At home, GM is at peace with the unions, benefits of having the UAW as a major shareholder. Abroad, GM Europe has been in a low intensity conflict with the European unions that oppose cuts at Opel. Now, a labor conflict flares up in an unexpected part of the world: Korea. (Read More…)

As much as managers of car companies love double digit increases such as the 22 percent overall gain in June, there is one aspect they really hate: When the market share charts come on the table. Market share measures the true performance of sales and engineering. If the damn market increases 22 percent, then your sales must increase 23 percent, just to stay ahead of the game. Managers of Detroit car companies eye these charts with trepidation. (Read More…)

From London’s Telegraph to Fox News, from Autoblog to Autoguide, gullible media predicted impending doom for foreign carmakers in China. Last February, it was announced that the Chinese government will henceforth only buy Chinese cars. This was seen as a blow especially to Audi. China’s Global Times calls an Audi A6 “Chinese officialdom’s vehicle of choice,” and it was predicted that the officialdom will henceforth have to make do with Roewes and Geelys. Why am I reminded of that story?

Audi’s sales in China are up 37.8 percent for the first six months of the year. (Read More…)

They have been together for a while. Behemoth Volkswagen and tiny, but bigger than life Porsche shared technologies and booths at auto shows, Volkswagen generals are in key positions at Porsche. Fitting the German Zeitgeist, they lived together without being formally married. This will be rectified in a few weeks. (Read More…)

The results are in. There is a winner in the Where Am I Contest: After careful photoanalysis, TTAC’s independent and impartial one man jury declares PaulMorgan the winner of the Where Am I contest. Here is the post-game analysis: (Read More…)

This contest closed today, Wednesday, July 4^th 2012 at 2 pm Eastern Time.

Please stay tune for the results. (Read More…)

Germany’s new car market recovered slightly in June. Sales were up 2.9 percent to units, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. (Read More…)

Domestic sales of regular new cars, trucks and buses increased 40.9 percent in June, while sales of mini vehicles  rose 48.4 percent on the year. Overall, Japan’s new motorvehicle market rose 43.6 percent on 505,342 units sold. The data compare with a post-tsunami June 2011. (Read More…)

Analysts polled by Bloomberg predicted June light vehicle sales to come in much lower. All analysts except one: John Sousanis of Ward’s predicted that this will be a good month. He nearly nailed the SAAR, and came closest to reality in his OEM forecasts. (Read More…)

Mazda’s Skyactiv engines are hitting on all cylinders. The company will double production capacity at its engine plant in Hiroshima from 400,000 units to 800,000 units per year in October 2012. The capacity increase is “in response to increasing demand” for Skyactiv-equipped cars, the company  said in an emailed statement. (Read More…)

Chrysler Group up 20 percent, GM up 16 percent, Toyota up 60 percent. Across the board sales up 22 percent (see table.)

June sales of new cars and trucks come in stronger than the cautious estimates of analysts. Why?  America’s most successful sales predictor thinks everybody needed to “make that quarter.” (Read More…)

Sergio Pininfarina died overnight in his Turin home at the age of 85. The company that bears its name designed almost every Ferrari since the 1950s and delivered the shapes of cars from the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Rondine to the 1996 Peugeot 406 Coupe. Sajeev will have a tribute to the man later on.

GM has blamed Western Europe location for Opel’s woes, unions, the economy. Opel has a brand crisis, and the crisis is “a self inflicted-wound,” says Christiaan Hetzner, Reuters’ man in Frankfurt, Germany, in an article on why Opel is in so much trouble. “Reputation is seen as the problem, not cars.” The recent attempts to move the Opel brand up-market ripped those old wounds open and could kill the patient. (Read More…)

About one third of all cars sold in Japan are an oddity: Cars for midgets. Kei cars. Limited in size (11.2 by 4.9 ft), displacement (40 cid), and power (63hp). “Americans won’t buy them,” says our contact at Honda who meets us in the basement garage of Honda’s headquarters in Tokyo. “Americans want big.” We […]

The sprawling city Guangzhou in southern China sprung a nasty surprise on its (pop. 12.7 million citizens: it drastically slashed the number of new cars being registered. Observers predict that this move could have far-reaching consequences on the Chinese car market. (Read More…)