President Barack Obama will carry a familiar gift to election rallies in Ohio today.

“The Obama administration will announce a trade complaint against China today as President Barack Obama campaigns in Ohio, alleging impermissible subsidies of auto- and auto-parts exports that encourage outsourcing to China from the U.S.” an administration official told Bloomberg.     (Read More…)

Daimler, or rather one of its Chinese customers, is paying late penance for the ill-fated merger with Chrysler. A Chinese patriot proudly presented this trophy on Weibo, the Chinese version of the (blocked in China) Twitter. He said he took it off a “Japanese Mitsubishi” which he savaged in rage against Japan’s occupation of the Diaoyu islands.

Mitsubishi Motors fell into the hands of Daimler through the merger with Chrysler. After that fell apart. Mitsubishi soon was back on its own. (Read More…)

GM wants the Treasury to sell its GM shares at a huge loss, says the Wall Street Journal.  Nothing doing, says the Department of the Treasury. It does not appear to need the cash (it can have it printed if needed) and is holding out for a slightly smaller loss. (Read More…)

GM is smarter than Ford when it comes to exploiting rich Chinese, says Tycho de Feyter of Carnewschina. While GM sells is Camaro in China for a whopping $72,000 on up, Ford is leaving money on the table and profits to grey importers. (Read More…)

The affliction for pink cars knows no bounds, and TTAC’s word-wide correspondents hunt them down. Here is a small selection of pinkies that arrived in our pink mailbox at shootthepink@gmail.com. North Bay, Ontario, is populated by people with eclectic tastes – for pink Hondas. (Read More…)

Anti-Japanese demonstrations grew ugly in China over the weekend, and it were cars that took the brunt. Chinese took to the streets after Tokyo said it would nationalize the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The uninhabited rocks are administered by Japan but claimed by China.  Tens of thousands protested this weekend – and vented their rage on cars.

One  of the first victims was a Honda CR-V, oddly owned by the police in the southern city of Shenzhen. Shenzhen’s finest were unable to protect their property.

As it becomes increasingly dangerous to own a Japanese car in China, people devise unorthodox ways to protect their cherished car. (Read More…)

The car show in Haikou on the Chinese island of Hainan is small as far as car shows go. Organizers had to try harder to attract visitors. Or, being small, they had to save money, and they decided to spare the garments of their female product specialists. They appeared covered in not much more than flowers.

Caution, the following pictures could be considered as offensive and NSFW in Sharia jurisdictions and parts of America, but have become quite common in officially still communist China.   (Read More…)

Volkswagen announced global Group sales for August, and they are a whopping 18.9 percent over August 2011. For the first eight months of the year, Volkswagen Group deliveries are 10.2 percent ahead of what VW delivered in the same period last year. With all the bad news from Europe, how can a European car company deliver such good numbers, you ask? (Read More…)

Five years ago, Chris Matthews said on MSNBC: “Well, The Washington Post is not the liberal newspaper it was.” Today, the Post finally will be condemned as part of the massive right wing conspiracy. In a brutal op-ed, signed by the full WaPo Editorial Board, the paper kills and buries the Volt. Basically, says the WaPo, we have been fooled: (Read More…)

Some TTAC readers complained that they never had the chance to cash in on the great $199 Volt lease deals.  We apologize. (Read More…)

Venture capitalist extraordinaire Tim Draper says Tesla has the resources to beat the Detroit Three. Detroit already has lost the electric war, Draper says, and it should pick a different battle to win. Like making flying cars. (Read More…)

Call it synchronicity or call it conspiracy: 2015 is drawing closer, the year when several large global automakers will begin full-scale launches of hydrogen-powered automobiles. Developing new powertrains being costly with unassured payback, automakers form alliances to share the cost. And alliance of Daimler, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota to jointly promote hydrogen use would be surprising, they usually are otherwise engaged. However, the four join hands, forces and cars for a grand hydrogen tour through Europe. (Read More…)

GM is not the only U.S. automaker that wants to close a plant in Europe, and Ford is thinking about more than the end of the road for Alan Mulally. German press, from the industry magazine Automobil Produktion to the German edition of the Wall Street Journal are talking about Ford shuttering its plant in Genk, Belgium. (Read More…)

With their Washington overlords breathing down their necks, GM executives are pushing Opel for a definitive agreement to close Opel’s Bochum plant. According to the Wall Street Journal, GM “would like to be able to announce the plan before or along with its third-quarter earnings, which are expected to be disclosed Oct. 31.”

Keep smoking. (Read More…)

A massage parlour and a car wash outlet in the Sunway Mentari suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, engaged in a flourishing joint venture until it was disrupted by police last week. After nine car washes, customers received a free detailing – but not of the car. (Read More…)