Used car prices have been rising for a while to a degree that sometimes it can be cheaper to buy new than used. If you have been sitting on the fence, it could be time to hop on down. Used car prices are predicted to peak within the next two months. (Read More…)

China is Porsche’s second largest market (behind the U.S.) and most of the Porsches shipped to the Middle Kingdom are Cayennes. No wonder that Porsche will choose the upcoming Beijing Auto Show to present a successor to its brutish GTS. (Read More…)

Carglass is one of the most lucrative sectors of the sometimes obscenely lucrative auto service business. Their eyes glaze over when purveyors of pristine panes talk about a new trend in car design: Glass roofs. (Read More…)

U.S. president Obama was not allowed drive the Volt down the Hamtramck assembly line. His colleague in Turkmenistan does not suffer such tight restrictions and was allowed to win Turkmenistan’s first car race. (Read More…)

Rumors of Audi starting U.S. production have been floating around for a while. Tennesseans in Chattanooga had hoped  Audi would move in with Volkswagen. These hopes have been dashed over the weekend. Germany’s Spiegel reports that Audi will get its own plant in Mexico. (Read More…)

GM’s new partner PSA increasingly reminds of pre-carmageddon Ford: Europe’s number 2 finds itself short on cash and way too long on capacity. Other than Ford that had mortgaged everything, PSA takes more radical steps. After putting is own headquarters building up for sale, PSA is ready to sign over parts of its Aulnay car plant to renters. (Read More…)

Two years after the Volkswagen Golf was launched, it received a fuel sipping diesel in 1976. I presented the launch campaign in Wolfsburg, and the ground shook. It wasn’t because of my campaign. It was because of the body stamping presses. The offices of the Zentrale Absatzförderung, VW’s advertising department, were two floors above. (Read More…)

The Chinese car market isn’t dead yet. China had delivered a few lackluster months and was promptly feted by the I-told-you-so crowd as the 21^st century version of the limits of growth. Suddenly, the Chinese car market shows surprising signs of resilience. Sales data for March are not here yet, but TTAC’s patent-pending Chinese sales oracle has spoken: GM China. (Read More…)

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, the designer of the Porsche 911, died today in Salzburg. (Read More…)

Nissan waited until the second press day of the New York Auto Show. They did not want their all-electric Infiniti sedan to drown in the floods of other reveals. They should not have worried. (Read More…)

Diesel engines increasingly turn into causes for divorce in the promiscuous automotive business. PSA Peugeot Citroen and Ford are calling off some of their diesel dalliances. (Read More…)

Before and after Saab had gone bankrupt, pipe-dreamers thought that the company can be revived with just a few million dollars. The number commonly used was $50 to $70 million. We maintained that it would cost a few billion dollars to get the company going again.

As it turns out, we were way too optimistic. (Read More…)

A year ago, Carlos Ghosn announced that Nissan is aiming for 8 percent global market share by 2016. This morning in New York, delivering the keynote address at the New York Auto Show, Ghosn said it again:

 “We can achieve 8 percent global market share by 2016.”

After a pause, he continued: “Whenever I state this 8 percent goal, I get some skeptical looks.” (Read More…)

That was an easy call: Car sales in Europe will decline again this year, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne told his assembled shareholders at a meeting in Turin. Fiat, caught with pants and sales down in Europe’s teetering south, would be in much worse shape without Chrysler, Marchionne thinks:

“This was the only way to preserve Fiat’s future. It does not make sense anymore to talk about Fiat as an Italian or European company… With Chrysler we have fixed our excessive dependence on Europe and have the tranquility to overcome the market’s fluctuations.”

Chrysler surprised again in March with a 34 percent gain and the best monthly result in four years. Back home in Italy, Marchionne already preannounced “horrible sales” for Fiat and March.

Reuters says that the shareholder meeting approved the conversion of Fiat’s preference and savings shares into ordinary shares, which makes it easier for Fiat to buy the 41.5 percent of Chrysler it does not yet own.

They did not know that TTAC’s man in the cold was surreptitiously snapping pictures with his iPhone. Again-elected Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin simply watched while Renault COO Carlos Tavares defaced the hood of a brand-new car with a Magic Marker. Nissan’s COO Toshiyuki Shiga grinned and did not interfere either. This is how they celebrate the opening of a new car factory, this afternoon in Russia. (Read More…)