New car sales in Japan rose 72 percent in March to 751,888 vehicles. Sales of registered vehicles climbed 78.2 percent to 497,959, says the Japan Automobile Dealers Association JADA. Sales of separately reported mini vehicles rose 60.5 percent to 253,929, as indicated by data of the Japan Mini Vehicles Association. (Read More…)

In the alleged police state China, speeders are not hunted down by testosterone-driven cops. Hey get fined through the mail. A system the Chinese have copied from Europe. Some Chinese have taken to using a little camouflage. (Read More…)

More and more of the daily news we consume is not written by people, but by robots and spiders. The people at Motor Trend will be painfully aware of that fact when they come back to work on Monday. Today, MT reports that “General Motors is investigating complaints that XM radios installed in Chevrolet Volts do not pick up the satellite radio service’s Fox station.” (Read More…)

Chrysler most likely will announce record growth in  market share for March. No such luck for Chrysler’s owner FIAT. Again, Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne is getting in front of a horrible story in order to soften its inevitable blow. Sergio told Italy’s newswire AGI that “March will be a terrible year for the Italian market.” (Read More…)

If you sell anything, a house, a car, a company, you always appreciate a good bidding war. Rivals Audi and Daimler could be in such a bidding war, if Italy’s Corriere della Sera is correctly informed. They are feuding over a troubled maker of motor cycles, Ducati. (Read More…)

“This would be the most expensive plant closure of all times,” warned Rainer Einenkel, chief of Opel’s works council and Vice Chairman of its supervisory board.  “This would cost GM billions,” Einenkel said today at a news conference following a staff meeting in Bochum. “Opel would not survive this.” (Read More…)

It’s “another broadside for the EV industry,” says Automotive News [sub]. The alleged artillery barrage was sent by the Center for Automotive Research. It cancelled its 2012 Business of Plugging In conference. The reason? Lack of interest. (Read More…)

Be careful if you take I84, one of Connecticut’s main drags. You could turn into collateral damage of a war between feuding State Police troops. There might be a pizza prize on your head. (Read More…)

Selling overpriced “Original” parts can be like printing money. I know carmakers that generate 30 percent of their profits out of parts sales. How do you drive parts sales? By forcing customers to stay as long as possible with your dealer, a money pit the customer tries to flee as early and as quickly as possible. The golden fleece in the business are repairs only an authorized dealer can perform, using overpriced parts only the authorized dealer has. Countless attempts have been made to break this monopoly. Another attempt is on the way. (Read More…)

Daimler and BYD unveiled their joint EV brand Denza today. They literally just unveiled the brand. The cars will be unveiled at the Beijing Motor Show in the last week of April. They should have kept everything covered and hire some professionals. (Read More…)

When, in early February, the first (unconfirmed) rumors made the rounds that UAW’s Bob King would get a seat on Opel’s supervisory board, the assumption was that King will speak for “the equity side.” According to the “co-determination law,” the supervisory board of a large German company consists of 50 percent equity side and 50 percent labor, with the chairman having two votes in case of a tie. The UAW, through VEBA, owns 10 percent of the stock of GM. That puts King definitely on the equity side. One would assume. (Read More…)

Video killed the radio star. And the Internet is about to kill the auto industry. Researchers at the University of Michigan noted a disturbing trend: More young adults would rather surf the web than cruise the highway.  In a new study, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of the U-M Transportation Research Institute found that a higher proportion of Internet users is associated with fewer drivers licenses among young persons. (Read More…)

It will be a suspenseful Monday. When new car sales numbers will be announced for March, I could look like carmageddon never happened. After  J.D. Power had predicted sales of 1,372,400 units for March and Kelley Blue Book 1,425,000 units, real-time date equipped Edmunds now sees a total of 1,451,956 new cars changing hands. That would translate into a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of 14.9 million units. (Read More…)

Carmakers all over the world strive to make more with less. All car companies that want to be around in a few years are on some kind of a standardization drive.  GM wants to cut its 30 platforms down to 14. Volkswagen wants to get rid of platforms altogether .

Mercedes will halve its vehicle architectures to two by 2015, and will double its number of model variants to 30, Automotive News [sub] reports. (Read More…)

Daimler Benz will launch a new lighter and more fuel efficient C-Klasse in 2014. Auto Motor und Sport caught a prototype.  The Erlkönig is only slightly camouflaged. Its Blade Runner outfit could not stop the AMS PhotoShop expert from recreating a C Class as it hopefully will appear in showrooms two years from now. See below. (Read More…)