Japan’s industrial output suffered major damage after one of the world’s strongest earthquakes, followed by an unprecedented tsunami hit Japan last week. Global supply chains are disrupted.

This is today’s rundown on auto plant closures. Read More >

Even if Japan’s nuclear power plants will be brought under control, even if roads, rails and ports are back up, the Japanese car industry will have to deal with a more serious problem: Blackouts.

On Monday, Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, will start turning off the power for three hours each to selected areas. This will happen once, in some areas twice per day. When the schedule was put up on Tepco’s website, the server crashed. That was just the beginning of the problems. Read More >

For all the buzz surrounding the Compact segment, the real battle at the moment seems to be in the Midsized (D-Segment) class. As in the C-Segment, Toyota is maintaining its leadership by a healthy margin, but right below it there’s a knife fight between Fusion, Accord, Altima and Malibu (look for this fight to include Sonata if Hyundai brings more capacity online). The fact that Accord no longer has a lock on second place has opened a huge opportunity, as the contenders clamor to become the Camry’s main rival. But this battle for second place has also bifurcated the segment into contenders (15k units and up) and everyone else. And speaking of “everyone else,” Mazda6 dropped off our chart this month with only 2,838 deliveries, hanging out with such underachievers as the Passat/CC (1,750 units) and Saab 9-3 (494).

Unlike a number of segments, the Compact Crossover space has a fairly well-established order. And with no new products in this segment on tap for this year, it’s hard to see this ranking changing too much in the next 12 months or so. Still, the C-CUV is becoming an increasingly important segment, and even if automakers aren’t stealing much share from each other here, all the major models are improving their sales. Could this be the segment where everyone wins?

Say what you want about Toyota’s recent struggles, it still knows how to sell the bejeezus out of its C-segment Corolla/Matrix juggernaut. Toyota’s compact twosome outsold its next closest competitor by more volume than the Kia Forte sold on its own. Chevy’s Cruze is also sneaking up on Civic (please note: Feb 2010 volume for Cruze is actually Cobalt), and VW’s new Jetta is streaking up the charts, landing Volkswagen’s C-segment offerings into fourth place (Golf made up only 2,337 of that volume). Elantra and Sentra are neck-and-neck, although look for Nissan’s aging compact to be leapfrogged by both Hyundai and Ford when fully ramped-up volumes of the new Elantra and Focus hit dealers.

On most weekends, TTAC publishes the fun, frivolous kinds of stories that don’t make it into our regular weekly coverage, exposing our readers to everything from the hilarity of the LeMons series, to obscure automotive histories to pictorials of such undercovered vehicles as vintage Snow Cats. This weekend, however, TTAC is feeding you your vegetables: sales graphs of the major automotive segments from February. We start our coverage with the subcompact segment, where the Nissan Versa continues to kill the competition, proving yet again that what Americans are looking for in a small car is a large car. Kia’s Soul held off the Fiesta’s attack on the number two spot, while Toyota’s Yaris slipped to Kia Rio volume levels and the Scion xD slipped to the bottom of the chart. Meanwhile, few of the long-established names in this segment are beating their year-ago numbers, but look for that to change if gas prices keep going up.

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of a bus crash on New York’s I-95, but it’s clear from these photos [via ABC] what caused many of the 14 fatalities in the crash: a sign warning motorists of red-light photo enforcement is what appears to have ripped the bus in half. Now, as much as we dislike photo enforcement, we wouldn’t argue that the sign caused this tragedy… but the irony of a sign intended to improve safety actually becoming a deadly obstacle is more than we can ignore.

Having a video like this sent into our contact form is one of the rare treats of being a blogger. Especially because I feel a little like I woke up under the hood of a Soviet-era engine bay this morning. To the anonymous heroes who both made and brought this fine video to our attention, we salute you.

Remember Pontiac? You know, the brand that “builds excitement.” And for all the advertising dollars GM spent over the years, trying to convince buyers that a Pontiac offered something that none of its other brands could, it turns out that quite a few former Pontiac owners have made the switch to Chevrolet and GMC. According to RL Polk

Looking at full-year 2010 data: the Pontiac brand saw 57,641 customers return to market and General Motors was able to recapture 53.3% of them. Historically through 2008, 60% of Pontiac owners have remained loyal to General Motors. In 2010, the loyalty rate fell to 47%, which represents a 13 percentage point decrease in overall General Motors loyalty. With the discontinuation of Pontiac: 33.5% defected to Chevrolet, 11.7% defected to GMC, 6.7% defected to Buick, and 1.5% defected to Cadillac.

Defections to other domestic corporations made up nearly 16% of owners. The Ford brand ranked 2nd in the conquest of Pontiac owners at 10.5%. Chrysler Corporation saw the Dodge brand ranked 9th, capturing 3.2%. Jeep and Chrysler combined were able to conquest 1.7%.

