The executive shake-ups show no signs of stopping at GM, as Ed Whitacre ended the week with yet another re-shuffle. And this time Whitacre himself is the big winner. Automotive News [sub] reports that Whitacre has assumed control of GM’s global product planning, leaving former planning boss Tom Stephens with the more prosaic responsibility of overseeing new product development. Whitacre will be assisted by new VP for product planning Steve Carlisle, who, unlike Whitacre, actually has some experience in product planning. Carlisle replaces Jon Lauckner, who will head up GM’s new venture capital unit. But the big news here is that a man who only just learned the term “segment” about five and a half months ago, is now in charge of GM’s global product planning. Quick learner or egomaniac?

Read More >

Drivers tooling around East College Avenue that runs past the Penn State campus showed symptoms of distracted driving after an encounter with an electronic road sign. It flashed the common “Stay Safe PA,” followed by a highly uncommon “Check for Smegma.”

To those not in the know, Centre Daily provided the needed trivia: Read More >

The NHTSA has definitely shut down on-line access to attachments in their Office of Defect Investigation complaint database. It’s about time, but it isn’t enough. To quote Kris Kristofferson, the database has always been “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” The database has been abused for political propaganda purposes. Now, that it has served its purpose, the database is being shut down. Partially. They have locked away the only content that is of real value: The evidence. We preserved some. To show you what you will be missing. Read More >

Within the last several hours, NHTSA has blocked access to documents hosted on its Office of Defect Investigation complaint database. The move comes after TTAC commenter carquestions posted this video to YouTube, showing a number of lapses in redacting which resulted in private information, including social security numbers and driver’s license numbers, being made publicly available. TTAC has contacted NHTSA about the apparent violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and is awaiting a response from the agency.

Ford and Chevy blew the lid off our 30k-unit graph limit… don’t count the big trucks out just yet.

We may love compact pickups here at TTAC, but apparently we’re in the minority. On the other hand, if the segment had some fresh blood, this graph might look a bit different…

As a nameplate, Lexus is now old enough to consume alcohol in all fifty states. Make no mistake, though: the brand Lexus has become is not the brand it was perhaps originally intended to be. Toyota and Nissan each launched with a (mostly) clean-sheet big V8 sedan and a warmed-over home-market showroom filler. For Nissan, the lineup was a short-wheelbase version of the all-new “President”, badged Q45, and a long-in-the-tooth Leopard coupe, yclept M30. Toyota introduced its “F1” global flagship as the Lexus LS400. To keep the new LS from being lonely in the showrooms, a quick nose job was done on a JDM faux-hardtop midsizer, and the ES250 was born.

Perhaps the Japanese thought they could win the “D-class” battle against BMW and Mercedes-Benz as easily as they’d destroyed the British motorcycle industry or humiliated the American attempts to build subcompact cars. It didn’t quite work out that way. The Q45 badge moved to the rather dismal Nissan Cima before completely fading away. The M30 was a sales catastrophe, to put it mildly. While the current LS460 does about the same annual volume in the United States as the Mercedes-Benz S550, it does so with a base price that is almost $23,000 below that of the Benz.

It was the humblest of the original four offerings from Lexus and Infiniti that would go on to conquer, if not the world, then at least the continent of North America. Today, Lexus is one of the top-volume luxury brands in the market. Its killer Camry-derived duo of ES 350 and RX350 perennially occupy the top of their segments’ sales charts, generating over 100,000 sales per year. Lexus is one of the most famous success stories in the industry, but it began with a straight badge-engineering job of a nearly obsolete car.

Read More >

Minivans, microvans, cargo vans. If it has rolling rear doors, you’ll find it here.

The big surprise in this segment? The fact that Nissan’s Versa has quietly become America’s top choice in the B-segment. All of a sudden we’re anxious to find out what percentage of those sales are of the sub-$10k stripper version. But even if that percentage is high, it wouldn’t mean that this segment sells on price alone. After all, Kia’s Soul is steadily gaining fans despite costing more compared to the competition than Kias usually do. In short, upscale does work… even for budget brands in a budget segment.

TTAC’s May sales analysis rolls on with this peek at the mid- and full-size crossover segment, which still looks to be waiting for a definitive competitor. But with other segments growing faster than this one, don’t expect a huge investment here anytime soon.

Got a nice empty property in an industrial park in Germany? Centrally located, close to a major airport like Frankfurt, or Munich would be a plus? Then we know some Chinese you may want to talk to. They are in Shenzhen and work for BYD. BYD is coming to Europe. And they want to put their European HQ right into the German hornet’s nest. Read More >

Anyone still feel like arguing that Cash For Clunkers was a good use of nearly $3b? [Coyoteblog, via Instapundit]

It has been almost three years since a young Saint Louis, Missouri motorist drew national attention by videotaping an out-of-control police officer’s profanity-laced tirade during a traffic stop (view video). St. George Police Sergeant James Kuehnlein was fired because of the bad publicity generated by the incident captured by the taping system that Brett Darrow, 23, installed in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. On Saturday, St. Louis County Police stopped Darrow once again.

Read More >

Customizing their own cars is the latest trend amongst carmakers. Now available at Shanghai Baozen Zhonghuan Automobile Sales and Service Co, an authorized BMW dealer in Shanghai: A 3-Series, blinged out with Swarovski crystals. On hearing the news, Global Times, the usually sedate English-typing sister publication of the usually very sedate party organ Peoples’ Daily, couldn’t help it and headlines: “BMW adds sparkle.” Read More >

Woken up by the Tata Nano warning shot (which so far seems to be a dud), everybody agrees that the key to making India “the next China” is to start small. Why does Suzuki own more than half of India’s market? Small cars.  And motorcycles. Another key to emerging markets is to give people an easy upgrade path from two wheels to four wheels. Remember how BMW got started? Remember that the initial business plan for the Volkswagen was to offer citizens of the Third Reich a car for the price of a motor cycle?

No wonder manufacturers are scouring their line-up for cars small enough for the huge Indian market. Read More >