End of October, China’s formerly white-hot auto industry basically is where it was last year. January through October, production of cars and commercial vehicles is down 0.42 percent, sales are up 0.19 percent, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers CAAM says. (Read More…)

Nissan appears to be preparing for another go at Germany’s Nürburgring. The time around the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the northern loop of the iconic Nürburgring racecourse is widely regarded as benchmark for speed and handling of a sports car. Nissan is emboldened by the performance of the new GT-R sports car, which its Chief Engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno showed TTAC last weekend on a track behind a Nissan factory in Oppama, Japan. (Read More…)

“Whenever Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of carmakers Fiat and Chrysler, appears in public, television crews jostle to beam his words around the globe. Amid the push and shove it’s easy to miss the tall, curly-headed young man who often looks on from the sidelines.

He’s John Elkann.  And he’s Marchionne’s boss.” (Read More…)

After Hyundai was caught by the EPA with the wrong fuel economy ratings on “select vehicles” (read: most of them) media outlets (including this one) prognosticated that Hyundai would have to abdicate as king of the fuel sippers. Nothing doing, says TrueCar.

According to TrueCar’s sales-weighted rankings, Hyundai continues to put the most automobiles with the lowest fuel consumption on America’s roads – even after Hyundai and Kia had to restate their EPA window stickers, and had to give money back to customers. (Read More…)

At the auto show in Los Angeles, next to Stuttgart basically home turf for Porsche, the company will have a small surprise for a big country: Porsche will unveil a “new compact sports car” at the show. Mum’s the word. (Read More…)

Based on the Mazda2, Mazda will build a sub-compact for Toyota after Mazda’s new plant in Mexico opens, the company says. The new (Mazota?) will start production around the summer of 2015 at a pace of 50,000 units per year, Toyota says. (Read More…)

Slovakia is part of the euro zone. While whole countries need to be bailed out or go bankrupt, the town of Zilina  is peaceful – and busy. At the Kia plant, more than 253,000  cee’d, Venga and Sportage models have rolled off the assembly lines, more than the plant made all last year, Reuters says. (Read More…)

In September, click-hungry Kelley Blue Book celebrated its “10 coolest cars under $12,000” (With click-triggering gallery!) Two months later, rampant inflation sets in. Now, it’s the “10 coolest cars under $25,000.” Necessarily, the September choices were a bit low rent. Let’s see what you get when you double your budget. All 10 of them. With pictures. And then, we’ll take revenge on Kelley and crown our own super cool car. (Read More…)

Talk about bad timing: One day after the elections that were preceded by the time-honored custom of China-bashing (with a little Japan-bashing mixed in, you never know) China’s largest automaker announced that the long feared attack of the Chinese car on American soil won’t happen anytime soon. (Read More…)

Superstorm Sandy left about a quarter million dead cars in its path, Reuters figures.  It mioght even drive up cars sales. (Read More…)

More than 300 Karma plug-in hybrids fell victim to super storm Sandy, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told Reuters.  The cars sat in a storage lot in Port Newark, New Jersey, which was inundated by Sandy. Among the lost Karmas are 16 that went up in flames. One car caught fire when seawater caused a short circuit. Winds spread the fire to 15 other cars.

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Renault opened negotiations on a new labor deal for France with a big squeeze, Reuters reports. Renault wants pay and working time concessions from its French workers. If Renault doesn’t get a good deal, jobs could go elsewhere. (Read More…)

The situation in Europe is “very volatile”, Ford CEO Alan Mulally told Reuters today in Berlin. “We don’t know whether it the European economy will stabilize or hit bottom or not because it’s continuing to decrease.” (Read More…)

GM told Reuters that it won’t build the next-generation Chevrolet Cruze in South Korea. Reuters says this is “raising the possibility that GM might shift the assembly to Europe to help boost efficiency at its money-losing unit there.” (Read More…)

Here is one car company that didn’t profit from Japan’s losses in China: Mercedes sales in China were down 3.9 percent to about 15,900 units in October, Reuters says. Daimler blamed the “very strong” sales of October 2011. (Read More…)