Rubbing shoulders with industry types displaced to a Chinese city called Chengdu has its good parts. You hear stories you normally don’t see in a press release. An executive who works for the western partner of a large Chinese joint venture told me today that my story about Chinese interests killing the Opel deal between GM and PSA wasn’t true. At least not completely. As so often, in the denial was a much more interesting story. After another drink for encouragement, said executive told me very much off the record that GM is tired of the PSA deal and wants out. If that means leaving Opel for dead, so be it. Read More >

Auto makers in Europe are freaking out about excess capacity, but Honda can’t get enough of it.

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The hordes of Chinese and Japanese reporters roaming the halls of the Chengdu Global Automotive Forum in Chengdu were not really interested in exports. They were sniffing blood. There are tensions between China, Japan, and a few other countries over some rocks in the sea. The rocks are called Diaoyu by the Chinese, Senkaku by the Japanese, and choice words by many others. Nissan’s COO Toshiyuki Shiga sat on the podium, next to the always photogenic Atsushi Niimi. The Japanese were flanked by a BAIC president and a Dongfeng CEO. The reporters wanted to know: How bad is it? Read More >

There is one thing about the Chinese car industry that can’t be said often enough: It is learning fast. A year ago, the recurring theme at the Chengdu Global Automotive Forum was brands, brands, brands. This year, nobody talks about new brands anymore. The only one who does is the CEO of Dongfeng, one of China’s largest automakers. He says last year’s brand binge was misguided, “irrational, incompetent, and immature.” Read More >

Renault has outmaneuvered partner Daimler, which didn’t have a prayer. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn handed Pope Benedict XVI (nee Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger) a new, fully sustainable electric popemobile.
It is unclear whether the public will see an emission-free pope. According to a Renault press release, the holy EV is for use when the Pope is travelling at his summer residence Castel Gandolfo. Read More >

They say the third time is always a charm.

I don’t think this was what they meant.

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The SUV arms race has been over for a few years now, with four-ton, leather-lined, full-framed trucks no longer appearing to be viable as the middle-class commuter machines they were during the SUV-crazed 1990s and 2000s. Oh, sure, you can still buy the things, but Times Have Changed. If we are to draw a parallel between the Golden Age of the Muscle Car (during which Detroit slapped off-the-shelf luxury-car engines and $27 worth of scoops and graphics on midsize commuter cars and made crazy money) and the Golden Age of the Big-Ass SUV (during which Detroit slapped off-the-shelf pleather and Simu-Wood™ trim and $27 worth of badging on full-sized work-truck chassis and made crazy money), then we are now in the SUV equivalent of about 1976. If so, this means that, in another decade or two, nostalgia for Navigators and Escalades will kick in, just as it did for GTOs and Super Bees in about 1985, and— just as with muscle cars— the love of these absurd luxo-trucks will take on symbolic connotations of past glory, an era before nanny-state killjoys, and so on. Read More >

When I saw this 1964 Mercury Park Lane convertible at the Ford and Mercury Restorers Club meet a few weeks ago, I immediately knew what it was. Actually that’s a fib. I didn’t actually realize exactly what car this was until I saw the informational panel laid out in front of the Merc. Then I knew immediately what it was. Earlier this year TTAC ran a post of mine about the car companies’ pavilions at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. The Detroit automakers went all out and Ford, working with Walt Disney’s team, came up with a novel way of exposing fair visitors to Ford and Mercury cars.

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A report by Reuters suggests that the Canadian Auto Worker’s union may take the unprecedented step of striking at the plants of all three domestic automakers.

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When I first got wind of the new 2013 Honda Accord Plug-In Hybrid, I was pretty optimistic about its viability. An improved hybrid system from Honda, a plug-in no less, mated to the practical, decent-to-drive package of the Accord? For a city dweller that gets electricity from clean hydroelectric power sources like me, it is, on paper, a decent choice for an everyday car. Until I saw it.

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August sales numbers caught analysts by surprise. They had expected a strong August, but they did not aim high enough. All but Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds. Read More >

Mazda has released official pictures of what will likely be the best-selling car in the United States, should it ever be sold here; the 2014 Mazda6 Wagon, which will be available with the new Skyactiv-D engine and a manual transmission.

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With Lincoln abandoning the tradition Panther platform Town Car and moving to the awkwardly shaped MKT for its offerings to livery fleet operators, you might think that Cadillac would aggressively market their new XTS to the “black car” industry. The XTS, like the outgoing Town Car, is a traditionally styled luxury sedan. Cadillac just announced it’s plans going forward for professional vehicles, and while they are indeed based on the XTS. Cadillac will be appealing to fleet operators that want to offer something a bit more luxurious to their customers than the decontented Town Cars of recent years.

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Volkswagen launched its seventh generation Golf to high acclaim yesterday, but there are people who think it is not good enough. Greenpeace picketed its premiere in Berlin last night, “accusing the German carmaker of doing too little to reduce fuel consumption and tarnishing the most important model launch in the group’s calendar,” as Reuters writes . Read More >

Now that we have the August numbers for the world’s second largest car market, attention turns to the world’s largest, China. The Chinese economy is cooling down. Has it hit car sales? Official numbers won’t be here until next week, but our patent=pending China sales oracle has spoken. Read More >