The European car market accelerates  its race to the bottom. Back from a long vacation, the European car manufacturers association ACEA reports that the EU car market was down 8.9 percent in August, after having dropped 7.8 percent in July. Eight months into the year, European car sales are down 7.1 percent as  Europeans registered 8,268,642 new cars so far. (Read More…)

Malaysia pretty much gave up on the idea of having a national car and sold Proton, a brainchild of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. This does not keep neighboring Cambodia from embarking on a similar silliness. State-owned ACICA signed “a US$2 billion join venture investment” with UK’s BIW Automotive to build a factory in Preah Sihanouk province for a Cambodian-made vehicle within the next three years, says the Phnom Pen Post. (Read More…)

For months, Frank Stronach’s Magna was about to take over GM’s Opel, until GM suddenly canceled the deal, a decision GM probably regrets several times a day. Used to reach for the stars, Frank Stronach reaches higher. Instead of ruling Opel, he now wants to rule a country. (Read More…)

Around 1,000 Chinese fishing boats are bearing down on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, while Japanese carmakers in China are buttoning-up their Chinese car factories. (Read More…)

President Barack Obama will carry a familiar gift to election rallies in Ohio today.

“The Obama administration will announce a trade complaint against China today as President Barack Obama campaigns in Ohio, alleging impermissible subsidies of auto- and auto-parts exports that encourage outsourcing to China from the U.S.” an administration official told Bloomberg.     (Read More…)

Daimler, or rather one of its Chinese customers, is paying late penance for the ill-fated merger with Chrysler. A Chinese patriot proudly presented this trophy on Weibo, the Chinese version of the (blocked in China) Twitter. He said he took it off a “Japanese Mitsubishi” which he savaged in rage against Japan’s occupation of the Diaoyu islands.

Mitsubishi Motors fell into the hands of Daimler through the merger with Chrysler. After that fell apart. Mitsubishi soon was back on its own. (Read More…)

GM wants the Treasury to sell its GM shares at a huge loss, says the Wall Street Journal.  Nothing doing, says the Department of the Treasury. It does not appear to need the cash (it can have it printed if needed) and is holding out for a slightly smaller loss. (Read More…)

GM is smarter than Ford when it comes to exploiting rich Chinese, says Tycho de Feyter of Carnewschina. While GM sells is Camaro in China for a whopping $72,000 on up, Ford is leaving money on the table and profits to grey importers. (Read More…)

The affliction for pink cars knows no bounds, and TTAC’s word-wide correspondents hunt them down. Here is a small selection of pinkies that arrived in our pink mailbox at shootthepink@gmail.com. North Bay, Ontario, is populated by people with eclectic tastes – for pink Hondas. (Read More…)

Anti-Japanese demonstrations grew ugly in China over the weekend, and it were cars that took the brunt. Chinese took to the streets after Tokyo said it would nationalize the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The uninhabited rocks are administered by Japan but claimed by China.  Tens of thousands protested this weekend – and vented their rage on cars.

One  of the first victims was a Honda CR-V, oddly owned by the police in the southern city of Shenzhen. Shenzhen’s finest were unable to protect their property.

As it becomes increasingly dangerous to own a Japanese car in China, people devise unorthodox ways to protect their cherished car. (Read More…)

The car show in Haikou on the Chinese island of Hainan is small as far as car shows go. Organizers had to try harder to attract visitors. Or, being small, they had to save money, and they decided to spare the garments of their female product specialists. They appeared covered in not much more than flowers.

Caution, the following pictures could be considered as offensive and NSFW in Sharia jurisdictions and parts of America, but have become quite common in officially still communist China.   (Read More…)

Volkswagen announced global Group sales for August, and they are a whopping 18.9 percent over August 2011. For the first eight months of the year, Volkswagen Group deliveries are 10.2 percent ahead of what VW delivered in the same period last year. With all the bad news from Europe, how can a European car company deliver such good numbers, you ask? (Read More…)

Five years ago, Chris Matthews said on MSNBC: “Well, The Washington Post is not the liberal newspaper it was.” Today, the Post finally will be condemned as part of the massive right wing conspiracy. In a brutal op-ed, signed by the full WaPo Editorial Board, the paper kills and buries the Volt. Basically, says the WaPo, we have been fooled: (Read More…)

Some TTAC readers complained that they never had the chance to cash in on the great $199 Volt lease deals.  We apologize. (Read More…)

Venture capitalist extraordinaire Tim Draper says Tesla has the resources to beat the Detroit Three. Detroit already has lost the electric war, Draper says, and it should pick a different battle to win. Like making flying cars. (Read More…)