In an interview with The Nikkei [sub], Mazda’s President Takashi Yamanouchi mounted a spirited defense of the internal combustion engine. He said it won’t go away anytime soon. He thinks the ICE will remain a mainstream option, especially in emerging markets. As proof he points to the recently launched Demio subcompact, which gets similar mileage as a Honda hybrid.

Yamanouchi does not believe that hybrids or EVs will make a huge dent into the market, especially not in the emerging markets, where money is tight.

“The size of the global auto market is now at roughly 60 million units, but it will top 100 million sooner or later. Though we factor in opinions from outside the industry, the share of hybrid and electric cars in the global market will probably not exceed 5% in 2020. That means gasoline-powered cars are expected to continue to dominate the market.” Read More >

Two weeks ago, commenter Marko asked: „Does anyone know when SkyActiv will make it to the US?” TTAC is required reading at Mazda, and here is the answer: Real soon! Read More >

The talks about a new labor deal between Ford and the UAW have barely begun, and both sides already utter the dreaded s-word: Strike. Read More >

Mahindra & Mahindra’s abortive plans to bring its rugged diesel-powered pickups to the US have garnered quite a cult following here at TTAC.  We follow the impending coming of M&M religiously. And now we demand license fees for the continuously coming cult car. Read More >

Japanese carmakers are watching the rising yen and falling dollar with great trepidation. Most have the yen at 80 or above in their plans. Today, the greenback buys just 77 yen. “The soaring yen is forcing major Japanese companies to rethink their assumed exchange rates for the current fiscal year,” writes The Nikkei [sub] today, and adds: “Reviews of assumed rates could also accelerate the transfer of production bases overseas.” Honda does just that. Read More >

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. —O’Brien, in “1984”.

O’Brien was wrong. The picture of the future is a picture of you: completely naked, with your privacy invaded, taken as you walk along the street, sit in your own vehicle, or pursue your own private business. You will be recorded forever, your movements will be marked, your possessions will be noted, you will become completely subservient to a government you may not even remember electing. Eventually, you may die of cancer, moaning out a final cry of drug-addled defiance as you are culled — in a quite humane fashion, of course — to prevent excessive healthcare costs.

The company helping to bring you the above future is called, without irony, “American Science and Engineering, Inc.”

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Each weekend, TTAC turns its attention to some of the more obscure news and stories from around the world, taking you from Jakarta to Haiti to Monaco… and now to New Zealand. Hungarian Skoda blog stipstop.com takes us to New Zealand in 1966, when Auckland-based Motor Lines were able to adapt a Jowett Bradford-based utility vehicle made by Kawerau into a Skoda Octavia-based Land Rover lookalike… and the Trekka was born!  Only 2,500 of the little runabouts were made in steel-paneled wagon and “ute” bodystyles (specs here), of which five served duty in Vietnam and one was purchased for unknown reasons by General Motors, which shipped it to Detroit in 1969. The Trekka was an “icon of the Kiwi can-do spirit” by the time it went out of production in 1973, and it was much loved in New Zealand, although it was never as capable as its Landie-alike bodywork suggested (a limited-slip differential was eventually developed for it). But the low-cost Trekka (it cost £895, less than a Morris 1100) was ultimately a product of New Zealand’s import tariffs, and as these began to fall in the 1970s, the Trekka’s day had passed. Today, fewer than 30 remaining models have been documented by trekka.co.nz.

The dwindling and demoralized ranks of Saab flagwavers had a bad week. No cash in the kitty, bankruptcy looms, their savior Vladimir Antonov is rebuffed by the European Investment Bank, dirty laundry about funds seeping away to hot islands is being aired. Their hopes now cling to a sheet of paper. Today, Christer Gerlach wrote an op-ed piece in Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter in which he makes the case that Saab should not be written off just yet. He is asking the Swedish government for help. A translation is printed at Saabsunited.

Christer Gerlach is a famous autowriter. The 66 year old Swede became notorious in 1972 by crossing the Sahara in a Citroen 2CV. In 1988, he entered the Guinness Book of World records in a solo trip around the world – in a Toyota Corolla. If you want the impossible on four wheels, Gerlach is the man to call.  I would not call him to restructure a moribund car company. Read More >

“Ask Amy” advice columnist and self-help memoir author Amy Dickinson has the late Ann Landers’ old slot on the Chicago Tribune. She also has a 1967 Morris Minor. She fell in love with the car the first time she saw one, soon after she moved to London with her then-husband, in 1986. “They are so cute, they look like ice cream cones,” she says. She loves the clatter of its engine, and the way people smile when she drives by, and she says it is her favorite material object in the world.

So after her husband embarked on an open-endedly extended business trip, in 1988, Dickinson, then a housewife, took her five week old baby, Emily, in a taxi to a dealer who restored Morrises, and made her purchase, for 1,500 pounds (roughly $5,000 in current dollars). “One advantage of driving a beautiful, quirky vintage car is that it really helped me meet people,” she says. “So many men said to me, ‘I had one of these,’ and ‘my dad had one of these,’ not to mention ‘getting rid of my Morris Minor was my biggest mistake.’”