Defections to import makes were nearly 31%. Among the foreign automakers, Toyota was able to conquest 7.7% of Pontiac owners, while Honda was just behind capturing 7.5%.

Best and Brightest, I have to say this confuses me. How did over ten percent of GM’s “driving excitement” brand end up at the its truck brand (GMC)? How did over 14 percent of buyers replace the brand that brought us the GTO and G8 for the mainstream, thrill-free anonymity of Honda and Toyota? How on earth did Dodge, the remaining brand that most resembles Pontiac, only manage about 3%? You may have to let me down gently on this, B&B, but are automotive brands not as important as people make them out to be? Say it ain’t so!

Many pronounced the end of China’s torrid growth of car sales after they slowed to just 4.57 percent in February. Xing Huang, chairman of state-owned auto parts maker China Auto Parts & Accessories Corp (CAPAC), thinks otherwise. He expects the Chinese auto market to grow at the same speed in 2011 as in the year before, says Reuters. That would  be 32 percent. Read More >

The Renault spy farce has taken yet another, this time totally unexpected twist. Presumptive spy catchers at Renault are behind bars. Renault’s security managers Marc Tixador and Dominique Gevrey are being held for questioning at the offices of France’s DCRI domestic intelligence agency which is investigating the matter, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor told Reuters. Read More >

While other car blogs interrupt their reporting to show gratuitous pictures from the massive earthquake in Japan, TTAC stays on topic. Even in this confused state, there are better sources for real-time information on the catastrophe in Japan than armchair car bloggers.

“The devastating earthquake that hit eastern Japan Friday will likely deal a severe blow to the nation’s overall economy, as that section of the country serves as a major hub for automobile, autoparts, energy and materials industries,” The Nikkei [sub] reports. The world’s auto industry has barely begun to recover. The disaster in Japan could have a major impact.

While having live news of the evacuation around two nuclear power plants in one ear, here the situation of the auto plants according to the latest news. Read More >

Reader Josh sends in this semi-camo’d Explorer from the Mile High city, writing that

The lady who was in the drivethru at Wendy’s was quite frustrated to see us photographing her car (we stalked her for a few blocks to find a “compromising” position) and she jetted without even ordering. While I know this is default behavior among tester-types, in my experience, they really only panic if there is something really special.

But besides the bizarre hand-painted camo on the rear-quarter panel, we’re not seeing anything too different here from a stock Explorer. Is that funny-looking tailpipe exhausting the forthcoming “premium” 2.0 Ecoboost four-cylinder during high-altitude testing? Josh notes

the exhaust seemed tame and quiet – but we were in a v8 excursion

What say you, Best and Brightest?

Amidst the rubble of earthquake and tsunami-racked Japan, a strange phenomenon: Three of the smallest local automakers suffered no interruption in production, while the very largest seemed to be hit the hardest. Toyota, Honda, and Nissan have all suffered some kind of production interruption since the quake hit, while Mazda, Suzuki and Mitsubishi remain untouched according to Automotive News [sub]. In a tragedy like this, some might be tempted to ascribe this division of suffering to some universal sense of justice, a cosmic leveling of Japan’s automotive playing field. But, as the map above proves, this twist of fate is purely geographic… Mazda, Mitsubishi and Suzuki happen to have all of their plants located well south of the affected area near Sendai. Besides, Subaru, one of Japan’s smallest automakers, closed five factories. There’s no making sense of a mess like this…

Read More >

Remember the Saturn Vue? The Theta-based crossover is known around the world as the Chevrolet Captiva (or Daewoo WinStorm… yes, really), and soon it will be known in the US as GM’s latest fleet queen. With some 86% of GM’s fleet sales last year coming from Chevy (about a 35% mix for the brand), GM is apparently trying to insulate its newer products from the fleet queen image, and as a result it’s decided to import the Captiva Sport from Mexico in order

to help satisfy growing demand for compact crossovers by fleet customers.

Keep in mind, this is not the latest Captiva to come out of GM-DAT, but rather the outgoing model that has been in production since 2006. But, according to GM’s release, this isn’t a weakness. Alan Batey, U.S. vice president, Chevrolet Sales and Service explains

It says a lot about our ability to draw on international programs and proven, quality crossovers that we were able to identify and federalize a strong new entrant such as Captiva Sport for the U.S. market. We turned to our global network for a solution to quickly meet the rising demand from local fleet customers and continue to meet strong retail demand for the Equinox.

And if this attitude seems shocking, it’s time to start getting used to it: GM is rumored to be planning this same strategy when it releases its updated Chevy Malibu next year. According to long-standing whispers, the outgoing model will continue to be produced as a fleet-oriented “Classic” model. Perhaps it’s time for GM to roll out a fleet-only brand?