss (at -1.2%), Toyota still finished the year with the highest retail market share of any automaker in the US market, at 17.3 percent according to our anonymous industry informant. Dig this: after the nastiest recall scandal since Ford’s Firestone debacle the Camry is still the best-selling car in the country, Lexus is still the top luxury brand, and Toyota still attracts more retail buyers than any other maker or brand. Would you have predicted that last February?

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As we wade through our year-end sales number reports, one of the important metrics that we’ll be looking at are incentive spending rates. Detroit continues to dominate both Edmunds’ True Cost of Incentives index (above) and TrueCar’s incentive forecast (after the jump), with little serious competition for their supremacy in this profit-sapping and brand equity-squandering category. Still, the foreign firms are increasing their incentives while Detroit has generally scaled back over the last year, so the incentive race is slowly getting tighter…

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Yes, you read correctly. For less than $200 I recently added a brand new Cadillac to my garage. The catch: it has only two wheels and I must supply the power myself. (Read More…)

Chrysler Group’s December sales were up some 16 percent compared to December 09, as the bailed-out automaker finished the year with 1,085,211 sales, a 17 percent increase over last year. But with the overall market steadily recovering, those year-over-year comparisons hardly tell the story, so Chrysler sales boss Fred “I Am Ram” Diaz brought it back to the firm’s five-year plan, saying

Chrysler Group 2010 sales of 1.1 million units are consistent with our sales objective that we presented in our Nov. 4, 2009 five-year business plan. We are extremely proud of the sales strides we made during this transition year. Chrysler Group launched 16 all-new or significantly improved models last year, most of them during the fourth quarter. We can now share our excitement with our customers as our new 2011 models arrive in dealerships in greater volumes over the coming months.

We’ll forgive Diaz the 15k unit “round-up” that gets him to 1.1m units, but with 2010 closing out an 11.5m unit year for the industry, Chrysler’s 1.085m units puts it behind the market-share projections trumpeted in the five year plan (closer to a 9.5 percent share, per slide above). And when you start looking at retail share, the situation looks even more grim. Chrysler may have gotten close to meeting its 2010 goals, but it pulled out the stops to get there. And things only get tougher next year.

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It’s looking like 2010 will end with the auto industry selling 11.5m units in the United States, as the SAAR over the last quarter of the year rose to about 12.4m units. We’ll update our table of December sales results as they become available, and in the meantime we’re preparing some year-end reporting of sales by automaker in the year that was. Stay tuned…

Though an objectively awesome car by any (non-environmental) metric (review forthcoming, I promise) some Corvette ZR1 owners are plagued with a strange brake vibration. Which, thanks to the Corvette Forum, is available for all and sundry to see. But let’s dig a little deeper: bearing in mind the customer involved is a personal friend, and his paraphrased comments are as follows.

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Hyundai just hit us with this teaser image, showing the forthcoming Veloster, which we (and everyone else) thought was a two-door. Apparently not. Look for the full reveal this Monday, live from the Detroit Auto Show.