Here’s a piece of news that will make Gordon G. Chang double his daily dose of Maalox, after he had eaten his words written in Forbes: This September, GM China sold more cars than GM USA. General Motors and its local joint ventures sold a record 181,148 vehicles in China in September, the company reports via Gasgoo. Back home in the U.S.A. GM sold 156,673 cars and trucks, as per Automotive News [sub] official statistics.
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If right-wingnut Glenn Beck needs a China hater on the tube, he usually calls Gordon G. Chang. Chang is always good for talking bad about China. In 2001, Gordon Chang published a book titled. “The Coming Collapse of China.” In it, he predicted that China would implode by 2006, if not earlier, due to the mass of non-performing loans in Chinese state banks. Much to the chagrin of Chang, China is still standing. It must give Chang heart palpitations that the Chinese economy grew more than three times since he penned his doomsday book. To add injury to irony, instead of a China syndrome caused by the meltdown of  Chinese banks, a non-performing global financing firm called Lehman Brothers started a chain reaction in 2008 that brought the world financial system to the brink of nuclear winter.

China ranks as the world’s third largest economy since it passed by Germany in 2007. China is likely to overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, either this year or by 2010. In the world of Gordon Chang, all this growth must be as real as a Gucci bag at China’s notorious fake markets.
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Forget the rice paddies and straw hats. Think Autobahn, and a testosterone-driven car on your tail, with his (it’s always a he) brights on. China is Bimmer country. The robust sales of BMW in China over the first nine months of the year made the Middle Kingdom the fourth-largest market for the Bavarian maker, Bloomberg reports.

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A certain website that concerns itself with facts about automobiles, had opined more than a month ago: “Once matters move to Brussels, they come to a crawl. Whoever wins the German elections has all the time they want to dispose of Opel. If it goes kaput, they can blame the Americans and Brussels.”

The Opel matter finally moved to Brussels. EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said, she could set aside her considerable qualms about the GM-Opel-Magna-Sperbank deal, if only all parties involved would send her a simple letter that certifies that the deal had not been reached under political pressure. All parties involved, meaning GM, the Opel Trust that officially owns Opel, and the German government. Scout’s honor. Cross your heart, and swear to … exactly.
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Yesterday, China’s auto production officially exceeded the 10m mark. You’ve seen nothing yet, opined Dongfeng Motor Co. vice president Ren Yong at the sidelines of the Tokyo Motor Show (which had been mostly shunned by foreign makers.) Peak oil theorists, take a Valium before reading further.+
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The Chinese car maker Great Wall Motor, a Hong Kong-listed Chinese car company, is suing Fiat in China for industrial espionage. According to the Financial Times, this in “an apparent response to an Italian court ruling that Great Wall copied a Fiat car model.”

Last year, Fiat sued Great Wall both in Italy and in China for copying the Fiat Panda, which Great Wall sells as the Peri.
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The deal to sell Volvo to Geely may be falling apart after 10 months of heavy petting. Everybody from Bloomberg to the DetN has lapped up the leak that it’s all about intellectual property that may be misappropriated in the Middle Kingdom. The true crime: A massive insult to the intelligence of the dear reader is being perpetrated. If there are concerns about stealing trade secrets, why did they come up now and not earlier, while Ford and Geely were progressing from first to second base in a cloud of steam? Did they fall asleep in the drive-in? Whatta we gonna tell your mama? Whatta we gonna tell your pa? “We say it’s about trade secrets.” “Great idea. Works all the time.”

The Financial Times found a more likely cause for the sudden interuptus:
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China’s capital Beijing officially has 17m people. Unofficially, it’s guesstimated to be closer to 20m. By the beginning of next year, Beijing will be host to more than 4m automobiles, China Daily reports. Back in 1997, Beijing barely had 1m cars. Now, one in 4 Beijingers has a car.

