Another indicator that the Chinese car market is not about to collapse, as projected (hoped?) by some: Daimler is guiding towards robust sales in January. “I hope that we will see double digit gains again in January,” Mercedes sales Chief Joachim Schmidt told Reuters. With the month nearly over, executives won’t “hope” what they don’t already know. And what does that have to do with China? (Read More…)

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy said in a speech to a joint session of Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” On 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon. The Apollo 11 crew returned safely to Earth on 24 July. Three years later, the Moon had its last visitors. The Sea of  Tranquility lives up to its name.

In last week’s State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama’s set an even more audacious goal. (Read More…)

Porsche’s legal troubles aren’t over yet. A group of hedge funds appealed the dismissal of their $2 billion lawsuit against Porsche. The lawsuit had been thrown out by U.S. District Judge Harold Baer on December 31 for lack of jurisdiction. (Read More…)

Now that most of the large car companies have supplied their numbers, TTAC has compiled its annual table of the world’s largest automakers. In doing so, we have attempted to come as close as possible to the methodology used in the official OICA list, which will be published some time this summer. Here is the 2009 version as a reference. And here are TTAC’s Top Ten of 2010: (Read More…)

The oft predicted collapse of the Chinese market does not seem to happen. GM is the canary in the Chinese coalmine, and January, the month before the Lunar New Year festivities, is a key selling month. So goes GM, so goes China, so goes January, so goes the year. This time, January was especially critical: Many had predicted that the cancellation of tax incentives for sub 1.6 liter cars, that went in effect on January 1, would have serious pull-forward repercussions. Not as far as GM is concerned. (Read More…)

According to data published today by Ford, the company sold 5,313,000 units worldwide “to wholesale” (i.e. out of the door.), up 447,000 units or 9.19 percent. With Volvo eliminated, the growth was 771,000 units. Record sales in the U.S.A. and Asia were partially offset by lower sales in Europe. Ford is not strong enough in China to profit like its competitors that are strong in China. One of these competitors is Hyundai. (Read More…)

Ford did not disappoint and today announced its biggest annual profit in a decade. According to a Ford release, the company booked $8.3 billion in pre-tax profits for 2010. That is a $3.8 billion increase from a year ago. (Read More…)

The civilian version of the car shown in the video will soon be available for purchase, reports TheTycho from Beijing. It won’t come with the microphones and the stand-up podium behind the driver. Instead, it will have full reclining seats in  the back. (Read More…)

Emboldened Tata has announced new plans to export their Nano. To markets such as Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. And Tata will do that carefully. “We will go after these markets one after another,” Tata CEO Carl-Peter Forster told Bloomberg at an industry event in Bochum, Germany. Gone are bravado and hype. No more mentions to export the $3,000 car to Europe or god forbid the U.S.A. (Read More…)

After Hyundai delivered a record profit of $4.7 billion yesterday, smaller sibling Kia announced its results today. The Kia’s 2010 net profits rose 55 percent to approximately $2 billion. Some analysts expected more, but the fourth quarter had only a rise of 4.6 percent.

Kia adds another 2,131,531 units to the combined Hyundai/Kia grand total, which now (according to our unofficial TTAC calculations) stands at 5,744,018 units. Where does that leave Ford? (Read More…)

Which are the safest cars you can buy in Europe? The results of Euro NCAP tests will rattle established Euro carmakers: Out of 5 categories, 2 were won by a Japanese car, one by a Korean car. In 2010, Euro NCAP crash tested twenty nine vehicles. 65 percent received  five stars.

Here are the best-of-class cars, according to Euro NCAP: (Read More…)

Troubled BYD has even more problems: Dealers defect the Chinese car maker, because the alleged master of the electric vehicle has perfected one ancient tradecraft: The art of channel stuffing. A Beijing BYD store switched to another brand because BYD required them to carry a whopping six times the monthly selling rate on the lot. The poor dealer that moved 70 BYDs in a good month was sitting on a steadily restocked inventory of 400 units.

Even that generous inventory strategy did not help: (Read More…)

“First smart ED Delivered in America.” (Read More…)

Hyundai Motor Co. today released impressive results. Net 2010 profit increased 77.8 percent to 5.3 trillion won  ($4.7 billion) on global sales of 3,612,487 units. That’s a 16.3 percent sales gain from a year earlier. Whoa, says the attentive observer of sales data, didn’t they make some 4.6 million last year? Where is the increase? The 4.6 million were Hyundai and Kia together.

Many journos will trip over that today. (Read More…)

After releasing global sales results of 8.418 million units a few days ago, Toyota today announced the all-important global production number. Toyota established a more comfortable lead before GM. A few days ago, unconfirmed numbers floating around the media made it look like GM had come within touching distance of Toyota.

All three Toyota Motor Corporation companies (i.e. Toyota, Daihatsu and Hino) together produced 8,557,351 cars in 2010. Now why is the production number more important than the sales number? (Read More…)