The world’s supposedly cheapest car ($2,500 apiece) will cost $220,000 when Mumbai-based D.C. Design is through with it. They will keep the car’s snub-nosed shape, everything else has to go.
The standard two-cylinder 624cc, 33-horsepower engine will be replaced by a 1600cc engine. To make room for the motor, the back seats will be removed. The car will get new brakes, new suspension, and bigger 20-inch wheels to allow for the top speed of 200 kilometers per hour (124 mph).
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If you ask Western auto manufacturers what they fear more, Chinese car exports or the antichrist, hell, they’ll definitely pick Chinese car exports. Should have chosen the devil: China is looking back at one of the worst car exporting years in recent history.
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Ed Whitacre said yesterday that none of the potential bidders for Saab have come forward with the financing needed. “I think we’ve done everything humanly possible,” Whitacre said. Then he announced that GM will start closing down Saab plants later this week. GM’s really, final, we-really-mean-it-this-time deadline for Saab runs out today.
Who knows, maybe someone will come up with the money. Or at the very least, with some Powerpointilisms: Joran Hagglund, Sweden’s state secretary for industry, said there are bids from two anonymous groups that might make today’s deadline. Except that there is that nasty little detail: “The problem is that none of them can show that they have financing in place,” Hagglund said.
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Here are some full year 2009 new car sales data as they have become available. Along with the source. Caution: Data as reliable as the source.
U.S.A.: down 21.2 percent – 10.4 million units
China: up 45 percent – 13.6 million units
Japan: down 9.3 percent – 4.6 million units
Australia: down 7.4 per cent– 937,328 units
Canada: down 10.7 percent – 1.46 million units i
India: up 18.7 percent– 1.43 million units
Brazil: up 11.35 percent – 3.14 million units
Turkey: up 12.77 percent – 557,126 units
Taiwan: up 28.3 percent – 294,423 units
Philippines: up 6.4 percent – 132,444 units
Russia: down 49 percent – 1,465,917 units
Austria: up 8.8 percent – 319,403 units
Belgium: down 11.1 percent – 476,194 units
Denmark: down 25.3 percent – 112,271 units
Finland: down 35.2 percent – 90,574 units
France: up 10.7 percent – 2,268,671 units
Germany: up 23.2 percent – 3,807,175 units
Greece: down 17.5 percent – 220,548 units
Ireland: down 62.1 percent – 57,460 units
Italy: down 0.2 percent – 2,158,010 units
Luxembourg: down 9.7 percent – 47,265 units
Netherlands: down 22.5 percent – 387,679 units
Portugal: down 24.6 percent -160,996 units
Spain: down 17.9 percent – 952,772 units
Sweden: down 16.0 percent – 213,408 units
United Kingdom: down 6.4 percent – 1,994,999 units
Iceland: down 77.6 percent – 2,020 units
Norway: down 10.8 percent – 98,675 units
Switzerland: down 8.2 percent – 264,798 units
Bulgaria: down 49.3 percent – 22,869 units
Czech Republic: up 12.5 percent – 161,659 units
Estonia: down 66.2 percent – 8,234 units
Hungary: down 50.4 percent – 78,590 units
Latvia: down 80.5 percent – 3,745 units
Lithuania: down 67.4 percent – 7,003 units
Poland: up 0.1 percent – 320,119 units
Romania: down 59.4 percent – 115,979 units
Slovakia: up 6.7 percent – 74,717 units
Slovenia: down 18.7 percent – 55,712 units
European Union (EU15): up 0.9 percent – 13,267,425 units
EFTA: down 10.5 percent – 365,493 units
EU15+EFTA: up 0.5 percent – 13,632,918 units
EU (New Members): down 26.6 percent – 848,627 units
European Union: down 1.3 percent – 14,116,052 units
Total Europe (EU+EFTA): down 1.6 percent – 14,481,545 units
China’s mushrooming car market was flooded with by a tsunami of new cars in 2009, Xinhua reports via Gasgoo. A record 221 new models were introduced last year.
Auto sales in China are projected to have surged 44 percent to 13.5m units last year. Chinese automakers are expected to launch about 100 more new models in 2010.
