We love our commenters. We hate to see them go. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. This is to announce the untimely departure of dogsledder54 a.k.a. “scarey”, and of curbie138 from the pages of TTAC. They were banished. What happened?

The matter turned into a story, because there is a moral to it. It illustrates perfectly the dos and don’ts of commenting on TTAC. (Read More…)

Members of the Chinese car industry are busy hiring foreign engineers and designers. That trend apparently has not reached China’s Shaanxi Province yet. The province is home to state-owned conglomerate Shaanxi Victory. It’s automotive4 division made unremarkable trucks and vans. Very few knew of this venture. Now, Shaanxi is famous all the way to Detroit. The company copied the Cadillac Escalade as the master design for its new S102. (Read More…)

Police in India is seeking to arrest the entire workforce of 3,000 at the Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar factory after a Wednesday riot left a manager killed, hundreds injured and the factory torched, Reuters says.  Maruti Suzuki’s factory is closed. A lengthy shutdown that could cost $15 million a day is expected. (Read More…)

PSA Peugeot Citroen’s Chairman Thierry Peugeot lashed out against what he calls “evil attacks” by the new leftist French government and its industry minister Arnaud Montebourg. He also raised a specter that makes any patriotic politician sit up and listen: Hostile takeovers. (Read More…)

Less than a year ago, the Tokyo automotive press corps was summoned to Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main Japanese islands to visit a Nissan plant. Nobody knew why, until Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn had one of his trademark impromptu outbursts. He called the exchange rate “abnormal,” several times, until everybody got it. He threatened several times that Nissan and most of the Japanese industry would pack up and leave, and delivered an ultimatum: “If six months down the road we are still in this situation, then this will provoke a rethinking of our industrial strategy.” (Read More…)

Nissan joins Hyundai and Kia in exporting cars to the U.S. Nissan will make the Rogue SUV at a plant of Alliance partner Renault Samsung Motor. This according to similar reports by Reuters and the Nikkei [sub], both without quoting official sources. (Read More…)

General Motors pensioners should not worry about their underfunded pension plan. Its assets will be in safe hands. Those of the Chinese government. The Chinese government has agreed to buy large chunks of it, says Financial Times. According to the paper, China’s “State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages China’s more than $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, will pay $1.5bn-$2bn for GM’s positions in blue chip private equity funds.” (Read More…)

Former Wall Street banker turned GM CFO Dan Ammann put the fear of a higher being into Reuters’ Detroit correspondent Ben Klayman. To drive home the point that bean counters can be car guys too, Ammann raced his gray-metallic Corvette Z06 around GM’s Michigan test track – with a nauseated Klayman in the passenger’s seat. (Read More…)

Ford is recalling 11,500 new 2013 model Ford Escape SUVs with 1.6-liter engines. The company also warned drivers to stop driving them immediately due to a risk of engine fire. “It is extremely rare for an automaker to warn drivers to stop driving their recalled vehicles,” Reuters says in a flash report. (Read More…)

Workers at Maruti Suzuki’s factory in Maneshar, India, ransacked and burned the factory, leaving the personnel director dead and many injured, Reuters reports. (Read More…)

Patrick Pelata is leaving Renault. This a year after the former Chief Operating Officer took the fall over the spy scandal. (Read More…)

A 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II, adorned with over a million Swarovski crystals is on display at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich, Germany. (Read More…)

The legendary Nürburgring, purveyor of records an dreams, is dead. Well, it’s clinically dead, but it might be brought back to life. What else would you do with a 16 mile road that goes nowhere in the middle of nowhere? The Ring is bankrupt. Out of money. Can’t pay its bills. Broke. Bust. Pleite. (Read More…)

The Peugeot family is on war footing with the French government. It “hit back at suggestions by a government official that its members have favored their own financial interests over the development of the family-controlled auto maker,” says the Wall Street Journal. Basically, the family followed the line of argument suggested by TTAC. (Read More…)

Brokerage Wunderlich Securities downgraded Tesla to “sell” from “buy.” The reason: Tesla has downshifted its production plans, reports Reuters.

“While initially saying that it would produce and sell 1,000 cars in the third quarter, Tesla now says it will certainly be 500 cars,” Wunderlich analyst, Theodore O’Neill, said in a research note. (Read More…)