100 years ago, just 25 years after the automobile was invented, a car reached the speed of 141.73 mph while the earth shook. The car could have done it a few years earlier. The pavement had to catch up first. The car was the Blitzen-Benz with a massive displacement. And this is its story. (Read More…)

Opel workers in Germany are getting increasingly frustrated and are banging the table. Rainer Einenkel, head of the works council in Bochum, today demanded that GM management in Detroit “immediately makes a clear and unambiguous statement, and to deny the plans of a sale without ifs and buts.” Rainel Einenkel writes on the website of the works council in Bochum that “ambiguous statements aren’t helpful, neither for the workers nor for our products.”

Yesterday, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel also demanded clarification from Detroit after the German newspaper Die Welt had written that China’s BAIC had made an offer for Opel. The paper said that GM’s board is tilting towards cutting Opel loose. On Thursday, Der Spiegel and Auto Bild had written that “GM is slowly wising up to the fact that the reasons that led to the planned Opel sale in 2009 have not changed.”  Media reports said that GM CEO Dan Akerson is getting impatient.

Now, it seems, there is impatience all around.

In the meantime, I finally tracked down my former Opel executive who always had been a dependable source. (Read More…)

While walking down memory lane to the dark days of diesel, I came across this gem in the archives of the Volkswagen History Department: The prototype of the first Golf Convertible. It was developed and produced by Karmann in Osnabrück. The company went bankrupt. Volkswagen bought Karmann, and inherited this find. (Read More…)

47.2 percent of all cars bought in Germany last month don’t run on gas. They run on diesel. It wasn’t always that way. A quarter century ago, a diesel car was unheard of in Europe. Well, not quite: The Mercedes diesels had a characteristic tractor sound. The diesel Mercedes was popular with taxi drivers because it was so sturdy, and with farmers. Farmers could buy low-tax diesel for their tractors. Allegedly, some found its way illegally into their diesel-Benz.

Success is not built on lawbreaking farmers and taxi drivers. What made the diesel driven car so popular?

It was the Volkswagen Golf D. And it didn’t make sense at all. (Read More…)

The other day, Daimler unveiled its third generation of the M-Klasse SUV, and it has big plans for it. When it’s available at dealers some time this fall, Daimler expects to sell boatloads of it to regain lost ground in the luxury race. There will be a three models, and there will be lots of pictures after the jump … (Read More…)

The heads of the European automobile industry are assembling in London for their annual European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association meeting. While they were there, they dropped in with UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron to talk a little politics. Norbert Reithofer of BMW, Sergio Marchionne of Fiat, Carlos Ghosn of Renault, Nick Reilly of GM Europe and their leader Dieter Zetsche, president of the association and chief of Daimler, asked for assistance with fair free trade with major economies such as India and Japan, government support for the swift introduction of breakthrough technologies and less bureaucracy through lean regulations. All noble goals. But the BBC found a fly in the ointment: (Read More…)

China’s BAIC, the car company that is for all intents and purposes owned by the city of Beijing, is after Opel. That’s what Germany’s Welt, a paper usually well connected with the current German government, heard “from sources inside the company.” (Read More…)

Today, Toyota finally delivered its delayed outlook for this fiscal year. It usually is delivered at the annual results conference, but the tsunami had muddled the waters, so to speak. Now, Toyota has a bit more visibility. Today, Toyota did forecast a 35 percent fall in profit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012. Toyota expects to end the fiscal with a net income of 280 billion yen ($3.5 billion).

According to Reuters, that’s “well short of the consensus for a 434 billion yen profit in a poll of 23 forecasts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.” I am proud of the optimism of the forecasters. Personally, after looking at the disaster in Japan, I hadn’t expected any profits. (Read More…)

When I stopped working for Volkswagen in 2005, they had some 400,000 parts, or “numbers” as they are called in industry parlance, in their central warehouse in Kassel. With each car, the number climbed higher. On the other hand, some 5 percent were usually out of stock. The launch of each car caused raw nerves in the parts department. When a part was faulty, dealers and production manager were at war for parts. The production managers usually won, and blamed the dealers for shoddy service.

It’s tough enough to keep the hungry beasts at assembly lines and in workshops supplied with parts during peacetime. If a volcano over Iceland blows ash, or if a huge tsunami wipes out a good deal of Japan, it turns into parts paranoia. Now, Japan’s formerly powerful METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is using the Tohoku disaster to force the Japanese car industry to standardize a lot of the parts it uses. (Read More…)

Day 2 of the Opel rumor mill, and it keeps on grinding. Is Opel up for sale or is it not? Opel, their works council and regional governments close to the labor unions dismissed yesterday’s reports of a possible sale of Opel by GM as pure speculation. Yesterday, Opel chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke sent a letter to all employees. Today, he called an all hands meeting in Rüsselsheim and appealed to his workforce to ignore the nasty rumors. What is missing: A clear denial from Detroit. Today, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel demanded that GM should “provide clarity regarding the future of Opel,” writes Der Stern. And the magazine adds: “GM however continues to take cover.” (Read More…)

China’s auto sales fell 3.98 percent to 1.3828 million in May. Production dropped 4.89 percent to 1.3489 million units. This according to data released today by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), and reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua.

Three cheers for our patent-pending TTAC China sales oracle, a.k.a. GM China. It nailed the number pretty closely in May. GM China’s May sales were down 2.7 percent. All percentages compared to May 2010.

Zhu Yiping, CAAM’s assistant secretary general, said the decline in May was caused by the removal of tax incentives in car purchases this year, rising fuel costs, and the purchase limits in some cities that were put in place to combat traffic congestion. (Read More…)

Both Der Spiegel and Auto Bild write that GM could throw in the towel on Opel and will put the loss making European division up for sale. Both papers are known to have high-ranking inside sources, both in Wolfsburg and in Berlin.

Auto-Bild: “GM is slowly wising up to the fact that the reasons that led to the planned Opel sale in 2009 have not changed.”

According to the paper, the German government has picked up indications that GM wants to sell Opel  to unnamed parties in China. (Any guesses? Who’s building cars in China on Opel platforms?)

Now, says Auto-Bild, Berlin is worried about the yellow peril and turned to Volkswagen for help.

UPDATE: Reuters reports

“Akerson is fed up with Opel, and the turnaround isn’t gaining traction,” said a person familiar with the GM CEO’s thinking who declined to be named.

“He is trying to think of all possibilities to improve performance. But a sale is wishful thinking.”

(Read More…)

In an (especially for Japanese tastes) strongly worded joint statement, Toshiyuki Shiga. Chairman of  Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, and Koichiro Nishihara, President of the Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers’ Unions threw down the gauntlet to the Japanese government. Executive summary: “We are sick as hell of the high yen and we can’t take it anymore. Do something, or kiss those jobs sayonara.” (Read More…)

In December 2009, freshly government owned GM cut a deal with its Chinese joint venture partner SAIC: For the chump change of $84.5 million, GM sold SAIC one percent of their Chinese joint venture. It was not just any one percent. It was THE one percent, the golden share that brought SAIC’s holdings to 51 percent. It allowed SAIC to consolidate the profits of the GM China JV in its books. And now, GM wants the golden one percent back. (Read More…)

While western companies have their eyes on China as the big market for EVs, and while they worry about their precious know-how being expropriated by the nasty Chicoms, Chinese are already looking elsewhere for low cost production of their cars. (Read More…)