Dave Garrad personifies the word “hoon”. When I first met him in the smoke and beer filled haze of the Gemutliche Ecke (Translation: Comfy Corner) in Adenau, Germany, he was attempting a maneuver called The Lunge. There’s never a dull moment around Dave. Naturally, I immediately considered him for the last English caretaker of TTAC’s Ford Sierra project, before its journey to Germany and (ultimately) Houston. Upon our (Panther-lovin’) man Dereck’s delivery of the Sierra to his abode northeast of London, Dave remarked at how glorious the brown upon brown scheme truly was. His wife Helen refuses to ride in the chocolate-toned thing, lest her unborn baby develop unnatural tendencies.

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Automotive News [sub] reports that three Renault executives, including one who works for the automaker’s electric vehicle development program, have been suspended without pay pending an industrial espionage investigation. According to a Renault source

[The investigation] involves people who were caught red-handed for industrial espionage. Renault is a victim in this story. The group is a bit worried about its electric vehicle program — it hopes that its leadership in this technology won’t be threatened.

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The story of Dimitrios Biller has been one of the more colorful sideshows in last year’s media-scourging of Toyota, complete with a “book of secrets,” accusations of corporate criminality, counter-accusations of mental instability and a congressional pissing match. But with the Toyota media circus long gone, it now seems that l’affaire Biller was just another distraction from the mundane truth of the unintended acceleration scare. As the Detroit News reports, Biller and Toyota’s legal struggle is over… and Toyota, not Biller, is going to get paid.

Biller, a California attorney who worked at Toyota Motor Sales USA for four years, from 2003 to 2007, and Toyota had agreed to have their disputes settled by binding arbitration, which limits the grounds for appeal.

Biller had sued Toyota for defamation and fraud, while Toyota had sued him for violating confidentiality and severance agreements.

Gary Taylor, a retired judge serving as the arbitrator, concluded in a final award that Toyota should receive $2.5 million in damages from Biller for 10 disclosure violations, plus $100,000 in punitive damages.

“The evidence showed that Toyota suffered, and will continue to suffer, multiple harms from Mr. Biller’s contract breaches,” Judge Taylor wrote.

He also ordered Biller to return documents, including attorney-client documents, he’d taken from Toyota and allow the company to inspect his computers.

With TTAC bringing retail market share into its year-end sales analysis, we’re fascinated by the results of Consumer Reports’ Car Brand Perception Survey. The results show Toyota falling slightly but holding onto the top spot, and Ford making strides towards overtaking the Japanese Juggernaut. That trend at the top absolutely comports with our retail market share data for 2010, as does Honda’s less-dramatic slide in favor. CR also shows Chevy losing some ground in most of the survey’s rating areas, especially “Design/Style,” where the bowtie brand dropped out of the top five brands. Still, Chevy does surprisingly well in the CR survey, considering it lost more retail share than any other brand besides Toyota. Between TTAC’s year-end retail share numbers and CR’s brand perception survey, industry-watchers now have more ways than ever to track the performance of automotive brands in the minds of consumers, rather than as measured by sheer volume.

The tuning house Gull Wing America have a huge thing for vintage Mercedes models, resulting in such bizarre creations as a re-interpreted W-121 and a retro-fied SLS. But for its latest project, GWA has taken on the most ambitious gullwing Mercedes ever, the “forgotten gullwing” known as the C111. Based on a tubular steel chassis, and sporting a 400 HP Mercedes V12, the “Ciento Once” is more of a re-interpretation than a strict replica. Still, it’s heartening to see such an influential yet forgotten car re-appear on the automotive scene, if only as a one-off prototype.Perhaps it will even inspire the the boys in Stuttgart to come up with their own “take two” on the great gullwing C111.

Dying to have OnStar in our car, but don’t want to buy a GM car? No problem! At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, GM unveiled an add-OnStar that fits (nearly) any car. Read More >

TTAC Commentator Craigotron writes:

I recently moved from Wyoming to Washington D.C. (and I grew up in northern Michigan) and have been tasked with preparing a brief five point “Winter Driving Tips” article for a local news outlet feature. I was asked since I’m the resident automotive enthusiast and my winter driving credentials (I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything that hasn’t been RWD…) here are pretty good; this is the first warm place I’ve lived in… well… ever. They thought I’d be a good person to help prepare the neighborhood for the next Snowpocalypse.

