You noticed that I needed to catch my breath a bit from TTAC’s Future Writers Week.  The results still have me breathless. At the start, I thought with seven a day, I probably have enough until Friday. Was I ever wrong. (Read More…)

Usually, we are not big on COTY’s, but this one is too good to pass up. According to lore, which is sometimes parroted in the comments at TTAC, there is mutual hate between Koreans and Japanese. This did not stop Korean journalists from crowning a Japanese car as Korea’s Car of the year: The Toyota Camry.  This was so momentous that Toyota Korea president Hisao Nakabayashi broke into tears when the award was presented at a Seoul hotel. (Read More…)

With only a 1.9 percent of lost sales in the black hole called Europe, Volkswagen remains relatively unaffected by the European contagion, especially compared to PSA (- 12.9 percent), Renault (-19.1 percent), Opel (- 15.8 percent), Ford (- 13.2 percent) and Fiat (- 16.1 percent). But Volkswagen can’t walk on water either. Volkswagen is throttling down the production of its bread & butter car, the Passat in reaction to lackluster demand. (Read More…)

How do you beat the Dow? Occasionally, by reading TTAC. Yesterday, we wrote about Beijing rumors that Daimler and China’s BAIC are planning a big tie-up.

While we at TTAC are busy looking for the appropriate tie-up pictures, in case the rumor should prove true, the Dow Jones Newswire reports today: (Read More…)

Germany’s metal worker union IG Metall proposed a new plan yesterday to solve the overcapacity at Opel  without undue grief on its members:  The union will agree to the closure of Opel’s Bochum plant, if Opel guarantees that no hobs will be lost until 2018. Reuters takes that as a tacit warming up to the inevitable, while demanding the seemingly impossible. (Read More…)

America, land of wide open roads and big cars, listen up: On the sidelines of Nissan showing its new day care center at its Yokohama headquarters to reporters, Nissan’s COO Toshiyuki Shiga made a comment that should resonate well with American customers: (Read More…)

Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said today that he does not expect any sales growth in Europe over the next three to four years. He is not giving up on growth, and said that most will come from higher demand in the United States and China, Reuters reports. (Read More…)

There are rumors ricocheting around Beijing about a possible big tie-up between China’s BAIC and Daimler. BAIC is Daimler’s joint venture partner in China, where the joint venture handles Chinese production of the long version of the E-Class, the C-Class and the GLK. (Read More…)

In what Reuters calls “the latest exit from President Barack Obama’s cabinet,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that he would not be staying on for the second term. (Read More…)

U.S. government funded and nonetheless bankrupt battery maker A123 will be Chinese. China’s Wanxiang emerged as the successful bidder in December. All the deal needed  was U.S. government approval. The deal has been approved, says Reuters. (Read More…)

Elon Musk offered Boeing Tesla’s help with its troubled Boeing 787 battery packs. He wants Boeing try the packs Tesla uses in its SpaceX rockets and Tesla cars. Ever the hipster, Musk announced the unsolicited aid via Twitter: (Read More…)

What’s 10 million these days – give the man a raise!

Up until the mid-1800s, debtor’s prison did await those who could not pay their debts. To this day, more than a third of U.S. states allow debtors to be jailed for non-payment. If you run a company called GM, Ally, or AIG, not only do you keep your freedom, you will be bailed out by the government, and given a $10 million salary. Waitaminute, you say, aren’t executive salaries of bailed-out companies limited to a still very generous $500,000? This is exactly the question the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program asked. The answer, provided in a report to Treasury Tim Geithner, and the public, is scathing: The Treasury Department ignored its own rules and approved “excessive pay packages” for the leaders of bailed-out companies. (Read More…)

Yesterday, I took you on a visit to Tokyo, to the Japan Classic Car Association’s New Year Meeting, and on a tour of imported cars in Japan. If you believe the propaganda, there aren’t any imported cars in Japan. But it is not true.

The history of car imports to Japan is a history of Yanase, Japan’s premiere car importer. Yanase was founded in 1915 as an importer of Buicks and Cadillacs to Japan. One of his big customers was the Imperial Navy which “had nothing but Buicks,” as Jiro Yanase told a reporter. The Japanese Navy also put Yanase nearly out of business, in December of 1941.

During the war, Yanase kept the Buick and Cadillac signs up to attract service business. After the war, Yanase became GM’s sole importer to Japan. Soon, he became the world’s go-to man for car imports to Japan.

(Read More…)

GM’s CEO Dan Akerson gave an interview to Norihiko Shirouzu, one of the best men in Reuters’ impressive stable of automotive writers. Akerson disclosed two very scary pieces of information:

1. GM hinged most of its emerging markets strategy on its Chinese JV partner SAIC
2. GM will hinge most of its emerging markets strategy on SAIC and PSA (Read More…)

GM’s tattered alliance-partner PSA Peugeot Citroen  did not produce any cars in its Slovak plant today and will add more stoppage days next month to catch up with weak demand in Europe, Reuters reports. (Read More…)