GM’s Susan Docherty, who is in charge of Chevrolet Europe, is shocked by  GM alliance partner PSA Peugeot Citroen. PSA, along with Fiat, are producing “very scary numbers” with discounts of as much as 30 percent off gross sale prices, Docherty told Bloomberg. Opel’s numbers can be even scarier. Read More >

Mark writes:

Long time reader, first time commenter here…

I am in the market for a car for my daughter and I have noticed that the market is quite a bit different since the last time I bought a used car (2 years ago). When we bought a car for our oldest, I was looking for a 5/5/5 car — 5 years old, less than 50,000 miles and under $5k. Two years later I had to change that to 5/5/7 (for under $7,000). Now, I am seeing plenty of 8-10 year old Corolla/Civic/Elantra/etc with way north of 100k on the odo for $8,000 and more (private sale — dealers are even higher). This is in the NYC/Long Island area. $4 gas and crushed Clunkers have sure changed the market. My metric is out the window. Which brings me to…. Read More >

A day after TrueCar and Kelley handed in their sales forecasts for September, Edmunds followed. Edmunds is more on the cautious side and projects that 1,145,344 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. this month for an estimated Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of 14.4 million light vehicles, and up 8.8 percent from a year before. Read More >

I’m not one who identifies as a “wrong-wheel drive” Nazi like most people with zero performance driving experience online car enthusiasts are, but to me, this is not a BMW. I’m sure it will be a great car, with a very cool three-cylinder powertrain and a nice interior. It would probably make a lot of sense for someone like myself, given that it’s a plug-in car. But to me, this is BMW. Not a hybrid city car.

European auto sales likely will fall 8 percent this year, Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn told Reuters today in Paris. Should some industry leaders be hoping for government help, then Ghosn has bad news for them. There is “zero chance” for a government-led restructuring of Europe’s auto industry. ” Every company is going to have to deal with its own problems,” Ghosn said. Read More >

Long-time TTAC readers will recall my infatuation with Couch Guitar Straps and their MB-Tex “upcycled” products. Couch doesn’t just do Benz-based stuff, however; they make a very popular guitar strap from Fleetwood Talisman roof vinyl and various other products from Ford trunk linings, VW Beetle seat vinyl, and Seventies Pontiac upholstery.

This morning, Couch spammed me with something about a limited run of bright-green upcycled-from-seatbelts guitar straps, and while I was reflexively clicking the “Buy Now!” button like Pavlov’s pup I noticed a few new items for the Murilee Martin crowd.

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Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho was sitting in his company jet, ready to go to Beijing for talks with the Chinese leadership, but the jet never got off the ground. After Chinese aviation authorities refused landing permission in Beijing, Cho left his plane and went home, NHK reports. Read More >

After I went to California and induced some dude at Toyota to loan me a Hot Lava Orange Scion FR-S earlier in the month, I figured I’d see if Audi’s PR types had forgotten how I compared the R8 to my hooptiefied ’92 Civic. Sure enough, Audi’s institutional memory proved to have some threadbare spots, and so I was able to arrange for the use of an Audi A7 for my trip to California for the Vodden the Hell Are We Doing 24 Hours of LeMons at Thunderhill Raceway. That meant a lot of rural highway driving, a lot of loading of race equipment into the cargo area, and exactly zero pushing-the-edge-of-the-performance-envelope 11/10ths-tyle driving. We’ll follow up Mr. Karesh’s impressions of the A7 from last year with a few of my own. Read More >

Lexus debuted a gorgeous mystery coupe, dubbed the LF-CC, and took all the fun out of it by making it a hybrid. I’ll take an Audi S5, thanks. Does anyone see a hint of Scion FR-S in the rear view of this car?

The Paris Auto Show is about to kick off tomorrow, and some of the product set to debut has me cursing myself for not maxing out my Visa on a flight and a room at the lovely hotel that’s walking distance from the Porte de Versailles, where the pretty girl with crooked teeth sits patiently at the front desk. And how could I forget the wizened gran-mere hovering over the table at breakfast, replenishing your plate with cheeses and baked goods that one could never hope to find at Publix?

Alas, I am not part of the A-List club that gets driven from the Georges V to the Expo Hall in an S-Class, and so rather than sucking down a Gauloises or getting a glimpse of Carla Bruni (I was blessed with such a privilege in 2010) I’m stuck in North America, having to use my brain rather than just repeating back what my PR minders told me over a glass of Cotes-de-Rhone. 

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Did Ken Lewenza hose Sergio Marchionne and Chrysler? Ask me that a few days ago and I may have said yes. Now that the terms of the CAW and Chrysler have surfaced, I’m not so sure.

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The 2014 Mazda6 wagon was shown in the buff today, causing the American contingent of journalists to spontaneously ejaculate in their pleated Wal-Mart trousers. Meanwhile, Europeans yawned with the sort of withering ennui that would have made Derrida blush. Predictions of the Mazda6 Skyactiv-D wagon 6MT selling 400,000 units have been running rampant today, mostly from “Top Auto Writers” who don’t own cars – let alone new cars.

Hey, remember when Porsche made an effort to make the C4s visually distinctive? Yeah, neither do we. But the new one has stop-start and is good for the polar ice caps. Anyways, if you squint really hard you can see the big visual change on the 2013 911 Carrera 4S. The “4S” badge on the decklid.

Oh, Happy Days! The Messianic Age is upon us. God so loved the world that he sent his only son to do battle with the Porsche Cayman R in an epic shootout organized by an over-the-hill Australian journalist. At least this one has a bunch of crap from TRD on it.