When a common law couple finally stops living in sin and ties the knot, it usually is (in more ways than one) an anticlimactic event. And so it is today. Today, August 1, Porsche finally came home to Volkswagen. (Read More…)

While we are waiting for the U.S. July sales table to populate, let me entertain or bore you with all the numbers from Japan. This was made possible by the , the Japan Mini Vehicles Association finally publishing its outstanding table. Domo arigatou. (Read More…)

U.S. domestic sales  of GM are down 6.4 percent, while sales of bitter rival Toyota are up 26.1 percent. Or more, depending on how you look at it. (Read More…)

And now, back to the usual blood and tears from Europe: July new cars sales dropped 7 percent in France and thudded 17 percent in Spain “as consumers cut back on costly goods in the face of economic uncertainty,” says Reuters. (Read More…)

It’s not all blood and tears in Europe. Actually, the bloodier Europe looks, and the more Marchionne & Co do cry, the bigger the smiles at European carmakers with heavy exposure to foreign markets.  The Euro is way down, and a low Euro means heavy profits from abroad – if you have business abroad. BMW sure does, and it posted its second best quarterly earnings in company history. Profit before financial result (EBIT) amounted to € 2.27 billion in the April-June 2012 quarter. (Read More…)

Japanese new car sales jumped in July while the business is getting ready to enter negative territory during the rest of the year. (Read More…)

Two times, the UAW tried to unionize the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee. Twice, the Union received a black eye. The UAW is trying a third time, this time counting on the fact that  “an estimated 70 percent of the workforce is black,” says Reuters in a feature story on the UAW’s last ditch effort to gain relevance in the South.

Says Reuters: (Read More…)

If this feels like the Manchester United and Ewanick day, so be it. If we’d pass up these morsels, we’d be accused of selective reporting. As a result of the torrent of leaks, we are now led to believe that the Manchester deal is what the Business Insider calls “one of the biggest marketing contractual screwups of all times.”

According to the leaks to Bloomberg … (Read More…)

While bloggers and the MSM are gobbling up the red herrings served by the deep throats at GM, some people are connecting the dots. They even drew a map. If you are concerned about U.S. taxpayer’s money leaving for Old Blighty, you want to read on. Don’t do it on an empty stomach. Or maybe do. You will want to puke. (Read More…)

What do you do if you lose market share and can’t stand it anymore? You deliver what the market wants. Hyundai is trying to make up for losses in China with a (so far) China only car that slot between the Elantra and the Sonata, says Reuters. (Read More…)

One day after  GM’s  Chief Marketing Executive Joel Ewanick was fired for failing ” to meet the expectations that the company has for its employees,” one day after it was leaked like from a fire hose that there were shady going ons between Ewanick and the Manchester United soccer club, GM signed a seven year contract with just the same soccer club. A day after the ouster of a marketing chief who was tasked with saving billions, GM paid, according to Reuters,  “twice as much as the team’s previous automotive sponsor” for putting “Chevrolet” on the team’s jerseys. Does this pass the smell test? (Read More…)

Germany’s Auto-BILD thinks it knows how it will look when Daimler shrinks the G-Wagen. In 2015, Daimler will bring out a GLG based on the new A-Class, says the magazine. Auto-BILD hasn’t seen more than the own renderings, but that doesn’t keep the rag from bitching: (Read More…)

Panic at RenCen. It’s not that people are leaving GM. It’s how they leave. Two weeks ago, Opel  chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke presented numbers to Dan Akerson. Akerson fires him.  Opel gets two interim chiefs in a week.  Last Thursday, Opel’s new design chief Dave Lyon doesn’t even start his job.  Today, media in the U.S.  and Germany report that Lyon had been escorted from the building and to a waiting car by GM’s head of personnel. A day later, global marketing chief Joel Ewanick suddenly leaves. Instead of wishing him all the best for his future endeavors, GM spokesman Greg Martin puts a knife in Ewanick’s back: “He failed to meet the expectations the company has of an employee.” (Read More…)

Well into the first decade of the new millennium, Changchun, China, was Volkswagen’s Siberia. When someone was transferred to the frigid city in Northern China, the others inevitably asked: “What did you do?”

It looks like Opel is quickly becoming GM’s Siberia, and people rather desert than going. (Read More…)

With China being the world’s largest car market, and the largest market of many of our carmakers, getting good and timely data is essential for stock analysts and journalists alike. Bloomberg has an exasperated story that cries about the absolute mess in China when it comes to hard data. It also describes the great lengths analysts go to when gauging Chinese car sales. No wonder the analyst reports are often messier than even the messiest Chinese data: (Read More…)