Even since Landwind crash test, and the Brilliance crash test, the reputation of Chinese cars in Europe has been a little, shall we say, challenging. Watching the bonnet of a car crumble like Professor Gilbert’s theory on Toyota’s UA tofu does have its effect on prospective customers.

But none of this seems to worry BYD. Europe is their next target. Autocar reports that BYD, the maker of China’s biggest selling car, the F3, will be coming to Europe in 2011. Not with their bestselling F3, but with a pure electric E6. The car was introduced at the Geneva Motor Show. (Read More…)

While Toyota is trying to convince the American public that they’re as American as losing at hockey Wal-Mart, Hyundai is pulling the same stunt over at the other side of the pond. Forbes reports that Hyundai wants to become a card carrying member of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). (Read More…)

Cadillac relaunched [release in PDF format here] its perennially disappointing European effort last week, revealing that a new sales and import firm, Cadillac Europe, had been formed. Why would Cadillac double down on a market that it until recently blighted with its ill-advised Opel Vectra-based BLS (which bizarrely still appears at the cadillaceurope.com website)? Caddy boss Brian Nesbitt explains:

Europe is an important market for Cadillac. Re-establishing distribution of our premium offerings is good news for those who seek import exclusiveness

Except that Europe and America are fundamentally different markets, with different tastes in luxury. Unless the Cadillac boffins have some kind of alternate explanation for why Lexus sells like hotcakes in the US, but can barely move the needle in Europe and is resorting to Euro-specific models to make headway. But apparently success in the US luxury market is just a few European sales away. Really.

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While America gets a Lexus-badged Toyota Sai as our first entry-premium hybrid car, the Europeans will get this CT200h instead. In addition to better differentiation from the Prius (to this blogger, the HS250h smacks of old Buick-style brand engineering), the CT200h is said to be more driver-focused than previous Toyota hybrids. But then, we Americans are all used to not getting the smaller, tauter, hatchback-ier models by now, right? Right?

For an industry under ever-increasing pressure from government emissions standards, start-stop technology (which shuts off engines under idling conditions) seems like an easy route to improved fuel efficiency. Cheaper and less complicated than a true hybrid system, a number of automakers from BMW to Kia are proliferating start-stop technology across their product lines without hybrid-like price premium. Since this technology represents a relatively easy, incremental efficiency upgrade, we’ve wondered why it hasn’t been made available stateside, where hybrids are making up a growing proportion of sales. Detroit’s executives seem to think it’s a good idea, and Mazda has even gone so far as to complain that EPA test results refusing to show the Japanese test-cycle’s 7-9 percent improvement is the main factor preventing it from bringing more stop-start equipped vehicles to the US. But there’s another issue preventing stop-start from becoming standard issue industry-wide, and it’s actually remarkably obvious.
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You don’t want to be traveling in or to Europe these days. In Germany, Lufthansa’s pilots went on strike this morning, grounding 3200 planes. “The largest strike in the history of German aviation” (Die Welt) paralyzed German air traffic, and caused jams on the ground as travelers switched from planes to trains and automobiles.

Meanwhile next door in France, a nation is running out of gas. Workers at the six refineries owned by the country’s biggest oil group, Total, have been striking for more than a month. The work stoppage threatens to spread “to the two French oil refineries owned by US group Exxon Mobil, where strikes are planned for Tuesday,” reports the BBC. (Read More…)

Nissan’s alleged premium brand Infiniti is going to the dark side…well, the less refined side. The Auto Channel reports that Infiniti are going to put a newly developed diesel power train (produced in grand alliance with Renault) into their vehicles for the European market. They are aiming to put this oil burner into the EX and FX CUV’s, and later into the M saloon. (Which is not a new watering hole. It’s  what the Americans would call a sedan. Which is a town in France. Or in Australia. Or in Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota and West Virginia. You figure it out. ED)

Infiniti has been in Europe for less than a year. Jim Wright, Vice President of Infiniti Europe, compensates lack of experience with lack of shame, and with a PR-writer prone to flowery prose (always a dead give-away for wannabe-luxury:) “The sales success enjoyed by Infiniti in Europe against a backdrop of financial uncertainty proves the cars’ appeal to a discerning audience. We have established Infiniti as the luxury performance brand thanks in part to the remarkable multi-award winning VQ petrol engine that powers most of the models in the range.” (And he didn’t refer to a kitchen stove. ED) (Read More…)

Imagine you’re a Belgian worker at GM’s plant in Antwerp. You’ve had to endure jokes about being the “sick man” of GM Europe’s family and had the sword of Damocles hanging over you. You then get told that you’re being shut down at a time when the economy is fragile, at best. How would you feel? Bad? Angry? Helpless? Well, GM’s just about you kick you while you’re down. The BBC reports that GM Europe are going to create an extra 700 jobs at their plant at Gilwice, Poland. But wait! There’s more! The reason these new jobs have come about is because they want to increase production of GM’s new Astra model, the very car which GM Antwerp made. The Gilwice plant will now operate 24 hours a day over three shifts. Ulrich Weber, Opel Spokesperson, told the BBC that “This has been planned for a long time, and will be in operation by the middle of the year,”. I’m sure that’ll come as some comfort for the Belgian employees. However, these new jobs in Poland don’t represent a change of heart from Vauxhall/Opel. They re-iterated their plans to cut 8,300 jobs across Europe. And by “across Europe” they mean those jobs in those expensive countries like Germany, Spain and The U.K.

