I am coming back to China after having been away for months. My trusted sidekick of many years, a lady surnamed Zhang, seeks my advice. “Bertel, we have car problems.” Uh-oh, I think, and I mentally do a review of my accounts. This smells expensive. As it turns out, the problem is bigger than what money can solve.
Ms. Zhang explains that her mother won the lottery. The Beijing license plate lottery.
Read More >
As a Chinese New Year expert, you most likely know where February auto sales in China headed: Down. Knowing how our patent-pending Chinese sales oracle, GM, did, you could also predict that there is a silver lining. And so it happened. Read More >
Hyundai and Buick are feeling the heat in China, and the industry might rethink past practices of freewheeling Twitter snark. Hyundai and a Buick dealer made remarks about the quality of their products after a 2-month-old baby was abducted along with the RAV4 it was in. Chinese commenters did not like it at all. Read More >
Let’s say you want a Fünfer BMW, but you are experiencing cash flow issues.
Mei wen ti, no problem if you are in China. Creative and innovative Chinese companies are here to help.
Here is how it works:
Today, GM did something highly unusual: It abandoned all spin and said that sales in China were down pretty much across the board in February: “General Motors and its joint ventures sold 215,070 vehicles in China during February. Sales were down 10.6 percent from the same month last year due to the week-long Lunar New Year holiday falling in February this year.” We at TTAC understand. Read More >
As expected, sales of Japanese cars in China took a nosedive to levels not seen since the days after Japanese cars and dealerships were torched last September. Sales of Nissan and Toyota are down a whopping 46 percent. No, it’s not a new flare-up of anti-Japanese riots. This time, it’s the effect of the Chinese Lunar calendar. Read More >
Max Warburton and his team. Warburton, of Bernstein Research, assembled a team to interview over 40 auto executives in China (both Chinese and foreign-born) and even bought two Chinese vehicles from Geely and Great Wall. Warburton had them shipped to Europe, where they were taken to a test track, driven extensively and then taken apart by engineers and automotive consultants. And it was far from pretty.
Li Shufu, Chairman Geely
Two months ago, we wrote that Geely will pour $11 billion into a development program for the next generation Volvos, and that half of that money would go to Sweden. Our commentariat did not quite buy that and said that the technology will go to China. Right they were. Read More >
The Chinese-Israeli co-production Qoros has not sold a single car yet, but it already finds itself in the legal hot seat. Via a temporary injunction of a court in Hamburg, Germany, Audi precluded Qoros from using – the letter Q.
Reports by Bloomberg suggest that Fisker could sell up to an 85 percent stake to Chinese automaker Dongfeng. The automaker apparently bid $350 million for the beleaguered plug-in car maker, according to sources close to the company.
In a month’s time, we’ll have our first look at the new Cadillac CTS, when GM takes the wraps off of its new luxury sedan at the New York Auto Show. The new CTS is merely the first in a wave of new cars for Cadillac, along with the already unveiled ELR plug-in hybrid.
Did you do what we told you and collect bets on China’s auto market in January? Even if you usually disagree with TTAC, even if you only read TTAC ten times a day to see what scandalous biased stuff we write, this time, you should have followed our advice. China’s new cars sales in January were up 46.38 percent as compared to January 2012, says China’s manufacturers association CAAM. How did we see that coming? Read More >
Daimler’s trials and tribulations should be a warning to those automakers who are too gung-ho about the Chinese market. The market is big, but it can hurt big when there are Chinese constipations. Daimler has been falling behind in China while its Bavarian competition by Audi and BMW racked-up double digit gains in the Middle Kingdom. Promptly, the Chinese flu affected the whole body. Says Reuters: Read More >
China’s love affair with crossovers and PSA’s desire to expand in the country has led to a logical conclusion; why not a crossover for the Citroen DS line, one that PSA is trying to push hard as a premium alternative to the usual upscale offerings?
Needs a lift
Three days ago, I showed you how to become a clairvoyant without even trying, or just by reading TTAC. If you followed my simple method of predicting the Chinese market in January and February, you could now collect on your first bet. GM, our patent-pending sales oracle for the Chinese market reports humongous sales, and an “all-time record month in China.” Is that the big turn-around? Read More >
Recent Comments