Ferdinand Piech is cultivating long standing traditions. He always liked to watch a good catfight between his people. In the olden days, he did let plants in Europe compete and bid for cars. Now for the battle royale:  Who will develop the basics on which all future sports cars in the Volkswagen empire will be built? Porsche or Audi? The answer should be obvious: (Read More…)

How did Tokyo digest Toyota’s lackluster U.S. May sales performance? In a market that forged ahead by 19 percent, Toyota grew only 6.7 percent. Even more embarrassing, other Japanese brands like Mazda (+ 35 percent), Subaru (+35 percent), or Nissan (+24 percent) had outpaced the market.  When Tokyo woke up to the bad news this morning, everybody ran to the phone, called their broker and … (Read More…)

China has finally revealed its worst kept secret and announced a pilot program for five Chinese cities. It’s raining cash for buyers of  electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. And it “reflects Beijing’s resolve to foster domestic brands,” says Reuters.

Really? At first glance, there is no discrimination against laowei cars. (Read More…)

Everybody is waiting for a sign of the Chinese car boom to go ka-boom. Bloomberg aims to please, and has the story that Chinese “passenger-car sales growth slowed in May as falling stock prices eroded wealth and consumer prices rose in the world’s largest automobile market.” Bloomberg is alarmed that growth was only 25 percent. Let’s have a look. (Read More…)

Some time in summer, OICA will announce the world production ranking of all automakers and answer that all-important question: Who are the world’s largest auto makers? TTAC readers are an impatient bunch and are used to hear and know stuff before anybody else. TTAC is pleased to announce the preliminary, unofficial world ranking of 2009 production. Who’s the top? Who’s the bottom? Who dominates the industry? We present you: The top ten car makers in the world. (Read More…)

Production at the Honda parts factory in Foshan, China, partially resumed this Chinese afternoon after Honda offered to increase the wages of striking workers by 366 yuan ($54) a month, company officials told The Nikkei [sub]. This reflects a pay hike of 20 percent. (Read More…)

Japanese car buyers are still auto otaku. In May, new car sales in Japan rose for the tenth straight month. Total sales of registered vehicles are up 28 percent to 228,514 units, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association told The Nikkei [sub].

Not only are the sales growing, the cars are getting bigger too. (Read More…)

Financial Times calls “Volkswagen a long-time skeptic about hybrid and electric cars.” As a long time observer of the Wolfsburg boys, I have to agree. Despite green initiatives for public and political consumption, their private position has been that the consumption and emissions of a hybrid could be achieved with their low displacement supercharged engines and some weight savings. Some electric initiatives notwithstanding, this position has not changed. Case in point: Their new Touran. (Read More…)

Korea? Bzzzzt.

The U.S.A.? Bzzzzt. Not yet and not quite. (Read More…)

This week, NHTSA came out and said that after a recount of their complaints database, they found 89 dead bodies in their computers, allegedly killed by evil runaway Toyotas. The MSM ate it up. If it bleeds, it leads. Even if it smells. In this article, we will show you the secrets of the incredible killing machine at NHTSA. (Read More…)

The strike at Honda’s transmission factory in China that has led to the closure of all Honda sites in China shows no sign of resolution. Actually, there is a new twist: Management is leaning on school interns not to strike, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reports. Why the sudden focus on interns? (Read More…)

Actually, he’s been broke for since last October.

“About four months ago, I ran out of cash,” Musk wrote in a court filing with the Superior Court of Los Angeles on Feb. 23. “I had to obtain emergency loans from personal friends. These loans are the exclusive source of cash I have. If I did not take these loans, I would have no liquid assets left.” Tough when you make only 8 grand a month and have two high maintenance women. (Read More…)

The PT Cruiser lit the world on fire … then it fizzled.  The new Beetle put a bug under many people’s bonnet – now it’s marked for extinction. That doesn’t deter Saab’s new owner Victor Muller of Spyker to think about a re-make of the legendary teardrop-shaped Saab 92 that was in production from 1949 to 1956. (Read More…)

Throughout the bailout bonanza, we were told that the car industry means million of jobs. True enough, before the money was doled out, we learned that auto-related industries employ 3.1 million people around the country. Now, the government is paying big bucks for electric car development.  From Tesla all the way to Nissan, the industry is getting $ 25 billions of DOE loans, conditional  on the development of advanced vehicle technologies. Which usually means electric cars.  What’s wrong with that picture? If successful, it could cost a big chunk of those 3.1 million jobs. (Read More…)

Toyota has released their production numbers for the first four months. So has Volkswagen. GM has not, but that doesn’t change the general picture: Toyota is still in the lead in worldwide production, Volkswagen catches up a bit, but sits solidly in the #3 position for the first four months of the year. (Read More…)