Reuters reporter Ben Klayman, part of their stellar Detroit team, assisted by Christiaan Hetzner in Frankfurt, did a great piece about the grim options that await Steve Girsky and his merry band of hatchet men when they go over to Europe to whip Opel in shape. It could actually be the end of Opel instead of a glorious future, the report says.

“Options for restructuring Opel range from bad to worse and could include a form of bankruptcy, analysts and bankers say. Costs will have to be slashed further, steps that could include politically charged job cuts and plant closures in Europe. Girsky, who was named chairman of Opel’s supervisory board on Monday, could look for new partners for Opel to share costs, and even return to the idea of selling the brand once it has been repaired, analysts said.”

Adam Jonas, analyst at Morgan Stanley, Girsky’s former employer, says it best:

“You can’t say the words ‘all options are on the table, we rule out nothing’ unless there’s something fundamentally changing.” Read More >

Opel workers and managers are deeply worried: It’s not just cuts that are coming. GM is sending a team of feared slashers. Says the Wall Street Journal:

“Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, GM’s second-highest-ranking executive, will become chairman of the Opel supervisory board. Tim Lee, president of GM’s international operations, and financial chief Daniel Ammann also will join the Opel board, the company said.”

Supposedly, GM was surprised and appalled that the European business hit GM’s bottom line with an operative loss of $292 million in the third quarter, despite increased sales. I am not surprised at all. I have always warned that restructuring Opel and cutting jobs is an expensive exercise. And those costs were mostly delayed into the third quarter.

Now Girsky and his team of handpicked hatchet men are coming. Read More >

Never let it be said that the General has lost its touch for whimsy. Other manufacturers may simply introduce a new mid-sized sedan… but where’s the fun in that? Far better to build both the old car and the new car at the same time, sell them side-by-side, and make sure customers can only buy the new one in a highly-specialized trim level. That way, all that pesky new-car fever is thoroughly dissipated and the public has completely lost interest by the time the mainstream models are available.

Without further ado, then, here’s your 2013 Malibu, available solely in “eAssist” form for the first half of 2012.

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As the world struggles to come to grips with economic uncertainty, Bertel has been reporting that Japanese automakers are abandoning their homeland for lower-cost production centers overseas. Now, with economic turmoil shifting to Europe, it seems that Fiat could possibly be preparing for a pullback from Italy. Two basic factors are driving Fiat towards reconsidering its global manufacturing footprint: first, its struggles in the European market where margins are slim and dropping, second, its battles with Italian unions. Though Marchionne’s latest comments are ambiguous at best, some see these factors pushing the Italian automaker away from the market that gave it birth.
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When I wrote an article about the “Mosler Raptor GTR” last week, I certainly wasn’t expecting to start the proverbial tempest in the teapot… but that is exactly what happened. One week later, there have been threats of lawsuits, endless phone calls, multiple “do not forward” e-mails arriving from several players in the situation, and what amounted to an outright request that TTAC abandon its editorial integrity to serve the interests of one individual.

Now, thanks to Matt Hardigree, Ray Wert, and the staff at Jalopnik, we know (some of) the rest of the story…

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With a tough negotiating session with its traditional employers now complete, the United Auto Workers are turning their focus back to the year’s primary goal: organizing the transplant factories. 2011 was supposed to be the year in which the UAW took down “at least one” foreign-owned auto plant, with the union’s boss even going as far as to say

If we don’t organize the transnationals, I don’t think there is a long-term future for the UAW

But as we found, the UAW is not welcome in the South, where most of the transplant factories are found. And with Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and VW all rejecting the UAW’s advances in some form or another, the union’s options are fairly limited. So instead of taking on the factories directly, the UAW is bringing back a questionable tactic from the days when it was misleadingly bashing Toyota for “abandoning” the NUMMI factory: they are taking the fight to dealerships.

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If you are one of those who are itching to buy a new car after years of economy-induced withdrawal, one of the many questions that may run through your mind is the exit strategy from that shiny new car. In other words: How well will the car hold its value? If you want the executive summary: Buy just about any Toyota, Lexus, or the 2012 Jeep Wrangler.

If you need more detail, hit the jump. Read More >

Say what you want about Saab fans, the guys have some dedication. At a time when most have finally accepted the fact that Saab is at the end of the line, Saab’s hard-core “dead-enders” are taking up their social media arms to rescue their beloved brand. After all they have a perfect opportunity: after months of wading through a quagmire, uncertain whether to support Victor Muller, Vladimir Antonov, or one of Saab’s Chinese suitors, all Saab fans can now rally against their old enemy, GM. Long blamed for Saab’s decline despite the fact that the brand’s peak sales came under its ownership, GM has long been the bête noire for Saabistas. And with GM now taking the wheel of Saab’s fate, Saab’s rabid fans have taken over GM’s Facebook wall, posting images of their favorite Saabs and demanding The General “let Saab go.” Will it be enough to convince GM to go against its carefully-crafted Chinese relationships and interests by giving Saab carte blanche to ship its technology wherever its new Chinese masters want? Don’t count on it. But for the moment GM has to sit through the online equivalent of an “Occupy” protest.

