Germany’s new car market recovered slightly in June. Sales were up 2.9 percent to units, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. (Read More…)

When did Americans start thinking the car-guy grass was greener on the other side of an ocean? Was it Tokyo Drift that did it, or was it David E. Davis’ thinly-veiled advertising copy for the BMW 2002 in the pages of the as-yet-un-revered Car and Driver? Perhaps it was the majestic Mercedes W108 that turned the trick, or James Dean’s Porsche, or the image of the overpaid, oversexed American aviator carelessly flinging an MG down a British B-road in the Lend-Lease era.

Regardless of when it happened, we all know that it did happen. Nearly every young automotive enthusiast wishes he could drive the ‘Ring, storm the Stelvio Pass, or deliver some tofu in a sticker-speckled hachi-roku. We’ve all imagined ourselves as steely-eyed arbiters of lane discipline on the Autobahn or standing-mile madmen nonchalantly betting a hundred grand on our chances down an Armco-lined two-lane on the dismal outskirts of Moscow.

Don’t be fooled. The United States of America has been, and continues to be, the greatest place in the world for a regular guy (or girl) to fall in four-wheeled love. Here’s why.

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Domestic sales of regular new cars, trucks and buses increased 40.9 percent in June, while sales of mini vehicles  rose 48.4 percent on the year. Overall, Japan’s new motorvehicle market rose 43.6 percent on 505,342 units sold. The data compare with a post-tsunami June 2011. (Read More…)

Here’s to all my American friends and readers; your glorious country is 236 years old, still the land of opportunity, where immigrants from all over the world flock to make their dreams come true. But you must wait an absurdly long time to import clapped-out world-market hot hatches, like this Peugeot 106 GTI. Soviet Canuckistan isn’t so bad now, is it?

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One of the cool things about car shows in the Detroit area is that you will most likely start seeing interesting cars before you actually enter the show. I like to call them “parking lot prizes”, but then I’m fond of alliteration. At the recent Eyes On Design show, which benefits the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, I spotted a couple of prewar V16 Cadillacs, a ’61 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and a first generation Corvette with a custom wooden boat tail before I even got to the press credential tent. Those are not common cars but the subject of this post is particularly rare. What could be rare about a Jeep Cherokee? They were in production in the US, South America and China for over two decades. However, this isn’t a Jeep Cherokee. (Read More…)

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

That all men are created equal.

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

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The Thunderbird got an independent rear suspension in the 1989 model year, and Ford added a supercharger to its 3.8 engine and created the Super Coupe. Motor Trend, probably still smarting from the Renault Alliance fiasco earlier in the decade, awarded its Car of the Year award to the Super Coupe, and we can assume that the buyer of today’s Junkyard Find believed that he or she was buying the best car of 1990. (Read More…)

Analysts polled by Bloomberg predicted June light vehicle sales to come in much lower. All analysts except one: John Sousanis of Ward’s predicted that this will be a good month. He nearly nailed the SAAR, and came closest to reality in his OEM forecasts. (Read More…)

Mazda’s Skyactiv engines are hitting on all cylinders. The company will double production capacity at its engine plant in Hiroshima from 400,000 units to 800,000 units per year in October 2012. The capacity increase is “in response to increasing demand” for Skyactiv-equipped cars, the company  said in an emailed statement. (Read More…)

Chrysler Group up 20 percent, GM up 16 percent, Toyota up 60 percent. Across the board sales up 22 percent (see table.)

June sales of new cars and trucks come in stronger than the cautious estimates of analysts. Why?  America’s most successful sales predictor thinks everybody needed to “make that quarter.” (Read More…)

Sergio Pininfarina died overnight in his Turin home at the age of 85. The company that bears its name designed almost every Ferrari since the 1950s and delivered the shapes of cars from the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Rondine to the 1996 Peugeot 406 Coupe. Sajeev will have a tribute to the man later on.

GM has blamed Western Europe location for Opel’s woes, unions, the economy. Opel has a brand crisis, and the crisis is “a self inflicted-wound,” says Christiaan Hetzner, Reuters’ man in Frankfurt, Germany, in an article on why Opel is in so much trouble. “Reputation is seen as the problem, not cars.” The recent attempts to move the Opel brand up-market ripped those old wounds open and could kill the patient. (Read More…)

The McLaren MP4-12C may be a supremely competent and accomplished sporting supercar, but only someone with a creepy, shiny-vinyl Lewis Hamilton signature Vodafone pit-crew shirt would pick one over the Ferrari 458 or Lamborgini Gallardo. It’s a bland, generic-looking wedge that was named after a secret “performance factor” number using calculations known only to McLaren. Not since Pontiac named a car the “6000STE” has nomenclature been so uninspiring, and since the Audi R8 offers twice the visual drama for about half the money it’s easy to see why the MP4-12C isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. The old SLR “McMerc” may have been a claustrophobic sauna that was frighteningly vulnerable to its much cheaper SL65 AMG sibling in a straight line and at risk from the even more prole-oriented SL55 AMG around a racetrack, but at least it looked like something interesting.

Just like the SLR, however, the MP4-12C is being top-chopped to pique a bit of consumer interest. It must absolutely grind the gears of the faceless androids working at the McLaren Technology Centre that they have to add eighty-eight pounds of folding hardtop to their marquee road car, just to make sure the average Russian gangster puts one in the garage next to his Aventador, but as the English say: “Needs must when the devil rides”.

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One engine. One man. 300,000 miles… and it was only the beginning.

Yesterday I visited an auction where 8% of the vehicles had over 300,000 miles.

I did a double-take when I did the math. (Read More…)

Bloomberg is reporting that General Motors and Facebook are talking again, in an attempt to get GM to resume advertising on the social network. Meetings between GM CEO Dan Akerson and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg were being reported.

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