Supposedly, the idea of the Saab / Pangda deal was to skirt requirements to obtain Chinese government approval. As we have explained on the day the MoU (as  Muller sees it) or contract (as Pangda sees it) was signed, it would be most silly to try to get around the Chinese government. They have a whole array of measures to demonstrate their displeasure if they don’t like a deal.

If ChinaCarTimes is correctly informed, the paperwork was barely dry and the Chinese government already made its annoyance felt. According to a CCT report, the Chinese government issued  a warning to Pangda. The story is written in Chinglish, but this is what it seems to be saying: (Read More…)

“The biggest problem” that faces widespread adoption of electric vehicles, “is striking a balance between performance and price.” The man who said that, Hiroshi Shimizu, thinks he has the solution to this problem. It is not generous subsidies. It is not miracle batteries. It is a technology his company has been developing over many years: In-wheel electric motors. Shimizu’s company , “SIM-Drive Corp. a Keio University-linked venture company, on Wednesday unveiled a prototype of its SIM-LEI electric vehicle that can travel up to 333 kilometers (206 miles) on a single battery charge,” writes Japan’s Jiji Press. (Read More…)

Once again, the 24 Hours of LeMons has taken over downtown Camden, South Carolina, with a parade down the main drag to baffle the locals and a BS inspection scene complete with live band and draft beer. Why don’t we do this for every race? (Read More…)

We still have not heard from Saab and there have been six weeks without production. It eventually reaches a point when you have to make a decision

Johan Andersson of the Swedish unit of supplier giant Lear in the WSJ, on why his employers just laid off all 160 workers of its Trollhättan-based Saab workforce. Apparently Mr Andersson and Lear aren’t any more encouraged by Saab’s PangDa deal than TTAC. And considering that the Chinese dealer group is telling Gasgoo that “production has already restarted” at Saab, the fleeing suppliers who haven’t even heard from Saab yet create some credibility problems for the PangDa-Saab alliance (even if PangDa was referencing GM production of the 9-4X at Ramos Arizpe). Which makes the dire rumors that the deal has not, nor will be, blessed by the Chinese government a little more worrying. Sounds like the rotund lady is warming up her vocal cords…

Has Jack’s carping about the empty symbolism of the latest Aston-Zagato project got you down? Looking for some retro-inspired unobtainium that you can feel good about? As Jack himself pointed out just yesterday, TTAC’s all about diversity…so allow us to suggest BMW’s 328 Hommage concept, which was just revealed at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este. Of course TTAC wasn’t invited to that august event, but CarDesignNews was kind enough to tweet these cell phone images of the retro roadster (so be sure to go check out their fantastic site, and pick up a subscription while you’re there). Based around the Vision ConnectedDrive concept, this all-carbon roadster is described as the analog analog (so to speak) of that high-tech concept (which itself previewed the forthcoming Z2 Roadster).  Like the Zagato, it’s got the whole pedigree reference thing down too, as its name refers to BMW’s 75 year-old 328 nameplate (check out a great history of the 328 at bmwblog.com). Plus, bare carbon fiber with leather straps. If this thing doesn’t make you feel at least a little tingly in the naughty bits, well, it might just be time for some medical attention.

The auto media has been receiving its advance copies of Bob Lutz’s forthcoming book “Car Guys versus Bean Counters” over the last few weeks, and have been leaking some of the more provocative statements and conclusions from it. I too requested a book and tore through it over the past week, enjoying Lutz’s direct voice and keen insights into his time at General Motors… as well as the attention-grabbing, politically-charged statements that the rest of the media seems so fixated upon. The bad news is that I won’t be able to write a full review until we get closer to its mid-June launch date, but the good news is that our forbearance has been rewarded: despite sideswiping yours truly in one passage, a brief but rewarding email conversation has generated more mutual respect, and Mr Lutz has agreed (in principle) to a TTAC interview to accompany our review at the time of the book’s release. Sometimes observing an embargo is worth it.

But fear not: just because the promise of an interview with one of the most influential figures in the industry has us delaying our review for another month or so, we’ve got more Lutz-related material with which to build up to what I expect to be a watershed interview for TTAC. Next week I’ll be publishing a review of Mr Maximum’s previous book “Guts,” and to kick of the coming months of Lutzmania, we’ve got a very special contest that is sure to stump even TTAC’s most well-versed Best and Brightest.

