Devotees of the Manchester United soccer club call for a boycott of the products made by the club’s sponsors. This famously includes Chevrolet. Last Monday, GM signed a seven year contract with Manchester United. A day before, GM’s Chief Marketing Executive Joel Ewanick, the architect of the deal, was fired. Manchester United supporters are opposed to their club going public on Wall Street. To put pressure on the Glazer family to ditch the plan, they ask the public to stay clear of the products of the club’s sponsors. (Read More…)

White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer apologized to WaPo and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer for having “overshot the runway.” Pfeifer had accused Krauthammer of falsely claiming that a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been removed from the White House and sent back to the British Embassy. In a blog post on the White House Blog (yes, the White House blogs too) Pfeiffer produced a smoking gun: A Churchill bust that was still at the White House.  The trouble was there had been two busts. Now there is only one.  (See, and I would have sworn Bill Clinton took all available busts when he vacated the White House.)

What do busts have to do with cars? (Read More…)

I have attracted the attention of our technical people to the plight of  smartphone users. YOU can be instrumental in bringing TTAC to a new smartphone glory. (Read More…)

An angry farmer in Vermont wiped out most of the fleet of the Orleans County Sheriffs’s Department by rolling his tractor over the cruisers. Without wheels, the deputies had to liberate one of their cars from a service station before they could go into high speed pursuit of the man who left the scene in red farm tractor, the Daily Mail reports. (Read More…)

Whenever we talk about middling sales and dwindling market shares of certain carmakers, moles pop out of the holes, check their talking points, and shout: “Volume is soooo lame. Awesome profits is where it’s at!” Point taken. (Read More…)

Toyota today published its revised production and sales plan for the calendar year 2012. The plan calls for slightly more than 10 million units produced globally by all Toyota Motor Corporation companies. If this plan is executed, Toyota will be the world’s first automaker to break the 10 million unit sound barrier. Based on its half year results, Toyota was already above plan before the plan was published.  (Read More…)

Yesterday, we did one of our regular checks on the World’s Largest Automakers. Today, finally some good news for the GM camp: TTAC is up-revising its year-end projection for GM by some 300,000 units. Here is why: (Read More…)

German new car sales are no longer Teflon-coated.  New car sales in Deutschland were down 5 percent in July, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. (Read More…)

GM posted better quarterly numbers today than analysts expected. Instead of jumping on the news, the GM share is down at the time of this typing? Why? Analysts and financial reporters quickly caught on to an old trick that has an air of despair: GM delayed spending into the next quarter. Says Reuters:    (Read More…)

They called the market correctly, but they did bet on the wrong horses. Bloomberg polled the usual  assemblage of analysts regarding the final tally of July new car sales, and the analysts did not disappoint  when it came to the overall market. On average, they nailed the July SAAR of 14.1 million. When it came to the Detroit 3, they were way too optimistic. And it just so happens that the chief car analyst of Germany’s largest bank is the winner of this month’s Grade the Analysts. (Read More…)

This makes Hugo Chavez happy: GM wants to more than double its production in the Caribbean worker’s paradise of Venezuela. At least that’s what Chavez told Reuters: (Read More…)

Toyota has decided to increase global production this year by about 300,000 units, The Nikkei [sub] reports, as usual for the Nikkei without quoting sources. If this is true, then it would bring global production numbers for Toyota and Lexus close to 9 million for the year. With Daihatsu and Hino, that number would be around 10 million. That is too high for GM to reach. (Read More…)

Fiat saved Chrysler. Now, Chrysler keeps Fiat alive. Fiat would be in deep trouble, would it not be for the huge profits generated at Chrysler.  Fiat’s future is so cloudy that it can’t give guidance for the near future.  Yesterday, Fiat reported a second quarter trading profit of 1 billion euros ($1.23 billion), “bolstered by soaring sales at its U.S. unit Chrysler,” says Reuters.  Today,  Fiat says it has no clue where it will stand by the end of the year. (Read More…)

Mitsubishi is still alive and well in Japan, for the rest of the world, it is hoping for a Mirage. Just to make sure, Mitsubishi built one. Produced in Thailand, the Mitsubishi Mirage is a global compact car. Today, it goes on sale in Japan. (Read More…)

And now, the hangover: July brings disappointing sales numbers for GM and Ford after June had surprised. GM is down 6 percent in July. Ford is down 4 percent. Even Chrysler Group reports down to earth results with July up only 13 percent after a truly ballistic series of months. In June, Edmunds Senior Analyst Jessica Caldwell politely voiced suspicions that the beautiful June numbers were the product of cosmetics: (Read More…)