As Bertel Schmitt has exhaustively documented, the Chinese luxury car market is hot fire right now. By 2015, luxury sales are expected to quadruple to 2m annually, making China the most important growth market in the world for brands like Audi, BMW and Mercedes. Having landed early, thanks to Volkswagen’s pioneering presence in the Chinese market, Audi is the king of Chinese luxury car brands, and isn’t showing any signs of quitting. And though 77 percent sales growth last quarter is nothing to sneeze at, longer-term trends show Audi’s market share sinking inexorably as its rivals fight hard for a toehold in the lucrative Chinese luxury game. According to BusinessWeek, Audi’s Chinese market share has skidded more than 20 percentage points since 2004, falling from a dominant 66 percent to a mere 42 percent last year. Can BMW and Mercedes continue to make gains? The only certainties are that they will try, and it won’t be easy.

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While its German rivals pour into the burgeoning four-door premium coupe segment, BMW has been busy exploring the premium five-door GT segment. With its complement of GT variants complete, the Bavarians are making up for lost time with this Gran Coupe Concept, debuting at today’s Beijing Auto Show. Basically a lower, wider, more coupe-profiled 7-series, the Gran Coupe is clearly aimed at models like the Porsche Panamera, Maserati Quattroporte and especially the forthcoming Audi A7. And though it’s technically just a styling exercise, the Gran Coupe (or something like it) could be headed for production.When asked by Autocar about the Gran Coupe’s chances of launching a revival of the 8 Series nameplate, BMW Chief Designer Adrian van Hooydonk said:

I don’t think of this car as an 8-series, but our marketing department may think differently. Either way, their work is just beginning, and I know that often it can take longer than our design work!

While the White House and most of the media spent the last two days parroting GM’s claim that it “paid back” taxpayers, Senator Chuck Grassley was busy writing a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury [letter available in PDF here]. The three-page note opens:

Dear Secretary Geithner:

General Motors (GM) yesterday announced that it repaid its TARP loans. I am concerned, however, that this announcement is not what it seems. In fact, it appears to be
nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.

No surprises there: TTAC has been all over this ruse for months now. Grassley does sum the situation up nicely, stating that “A debt-for-equity swap is not a repayment,” but the most interesting part of his letter is his theory for why GM and the Administration approved the tax-money reshuffle. Thus far, we’ve assumed that PR was the driving concern in this transparent deception. According to Grassley though, there may be another reason…

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Well, it’s been nearly 20 years since Nissan offered its vision of a Future Electric Vehicle, but the dream seems to be coming true. According to Automotive News [sub], Nissan has already booked 3,754 (deposit-free) pre-orders for its Leaf EV in Japan, launching the nameplate over half of the way to its first-year JDM sales goal of 6,000 units. In the US, Nissan already has 115,000 potential buyers on its pubic reservation list, which gives buyers priority for pre-orders. Interestingly, only 15 percent of Japanese Leaf private pre-orders are from people under the age of 40, while a full 61 percent of pre-orderers are over 50 (though this could be more indicative of Japanese demography than anything to do with the car). 36 percent of all Japanese pre-orders so far are from fleets, though given the apparently strong demand for the little EV, this shouldn’t hurt resale too much. After all, that’s what long-term battery degradation is for. [Photo Hat Tip: TTAC Commenter Mercennarius]

Several Chinese sites have caught shots of the next-generation Hyundai Accent [via autoincar.com] just prior to its reveal at the Beijing Auto Show. Styling-wise, the Accent appears to combine equal parts Y20 Sonata and Genesis Coupe, in a compact four-door package. The coupe-like profile looks to limit visibility somewhat, but no more so than other examples of the current trend towards bunker-like interiors. Otherwise, we’re looking at a fairly stylish little sedan that should help Hyundai keep its momentum building in the US market. And what of the long-available three-door Accent? Hyundai will likely be replacing both that budget hatch and the Tiburon sports coupe with the Accent-based Veloster sporty hatch.

I can’t think of anyone who has watched an episode of the BBC’s seminal car show Top Gear and not enjoyed it. In fact, even my most auto-ambivalent friends are quick to reference the exploits of Jezza, Captain Slow and The Hamster as their sole source of automotive news and entertainment. Thanks to its status as one of the world’s most-pirated TV show, Top Gear has made remarkable inroads in the US with a little “help” from fansites like Final Gear. But will an American version be able to capture the appeal of the original? It’s been tried before, and now it’s being tried again.

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Look everyone, it’s a Chevy Volt that can seat more than four people! Official images of the Volt MPV5 concept have leaked today [via AutoblogGreen], confirming what recently-discovered line drawings hinted at: a people-carrying version of Chevy’s Volt is under development. The extra rear seat and the 30.5 cubic feet of storage space (62.3 cubic feet with rear seats folded) does come at a price though, as GM says the MPV5 comes up 8 miles short of the Volt’s marketing-mission-critical 40 miles of electric range using the same drivetrain. On the upside, it will almost certainly be classified as a light truck (despite its compact, FWD underpinnings), making it the perfect vehicle to goose increasing CAFE standards.

