After a lot of to and fro, GM today officially gave up on the Hummer deal. Reuters reports that “General Motors Co will wind down its Hummer SUV line after failing to complete a deal to sell the brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co.”

“We are disappointed that the deal with Tengzhong could not be completed,” John Smith, GM’s outgoing vice president of corporate planning and alliances, said in a statement. This is the last in a row of failed deals Smith misengineered. (Read More…)

Everybody who’s ever worked in China knows that some things take some time. Nothing that is announced today, happens tomorrow. There are applications to be made, documents to be “chopped.” Sometimes, this process takes forever, as it seems to be the case with Hummer. Sometimes, things move a bit faster. Last December, we reported that GM would sell a crucial one percent of the 50:50 holdings of GM China to their joint venture partner SAIC to bring the shareholdings to 51 percent SAIC, 49 percent GM.

As China’s new year (that of the tiger) came around, China’s biggest automaker SAIC Motor Corp has won regulatory approval to acquire the crucial 1 percent stake in Shanghai GM, Shanghai Daily reports today via Gasgoo. The matter has been officially filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday. It’s official now. General Motors officially has been relegated to minority shareholder in its key venture in the world’s largest auto market. SAIC is now calling the shots. (Read More…)

Although the Chinese government takes much of February off for New Year festivities, GM’s deal to sell HUMMER to Sichuan Tengzhong has exactly one week left before a self-imposed deadline for completion arrives. The deal is being held up by China’s Commerce Ministry which has publicly said that it wants the Chinese auto industry to consolidate and become “greener,” two goals that are severely at odds with Sichuan Tengzhong’s HUMMER aspirations. Now, the Financial Times reports that Tengzhong may be trying to pull an end-around on the Chinese government by pursuing a purchase via an offshore investment vehicle. This would (in theory) evade the requirement for the Commerce Ministry’s approval. In reality … (Read More…)

GM and Chrysler were already culling dealers before their bankruptcies, which hastened the process. Many of those dealerships were profitable businesses, often family owned, whether or not they were ultimately an asset to the parent automakers. Dealers have established regional brand equity, being major advertisers in their markets. The dealers losing their franchises have explored what few options they have. There are lobbying efforts at the state and national levels to protect the affected dealers with some kind of legislation. Some have signed up with Hyundai & Kia, as the low priced Korean automakers thrive in the recession. Others, recognizing that new car sales are often a wash, and that repair service and used car sales are profit centers, have stayed in business as used car dealerships or automotive service centers.

Now Sears Roebuck & Co. has offered some of those culled dealers another lifeline. Banking on the reputation of its DieHard battery brand as well as being one of the country’s leader tire retailers, Sears is launching the Independent Sears Auto Center franchise program, starting with a former Chrysler dealer in New Jersey, the Coleman Auto Group. Participating stores will offer Sears’ full automotive product line of batteries, tire, accesories as well as repair services and replacement parts.

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Maisara Gad writes in from Egypt to register his unhappiness with a recently purchased Lifan 520 which blew its gearbox at 70 km/hr.

Do you Call this a car ? Since i got this JUNK and i have been allways in problems .. the car is full of problems .. check out the web site i started to let the world see how junk car you sell to the public.. i wouldnt stop showing every one this junk car

Yes, well it is a 20-year-old Citroen ZX with the latest in Chinese styling and interior work. With that kind of pedigree, it’s hard to have too many expectations. Still, Chinese automakers who thought that success in foreign markets is as easy as improving crash test videos on Youtube should take note.

Typically, the only reports on China’s BYD involve booming Chinese sales, unproven future products, and Warren Buffett’s investment in the battery and auto manufacturing conglomerate. But these don’t tell the whole story of how BYD has emerged from relative obscurity to publicly announcing that it intends to challenge Toyota to become the world’s top automaker by 2018. Chinese outlet Caixin [via GreenCarReports] attempts to shed some light on BYD and what it takes to rise to the top of China’s massive manufacturing industry, in a piece titled “How Manufacturing’s Mockingbird Sings.” The piece details BYD’s reliance on reverse engineering, the practice of stripping down competitor automobiles and components and copying them, and its extreme (even by Chinese standards) dependence on cheap labor.

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Toyota is getting in big kuso (doo-doo) back home.

Up until now, the company could do no wrong. Largest company in Japan. Largest employer. Provided income to countless publishing houses that printed books about the Toyota Way.

