Journos are congregating at an undisclosed location near the Chelsea Dog Run Park in downtown Manhattan as I write this, for the first ever unveiling of the BMW i3 and BMW i8 concept cars in North America. The sneak preview is being held before the cars get shipped to Los Angeles for the LA  Auto Show. The  mostly carbon fiber built battery operated and hybrid-electric vehicles had already been shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show, but here they are, on America soil.  (Read More…)

Dateline  Istanbul: Accompanied by Turkish bellydancer music  rock’n’weave, BMW launches its new open-top two-seater MINI Roadster in Turkey’s capital. But is that TWO GUYS? in front? Where is the fun of that?

When the March 11 tsunami hit, Nissan was first to recover. This was caused by quick reaction and sheer luck. Now that Japanese carmakers are under water in Thailand, it looks like Nissan will emerge relatively unscathed again. The Nikkei [sub] reports that Nissan plans to resume partial production in Thailand from November 14. (Read More…)

Pangda, one of Saab’s presumptive white knights, could itself be facing financial difficulties. Both the staid government-owned China Daily and the more outspoken Taiwan-based China Times report strange financial going-ons at PangDa. Says China Times:

“Shareholders and securities analysts are scratching their heads over how a top automobile marketing group in China managed to “burn” a huge fund of 6 billion yuan (US$944 million) in just six months. Many have speculated that Pang Da Automobile Trade Co has shifted to financial leasing services to cope with stalling car sales caused by the government’s credit-tightening regulations.”

According to China Daily, $659 million had been “used to repay bank loans and supplement working capital.” China Times reports a lot of the money as lost and says: (Read More…)

The president of the International Association of Vehicle Manufacturers OICA says that U.S. auto makers risk being left behind. In an interview with Wardsauto, OICA-head Patrick Blain warned that European and Asian car companies are setting the pace while working together with their governments to reduce emissions and rising fuel costs.

OICA is the world’s umbrella organization of all auto manufacturer associations. OICA also represents the global auto industry at the United Nations. As OICA president, Blain is the auto industry’s ambassador to the UN. (Read More…)

China’s Dongfeng makes a lot of cars with several joint ventures. It also makes its own cars. In a way. It’s ode to the Hummer is legend. Now, Dongfeng found inspiration in another legend: The Unimog. At a show in Shanghai, Carnewschina found the Dongfeng v-Tiger, or EQ2070FQJ, which it says is a spitting image of Daimler’s inconic Unimog workhorse. Well, that’s up to debate. One thing isn’t: (Read More…)

The US-Korean (not quite) free trade agreement will bear fruit, and U.S. cars will be shipped to Korea. The funny part is: Some of the first companies to do so are Japanese. The Nikkei [sub] writes that Toyota will begin exporting cars from the U.S. to South Korea in early November. (Read More…)

The Nikkei [sub] says that Nissan will move the (or a) headquarters of its Infiniti brand to Hong Kong, and that Nissan “will begin manufacturing Infiniti-brand vehicles in China as early as next year, becoming the first Japanese automaker to produce luxury cars in that nation.”

Not so fast, say close-to-the-matter contacts in Yokohama. (Read More…)

US Car sales are up a solid 10 percent in October, and Automotive News [sub] has the October Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) at 13.26 million. I need to hop on a plane to Tokyo, so I go with this number for the time being.  13.26 is pretty much the average of our analyst guesses. As for the Detroit 3, General Motors disappointed at 2 percent (and threw the analysts off), Ford and Chrysler came in as expected at 6 and 27 percent respectively. And how did our analysts fare? (Read More…)

Regular Vehicle Sales Japan October 2011

Sales of new cars in Japan rose 28.3 percent in October to 247,927 units, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association reports today. For the current fiscal year (April-October), sales are still 22.2 percent in the hole at 2,214,878 units, compared to 2,846,804 units sold in the same period of 2010. The numbers do not include sales of separately reported minivehicles. The numbers are not a sign of newfound health. They are simply the effect of a comparison with a market that had crashed in fall 2010 after subsidies were withdrawn. (Read More…)

Today, October new car sales will be announced, and they are expected to be good. Analysts polled by Bloomberg show rare unity: They expect a Seasonally Adjusted Average Rate of sales (SAAR)  of 13.2 million on average, and the spread is only 500,000. Likewise, analysts agree that Ford and GM will each add around 6 percent in sales, whereas Chrysler will jump by around 28 percent. (Read More…)

Someone asked yesterday: “And what exactly is the difference between journalism and blog anyway?” Let me tell you a story:

Last Wednesday, I walked down the shop floor of Nissan’s humungous factory in Smyrna, Tennessee. A monitor pronounced that Volkswagen would end the year as the world’s largest automaker. My stomach knotted.

Two days before, Bloomberg had made the same proclamation: “VW Likely to Overtake Toyota as Top Carmaker in 2011, GM to Remain Second.”

I immediately warned the world that this is nonsense. But it didn’t stop the story from going viral. After all, who are you going to believe, a blogger at TTAC, or the professional journalists at Bloomberg?

The following day, I received a surprising email from someone very high up the food chain at Bloomberg … (Read More…)

I’m sure you know the stage trick where a woman is sawed in half and lives. Now, try the same with a Volvo and a truck loaded with masses of steel bars. Volvo S40 crashes into truck. Bundles of steel bars crash through the windshield,  exit on the other side of the car. What happens to the driver and front seat passenger? (Read More…)

Last year, world car production had jumped 26 percent to 77.8 million units, as it recovered from  a carmageddon-induced slump. This year, global car output will see a “sharp slowdown,” if  The Nikkei [sub] is to be believed. The Tokyo business paper cites IHS and J.D.Power, both expect only 4 percent growth. The Nikkei however should do some chart studies before writing. (Read More…)

Today, Saab creditors met in a packed-beyond capacity courtroom on Vänersborg. After a short deliberation, the district court approved the reorganization plan, Göteborg’s Posten reports. It will cost 500 jobs in Trollhättan. On Friday, China’s Youngman and Pangda had agreed to take over Saab 100 percent – in a Memorandum of Understanding, which isn’t worth much, and which is littered with caveats.

The reorganization plan, (full text here), was feted in a lengthy press release. It starts like this: (Read More…)