Diesel drivetrains have long been a crucial component to the European market’s forbidden-fruit appeal for American enthusiasts, ranking right up with station wagons and manual transmissions on the list of under-offered features in the American market. But there are signs now that Europe’s longtime infatuation with oil-burners might be drawing to a close (and not just for biodiesel). The Telegraph reports that Europe-wide diesel market share has fallen from 52 percent to 46 percent in the last 12 months, with the UK’s share dropping from about 43 percent to about 41 percent. Much of this trend is being driven by growth in the low-cost car segment, where the higher cost of diesels make them less competitive. Fears of higher repair costs for more complicated clean-diesel drivetrains and a relative undersupply of diesel fuel aren’t helping either. And just as diesel is faltering in its most important consumer market, the EU is eying a tax increase that Reuters UK says “could boost demand for gasoline at the expense of diesel.”

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Fisker’s Karma won’t compete directly with Chevrolet’s Volt or Opel’s Ampera, but it will be the only other Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) on the market when it goes on sale later this year. But GM isn’t taking the challenge laying down, showing this Opel “Flextreme” Concept as a vision of a Volt-based four-place coupe, a theoretical (and vaguely Lexus LF-A-inspired) challenge to Fisker’s EREV luxury four-door. Too bad Opel’s facing nearly as many challenges as Fisker is…

“Toyota is considering halting production at its factory at Burnaston, near Derby, because of collapsing sales amid the car company’s recall crisis,” London’s Times reports.

This comes on the heels of reported plans to shut two down two plants in the United States for a total of 14 days. According to the Times, Toyota is “reviewing production at its European factories.”

Toyotas recall led to “a collapse in sales for the world’s largest carmaker,” as the Times put it. (Read More…)

Europe’s ACEA, the Association des Constructeurs Européens d’Automobiles, better known as the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, has finally gotten around to tallying new car sales in Europe for the month of January. Europe as defined by the ACEA consists of the EU states, plus the three EFTA holdouts, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.

First, the good news: January new passenger car registrations in Europe increased by 12.9 percent. With the exception of Germany (-4.3 percent,) the larger markets are all sputtering along nicely: France (+14.3 percent), Spain (+18.1 percent), the UK (+29.8 percent) and Italy (+30.2 percent). In total, 1,058,868 new cars were registered in Europe.

On the market share front, the Volkswagen Group maintains to be the king of the European hill with a 20.6 percent share. Next up are PSA (14 percent) and Renault (10.7 percent). The French are getting frisky: Renault added an impressive 3.1 percent to its January market share, PSA 0.6 percent. Now for the bad news: (Read More…)

Peugeot are going through a bit of a turbulent phase at the moment. They announced a loss of £1.02bn for 2009 (which was curbed by “Bangers for Cash”) and shareholders are pressuring management for more growth. So, Peugeot are revamping their line up, starting with the 407. The 407 was a bit bland and really only existed to sell to fleets, so PSA are going to give it a new lease of life…..by killing it. Car Magazine reports that the Peugeot 407 is going to be retired and replaced with the 508. The 508 will be showcased at the 2010 Geneva motor show. The car is still in concept phase, but is strongly suggesting that the design of the concept car will be spread across all ranges.

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“The American people are willing to forgive and forget, but they would like a little gift,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson tells Toyota [via USAToday]. Toyota’s answer (other than possible warranty extensions): a nice, dull little facelift for a nice, dull little cute ute. Meanwhile, Toyota’s US dealers are not thrilled with the state of affairs, gifting Automotive News [sub] such saucy quotes as:

Dealers will be talking [at the NADA convention] about how this will affect their investments as a dealer. You bet I am questioning my investment. I think they have handled this poorly.

And that was the quote that didn’t feature expletives! Will the softroader update (shown here in European spec) tame the angry beast that is Toyota’s dealer network? Given that it’s only being shown in Europe until “later this year,” the answer seems to be “not for now.”

One more obstacle to the Spyker-Saab deal has been eliminated, as BusinessWeek reports that the EU has approved the Swedish government’s guarantee of a €400m ($547m) loan to the company from the European Investment Bank. EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes approved the loan today, saying it would not cause “any undue distortions of competition,” and that Saab had offered “adequate remuneration” and collateral. The EIB still has to give the loan final approval, a prospect that Swedish government officials say is likely, despite the fact that €320m of the package was originally intended as an environmentally-friendly car development fund. As Bertel Schmitt put it, “keeping the lights on in Trollhättan while GM delivers parts doesn’t quite fit the purpose.” Unless of course you’re willing to justify anything to get your hands on the  new 2010 9-3X “Cross-Combi,” which SaabHistory claims can now be pre-ordered from the remaining US Saab dealers. And if the sedated Swedes in this video are anything to go on, the 9-3X is sure to be, well, a Saab.