Volvo, given up as beyond salvage by former owner Ford, was sold off to China’s Geely in the automotive equivalent of a yardsale at $1.8 billion. Saying no is always easier than saying yes (well, there are certain exceptions), so most augurs said: “This won’t work.” Asked why, they answered: “It was tried it before, and it failed.”

Wonders of wonders, it appears to be working: Volvo Cars reported an EBIT of 600 million kronor (about 93 million U.S. dollars) in the second quarter, 40 percent more than in the same period of the previous year, a statement from Volvo Cars says. (Read More…)

I know I’ve said this several times before, but the end really is near for Saab. The WSJ [sub] reports that Sweden’s Debt Enforcement Agency began auditing Saab’s finances after several debts came due earlier this week, and found only 5.1 Kroner ($796,291) in its Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken account. That’s barely enough to cover the 5.06m Kroner in debts that came due this week alone… and Saab’s total outstanding debt is ten times that amount, around 50m Kroner. And as if the financial trouble weren’t dire enough, key stakeholders are abandoning Saab in embarrassment, like Benny Holmgren, one of Sweden’s largest car dealers. Holmgren tells SvD.se that his contract to sell Saabs has expired and that he won’t renew, explaining

“For me, it is important to be proud of the brands that we have in our halls. Saab does not deliver cars they promised, they do not pay wages to their employees, nor debts to their suppliers while the owners pick out big money. It does not feel right for a [my] car dealers.”

But among the hardcore Saab faithful, today is not a day of sorrowful resignation… but a day of totally overblown and unrealistic hope for their dying brand. Yes, really…
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Over the last several months I’ve been especially glad that TTAC is relatively more free from the demands of the news cycle, as the doldrums of August has left us with little in the way of breaking news. Luckily TTAC is blessed with the kind of writers who can make even the most obscure story relevant and fascinating, and we’ve kept up our story cadence rolling even through the near media blackout of deep summer. But with just under a month left before the first and biggest auto show of the year, the Internationale Automobile Ausstellung in Frankfurt, the concepts and new models are starting to be rolled out, and the news cycle is chugging back to life. And one of the sparks that’s getting things moving again is this Kia rear-drive, four-door sports coupe concept.
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At the times of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Toyota proudly stood on the podium of the Chinese sales winners, along with Volkswagen and GM. Ever since, Toyota received the wrong fortune cookies in China: Its market share deteriorated steadily, down to half of its 2008 high. Toyota now is on an all-out offensive to re-gain lost ground, with promising success. (Read More…)

The city council in Tampa, Florida this month began deciding how it would spend revenue from the red light camera program expected to go online next month. Officials calculated that the automated ticketing machines would bring in an extra $2 million a year, an important amount for a city facing a $34.5 million budget deficit.

Police Chief Jane Castor had proposed to the city in March that it sign a contract with American Traffic Solutions. Castor and members of her department personally profit from any ticketing system linked to an increase in automobile insurance rates. This is so because the state imposes a tax on car insurance that is deposited as a “state contribution” in each municipality’s police pension fund. Based on city figures, the 0.85 percent tax pumped an extra $8,158,217 into Tampa police pensions from a total of $1 billion in added insurance costs paid by Tampa drivers between 1999, when the current system was imposed, and 2009.
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You’ve got to love a car named the Sports, if only because it reminds us of the pre-focus-group era. I’m on vacation in Door County, Wisconsin at the moment, which means I’m surrounded by endless Packers paraphernalia, startling quantities of Buicks driven by folks 50 years younger than the normal Buick demographic, cheese curds, and this beautiful street-parked vintage Datsun. (Read More…)

Any Nineties-era German car fanatic worth his “D” sticker knows how to remove badging from the back of a car. Here’s a helpful link in case you don’t remember. A few minutes of one’s time can turn a BMW 323i or Mercedes S430 into a mysterious Autobahn machine of unknown potential puissance. Most of the time, it’s a visual improvement. There’s something nice about tidying-up one’s rear end. Ask Jessica Gottlieb if you don’t believe me.

It’s possible that the photograph above does not reflect what the Porsche “991” will actually look like in production. It could be Photoshop. It could be a guy in marketing having a laugh. It could have been a minor glitch in the prototype-production line that caused some machine to simply vomit a pound of chromey-plastic letters onto that car’s ass, and it could be pure chance that the aforementioned pound of garbage just happens to spell out “P O R S C H E 911 Carrera S”.

Don’t bet on it. Porsche clearly wants their letter-vomiting machine to spray every new 911 with a fine-mist alpha-numeric jumble, and I’ll tell you why.

