As part of its quest to become the world’s largest auto maker, Volkswagen decided to design and engineer a pair of sedans specially for the American market. Compared to VW’s traditional, Eurocentric products, the new sedans will be larger, less sophisticated, and cheaper. The first of these, the new 2011 Jetta, has now arrived. It starts at $14,995 (plus $770 for destination), a substantial $2,590 less than the 2010 Jetta and also less than many other compact sedans. A German-engineered sedan for less than $15,000 certainly got everyone’s attention. Which was of course the point. But is it a good value? Read More >

This video wandered onto one of Ford’s YouTube sites today. It shows a Focus ripping around the Dearborn Development Center…

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Some folks around here seem to think that I’m just not getting into the Panther spirit this week. I’m trying, honestly! Well, there just aren’t very many here, except for what the cops drive. And I’m not going take pictures of them; our police is quite Taser trigger-happy. This is just not Panther country, but then that’s pretty much the case for the whole West Coast. Panthers tend to have a certain regional appeal, as well as political. But I did snag one yesterday, and a Family Truckster, no less. Read More >

A few weeks ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel ( or vice versa, depending on who’s telling  the story.) The crew was sent home, the captain was arrested. This happened near some uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea, called Diaoyu islands in China and Senkaku islands in Japan. The rocks are under Japanese administration, but are also claimed by (to make matters even more complicated) China AND Taiwan. The islands sit on top of a huge natural gas field, to make matters really interesting. To get the captain home and to make a point, China has been ratcheting up the rhetoric. China is looking for a pressure point that hurts the Japanese. First, they tried to cut off the stream of Chinese tourists that go shopping in Japan. That didn’t work.

Now, China may have found something that seriously messes with traffic in Japan. Read More >

The things we make, according to the Jeep Grand Cherokee “Manifesto,” make us. Which apparently means that the Grand Cherokee is an on-the-job drinker. Yes, despite an ad campaign that touts craftsmanship and American manufacturing prowess (not to mention the litany of “Detroit Reborn” hype), Jeep Grand Cherokee assembly workers at the Jefferson North plant were caught drinking and doobing on their lunch break. Clearly, these gentlemen appreciate Chrysler’s new-found dedication to quality, and are eager to create value for their union and taxpayer owners. Oy vey…

UPDATE: The Detroit News reports

The lunchtime habits of a small group of workers, which included a trip to a party store and then to a public park, were captured on video by WJBK-TV (Channel 2). WJBK was tipped off by concerned workers at the plant.

Chrysler executives are now using the video to identify the workers, a number of whom have already been suspended without pay.

GM”s IPO scuttlebutt has been dominated in recent weeks by speculation about possible foreign “cornerstone” investors. But, according to five sources who spoke with Reuters

GM is likely to sell about 80 percent of the common shares in its IPO and more than 90 percent of the preferred shares in North America.

Yes, despite deep skepticism about the GM IPO’s appeal to retail investors, GM will sell most of its equity in North America, and it’s even splitting its share price to bring the per-stock price into retail range. Why the sudden back-away from talk of courting global investment and “cornerstone investors” from abroad? Politics, baby! With Chrysler likely to end up owned outright by Fiat, something had to be done to keep The General at least nominally American-owned. Meanwhile, in news that is sure to thrill prospective retail investors, Special Inspector General of the TARP program (SIGTARP) Neil Barofsky is investigating the IPO… and says GM’s per-share price will have to hit $133.78 (pre-split) for the Government to break even. GM’s highest-ever stock price was $94.63, and that was back in April of 2000. Are we getting excited yet, retail investors?

Being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) can cost a motorist thousands of dollars in court fines, insurance costs and attorneys’ fees. At least 79 accused drivers were notified last Friday that the police officer that charged them with drunk driving had likely falsified at least one piece of evidence. Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully threw out the cases after an investigation into the conduct of Sacramento Police Officer Brandon Mullock, 24.

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Despite not having spent a dime on the US firm, Fiat is widely credited with “rescuing” Chrysler. Here’s another way of looking at it: the United States taxpayers bailed out Fiat, an Italian firm with no presence in the US market. For no money down, Fiat got a 20 percent stake in a Chrysler that, although troubled, had been rinsed clean in bankruptcy. Now, analysts looking at Fiat’s spin-off of its automotive unit are telling Automotive News [sub] that

The fairly generic egg-crate grille of the ’79 Caprice was tough. But we have some remarkable talent playing CCC, and one of the best of them is tklockau, who has won several before. Congratulations are in order.