Every day, more than 1000 cars are being registered in Beijing. After the October holidays, 10,000 needed to be registered and caused a giant traffic jam around the Beijing version of the DMV.
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Another day, another Opel that is still not sold yet. As reported before, EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes made good on  her previous threats (which were ignored in wholesale fashion) and said that the €4.5b ($6.72b) in – mostly German – state aid for Opel may be against EU rules. So what now? One option seems to take Opel into insolvency.  But there’s another way to fix it: GM needs to certify that the Opel/Magna/Sperbank deal came together “without political pressure.” So says the German car dealer’s favorite read, Das Autohaus. If Brussels gets such a letter, then the qualms they have about possible anti-competitive behavior will just go away. It’s that easy?
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A year ago, the 21st Century Business Herald reported that SAIC might buy GM and Dongfeng might buy Chrysler. TTAC was the first to break the story in the USA. As a result, our servers melted down, and we were accused of driving down GM’s and Chrysler’s stock price. Usually, buyout rumors drive prices up. But GM and Chrysler had only one way to go: Down. Months later, GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. They became a ward of the US government. Chrysler was given away to Fiat. GM was trimmed down to the barest minimum and is still owned by the US government. And the China story turned out to be a myth.

Following this, stories of Chinese car companies buying US car companies became a regular staple. Up to now, it is mostly talk and little action.

After MG, Rover, and the iconic London taxi maker Mangenese Bronze, one of the last remnants of the British auto industry was bought by a Chinese. By a Chinese woman, to be exact. Dr. Qu Li, owner of Eco Concept Ltd., agreed Thursday to buy for an undisclosed amount LDV, a Birmingham-based van-manufacturing company that went “into administration” in June. The lady has a history.
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The Chinese equivalent of the Forbes Richest People in America is the Hurun Rich List. On top of the list, released Tuesday, is Wang Chuanfu, founder and chairman of the automobile and battery maker BYD Company. Wang Chuanfu dethroned Huang Guangyu , who was the chairman of electronics retailer GOME. Huang was jailed last year on charges of stock marked manipulation – along with several senior Communist Party and government officials suspected of involvement.

Last year, Warren Buffet’s invested $232 million into the the car and battery producer BYD. Wang, China’s richest man, moved up 102 places on the list and has an estimated worth of more than $5.1b. Since September 2008, the BYD share had risen nearly 1000 percent.
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Today’s the day GM, Magna, Sperbank, the Unions, the Opel Trust, and a whole host of others are supposed to finally, at long last, definitely sign the contracts that seal Opel’s new fate and future under the Magna/Sperbank regime. At the time of this typing, it looks like the signatures will remain blank. Who’s holding up the flow of ink?
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European new car sales continue on their path of recovery. However, as the Abwrackprämien-fuel tank ran dry in Europe’s growth engine Germany, the party may come to a halt in October.

In September, European passenger car registrations increased by 6.3 percent, compared to September 2008. A total of 1,388,136 new cars were registered in all of Europe last month, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) reports today. Nine months into the year, registrations of new cars in all of Europe are still 6.6 percent lower than during the same period of 2008.
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Until recently, popular wisdom had it that Germans would rather not eat than give up their cars. According to lore, Germans even eschew back seat loving – because it might spoil the immaculate interior. Horrors of horrors: The Teutonic automotive love affair may be losing its lust. Nearly one third of Germans contemplate getting rid of at least one of their cars in the next six to twelve months. This according to a study commissioned by Europcar, a large European car rental company that has a vested interest in these developments. The shocking study has been published in Das Autohaus.

Last year, only 17 percent of the Germans had announced they would dump their cars and switch to public transportation, car sharing, rental cars, or mopeds. Never mind that they didn’t follow through. According to the ever so efficient Kraftfahrtbundesamt, Germans bought 26.1 percent more cars in the first nine months of 2009 than in 2008. Sales of used cars dropped by only 1.6 percent.  Europcar hopes that a new trend is their friend: All indications say the German Abwrackprämien-powered sales orgy is about to experience a sudden interuptus in October after the financial lube has dried up. But a third of German cars being retired and not replaced next year? A rental car company’s wet dream.