Now, Toyota is being blamed for Japan’s falling reputation abroad, political difficulties, and just about everything including the bad weather (it snowed this morning in Tokyo,) and the falling GDP. (Read More…)

While the world is trying to come to grips with pedal-gate, tiny Hong Kong is attempting an exorcism of its own gremlins: 18,000 (mostly Toyota Crown) taxis and 2,000 minibuses are propelled by LPG, liquefied petroleum gas. The gas is lugged around in a large tank housed in the trunk of the taxis, much to the chagrin of suitcase-schlepping tourists. The real problem is: The LPG mobiles are breaking down in wholesale fashion, China Daily reports. Hundreds a month.

The Hong Kong government set up a special task force to investigate. Nobody is blaming Toyota – this time. (Read More…)

And the winner is (left.)

China’s 11th Five-Year Plan (they still have one of those) encourages industrial design as one of the six key modern service sectors that will receive priority support from the central government.

One of these support measures was the creation of a government-sponsored patent award, which “ aims to boost the nation’s intellectual property strategy and accelerate creation of proprietary intellectual property,” as Gasgoo put it.

FAW’s Besturn B70 was the only design patent to win a gold medal at the 11th China Patent Awards in Beijing. There is just a small niggling problem: (Read More…)

And yet again, the reports of Chinese cars flooding worldwide markets have been greatly exaggerated. The reverse is true: Chinese car exports are a disaster. China’s already anemic auto exports dropped 46 percent in 2009. That according to China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) data reported in China Daily. (Read More…)

China’s passenger car sales in January skyrocketed an unbelievable 115.5 percent from a year earlier, China’s official scorekeeper, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said today. A total of 1.32m passenger cars were sold last month in China, compared with 610,600 units a year earlier. In December 2009, 1.1m units changed hands, Reuters reports. The January number is even more surprising as the China Passenger Car Association had originally figured that China’s passenger car sales rose 84 per cent in January. We compared the Reuters story with Xinhua, the official word on China, and Xinhua also says: “Passenger car sales were up 113.21 percent to 1.32 million units last month.”

Overall vehicle sales, including buses and trucks as well as cars, were even more amazing: A total of 1.66m units in January, up 126.3 percent from 735,500 units a year earlier. Keeping passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles apart is a frustrating exercise in China. Minivans for instance, and of course pickups, count as commercial vehicles. (Read More…)

While Toyota is successful in hitting the target it painted on its own foot, Chinese manufacturers are setting more ambitious targets, Gasgoo reports. On the average, domestic automakers plan for 30 percent expansion. Joint venture car makers are a little more restrained. (Read More…)

Premium cars are a hard sell? Not in China. The Chinese developed a ravenous appetite for Germany’s luxury brands. In January, all three German premium makes, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, more than doubled their sales, reports Das Autohaus. (Read More…)

Yesterday, we reported that China wants to be a market of 20m cars in 2012. We didn’t predict that, just reporting the news, ma’am.

A hue and cry ensued:  “Can’t be!”

Commentator ohsnapback, who’s forte is lawyering, a much more complex field than economics, prognosticated an immediate burst of the Chinese bubble, with a mega tonnage of more than 100 times of our housing bubble.  The argument was promptly defused. After all, China doesn’t borrow money. They lend it. Mostly to the U.S.

Then, commentator ra_pro rolled out the really big ordnance: “As I said many times previously: Demography is Chinese destiny as it is Japan’s.” If people would only stop prattling on about demographics, and would check their data first. (Read More…)

China’s car industry has big plans. According to the China Business Journal, cited by the Nikkei [sub], China’s top 14 automakers are planning and building for a combined output capacity of 23 million vehicles in 2012. “With other carmakers included, the total figure will likely top 25 million,” says the Nikkei.

Last year, China became the world’s largest auto market, with 13.64m vehicles sold. Demand is officially projected to grow by 10-15 percent a year, reaching 20m units in 2012. “Consequently, there is the possibility of excess capacity,“ worries the Nikkei. (They are ostensibly not worried about 20m cars being sold, an idea that makes peak oilers lose precious sleep while they are wearing out their – plastic – keyboards on the message boards.)

As far as this reporter is concerned, 5m excess capacity in 2012 would fall in the „nice problem to have“ category.

One, Chinese projections are notoriously lowballed. (Read More…)