2009 sales of light vehicles (cars and light trucks) in the United States came in at the bottom end of the estimates. Americans bought only 10.4m units, the lowest level in 27 years, Reuters reports.
America actually lost some 4 million cars. The United States scrapped 14m autos while buying only slightly over 10m last year. Cars on the road dropped to 246m from a record high of 250m in 2008, says a report to be released on Wednesday by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), cited by Reuters.
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Official Kraftfahrtbundesamt data are uncharacteristically late. But Dow Jones Newswire (via Finanznachrichten.de) has it from two reliable sources that Germany’s new car market rose to 3.8m units in 2009, which would be an increase of 23 percent if it pans out. According to the report, Germans bought 3.8m units in 2009, in 2008 it was 3.09m units.
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It’s getting old (in more ways than one:) The Japanese new car market marked its fifth straight fall in 2009. Sales of new cars, including minivehicles, dropped 9.3 percent in 2009 to just 4.6 million units. For the first time since 1978, the 5m level was ruptured, reports the Nikkei [sub].
Sales of regular cars dropped 9.1 percent to 2.92 million units. Sales of minivehicles (cars with a displacement of 660cc or less) fell 9.7 percent to 1.68 million units.
The only genki part: In December, new car sales were up 21.6 percent, fueled by government tax breaks for green cars. With minivehicles are excluded, sales of new cars increased 36.5 percent.
Refer to TTAC’s roundup of 2009 sales data for a continuously updated roundup of 2009 sales data from around the world.
Ford’s Chinese joint venture with Changan sold 316,139 units in 2009, up 54.5 percent from a year earlier, Reuters reports. In December alone, sales were up 61.4 percent from a year earlier. After GM China reported a 67 percent increase for the year yesterday, all indicators point to a strong finish for the Chinese market. Numbers will be announced by the end of the week. Chinese unit sales are expected to be in the 13.5m neighborhood for the year, up 44 percent.
Elsewhere in Europe, first data releases point to a strong December there also: France up 48.6 percent, Spain up 25.1 percent, Italy up 16.73 percent, Belgium up 21.12 percent.
U.S. auto sales are due today and are expected to come in at around 10.5 – 11m units for the year.
Refer to TTAC’s roundup of 2009 sales data for a continuously updated roundup of 2009 sales data from around the world.
Loss-making Dutch boutique carmaker Spyker (well, Spyker actually stopped making cars, and is outsourcing whatever car production is left to UK’s CPP) is revising – for a third time – its bid for GM’s loss-making Swedish carmaker Saab. Spyker received a new deadline of January 7th, Reuters reports. Everything else has already been said.
GM China’s 2009 vehicle sales jumped nearly 67 percent year on year to 1.83m units, Gasgoo says, citing company data. GM and its joint venture ventures in China expanded their market share to an estimated 13.4 percent, up from 12.1 percent by the end of 2008.
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France celebrated New Year’s Eve in its own special way: 1,137 cars went up in flames all across the country. According to Reuters, the number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned last year. France’s Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night, 10,000 more than 12 months ago – apparently with little effect.
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As countries in Europe wind down their cash for clunkers programs, China is increasing the bounty on old cars. China’s Ministry of Commerce said that qualified car owners who trade in outdated or “highly polluted” vehicles will receive a subsidy between US$733 and $2635 this year, up from last year’s maximum $878, reports Shanghai Daily.
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The United Nations UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations is likely to adopt many Japanese safety rules for hybrid and electric vehicles as a global standard, says the Nikkei [sub].
Currently, there are no ECE safety standards for hybrid and electric vehicles. Japan has pushed its domestic safety rules to be adopted as international standards. Chances for adoption are good, Japanese companies and rulemakers are the pioneers in the field. Europe, which usually dominates ECE rule making, is lagging behind in the development of hybrid and electric vehicles, and doesn’t have much to lose if the Japanese standards are accepted.
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As TTAC’s Overseas Editor, allow me to be first to wish you a Happy New Year, or a akemashite omedetou, as they say in the Japanese time zone. May 2010 be better than 2009 (as predicted by Scotia Economics.) It’s the year of the tiger. Put it in your tank. As long as PETA ain’t watching …
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