If you want to start a business in China, you need a business license. Getting a license to make cars used to be quite hard, but the Chinese government wants to make it harder. China’s industry ministry will hand down standardized rules, which may limit new entrants, Bloomberg reports.

The not yet precisely defined rules don’t sound sinister at first glance. They state that new car companies must meet certain criteria including scale of production and development capacity. They will take effect on January 1, a statement on the ministry website says. (Read More…)

While Saab in Sweden is in the emergency room with wires and drips attached, Saab will be back from the dead at the  Guangzhou Auto Show. This is when  BAIC will show what they have produced from the Saab tooling that they had bought at fire-sale-prices when Saab had gone bust before. (Read More…)

Vladimir Antonov, the Russian “financier” who was feted by the acolytes of the zombie Saab as the second (after Victor Muller) coming of the dear Jesus, had his bank taken away from him.

More than $392 million of assets of Antonov-controlled Snoras Bank may be unaccounted for, central bank Governor Vitas Vasiliauskas told Bloomberg. Snoras’s operations were halted, and a state administrator was appointed by the Lithuanian government after the bank ignored recommendations to reduce its credit risk.

As a precautionary measure, government and bank traded accusations of felonious conduct. Reports Reuters:

“The government and central bank said they had found a risk of insolvency and possible criminality. The bank meanwhile has accused the government of ‘robbery’.”

Just to be sure, Swedish Radio mentions that “Antonov lent a large sum to Victor Muller which allowed Spyker to buy Saab.” (Read More…)

Say what you want about Saab fans, the guys have some dedication. At a time when most have finally accepted the fact that Saab is at the end of the line, Saab’s hard-core “dead-enders” are taking up their social media arms to rescue their beloved brand. After all they have a perfect opportunity: after months of wading through a quagmire, uncertain whether to support Victor Muller, Vladimir Antonov, or one of Saab’s Chinese suitors, all Saab fans can now rally against their old enemy, GM. Long blamed for Saab’s decline despite the fact that the brand’s peak sales came under its ownership, GM has long been the bête noire for Saabistas. And with GM now taking the wheel of Saab’s fate, Saab’s rabid fans have taken over GM’s Facebook wall, posting images of their favorite Saabs and demanding The General “let Saab go.” Will it be enough to convince GM to go against its carefully-crafted Chinese relationships and interests by giving Saab carte blanche to ship its technology wherever its new Chinese masters want? Don’t count on it. But for the moment GM has to sit through the online equivalent of an “Occupy” protest.

Saab’s Memorandum of Understanding with PangDa and Youngman expired today, returning Saab to what must by now be a rather comforting, familiar state of limbo. Of course, the MoU in question was already dead, as GM had publicly nixed it, saying it wouldn’t supply parts or license technology to a 100% Chinese-owned Saab. But now, without an official agreement to rally around, Swedish Automobile, PangDa and Youngman are desperately pitching new ownership structures to GM in hopes of approval. Swedish Auto’s Victor Muller tells the WSJ [sub]

We are submitting an information package to GM and we will have to await the feedback that GM has on that package and then we’ll know.

Muller says the lesson of the failed MoU is that GM won’t accept Chinese control, and as a result the new proposed ownership structure is “very carefully crafted” so that none of the three partners has complete control. But since the previous deal, in which PangDa and Youngman would split a 54% stake in Saab, is also off the table, it’s tough to say what Muller’s “carefully crafted structure” entails. And while Saab and its Chinese suitors wait for GM approval that may never come (but don’t tell Keith Crain [sub] that!), it seems both time and money are getting tight. Again. Still.

(Read More…)

Are you unhappy with the fact that Chinese car sales were down 1.07 percent in October? No problem! All you have to do is to subscribe to the on-line version of the Financial Times. For the price of your subscription, you would be assured that “China’s passenger car sales in October surged 75.8 per cent from a year earlier.”  Don’t believe it?  The Financial Times will tell you it’s true. (If the link breaks, they woke up.) (Read More…)

The Honda share is edging closer and closer to its  2009 carmageddon lows. And guess who knows a good bargain when they see one? The Chinese. The Nikkei [sub] reports that a “stealth” Chinese fund has emerged as a major shareholder in Honda. (Read More…)

When American cops drive around with expensive iron, they claim they impounded it from a drug dealer fair and square, and all is good.  For some odd reasons, China hasn’t come to the level of vehicular expropriation yet. Their police gets its car the old fashioned way: They buy it. Imagine the consternation of the people in the port city of Tianjin, when they spotted a new Mini Cooper in police livery.  That car is imported, and a basic version starts at around $45,000. (Read More…)

The gilding of China’s supercars continues. Says Carnewschina: ”

“One Chinese owner of a hyper exclusive Bentley Continental Supersport found his vehicle just not cool enough and made it even more exclusive by wrapping it and gold, and some carbon fiber-wrap on the bonnet for good measure. Well, what is taste? I certainly looks striking…”

(Read More…)

We have been pointing it out for quite a while:Something counter-intuitive (and counter- conventional wisdom) is happening in China: While the growth of the general market is slowing down, it is at the expense of the Chinese brands. The foreigners are doing fine.

Nothing illustrates this better than the story of the two Gs, Geely and GM. In October, the growth of the Chinese market effectively came to a halt.

How did the two Gs fare during that braking maneuver? (Read More…)

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released its October sales, and they confirmed the rumors that they were nothing to write home about. Total automobile sales are down 1.07 percent compared to October 2010. Production rose less than 2 percent. Passenger vehicles still outpace the overall market, up 1.42 percent. (Read More…)

GM’s China chief Kevin Wale poured a huge bucket of ice-cold water over hopes that China’s Pangda and Youngman will rescue Saab. The deal needs to be approved by the Chinese government, the European Investment Bank, the Swedish government and – GM.

Wale told Reuters today: (Read More…)

In China, rumors of empty showrooms during the important Chinese October holidays made the rounds. It must have been different showrooms than GM’s. GM China announced a fresh October sales record of 220,412 units. October sales across all brands of GM China were up 10.4 percent.

The surprising part is that SAIC-GM-Wuling jumped 19.2 percent year on year to a new record for the month of 111,957 units. It was this joint venture that had dragged GM China’s numbers down in the previous months. (Read More…)

China’s People’s Daily, the newspaper owned by the (alleged) communist party, carries a sobering analysis of the state of the Chinese auto industry. It is not that it will crash in to oblivion as some predicted. But it will not grow as fast as automakers build factories. Serious overcapacity and possibly the long predicted shakeout of China’s chaotic auto industry will be the likely result:

“China’s automotive market has suddenly entered an adjustment period and almost all the automotive enterprises of China were caught unprepared. Since April 2011, the automotive output and sales volume have both been declining for three successive months. (Read More…)

Pangda, one of Saab’s presumptive white knights, could itself be facing financial difficulties. Both the staid government-owned China Daily and the more outspoken Taiwan-based China Times report strange financial going-ons at PangDa. Says China Times:

“Shareholders and securities analysts are scratching their heads over how a top automobile marketing group in China managed to “burn” a huge fund of 6 billion yuan (US$944 million) in just six months. Many have speculated that Pang Da Automobile Trade Co has shifted to financial leasing services to cope with stalling car sales caused by the government’s credit-tightening regulations.”

According to China Daily, $659 million had been “used to repay bank loans and supplement working capital.” China Times reports a lot of the money as lost and says: (Read More…)