Since ruling Americas roads in the heyday of the US auto industry, sales of large sedans (as a percentage of the overall market) have been in a decades-long slump. More recently, as SUVs have merged with large cars to form the modern crossover, the decline in large car sales has picked up speed. And there’s reason to expect that trend to continue, as a closer look at the data shows that market support for large sedans has eroded farther than even these numbers might suggest. One of TTAC’s well-placed sources reveals that the “large car” segment (admittedly, a notoriously difficult segment to accurately capture) is running at 50% fleet sales, year-to-date through October. That’s right, every second large sedan sold in this country end up as a fleet vehicle, many of them daily rentals.

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Saab’s Memorandum of Understanding with PangDa and Youngman expired today, returning Saab to what must by now be a rather comforting, familiar state of limbo. Of course, the MoU in question was already dead, as GM had publicly nixed it, saying it wouldn’t supply parts or license technology to a 100% Chinese-owned Saab. But now, without an official agreement to rally around, Swedish Automobile, PangDa and Youngman are desperately pitching new ownership structures to GM in hopes of approval. Swedish Auto’s Victor Muller tells the WSJ [sub]

We are submitting an information package to GM and we will have to await the feedback that GM has on that package and then we’ll know.

Muller says the lesson of the failed MoU is that GM won’t accept Chinese control, and as a result the new proposed ownership structure is “very carefully crafted” so that none of the three partners has complete control. But since the previous deal, in which PangDa and Youngman would split a 54% stake in Saab, is also off the table, it’s tough to say what Muller’s “carefully crafted structure” entails. And while Saab and its Chinese suitors wait for GM approval that may never come (but don’t tell Keith Crain [sub] that!), it seems both time and money are getting tight. Again. Still.

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Hear about two high-ranking Mitsubishi execs leaving their positions simultaneously, and you might be forgiven for thinking “rats leaving the sinking ship.” After all, Mitsubishihas been in deep decline for the better part of a decade, as sales have fallen from a peak of over 345,000 units in 2002. But in actuality, Mitsubishi is having something of a turnaround year. Sales are up 51% year-over-year, and volume crossed the 70k mark in October, guaranteeing the brand its best year of sales since 2008. So, why did VP of marketing and product strategy Gregory Adams, and vice president of corporate planning and incentives Mike Krebs leave Mitsu “to pursue other opportunities”? Automotive News [sub] offers few answers beyond pointing out that Krebs is a ten-year veteran of Mitsubishi Motors America, while Adams joined in 2010. Why the two decided to jump ship (or were forced out) at the same time remains a mystery  for now…

GM has made much of the fact that its Chevrolet Cruze compact has enjoyed strong sales this year, but volume alone isn’t enough to make it in today’s car industry. The key to profitability is keeping production in line with sales, so that plants don’t overproduce, in turn forcing profit-sapping incentives to move the metal. And, as these charts show, GM has been having success selling the Cruze, but not to the extent that it needs to keep production at its current levels. The graph above shows monthly production and sales levels for this year, and it shows that GM has already tried to adjust production once to keep it in line with slower-than-expected sales. But that wasn’t enough. With sales volume dropping the last four months in a row, and inventory jumping from 33 days to 43 days in the month of October alone, the UAW is reporting that the Lordstown plant where Cruze is built will be idled for the entire week of November 28. According to the announcement

The down week is necessary to align production with current market demand. The scheduling modification is attributed to traditional seasonal buying behavior coupled with competitors’ recovering inventories previously impacted by the March earthquake in Japan.

Like a lot of recent Detroit products, the Cruze has received a lot of positive press due to its giant improvement in quality and sales compared to its predecessor. But with demand softening, and GM’s brass fretting over profitability margins as the market shifts to smaller cars, it’s clear that the Cruze’s ultimate success has yet to be proven.

With Saab’s latest MOU with PangDa and Youngman expiring on Tuesday, the heat is on for parent company Swedish Automobile (SWAN) to hash out the many problems and disagreements between GM and the proposed Chinese buyers. And now that it’s fairly obvious that a deal won’t happen, as GM and the Chinese Government seem fairly well set against it, the question is “what next?” How do you plan an endgame that should have been initiated months, if not years ago? That’s the challenge being considered by the few remaining shareholders in SWAN, who are meeting in Holland to pick through the none-too appealing options.

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In an era where print publications are increasingly conscious of external scrutiny, ethics issues, and responsibility to one’s readers, one might expect that Washington Post auto reviewer Warren Brown would see some kickback from being exposed in the American Journalism Review earlier this year. As it turns out, Mr. Brown has been singled out by his peers… but not, perhaps, in the way one might expect.

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Since the Tokyo Auto Show and some Scion scuttlebutt have us on something of a Daihatsu theme here, I thought I’d show a bit of what the small car specialists are up to these days. The truth: despite the brand’s futuristic showcar image projections, Daihatsu mostly plays in the rough-and-tumble entry-level segments of emerging markets, where the cars are small and the margins can be even smaller.

And it’s had better luck there than in the so-called “mature markets.” Though the third generation Charade flopped on the American market amid much popular ridicule of its name (and, according to gearhead lore, oversight of other favorable qualities), the previous generation became the FAW-Tianjin “Xiali,” one of China’s most ubiquitous cars. Now Daihatsu is ditching Europe and  hustling strangely cool little mini-MPVs built in Indonesia with the taglines “it’s very cheap” and “we build them compact.” Who needs developed markets?
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