With GM’s share price currently hovering below $25, well under its $33 IPO price, The General is holding its second annual Global Business Conference in hopes of encouraging investors the world over to buy into its turnaround. A webcast is currently streaming over at the GM Investor Relations website, but the key points are available in slides available in PDF here. The presentation involves nearly every level of GM’s business, so listening in and reading the entire PDF is going to be the best way to make sense of what GM is trying to communicate… but if you just want an overview, check out the gallery below for a few hand-picked slides, illustrating some of the more important points.

By late 2012, BMW will be showing the world a facelifted version of its current 7-Series flagship, in hopes of extending its new dominance in the luxury thermonuclear wars. But, with Mercedes determined to retake the throne, it’s developing an all-new S-Class, to debut in early 2013. Known as the 222, this new S-Class will reportedly be styled with an eye towards the 2007 F700 concept, and will debut in Detroit rather than Beijing, where the updated 7er will launch. For now though, it’s rolling around in heavily-camouflaged mule form, practicing the fine art of luxury before going into battle with the Bavarians. With all the hopes of the Mercedes brand on its back, this next-generation luxury warrior has a lot to live up to.

With BMW breaking new eco-friendly premium ground with its “i”-branded concepts, it seems Audi does not want to be out-greened… or out-weirded. This “Audi e-tron Urban Concept” was seen in Berlin’s Potsdammer Platz, ahead of its introduction at the forthcoming Frankfurt Auto Show, where we’ll doubtless learn more about why this is the future for environmentally correct urban dwellers. For now though, all we know is that it’s heavily Messerschmitt Kabinenroller-inspired, as Autobild reports that it features tandem seating and a slide-back canopy along with its modern carbon fiber construction and electric drivetrain. From the look of this video though, the most surprising part of this car (to Berliners, anyway) appears to the Audi badge. What a strange new world we live in…

For the first minute and ten seconds or so of this video, you might be thinking “so what, it’s just an SUV with quad pipes?” After the 1:10 mark, though, when the development mule for the new Mercedes ML63 AMG starts flying around the track, you may just begin to wonder if the laws of physics are being bent. There’s something a little distressing about watching a 5,000+ lb ute tucking through tight corners, as if the car guy’s traditional fetish for light weight were suddenly revealed to be some kind of cruel joke. But perhaps what’s really bothering me is that I know I’ll never see one of these things driven this way, unless some famous football player commits a heinous crime of some kind and leads cops on a modern, high-speed update of OJ Simpson’s infamous chase. In which case, I’d say this might just be the vehicle to have.

GM’s North American boss Mark Reuss released this, the first official teaser image of the 2013 Cadillac ATS, at the Management Briefing Seminar in Traverse City this morning. Previously we’d had only an under-the-skin look at what appears to be the ATS along with the usual mule shots, but this teaser doesn’t cast a whole lot of light on the situation. I mean, frankly, it just looks… like a Cadillac. Between this shot and the dire rumors surrounding the ATS’s Alpha Platform development, I feel like I’m beginning to understand what GM CEO Dan Akerson meant when he said that this ATS and Caddy’s new “flagship” XTS

are not going to blow the doors off, but they will be very competitive.

Infiniti’s Essence Concept has been making the rounds since 2009, generating all kinds of speculation about its production possibilities. In fact, so desperate are the autojourno hordes for a GTR-based Infiniti halo car based on the Essence, that CAR magazine recently asked Carlos Ghosn if Nissan were working on such a car, and interpreted the following answer as a “maybe.”

The idea makes sense. The technology is here, the platform is here. It’s a great car, the GT-R. Is it a project now? No. But I don’t want to give you the impression we’ll never do that. But I don’t want you to think that it’s coming in the next two to three years either.

Yeah, that’s definitely a “no, but you’re just too adorable to disappoint.” Anyway, little did anyone guess that the Essence’s chief function (besides wowing show-goers) would be lending its sleek schnozz to the facelifted 2012 Infiniti FX crossover… and yet here it is. Who could imagine that a big-volume crossover would be a higher priority for a luxury brand than a range-topping super-coupe?

