Ah, my fellow Germans, so predictable. It happens after every crisis: After selfmedicated austerity (money or no money, does not matter,) at one point, all secretly get together and agree that too much restraint is a bad thing. Then, they go out and buy cars. More cars, bigger cars, faster cars.

And so, it happens again. New car sales in Germany, Europe’s largest and most influential car market, rose 8.1 percent in September to 280.689 units. This according to a count of registrations, performed by the German Kraftfahrtbundesamt. This is no one-month wonder: January through September, 2.4 million new cars were registered, 10.8 percent more than in the same period of 2010. (Read More…)

In a press conference that is about to begin in a few minutes in Curitiba, Brazil, (see picture above), Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn is expected to announce the expansion of an existing Renault plant, and the building of a new Nissan factory. And possibly even bigger news. (Read More…)

A day after Mazda had announced that the company “has become the first automaker to successfully develop vehicle components using 1,800 MPa ultra-high tensile steel,” Nissan announced “the world’s first Ultra High Tensile Strength Steel rated at 1.2 gigapascals (GPa).” So who’s on first?

5 minutes of in-depth research revealed that  1,800 MPa equal 1.8 GPa. In the heavy metal business, those Gs are similar to gigahertz or gigabytes in computers: The more, the merrier. Whether Mazda has outdone Nissan or v.v. is also a bit like Pentium and Athlon: It depends. What matters is that cars get both stronger and lighter

Three topics give a car engineer sleepless nights: (Read More…)

Remember when cars, especially Toyotas, suddenly had a mind of their own, started accelerating, leaving their drivers helpless and hapless? It was in the beginning of 2010. The media cited scores of allegedly killed people. Source: The NHTSA complaint database. When complaints skyrocketed, the media wrote about a dramatic increase of complaints. Now, have a look at the graph above. (Read More…)

In Europe, black cars are all the rage. According to Dupont’s 2010 Automotive Color Popularity report, the most popular car color in Europe is black, followed by grey. Usually a very dark grey. In Japan, the most popular car color is white. Followed by silver. Usually a bright silver. However, black is coming on strong in Japan. It already is in third place. Always on the lookout for the latest craze, the Japanese car industry is eager to get into black.

Mazda releases its roadster (known stateside as the Mazda MX-5 as a BLACK TUNED special edition for the Japanese market. (Read More…)

Yesterday brought you news of the tepid Japanese car market that has been down 26 percent for the year. Commenter Alex Nigro DEMANDED the answer to “Are Japanese people still not interested in driving?”

The Nikkei [sub] immediately went on the case and reports today that there is one segment in the industry that is booming: Bicycles. Writes the Nikkei:

“The March 11 earthquake triggered an increase in the number of people who commute to work by bike, and new business are cropping up to accommodate this trend, including high-end park-and-shower services in central Tokyo.” (Read More…)

US car sales rose a solid 10 percent in September to a little over one million. The seasonally adjusted annual rate is reported as 13.1 million by Autodata.General Motors is up 20 percent, Chrysler shot up 27 percent, Ford brought up the rear with a 9 percent gain. And how did our analysts fare? (Read More…)

According to the September sales report, Saab sold a grand total of 429 units in September in America, down 62 percent compared to September 2010. With 4,647 sold for the year, that’s about par for the course as far as the monthly run-rate goes.

Now how do the faithful at Saabsunited celebrate this achievement? Let’s have a look. (Read More…)

One of the biggest complaints about biofuel is that food is turned into fuel while people go hungry. Price hikes for staples have been blamed on ethanol production, especially subsidized ethanol production. Ethanol is usually made from sugarcane, corn, and beets. Grapes find their way into fuel tanks instead of wine glasses, rice is often driven instead of eaten.  Woodscraps and agricultural residue would be less of a moral and financial hazard if converted into fuel. However, it proved resistant against yeasts. Today, Toyota took reporters to a lab in Aichi and showed off a yeast that wood-scraps, dead leaves, straw etc find highly irresistible. (Read More…)

For the first time in 13, yes 13 months, Japanese new car sales registered a small uptick. Small (sukoshi) it is, 1.7 percent, compared to September 2010. And that only, because September 2010 was bloodbath.

When we sang our Sayonara to growth a year ago, we didn’t expect it would be THAT bad: For the 9 months of this year, Japanese car sales are down by a whopping 25.9 percent.  Following data provided by the Japan Automotive Dealer Association. The numbers do not include minivehicles. (Careful when applying the data to minivehicle-heavy makers such as Daihatsu or Suzuki…) (Read More…)

Or was it GM that proposed? “General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner secretly proposed a merger with Ford Motor Co. in 2008, a year before GM’s bankruptcy filing, the New York Times reported.” That explosive revelation is made today by Bloomberg.  And OMG, Rick Wagoner turned down the deal! Isn’t anything secret sacred anymore?

Of course, TTAC goes straight to the source. Here it is! In the New York Times! (Read More…)

India will likely report a good September for most of its carmakers. The final numbers are not expected until a week from now, but here are the results of some of the most important ones. Keep in mind that these “sales” numbers are the total of what has been sold in India and what has been shipped abroad. The Indian domestic market is still a bit sluggish, but exports are picking up nicely. (Read More…)

What looks like a Chinese-Japanese matter should cause considerable heartburn in Sweden and the Netherlands: The Chinese government has informed Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. that it will not approve the automaker’s application to set up a joint venture in China, says Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. Let’s take a closer look. (Read More…)

September Light Vehicle sales, which will be out on Monday, could rise to levels not seen since April, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg reckon. The consensus average stands at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 12.8 million units. The people who have the real time sales data even think it’s a bit higher: Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds figures 12.9 million SAAR, Jesse Toprak of  Truecar even expects 13.1 million. And guess who saved the American bacon? The Japanese. (Read More…)

Now that’s a nice sale: Renault sold 15,600 EVs that don’t even exist yet. In one fell swoop, Renault most likely overdelivered its near term business plan for electric vehicles in Europe. According to Reuters, Renault scooped up most of the 25,000 electric car contract awarded by the French government. (Read More…)