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The 19th Indonesian International Motor Show (IIMS) is currently taking place at the JIExpo in the capital city, Jakarta, with almost all the world’s major automakers represented at a show which is quite simply bigger, bolder and brasher than ever before. There is a real spring in the step here as this huge, underdeveloped nation of 238 million people, the fourth-most populated in the world, stands poised to unlock the potential of its auto industry and become a major player on the world stage. Indonesia is standing at a crossroads and everyone is preparing to join the party.

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Jeff Glucker, a.k.a. jglucker, had his head handed to him by the Twitter mob. It must have been the little head. The emasculated editor of Autoblog caved in to the rabid rabble and sacrificed a supposedly sexist headline. What happened? Read More >

Mazda lost $327m in the second quarter, falling below analyst expectations as tsunami-related supply interruptions and currency woes battered the company’s bottom line. According to the Detroit News, this was Mazda’s third straight quarter of losses and the firm has lost money during its last three fiscal years. But, as this video (which, as far as I know has not yet been shown in the US) argues, the “Hiroshima spirit” which allowed locals to rebuild after the devastation of the nuclear attack in 1945, flows through Mazda. The company has a bold new design direction, an “enthusiast howl” of an ad campaign, and it says it will return to profitability when its fiscal year ends in March. But its projected profit for the full year is only $12.8m, which means Mazda is cutting it real close… and as the last quarter proved, projections can always be missed. Here’s hoping the last independent, mass-market, enthusiast-oriented automaker is able to turn things around this year and keep fighting the good fight.

The US market won’t be getting the microvan-style Mercedes B-Class or the hot little A-Class hatch (thanks to to “consumer clinics”), but we will be getting a a crossover, a sporty coupe and a sedan based on the same front-drive platform. Because these models will form the new entry-level for the Mercedes brand in the US, we can assume the new models will have a similar interior to the B-Class, which debuts at the Frankfurt show in September… and that means this video is a sneak-peek at an interior we won’t see at a dealership until 2012 at the earliest. So… what do we think?

With congress deadlocked on the debt ceiling, President Obama used today’s ceremony announcing (although not fully revealing) a 2025 CAFE standard to contrast fuel economy standard negotiations with the chaos on Capitol Hill. ABC quotes the President saying

You are all demonstrating what can happen when people put aside differences.  These folks are competitors.  You’ve got labor and business.  But they decided:  We’re going to work together to achieve something important and lasting for the country. So when it comes to tackling the deficit or it comes to growing the economy… the American people are demanding the same kind of resolve, the same kind of spirit of compromise, the same kind of problem solving that all these folks on stage have shown. They’re demanding that people come together and find common ground… That’s what I’m fighting for.  That’s what this debate is all about.  That’s what the American people want.

But getting a bunch of auto CEOs in the same room to agree on one 2025 “number” is a lot easier than breaking a political deadlock: after all, the standard could well be changed during the 2017 review period, so nobody is agreeing to anything set in stone past 2016. And the saber-rattling continues, as industry consultants predict doom for the post-2016 period, when the truck standard hits the same 5% annual improvement rate as cars. Besides, Volkswagen and Daimler are the equivalent in this situation of holdouts in the congress, refusing to appear at today’s ceremony and protesting the proposed standard in the media. And when the final rules is announced, this coalition of exemplary compromise could fall apart, as the Sierra Club threatens

As the administration moves forward to finalize the standard, it is critical that they avoid weakening loopholes and giveaways for the industry, and we look forward to working with them to ensure the strongest 2025 fuel efficiency and pollution standards possible to benefit American families and workers.

Defections on the right and left? Continued saber rattling? No concrete agreement yet in any case? Sounds a lot like congress, actually…

AlixPartners, the consulting firm that led GM’s reorganization efforts, has put the perennial optimism of auto industry analysts on notice, introducing its 2011 Automotive Outlook by arguing

The AlixPartners 2011 Automotive Outlook finds that while automakers and suppliers have seen profits bounce back handsomely – North American original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) posted $12.5 billion in 2010 profit on a net margin of 4.6% and North American suppliers reaped $8.2 billion on a net margin of 4.3% – no one should be tempted into thinking that things are now back to “normal,” or at least the normal defined by the consumer-incentive-induced sales levels of the past. In sync with its past annual auto studies, AlixPartners continues to predict that U.S. auto sales will climb slower, and to a lower peak, than many others are predicting. Specifically, the firm estimates U.S. auto sales will reach just 12.7 million units this year and only 13.6 million in 2012.

This is a tough moment for us: on the one hand, pessimistic economic forecasts don’t make anybody happy… on the other hand, the AlixPartner outlook is a significant validation of TTAC’s longtime bearishness. So rather than either moping or self-congratulating, let’s just take a look at why AlixPartners is so gloomy about the near-term outlook.
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