Every evening and every morning, and times in-between, Nick Reilly wonders why he exchanged his cushy job as Shanghai-based chief of GM’s international operations with the purgatory of heading Opel in Rüsselsheim. This Tuesday morning, he woke up to more news from hell:

An unholy alliance of the center-right German government and the supposedly left-leaning unions told him that his turn-around plan for Opel is rotten, and if GM doesn’t cough up €1.65b, there won’t be a cent in government money. Read More >

Maisara Gad writes in from Egypt to register his unhappiness with a recently purchased Lifan 520 which blew its gearbox at 70 km/hr.

Do you Call this a car ? Since i got this JUNK and i have been allways in problems .. the car is full of problems .. check out the web site i started to let the world see how junk car you sell to the public.. i wouldnt stop showing every one this junk car

Yes, well it is a 20-year-old Citroen ZX with the latest in Chinese styling and interior work. With that kind of pedigree, it’s hard to have too many expectations. Still, Chinese automakers who thought that success in foreign markets is as easy as improving crash test videos on Youtube should take note.

Typically, the only reports on China’s BYD involve booming Chinese sales, unproven future products, and Warren Buffett’s investment in the battery and auto manufacturing conglomerate. But these don’t tell the whole story of how BYD has emerged from relative obscurity to publicly announcing that it intends to challenge Toyota to become the world’s top automaker by 2018. Chinese outlet Caixin [via GreenCarReports] attempts to shed some light on BYD and what it takes to rise to the top of China’s massive manufacturing industry, in a piece titled “How Manufacturing’s Mockingbird Sings.” The piece details BYD’s reliance on reverse engineering, the practice of stripping down competitor automobiles and components and copying them, and its extreme (even by Chinese standards) dependence on cheap labor.

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Toyota is getting in big kuso (doo-doo) back home.

Up until now, the company could do no wrong. Largest company in Japan. Largest employer. Provided income to countless publishing houses that printed books about the Toyota Way.

Now, Toyota is being blamed for Japan’s falling reputation abroad, political difficulties, and just about everything including the bad weather (it snowed this morning in Tokyo,) and the falling GDP. Read More >

While the world is trying to come to grips with pedal-gate, tiny Hong Kong is attempting an exorcism of its own gremlins: 18,000 (mostly Toyota Crown) taxis and 2,000 minibuses are propelled by LPG, liquefied petroleum gas. The gas is lugged around in a large tank housed in the trunk of the taxis, much to the chagrin of suitcase-schlepping tourists. The real problem is: The LPG mobiles are breaking down in wholesale fashion, China Daily reports. Hundreds a month.

The Hong Kong government set up a special task force to investigate. Nobody is blaming Toyota – this time. Read More >

And the winner is (left.)

China’s 11th Five-Year Plan (they still have one of those) encourages industrial design as one of the six key modern service sectors that will receive priority support from the central government.

One of these support measures was the creation of a government-sponsored patent award, which “ aims to boost the nation’s intellectual property strategy and accelerate creation of proprietary intellectual property,” as Gasgoo put it.

FAW’s Besturn B70 was the only design patent to win a gold medal at the 11th China Patent Awards in Beijing. There is just a small niggling problem: Read More >

And yet again, the reports of Chinese cars flooding worldwide markets have been greatly exaggerated. The reverse is true: Chinese car exports are a disaster. China’s already anemic auto exports dropped 46 percent in 2009. That according to China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) data reported in China Daily. Read More >

China’s passenger car sales in January skyrocketed an unbelievable 115.5 percent from a year earlier, China’s official scorekeeper, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said today. A total of 1.32m passenger cars were sold last month in China, compared with 610,600 units a year earlier. In December 2009, 1.1m units changed hands, Reuters reports. The January number is even more surprising as the China Passenger Car Association had originally figured that China’s passenger car sales rose 84 per cent in January. We compared the Reuters story with Xinhua, the official word on China, and Xinhua also says: “Passenger car sales were up 113.21 percent to 1.32 million units last month.”

Overall vehicle sales, including buses and trucks as well as cars, were even more amazing: A total of 1.66m units in January, up 126.3 percent from 735,500 units a year earlier. Keeping passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles apart is a frustrating exercise in China. Minivans for instance, and of course pickups, count as commercial vehicles. Read More >

While Toyota is successful in hitting the target it painted on its own foot, Chinese manufacturers are setting more ambitious targets, Gasgoo reports. On the average, domestic automakers plan for 30 percent expansion. Joint venture car makers are a little more restrained. Read More >

Premium cars are a hard sell? Not in China. The Chinese developed a ravenous appetite for Germany’s luxury brands. In January, all three German premium makes, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, more than doubled their sales, reports Das Autohaus. Read More >

China’s car industry has big plans. According to the China Business Journal, cited by the Nikkei [sub], China’s top 14 automakers are planning and building for a combined output capacity of 23 million vehicles in 2012. “With other carmakers included, the total figure will likely top 25 million,” says the Nikkei.

Last year, China became the world’s largest auto market, with 13.64m vehicles sold. Demand is officially projected to grow by 10-15 percent a year, reaching 20m units in 2012. “Consequently, there is the possibility of excess capacity,“ worries the Nikkei. (They are ostensibly not worried about 20m cars being sold, an idea that makes peak oilers lose precious sleep while they are wearing out their – plastic – keyboards on the message boards.)

As far as this reporter is concerned, 5m excess capacity in 2012 would fall in the „nice problem to have“ category.

One, Chinese projections are notoriously lowballed. Read More >

IP squad, to the front! SinoCast, relying on information from a “top executive of Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd.” says that Geely will buy 100 percent of Volvo, “including the ownership of existing technologies in the fields of safety and environmental protection, as well as technologies of new car models.”

Before, it was reported that Ford could hold back some sensitive technology, namely new environmental and safety gear. Nothing doing, says Geely. Also, Geely seeks to get their hands on advanced hybrid and electric car technologies jointly developed by Volvo and Vattenfall. Read More >

China’s Tengzhong is a little-known machinery maker in southwest China’s Sichuan province. They have  been buying GM’s Hummer for what, more than half a year now? Today they said that they and GM have agreed not to rush it and to push back the deadline for the closing  from January 31 to the end of February. Delaying it was a prudent move, because there still is no approval  from Chinese regulators. If they don’t have approval now, then they probably won’t have it by end of February either. Due to the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities, most of China will be closed for most of February, and the really important regulators will not be back from Spring vacation before March. Read More >

The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association today officially conceded defeat and yielded the title “world’s top automobile manufacturer in 2009” to China, reports the Nikkei [sub]. The world had known for quite some time that China made more than 13m cars in 2009, and that Japanese production was a mere shadow of its former self. But it needs some time to sink in and to make it official.

Note: All that follows are production data, as opposed to sales data. In China, production data nearly equal sales data. Couldn’t be more different than in Japan. Here, usually twice as many cars are made than sold. Half of the Made in Japan cars are exported. Usually. Let’s see what happened this time. Read More >

Europe has largely shifted towards a CO2-based vehicle taxation regimen. Next in line to tax what comes out of your car may be, wonders of wonders, China.

“Drivers in China may be taxed on the level of emissions produced from their vehicles in the future,” writes China Daily, citing the comments of an official of the Beijing Development and Reform Commission (BDRC). Read More >