Today’s clue is a bit different. No, the clue is not my xB in the background. And yes, you are looking at/through a regular production car, not some hippie bus with a glass gunner’s dome from a B17 on the top. Have fun.

Jaguars have always been noted for their lush tails, and here’s a quartet lined up to show off their hind quarters. Now here’s some feline appreciation I can get behind.

The government of Sweden’s Västra Götaland County has referred Saab to the Swedish Enforcement Service (Kronofogdemyndigheten) over nonpayment of a $16.2m loan, reports thelocal.se. The bill is for repayment of a portion of a roughly $45m in aid extended by the county to Saab during its first weeks of bankruptcy. Because the $16.2m portion was used specifically to guarantee employee salaries, the County is arguing that it is not covered by Saab’s 75% writedown agreement with creditors. Saab insists that the salary guarantee portion is covered by the cramdown, and says it has paid its 25 percent of the total loan.

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In 2007, the United Auto Workers came to a defining decision: rather than sharing sacrifice equally in the spirit of solidarity, the union divided its membership into two tiers. Tier one was the old guard, existing UAW workers who continued to receive relatively generous wages. Tier two was made up of all new hires, who were paid about half what their tier one “brothers” made. As the bankruptcy and bailout of GM and Chrysler brought the UAW’s internal divisions to the fore, second-tier workers have become more and more vocal about their second-class status. The excellent Changing Gears project (a “public media conversation about the future of the industrial Midwest”) speaks with several second-tier workers about the challenges and frustrations of earning half as much as their union brethren. In the words of one worker

There’s a joke within the two tier people, that if two two-tier people died in a fire, they’d say “one GM employee lost.”  You feel like half an employee… It’s not like we have to wear a badge.. or drink out of a seperate drinking fountain, it’s just, you know every day that when you go in there, the life these people have made for themselves is something you’ll never have.

Carlos Ghosn has the Wall Street Journal flabbergasted. To the utter dismay of the WSJ, Ghosn said that Nissan is talking to their joint venture partner Dongfeng about transferring lithium-ion battery know-how and other electric-car technology to the joint venture. Even more worrisome to the WSJ is Ghosn’s statement that “there’s no limit to technology we bring to China.”

According to the WSJ, “Ghosn’s remarks on electric vehicles, at a news conference Monday, come amid worries by many foreign auto executives about a ten-year plan China is drafting for the electric-vehicle industry that they fear could compel foreign companies to transfer technology to local joint ventures in a way that might result in their losing control of the technology.”

These worries are either worries by junior executives, or the imagination of even greener Wall Street Journal reporters. Read More >

Panther Appreciation Week rolls on with this look at the platforms sales since 1995 (sorry, our sales data doesn’t go back farther) compared to some key competition. As the last several years of the graph prove, large sedans were hit fairly hard by the “Carpocalypse,” but Panthers were in a terminal sales decline anyway. In the mid 90s, Ford was selling nearly 100k each of its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury-branded Panthers, but steady updates from large, cushy FWD competition like the Avalon slowly eroded sales.

Meanwhile, the 300/Charger combo from Chrysler looks to be the Panther of the 21st Century. Beloved by fleets and Donkophiles alike, the LX sedans beat the mass-market-branded large, RWD competition… such as it is. Heck, it even beat FWD rivals like the Avalon, the Genesis (21,889), the Lexus ES (48,485) and the Taurus (45,617) in 2009. And with the updated 2011 Charger in strong competition for police fleet business, Chrysler could just be building big, old-school, rear-drive sedans in the American style for some time to come. The Panther is dead… long live the LX?

With the second annual Distracted Driving Summit underway, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has announced his latest cure for what he terms the “epidemic” of driver distraction. According to a NHTSA presser

In kicking off the 2010 national Distracted Driving Summit this morning, Secretary LaHood announced that he is initiating a new rulemaking to prohibit commercial truck drivers from texting while transporting hazardous materials. In addition, Secretary LaHood announced that two rules proposed at last year’s summit have now become the law of the land. Rules banning commercial bus and truck drivers from texting on the job and restricting train operators from using cell phones and other electronic devices while in the driver’s seat have been posted today.

Another year, another public display of governments inability to actually make progress on its overly-ambitious campaigns.