Someone (I can’t find it, our search function sucks) once said that “when Bertel Schmitt reviews a car, he does it from the back seat, with a driver.” Which is true.

Heads of state will agree, being driven is the most dignified mode of transportation. Add to that the fact that the Lexus GS 350 has been driven and reviewed multiple times by Jack Baruth AND Alex Dykes, and you will understand why I chose to review the Lexus GS 350 from a position of power: From the back seat. Which, after all, is the most appropriate perspective to view a luxury vehicle from. (Read More…)

More and more U.S, carmakers run their plant 24 hours a day by adding a 3^rd shift, reports Bloomberg. U.S. auto plants are estimated to run at 81 percent capacity, up from 49 percent in 2009, IHS Automotive says. In the business, capacity utilization above 80 percent is considered good, anything lower is thought to be an invitation to disaster. (Read More…)

Was it luck? Was it hard work? A mixture of both? After escaping a near collision with fate in Iwaki, and not even getting its feet wet in Thailand, Nissan emerges as the most successful after the trials brought on by the unholy triad of tsunami, flood and yen. We said this a while ago when we compared 2011 production numbers of Japan’s majors.

Today, we go to Yokohama to check the balance sheets. (Read More…)

Toyota  U.S.A., Inc. today announced  pricing for the 2012 Prius c subcompact hybrid. They were not kidding when they had promised that the car would start at below $19,000. (Read More…)

Even at Germany’s IG Metall metal workers union the daily BILD Zeitung was put aside today to make room for the fancy Wall Street Journal. The paper claims to have talked to “a GM official,” who thinks that all hell is about to break loose at Opel in Germany. (Read More…)

Have a quick look at this screenshot. Scan it as quickly as you scan other news from China. Now picture scanning it under as much time pressure an average news editor is under. That’s what this is for, it is GM China’s site for journalists. Wouldn’t you think that GM China’s January sales were absolutely marvelous?

Well, it’s not true. (Read More…)

New car sales in China imploded in January. This will be the message when the official data by the CAAM are announced. Which should happen any minute.

The signs are ominous: Yesterday, GM China, TTAC’s in-house leading indicator, announced (in a way) that sales in January had been down by 8 percent. Then, China’s largest carmaker SAIC said that its January was down 8.5 percent. Today, the China Passenger Car Association told China Daily that the car market in China had nosedived16.5 percent from a year earlier to 1.17 million units in January. Late in the afternoon in Yokohama at Nissan’s quarterly earnings conference, Nissan’s Corporate Vice President, Joji Tagawa proudly pronounced that Nissan sales “declined only 16 percent” in China, while the Chinese car market as a whole registered “a negative 28 percent,” and isn’t that wonderful?

Whoa!!!! What’s going on?

Is the sky over China finally falling? It sure looks like it. (Read More…)

As the man said: “Finally, we can exercise our capabilities in earnest.”

Today, I heard at Toyota’s October-December results conference that TMC lost 240,000 unmade (and some made) cars to the Thai flood. After the conference, I asked Toyota spokesman Dion Corbett how many cars Toyota had lost to the tsunami.

I expected a bit less than a million. To my surprise, Corbett said: “150,000.”

I could not believe it. And I spent the rest of the day twisting arms until I knew how that happened. (Read More…)

Today, Toyota announced its October-December 2011 results to reporters packed into its basement meeting room in Koraku-en, Tokyo. Like most Japanese companies, Toyota is on a fiscal year that spans from April to March the following year. The reporting quarter was the third of the 2012 fiscal. It was surprisingly good. From October to December, TMC had an operating profit of 149.7 billion yen ($1.95 billion,) up 51 percent to from a year earlier. It gets better … (Read More…)

So what about Chrysler’s halftime ad? You know, the one with a Clint Eastwood who looked like he would die on the set? It did not show up in any of the Edmunds.com rankings. It is neither on the “that ad’s the bomb!” list. Nor is it on the list of ads that bombed. Maybe because Edmunds could not find the car. Car? What car? The ad tried really hard to repeat the “Imported from Detroit” success. Instead, the ad created a lot of controversy. Controversy? The [forbidden word] hit the fan! It might cost Obama the election! (Read More…)

Nah, not those dogs. We are not referring to the cute canines that populated many commercials aired during the Super Bowl last Sunday. We are referring to the dogs that didn’t hunt, we are talking bad ads, bad, bad, bad, baaaaad ones. The worst. Ads imported from Yucksville. Those we make you watch again today. (Read More…)

GM noted that Fox has issues with the Volt. They give Eric Bolling a Chevy Volt for a week. And this is what GM receives in return. Ingrates.

A few days ago, 24/7 Wall Street published yet another list of the best selling cars of all times, kicking the perennial Ford F-Series to second place. We usually stay away from these lists, they just produce flame wars, especially when the methodology remains as dubious as in “we looked at best-selling car data from a number of sources.”

However, powered by the Huffington Post et al, the list went viral. And there you have it: “Toyota Corolla becomes world’s most popular car with one sold every 40 seconds.”

Toyota took that to heart today and added a second shift to its Blue Springs, Mississippi plant. It makes the Corolla in America. And yes, in the press release, Toyota confirms that the Corolla is “the world’s best-selling car of all time.”

The Blue Springs plant has an annual capacity to produce 150,000 Corollas. According to our monthly sales snapshot, the Corolla disappointed in January, whereas the new Camry is selling well. In 2011, Corolla U.S. sales had been down 9.7 percent. (With the Ford F series solidly in number 1.) So why a second shift? (Read More…)

So what was the best Super Bowl ad yesterday? Edmunds has the answer: It’s the commercial for the Fiat 500.

The alluring advert must have touched the inner submissive in America’s men. They are shown an ad where a dork is slapped around by an (allegedly) Italian beauty with an Abarth tattoo (on her neck,) and they obligingly click it to the top of the charts, without even thinking of hissing: “On your knees, Ffffffffiat.”

Wimps.

Of course, it could also have been American females who had their inner dominatrix tickled. (Read More…)