Your personal information is valuable.

When I liquidated vehicles for Capital One, we typically examined over 14,000 variables before lending out our money to a customer.

Any customer. A credit card. An automobile. A commercial loan. It didn’t matter. We needed to get to know the economics of you first.

All of the low rates and big profits were dependent on buying your personal information, and then crafting decision models and metrics to determine your personal risk.

Our success in auto finance generated low rates for our customers and low delinquencies for our investors. But they both could have been far lower.

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Despite being attacked in some circles as symbols of American decadance, the compact crossover is rapidly gaining in popularity. French business outlet La Tribune reports that sales of small crossovers are up 25 percent this year, with crossovers of all sizes now accounting for 10 percent of the car market.

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Yesterday, Bertel posted that Michigan, home to the United Auto Workers and a state where twice the national average of workers are organized by labor unions, “might” soon pass a right-to-work law, something that is anathema to labor unions. It appears that law will be enacted even faster than soon. On Thursday afternoon, with thousands of protesters at the capitol representing both sides of the issue, the first step in the legislative process, approval by the state House of Representatives, took place with the passage of House Bill 4054. The legislation is expected to be passed by the Michigan Senate and signed into law by Governor Snyder by the middle of next week.

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Aston Martin won’t be sold to the Indians, nor will it be sold to the Chinese. The low-intensity bidding war for the British boutique sports car maker was won by the Italian private equity group Investindustrial. It is buying 37.5 percent for $241 million via a capital increase agreed with majority Kuwaiti owner Investment Dar, Reuters reports after having received confirmation by Aston Martin. Read More >

In September, formerly red-hot sales of Japanese cars in China began to crater after cars were turned over and dealerships torched as fallout of a diplomatic row between Japan and China. Sales were down by about a half in October, and a little less than a third in November. At TTAC, we were skeptical that sales will be back to their old glory in a few months. A high ranking Toyota executive said for the first time that it will take long to recover. Read More >

Perenially broke Ontario is now subsidizing electric vehicle charges. Consumers can claim as much as $1,000 of the total cost of the charger

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Although I’m not much of a fan of Mercedes current product lineup, the AMG vehicles hold a special place in my heart – they’re not dynamically superior to BMW’s M cars, or even some of the quicker Audis, and you can’t get them with a proper manual gearbox; but they are a naked display of conspicuous consumption, and for that, I love them. So news of an all-new, all-wheel drive AMG product neither surprises nor disappoints me.

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In the bankruptcy auction for EV battery maker A123 that begins today, Reuters is reporting that NEC of Japan and Siemens of Germany are going to join China’s Wangxiang and Wisconsin’s Johnson Controls in bidding for the entire company.

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If you know how to listen and who to listen to, you have heard for weeks that Hyundai is not the only one with overenthusiastic EPA ratings, and that other car companies might soon have to restate their MPG numbers. The carmaker mentioned most often in those whispers was Ford.  Today, Consumer Reports magazine said that Ford’s C-Max and Fusion hybrids fall about 20 percent short of their fuel economy claims. Read More >

Now turn your hymnals, as the great man once said, to Number Four, and we’ll sing two choruses of Withering Contempt.

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In its darkest hour, GM handed China-partner SAIC half of GM’s India business in return for some cash. Recently,  GM injected cash (which it has again) into the joint venture, which resulted in GM owning 91 percent of the India business, and SAIC nine. That was widely lauded as GM regaining its independence. Some even said GM and SAIC don’t get along anymore. The opposite is true: GM and SAIC are expected to march hand in hand all over Southeast Asia. SAIC’s influence on GM is spreading. Read More >

This is going to be interesting: Michigan lawmakers are expected to introduce right-to-work legislation today,  Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder is for it, the UAW, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan is fiercely against it. Read More >

The (not really) silent bidding for British sports car maker Aston Martin still is undecided. The current  favorite appears to be the Mahindra Brothers in India, with  an Italian private equity group also interested. Allegedly, there is another courtier, and that is China’s Geely. Read More >

While Japan may be a “closed market” in the eyes of some, imported cars from America are all the rage in South Korea. Honda is planning on sending no fewer than six American-made cars; the Civic, Accord, Odyssey, CR-V, Crosstour and Pilot will all be sent to South Korea as Honda attempts to become a net exporter of American made vehicles.

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Usually, China gets accused of copying from America. This time, U.S. lawmakers will itch to copy a new Chinese law that comes in effect on January 1. Stealing this idea could help solve the current cash flow problems in Washington, and could provide a happy ending to the DC fiscal cliff-hanger. It also could provide an elegant way to eliminate disagreeable competitors. Car companies would not like it at all. Read More >