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Phew! Can you say “American Rolls-Royce Drophead?” In sharp contrast to its last concept, the awkward subcompact Urban Luxury Concept, the Ciel is pure old-school Caddy. A huge car with huge presence. Of course, this exact car will never go into production, but it’s good to see more flowing lines, subtle surfaces and classical elements working their way into Caddy’s sharp-edged, stealth fighter design language. After all, the cartoonishly vertical headlamps indicate just how close the pure “Art & Science” approach is coming to an evolutionary dead-end. In any case, with rumors circulating of a “true flagship” going into production around 2015, the Ciel is sure to rile up the Cadillac faithful. [Press release here]

Well, you’ve already seen the OEM-approved press shots of the Lexus GS and Infiniti JX, but TTAC’s tame Californian, Alex Dykes, is on hand to bring us all the pomp and pagentry of Pebble Beach. Hit the jump for a full gallery and a few of Alex’s on-the-spot thoughts.
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Everyone knows what a Hofmeister Kink is… but until today’s debut of the Infiniti JX, nobody had ever heard of a Hofmeister Curve. Well, here it is… what do you think of it? Gimmick or gamechanger?

In a press release announcing the new 2013 Lexus GS, Lexus group vice president and general manager Mark Templin explains the sports sedan’s mission as follows:

Today, buyers in the mid-size luxury segment want a more engaging driving experience, styling that makes a statement, and a roomier interior package. With the all-new GS, we’re giving them what they asked for, and more.

And if the new GS looked more like the LF-Gh concept, we might agree. But with its toned-down looks failing to move the game past its foregettable forbears (at least in these 2-D images), it seems as though Lexus listen too hard to the customer (for example, creating more space with the same dimensions) and missed an opportunity to create a design that makes a statement that buyers didn’t yet know they couldn’t live without. Tarted-up midsized front-drivers are one thing, but this class of larger, rear-drive sports sedans demands bold yet sophisticated looks… and I’m not convinced this Lexus is “there.”

When Toyota built the first generation of its Vitz subcompact in 1998, the firm had no plans to sell it in the US under the Yaris nameplate (as it was called in Europe). Instead it sold a four-door and two-door version of the Platz, which was mechanically identical but had unique sheetmetal (except for the front doors), as the Echo. The Echo fell into a pattern that seems to have repeated itself several times in Toyota’s recent subcompact past: a year of growth, and then a drop. Eventually, Toyota brought the Yaris nameplate to the US, with a hatchback option in tow, and found its strongest performer in this class since the Tercel.

Now, with the hatchback bodystyle back in vogue, Toyota’s dropping the Yaris sedan altogether for the new generation, debuting later this year. It’s not the JDM/Euro Yaris/Vitz which Bertel showed us back in December, but it is being built at the revolutionary Sendai plant he visited in Fbruary. And without a sedan counterpoint, it will definitely mark an entirely new approach for Toyota’s US-market subcompact strategy.

One of the most challenging aspects of running a blog like TTAC is managing diversity. As a global site, TTAC and its readers are exposed to the full range of diverse global perspectives, but our largest market, the United States, is also home to incredibly divergent views and lifestyles. Much is made of our national polarization these days, and when the topic turns political, TTAC often finds itself on the front lines of America’s cultural and ideological battlefield. Luckily we’re all of us bound together by something that transcends much of what divides us: our shared fascination with cars gives us the opportunity to interact with and relate to people with whom we may have little else in common.

Take this photo: depending on your perspective, this scene, photographed near my home in Portland, OR, might be a symbol of the ultimate automotive aspiration or a dread vision of a dystopian anti-automotive future. But regardless of how the image relates to your personal views and circumstances, nobody can deny that the people who live in that house think very seriously about their automobiles. And even the most unabashed, gas-huffing EV skeptic has to respect that. Vive le difference!

The truck depicted above was found by one of Carnewschina’s many stringers in Southern China, Guangxi Province, National Highway 323, km 1181, near the town of Desheng. The stringer noted an indicated speed of 80 km/h. This gives a whole new meaning to a crash truck. (Read More…)

Today might be the day the car industry loses its unconditional infatuation with social media. Like congressmen (especially half clothed congressmen), the auto industry could soon avoid social media like we avoid social diseases.

“This is all very annoying,” complains an exasperated Mark Carbery from London. “This Twitter matter turned into a real problem, for us and for other companies in the industry.”

Eterniti spokesman Carbery is a seasoned industry veteran. He started as the PR Manager for Toyota UK and worked for Daewoo and Michelin before hanging out the shingle for his own consultancy shop in bucolic Barnwell, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire PE8 5PS, UK.

Today he may be rethinking his career choice. (Read More…)