Nissan and Mitsubishi today presented their jointly developed, but separately badged and marketed kei car to an amazingly large contingent of the Japanese press.  TTAC readers are quite familiar with the car(s). They have watched the Nissan DAYZ and its Mitsubishi siblings, the eK Wagon and eK Custom  on its first day of production at Mitsubishi’s  plant in Mizushima, near Hiroshima, more than two weeks ago. Today, the car arrived in Tokyo.
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Japanese automakers are a little less worried when they look westwards to China, as their sales appear to slowly recover from a severe drumming during the island crisis.  Read More >

May sales were down in Japan, and this time around, small kei cars could not bail out their bigger brethren. Imports into the allegedly closed market Japan on the other hand are zooming, despite the weaker yen that makes imports more expensive. Read More >

Toyota has a “good chance” of selling a record number of luxury Lexus vehicles this year, Mark Templin, executive vice president of Lexus International, told Reuters.  With a weaker yen, those mostly made-in-Japan cars might actually turn a profit. Read More >

Carlos Ghosn and Osamu Masuko CEO of Mitsubishi

Renault chief Carlos Ghosn is reaching out, forging foreign alliances with a heavy emphasis on emerging markets. “Faced with the slump in the European markets,” writes the French Figaro, Renault is “edging closer to Mitsubishi.” Nothing is official, and if you ask on the record, you get firm denials, such as the “this is not true,”  told to Reuters by a Mitsubishi Motors spokesman. Behind the scenes, there are traces of heavy petting. Let’s look into them. Read More >

Today’s Nikkei [sub] puts forth an interesting thought: Dependence on big pick-ups distracts the Detroit 3 on a global basis. Now, tiny kei cars could do the same to the Japanese.  Writes the Nikkei:

“Part of the reason the Big Three U.S. automakers lost their international dominance is because they lagged foreign carmakers in implementing global strategies by clinging to large pickup trucks, which only do well in the U.S.” Read More >

Kawasaki Heavy Industries has developed “technology to produce fuel for cars from farm waste at a cost that is competitive with imported ethanol made from food products, such as sugar cane,” Reuters says. Read More >

Toyota announced today what it calls the “Big Data Traffic Information Service,” a giant mashup of data harvested from currently 3.3 million of telematics users in Japan, and 700,000 Toyota customers equipped with a Digital Communication Module (DCM), a gizmo that constantly monitors and transmits vehicle data.  Combined with other telematics data, the harvest powers navigation and information services. Unlike other systems, Toyota’s on-line platform can also be used by local governments and businesses. Read More >

The fact that GM creates 6,000 jobs in China and will invest $11 billion in China until 2016 (and $16 billion in America)  gets all the headlines.  What falls under the table is the fact that someone else invests $76 billion each year straight into more than a million Americans.  It’s the Japanese auto industry. Read More >

Honda’s jet was supposed to be commercially available in 2012, and then in 2013, but it will be another wait of another year. The FAA certification of Honda’s small business jet is delayed until late next year, “due to a minor issue in the certification procedure, which has since been resolved,” says Reuters. Read More >

Nissan Dayz or Mitsubishi eK Wagon?

TTAC finally found the holy grail of the auto-blogosphere: We busted a stringent embargo that won’t lift for more than two weeks. We did that on cars that are unobtainable for most. We blew the tarps not off one, but two makes.  We didn’t find a dealer brochure, we caught the cars while they were made.
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Thursday-afternoon press  conferences at Mitsubishi and Nissan remained mostly deserted  as the Fourth Estate congregated at Honda to hear the not so secret news that Honda will return to F1. I didn’t go because I thought we don’t cover F1. When I remembered that we now do, it was too late. Did I mention that running around Tokyo covering the auto beat is a world of tough decisions? Read More >

Of course, Carlos Ghosn did not miss this opportunity to talk about his most favorite topic: The value of the yen.  As last Friday, the CEO of Renault and Nissan still does not want to hear talk of a low yen. Ghosn says the Japanese currency “is coming back to normal levels,” and as far as Ghosn is concerned, the yen still has some ways to go. Even if this freaks-out  the CEO of Ford. Read More >

Yoko Kubota of Reuters had already written half of her story before we boarded a bus this Tokyo morning. It took us north to Nissan’s Tochigi plant, where we were promised to see the new Infiniti Q50 roll off the assembly lines. Kubota wrote that “in the financial year ended March, Infiniti sold 172,615 vehicles globally, up 12.1 percent year-on-year,” that the brand needs to grow, that the backbone of Infiniti’s volume has been the G37 Sedan, and that its successor, “with a new name Q50, will go on sale in the United States in the summer.” Today, we see how the Q50 is made.

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Infiniti’s Q50 will come “this summer” says  the new York Daily News, which nonetheless already “reviewed”  it, coming to the conclusion that “the all new Infiniti Q50 will be base priced at just $36,450, and the expected to be most popular trim level, the “Premium,” featuring an optional, navigation system is expected to come in at $40,700.” Read More >