Patrick Pelata is leaving Renault. This a year after the former Chief Operating Officer took the fall over the spy scandal. (Read More…)

A 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II, adorned with over a million Swarovski crystals is on display at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich, Germany. (Read More…)

The legendary Nürburgring, purveyor of records an dreams, is dead. Well, it’s clinically dead, but it might be brought back to life. What else would you do with a 16 mile road that goes nowhere in the middle of nowhere? The Ring is bankrupt. Out of money. Can’t pay its bills. Broke. Bust. Pleite. (Read More…)

The Peugeot family is on war footing with the French government. It “hit back at suggestions by a government official that its members have favored their own financial interests over the development of the family-controlled auto maker,” says the Wall Street Journal. Basically, the family followed the line of argument suggested by TTAC. (Read More…)

Brokerage Wunderlich Securities downgraded Tesla to “sell” from “buy.” The reason: Tesla has downshifted its production plans, reports Reuters.

“While initially saying that it would produce and sell 1,000 cars in the third quarter, Tesla now says it will certainly be 500 cars,” Wunderlich analyst, Theodore O’Neill, said in a research note. (Read More…)

Contracts talks between the Canadian Auto Workers and the Detroit 3 won’t start before August. But combattants are already lobbing grenades across the border. Ford of Canada told Reuters that Canada is now the most expensive place in the world to make cars. (Read More…)

Now here is something that is rarely heard these days. A top EU Commissioner told European automakers to get out of the way of European trade deals with Asia. Europe’s carmakers must reform their industry and cannot place the blame for falling sales on foreign trade, Reuters reports. (Read More…)

GM throws fresh troops in Opel’s losing battle. For keeping more money, Opel has a new CFO. For eventually making more money, the Rüsselsheim automaker has a new R&D chief. (Read More…)

How would you feel if you start your new job and people greet you by speculating who will replace you? This is how Thomas Sedran must feel. Only hours after he has been made the new interim CEO of Opel, German media speculates who will be next in his ejection seat in Rüsselsheim. The roster of likely candidates is not encouraging. (Read More…)

The Peugeot family will receive an invitation from French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, but not for tea and cookies.

The minister “plans to summon members of the Peugeot family to explain why the car maker had continued to pay dividends even as it was facing mounting difficulties,” Reuters says. (Read More…)

Need some extra money? Want to work from home? Easy: Sell her to perfect strangers, by the hour. You will receive assistance in pimping her as long as she’s an OnStar-equipped Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, or Cadillac.   (Read More…)

Opel has a new CEO, the second in a week, and he will soon be out of a job: As expected by TTAC,  GM named Thomas Sedran as interim CEO of Opel, replacing the current interim CEO Stephen Girsky, who replaced the not quite interim CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke. (Read More…)

Just when you thought shares of Ford and GM can’t get any lower, major brokerage Morgan Stanley “lowered its 2012 U.S. auto sales projections by about 3 percent and cut its earnings-per-share estimates for the North American auto sector due to weaker-than-expected sales in the United States and Europe,”Reuters says.

For what it’s worth, Morgan expects U.S. auto sales to be 14.4 million this year, down from its earlier projection of 14.8 million.  What is more disconcerting is Morgan’s outlook on financials of U.S. makers. (Read More…)

Brazilians are unhappy with GM. GM is cutting capacity and jobs at a Brazilian plant. This made the Brazilian government unhappy, because it had cut taxes on domestically made cars, in exchange for manufacturers maintaining the size of their workforce. It also made unions unhappy. They voiced their displeasure on Monday by going on strike, Reuters says. (Read More…)

Australians are unhappy with Ford. In January, Ford received more than A$34 million ($35 million) from Australian state and federal governments to guarantee local production until 2016. Today, Reuters reports that Ford will cut 440 jobs, or about 15 percent of its Australian workforce. (Read More…)