Autocar reports that the new “Baby Jag” roadster, will hit the European market by late 2012, cost £40,000 (about the same as a Boxster S) and “will blow the rest of the industry away.” According to the British buff book

The styling of the XE, Autocar understands, follows the company’s philosophy of “expressing lightness”. This is a new Jaguar styling principle that should result in the shape of future models “visually reflecting” the fact that they are made entirely of aluminium.

Unfortunately, because it shares its all-alu platform with the next-gen XK, it won’t be quite as light as a Boxster, with production weight estimated at 3,300 lbs. But, because this video only shows the “XE” (the name is still a matter of hot debate inside Jaguar) test mule, the most relevant detail is the drivetrain: a V6 of unrevealed displacement, in naturally-aspirated and supercharged forms, and hitched to an eight-speed automatic. The engine in this test video exhibits a nice, “emotional” raspy edge that is sure to satisfy in top-down driving, but the final clip of the video gives me the slushbox blues. Skip ahead to the 3:50 mark, when the mule accelerates from a stop, and it’s clear that (at least in mule form) this car shifts softly enough to sound almost like a CVT. Let’s hope they were just testing “touring” or “eco” mode or somesuch, because if you aren’t going to offer a manual transmission in a roadster, the slushbox needs to at least be able to bang some hard shifts when necessary.

Between Consumer Reports’ decision to drop the Honda Civic from its “recommended” list, the poor financial numbers, increased competition from Detroit, Wolfsburg and Korea and the chaos of the tsunami (not to mention the Toyota recall scandal), there are plenty of signs that the land of the rising sun is losing its grip on the US car market. But is the slide inexorable, or can Japan rally to regain its dominance? Here, via Automotive News [sub], is a graphic that projects the product cadence of Japan’s “big three” over model-years 2012-2015… does it give you hope for Japan, or do you see signs of continued struggles?

Each weekend, TTAC turns its attention to some of the more obscure news and stories from around the world, taking you from Jakarta to Haiti to Monaco… and now to New Zealand. Hungarian Skoda blog stipstop.com takes us to New Zealand in 1966, when Auckland-based Motor Lines were able to adapt a Jowett Bradford-based utility vehicle made by Kawerau into a Skoda Octavia-based Land Rover lookalike… and the Trekka was born!  Only 2,500 of the little runabouts were made in steel-paneled wagon and “ute” bodystyles (specs here), of which five served duty in Vietnam and one was purchased for unknown reasons by General Motors, which shipped it to Detroit in 1969. The Trekka was an “icon of the Kiwi can-do spirit” by the time it went out of production in 1973, and it was much loved in New Zealand, although it was never as capable as its Landie-alike bodywork suggested (a limited-slip differential was eventually developed for it). But the low-cost Trekka (it cost £895, less than a Morris 1100) was ultimately a product of New Zealand’s import tariffs, and as these began to fall in the 1970s, the Trekka’s day had passed. Today, fewer than 30 remaining models have been documented by trekka.co.nz.

When you talk to industry insiders about BMW, they most typically identify the brand’s great strength as it’s deep institutional knowledge about how to create satisfying road cars, an attribute that explains a lot of the brand’s previous conservatism about its product line. But expanding to include SUVs, hybrids and front-drive MINIs is one thing… starting a new brand as a completely clean sheet of paper, with hardly a trace of previous BMW technology, is quite another. And yet here they are: the i3 and the i8, the former of which launches in about two years. For a projected price of around €40k (BMW is also talking about car-sharing schemes), the i3 offers a 170 HP and 184 lb-ft of rear-drive electric power, wrapped up in an innovative construction concept that’s almost a throwback to body-on-frame (more like body-on-drivetrain) and is unique to the i brand. The whole thing is executed in carbon fiber reinforced plastic, hits 60 MPH in under 8 seconds, can reach 93 MPH and offers 80-100 miles of range. The i8 is further off, and is intended to be a four-door plug-in hybrid halo car, with a 5 second 0-60 time and front, rear or all-wheel-drive, depending on driving mode.