I’d love to ask the best and brightest for some input. I’m making sure all the obvious stuff is there: keep up on maintenance, understand how your car works, jumper cables, keep your tank full, kitty litter. What would you add to the mix?

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German new car sales pierced the previous year line for the first time this year. In December, Germans bought 6.9 percent more cars than in December 2010. However, this is more due to a moderate December 2009 than to an overly strong December 2010. For the year, German new car sales are 23.4 percent below 2009. Read More >

The city council in Washington, Missouri no longer believes that red light cameras have a positive impact on safety. Members voted 6 to 2 on Monday to allow the automated ticketing contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to expire, and Mayor Sandy Lucy agreed to draft a letter to the for-profit company making it clear that the council has no interest in ever bringing the devices back.

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GM China’s 2010 sales numbers did not disappoint. They expected more than 2.3 million cars for 2010 sold in the Middle Kingdom,  they got more than 2.3 million. 2,351,610 units, to be exact, up 28.8 percent compared to a very strong 2009. to a record in 2010. GM is the first global automaker to sell more than 2 million vehicles in China in a single year. And here is the breakdown: Read More >

When it comes to new cars, trucks and buses, Japan’s can look back at the first sales increase in seven years. Sales rose 10.6 percent in all of 2010, powered by the generosity of the Japanese government. The country will remember 2010 with woefulness. This year, the sales will be down hard. After 14 months of government-induced growth, Japan cut the buying incentives last September, and the market keeled over.

December sales gave a preview of sales not to come: Sales were down 28.3 percent in December, according to data provided by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association to The Nikkei [sub]. These numbers do not include mini (“kei”) cars and trucks.

Japan’s total new vehicle sales including minicars rose only 7.5 percent in 2010 from the previous year to a total of 4,956,136 units, the Mainichi Shimbun reports. The total was dragged down by the poorer (sales-) performance of the small cars. Mini vehicles sales rose only 2.3 percent to 1,726,420 units, the Japan Mini Vehicles Association said.

The way the incentive program was set up, it had an immense pull-forward effect. The program had a cash for clunker component, but that was hardly used. Japan doesn’t have the number of old cars like the U.S.A. or Europe. The extra cars bought in 2010 will be sorely missed in 2011. Compared with an artificially high 2010, Japanese domestic  2011 numbers will look very ugly.

You’re 20 years old. At least for this exercise, you have been able to implant your current wisdom into that once wonderful body of yours. You hit the jackpot! Well, sort of… A genie popped out of a bottle of Colt 45 and granted you the chance to relive your life from that 20th birthday forward. Except there’s a catch. You must live out the next 60 years of your life drinking malt liquor and sporting bad hair.

Actually, it’s not that bad. You can buy only 1 new car for the next 20 years of your life. Tough break huh? The car you choose must be owned and maintained by you, and only you, for the next 20 years. Why? Don’t ask questions. This genie’s been stuck in a malt liquor bottle for decades and it wouldn’t grant you a wish without messing with your head at least a little bit.
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President Obama has been busy signing a number of bills into law today, including the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, which, according to the Congressional Research Service

Directs the Secretary of Transportation to study and report to Congress on the minimum level of sound that is necessary to be emitted from a motor vehicle, or some other method, to alert blind and other pedestrians of the presence of operating motor vehicles while traveling.

But that’s not all. Once the SecTrans determines the minimum standard for alerting blind pedestrians to a vehicle’s presence, he is required to

initiate rulemaking to promulgate a motor vehicle safety standard

(1) establishing performance requirements for an alert sound that allows blind and other pedestrians to reasonably detect a nearby electric or hybrid vehicle operating below the cross-over speed, if any; and

(2) requiring new electric or hybrid vehicles to provide an alert sound conforming to the requirements of the motor vehicle safety standard established under this subsection.

Let’s hope Secretary LaHood takes the time to read David Holzman’s treatise on the topic before setting anything in stone. Read the whole thing here.

As we wade through our year-end sales number reports, one of the important metrics that we’ll be looking at are incentive spending rates. Detroit continues to dominate both Edmunds’ True Cost of Incentives index (above) and TrueCar’s incentive forecast (after the jump), with little serious competition for their supremacy in this profit-sapping and brand equity-squandering category. Still, the foreign firms are increasing their incentives while Detroit has generally scaled back over the last year, so the incentive race is slowly getting tighter…

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Yes, you read correctly. For less than $200 I recently added a brand new Cadillac to my garage. The catch: it has only two wheels and I must supply the power myself. Read More >