Building on solid financial results in the fourth quarter of last year, Hyundai has announced today that it turned a net profit of about $1.02b (as in billion) in Q1 2010. That shatters a previous record of $650m, recorded in the second quarter of last year, and eclipses last year’s $203m Q1 net profit. According to the Detroit News, Hyundai raised sales revenue by nearly 40 percent last quarter, with global gross receipts hitting $7.6b. Sales volume was up 36.6 percent, to 842,037 units. Though the Chinese and Indian markets drove growth with 48 and 34 percent volume increases respectively, the big news comes from the US, where Hyundai’s volume grew 78.3 percent and revenue gained 61.5 percent. And if Hyundai’s margins seem surprisingly attractive, consider that the dollar’s recent declines against the Korean Won bled off some of that US-market profit. Oh, and that billion-dollar profit doesn’t include results from Hyundai’s sister-firm Kia, which reports Q1 financials tomorrow. Get down with your bad self, Hyundai!

Nissan has released this teaser of the forthcoming 2012 Quest minivan at a company microsite aimed at drumming up interest until the model goes on sale in “early 2011.” And boy, does it ever have its work cut out.

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You might think that, when confronted with its first major quality crisis, Toyota would have responded by upping its spending on DC lobbying. After all, when Washington has painted a target on your back, it’s usually a good time to hire a few well-connected friends. But then, a good deal of the congressional scrutiny aimed at Toyota has focused on the company’s lobbying efforts in the first place, especially after the House Oversight Committee leaked Toyota briefing documents that showed the company had successfully negotiated away penalties for defects. Perhaps then, Toyota’s decision to reduce lobbying spending in the first quarter of this year was a reaction to accusations that the automaker manipulated the NHTSA. Or maybe the Japanese firm simply decided that its huge lobbying budget simply wasn’t winning it any friends. In any case, Automotive News [sub] reports that Toyota spent a mere $880k on lobbyists last quarter, down nearly a third from its $1.3m Q1 spend in 2009. And, according to the Toyota report cited by AN [sub], defect recalls don’t even enter into the equation, as Toyota merely

lobbied the House and Senate on such issues as making it easier for workers to unionize, patents, financial regulation and energy matters

Meanwhile, as the image above proves, Toyota wasn’t going to be able to match the lobbying power of a GM anyway.

We all knew this day was coming. We knew that Maybach would receive one final facelift before disappearing in a puff of garish pretentiousness. And really, we should have been prepared for this last aesthetic update to live up to the Maybach brand’s already-high standards for tastelessness. But could anything have prepared us for this Hyundai Equus-grille’d monstrosity? All of a sudden, the new Phaeton’s terminal subtlety is looking a lot better. After all, would you rather your plutocrat’s chariot be mistaken for a Passat, or a pimp-my-ride nightmare? [via automotorundsport.de]

Having laid into GM today for trumpeting a government loan repayment, it would be churlish not to point out that, by Detroit standards anyway, GM’s “partial refund” is actually kind of a big deal. Take today’s news from the nearly year-long liquidation of “Old CarCo,” the poisoned (in some cases, literally) remains of what was once “Bad Chrysler.” Bloomberg reports that the US Treasury’s $5b line of credit has been placed in the “unsecured” category of Old CarCo’s last debts, meaning recovery is “undetermined.” As in not so very likely at all.

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Already a good year into its hype-cycle, Toyota’s much-discussed FT-86 sports coupe is apparently losing some of the focus that made it an instant (theoretical) hit with enthusiasts. According to Autocar, Toyota has given up on its price point goal of $20,000 for a base model in the Japanese market, bumping MSRP targets to $23k for a base model and $26k for loaded examples. No word on how this will affect US-market prices, which Toyota has never disclosed goals for. And if this were the only news coming out of FT-86-land, we might have ignored it altogether. Sadly though, the price shift reflects larger trends within the FT-86’s development, none of which are wildly promising from the perspective of the enthusiasts that this car was allegedly being built for.

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Much of the speculation in the leadup to Fiat’s five year plan announcement centered on a long-rumored spin-off of Fiat’s auto business from the rest of the industrial conglomerate. Speculators even drove up Fiat’s share price considerably yesterday on hopes that the long-awaited spin-off would be announced today. And sure enough, Fiat did announce today that it would be spinning off part of its business. The only problem, according to Automotive News [sub], is that the newly-formed unit isn’t made up of Fiat, Alfa and Lancia, but Iveco and New Case Holland. Instead of its car operations, Fiat is bundling off its heavy commercial truck and tractor business into a new entity known as Fiat Industrial S.p.A. (Fiat-branded light commercial vehicles and Fiat Powertrain will remain behind).

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The last ten years have not been kind to Fiat’s Alfa-Romeo brand, as 2009 sales levels fell to about half their 2000 volumes. Having put Alfa on “strategic review” and stuffed it into a “brand channel” with Maserati and Abarth, CEO Sergio Marchionne has had a change of heart, and is now “determined” to build the brand into a “full-line premium carmaker.” According to Automotive News [sub]’s coverage of Fiat’s five year plan presentation, that means committing to a US presence targeting 85,000 annual sales by 2014. For a sense of scale, the Alfa brand sold a grand total of 103,000 units globally last year. And Alfa is going to have to kick ass around the world to meet Sergio’s goals. By the time Marchionne expects American Alfisti to buy 85k units each year, he wants the brand’s global sales to have increased nearly five-fold to half a million units. Ambitious doesn’t even begin to describe it…

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