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The story goes that an English gentleman was sitting in his London club and noticed that the man reading next to him was David Brown, star-crossed industrialist and owner of Aston Martin.

“Say, old chap,” the fellow asked Brown, “I do quite fancy that motorcar of yours. Don’t suppose you could sell a fellow one of them, do you?”

“Be delighted to,” Brown responded. “Simply have your bank draft me a cheque for forty-two hundred pounds.” The gentleman cleared his throat.

“Well, old chap, since we are both members of the same club, one doesn’t suppose it could be done at cost?”

“I would be even more delighted to,” Brown responded. “Simply have your bank draft me a cheque for fifty-two hundred pounds.”

Feel free to file that story, along with the well-known tales of a young Prince of Wales absolutely dusting his personal bodyguards whilst caning his DBS-V8 through the leafy B-roads of Merrie Olde England, in the dumpster of history where they belong. Today, Aston is simply another reanimated wanna-be luxury brand chasing the favor of an international class of nouveaus whose breeding and taste make the miniature-giraffe Russian gangster from the Direct TV ads look like Lord Mountbatten. The V-12 Zagato is simply a gilded lure dangled before their nighmarish deep-sea mouths.

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While the political battle lines over increasing CAFE standards are being drawn in Washington, with the industry taking on both environmentalists and itself, a line of analysis that’s been around since 2009 is exacerbating the industry’s internal divisions over the impact of CAFE increases. A two-year-old University of Michigan study has been exhumed and expanded upon in a new CitiGroup report which makes a bold claim: CAFE will actually improve both sales and profits for the industry. And with Detroit taking the lead in resisting CAFE increases, one might think that the industry’s “turncoats” like Toyota and Hyundai, who have made marketing-led decisions to support CAFE increases, would be the main beneficiaries of these reports. Not so. According to this battle-line-confounding analysis, the biggest beneficiary of CAFE increases will be… Detroit. Madness you say? You may well be right…

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The rise of the Chinese auto market, which only surpassed the US to become the world’s largest in recent years, has drawn considerable attention from China-watchers and industry insiders alike. China’s rampant sales growth has paid huge dividends for firms who gambled on the Chinese market, in turn spurring more investment as every global automaker scrambles for access to China’s rapidly-developing market. As a result of several years of this gold rush mentality, everyone is now looking for China to stumble, to show the first signs of a bubble ready to burst.And over at Forbes, Handel Jones (the author of Chinamerica: The uneasy partnership that will change the world), thinks he may have found these first signs of slowdown in China’s auto production numbers.

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When “Beijing’s car industry” (read: BAIC) put forward the suggestion to exempt EVs from the license plate lottery, and when that suggestion was adopted, those in the know said: “Great idea, bad timing.”  Why? There are no EVs one can buy in Beijing.“Beijing’s car industry” (read: BAIC) is about to change that. (Read More…)

With all the news about earthquakes and tsunamis, you would think that the lots of your favorite ricer retailer are bare. They aren’t. But some dealers hang on to what they have got and sell it at healthy mark-ups, assuming that the pipeline will run dry. Both Honda and Nissan are unhappy with this perception and tell their dealers to move the metal. “Honda told its U.S. dealers Friday that July vehicle deliveries would increase by 11% from June levels and accelerate in August as the auto maker ramps up production after the March 11 earthquake in Japan,” says The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

With VW wading into the budget roadster segment with its forthcoming BlueSport mid-engine roadster, it seems that Kia wants in on the action as well. Reports are surfacing in Europe and the US that the Korean automaker is making good on Peter Schreyer’s threats, and is developing its first roadster since it bought up the tooling and IP for Lotus’s front-drive Elan, which it sold in Korea between 1996 and 1999.
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How do you make money with small cars? You make it up with volume. The Japanese market for the very Japanese minivehicles, or kei cars, is shrinking. So what do manufacturers do? They circle the diminutive wagons and forge joint ventures. (Read More…)

The average price of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.96 this week, an increase of 38 percent over the same time last year. US Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) on Tuesday proposed to temporarily reduce that cost by 18.4 cent cents by suspending the federal gas tax. Under the freshman lawmaker’s plan, the highway trust fund would be replenished by reducing payments made to foreign governments.

“Let’s have a gas tax holiday,” Paul said in a floor speech. “Let’s take the money from foreign aid and let’s give it back to the American people who worked hard to earn it…. That would help people, that would lower the price of gasoline and that would be a stimulus to the economy.”

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