It’s all very Buck Rogers, like a set of Motorama cars of the future, and though the versions being shown now are called concepts, they’re supposed to be very, very close to the real thing. All we have to do now is wait, save our pennies and wait for the future to catch up.

As we’ve already seen, BMW is building a record number of variants of its next-generation 3 Series, including “GT” hatchback and X4 “Sport Activity Coupe.” But as this photo shows, there is at least one other Dreier bodystyle that we hadn’t heard about yet: the long wheelbase sedan (top). Given the brand’s post-Bangle swing towards extreme styling consistency, the decision between a LWB 3 series and a 5 series seems to have serious head-scratching potential… but it’s not something we’ll have to worry about. The LWB sports sedan will only be sold in China, according to Auto Motor und Sport, where upmarket buyers favor chauffeurs… even in the Ultimate Driving Machine.

With only a tiny bit of front-end camouflage left, the new Porsche 991 has been almost completely revealed… can you tell? One thing is for certain, Porsche’s not about to lose its reputation for evolutionary styling anytime soon.

Has Honda been gazing longingly at the new crop of Kia crossovers? From the pulled-back, smoked headlights to the sharp Hofmeister kink in the C-pillar, this “concept” version of the forthcoming 2012 Honda CR-V looks like it’s been stealing cues from Peter Schreyer’s sharp-looking lineup. Which is not to say the design is wholly unoriginal: the grille protruding into the headlights is one cue that I’ve seen precisely nowhere before. And lest we draw too many conclusions from this “near production” design, let’s just remember that the real thing won’t debut until later this fall.

If Saab survives long enough, it plans on developing three new vehicles which China’s Youngman Auto will build in China, including a 9-6X midsize crossover SUV. But, as it turns out, a 9-6X already exists… at the museum in Trollhättan. Auto Motor und Sport reports that six years after Saab did the hard work of re-badging a Subaru Tribeca, the firm has brought the prototype out of storage to show… I don’t know, what might have happened had GM kept its stake in Fuji Heavy Industries? The good news is that the Tribeca almost makes more sense as a Saab. In fact, it almost makes you wonder why Subaru didn’t just buy Saab, since it basically stole the Swedish brand’s college-town-lefty market niche. The bad news: Saab’s forthcoming made-in-China 9-6X probably won’t be as good as this cynical GM-era rebadge. Oh well, perhaps this six-year-old reminder of Saab’s extended decline will help the faithful get over their terminally ill Swedish patient…

Would you be a little bit surprised if the man behind this tiny, funky little electric van was the man who styled the VW Passat CC and first-generation Mercedes SLK? Well, Murat Günak has been heavily into the electric car game since leaving Volkswagen, having designed one of my favorite EVs, the fresh-and-freaky Mindset. But even though the Mia and the Mindset seem a little more in the same vein, Günak has actually moved well past the Mindset’s super-high-end positioning, as this Mia is set to sell for the lowest price of any EV in the EU, starting at €19,500 ($28k). For comparison, Mitsubishi’s iMiEV (the cheapest EV in the US market) sells for €34,390, or nearly $50k… although its European price is set to drop to closer to €15k when production ramps up.

But the Mia isn’t just (relatively) inexpensive… it’s downright cool. Built by the French firm Heuliez in either 9.4 or 10.5 foot lengths (the latter with 53 cubic feet of cargo space), it comes with a McLaren F1-style central driver’s seat and doors designed to operate in tight urban conditions. With a range of only 60 miles and a top speed of only slightly more than 60 MPH, it’s strictly an urban runabout, but as a small business delivery vehicle it seems to hit a lot of the right buttons… especially the three-hour charging time (an 80-mile-range battery is optional but takes five hours to charge). Production hits 10,000 units next year, when sales to private customers begin. [via Autobild]