After Hyundai was caught by the EPA with the wrong fuel economy ratings on “select vehicles” (read: most of them) media outlets (including this one) prognosticated that Hyundai would have to abdicate as king of the fuel sippers. Nothing doing, says TrueCar.

According to TrueCar’s sales-weighted rankings, Hyundai continues to put the most automobiles with the lowest fuel consumption on America’s roads – even after Hyundai and Kia had to restate their EPA window stickers, and had to give money back to customers. (Read More…)

Based on the Mazda2, Mazda will build a sub-compact for Toyota after Mazda’s new plant in Mexico opens, the company says. The new (Mazota?) will start production around the summer of 2015 at a pace of 50,000 units per year, Toyota says. (Read More…)

Slovakia is part of the euro zone. While whole countries need to be bailed out or go bankrupt, the town of Zilina  is peaceful – and busy. At the Kia plant, more than 253,000  cee’d, Venga and Sportage models have rolled off the assembly lines, more than the plant made all last year, Reuters says. (Read More…)

Talk about bad timing: One day after the elections that were preceded by the time-honored custom of China-bashing (with a little Japan-bashing mixed in, you never know) China’s largest automaker announced that the long feared attack of the Chinese car on American soil won’t happen anytime soon. (Read More…)

Superstorm Sandy left about a quarter million dead cars in its path, Reuters figures.  It mioght even drive up cars sales. (Read More…)

More than 300 Karma plug-in hybrids fell victim to super storm Sandy, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told Reuters.  The cars sat in a storage lot in Port Newark, New Jersey, which was inundated by Sandy. Among the lost Karmas are 16 that went up in flames. One car caught fire when seawater caused a short circuit. Winds spread the fire to 15 other cars.

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Renault opened negotiations on a new labor deal for France with a big squeeze, Reuters reports. Renault wants pay and working time concessions from its French workers. If Renault doesn’t get a good deal, jobs could go elsewhere. (Read More…)

The situation in Europe is “very volatile”, Ford CEO Alan Mulally told Reuters today in Berlin. “We don’t know whether it the European economy will stabilize or hit bottom or not because it’s continuing to decrease.” (Read More…)

GM told Reuters that it won’t build the next-generation Chevrolet Cruze in South Korea. Reuters says this is “raising the possibility that GM might shift the assembly to Europe to help boost efficiency at its money-losing unit there.” (Read More…)

Here is one car company that didn’t profit from Japan’s losses in China: Mercedes sales in China were down 3.9 percent to about 15,900 units in October, Reuters says. Daimler blamed the “very strong” sales of October 2011. (Read More…)

All three major Japanese automakers have reported their half year financial results. After Honda last week and Toyota yesterday, Japan’s number two automaker Nissan followed today. The presentations could not have been more different. (Read More…)

Nissan’s chief operating officer Toshiyuki Shiga said he was “disappointed and frustrated” by the lackluster sales of electric vehicles in general and the Leaf in particular. Speaking at the mid-term results press conference at the Nissan HQ in Yokohama, his emotional appeal to recognize Nissan’s pioneering efforts in the field of zero emissions had undertones of an eulogy on the electric vehicle: (Read More…)

China’s SAIC told Reuters today that its October auto sales rose 20.7 percent year-on-year to 414,471 units. This indicates a very strong jump in Volkswagen sales. (Read More…)

Ford and GM co-signed a $6.5 million loan in an effort to pull a key Australian parts supplier from the brink, Reuters says. (Read More…)

“No, Japan is not a closed market, come on, it has zero percent duty on cars.” Such spoke Yasuo Maruta, Communications Director of Volkswagen Japan, today at Volkswagen’s  Tokyo offices. Volkswagen Group sold 66,000 cars in the first ten months of the year in Japan, and is expected  to sell roughly 80,000 by the end of the year, making it Japan’s largest car importer, a title it held for as long as I can remember.

Maruta’s employer wants to enlarge its footprint in Japan. (Read More…)