Miller Motorsport Park is going to be caught up in a Chinese finger trap of lawsuits thanks to one butthurt losing bidder.

Center Point Management, represented by Andrew Cartwright, is taking the winner — Geely subsidiary Mitime — and Tooele County to court over the bidding process.

According to Deseret News, the lawsuit filed by Center Point Management states the county broke local and state laws by “basing its decision on future benefits of uncertain value” instead of Center Point Management’s higher bid amount.

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Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah (about 45 minutes outside of Salt Lake City) has a new lease on life, Hot Rod is reporting. The racetrack will be purchased by Chinese carmaker Geely and renamed Utah Motorsports Campus. The facility could receive $50 million in upgrades to host more racing events in the future.

The track had been on the ropes after the Miller family, who took over after patriarch Larry H. Miller died in 2009, said they weren’t renewing the lease and walking away from the world-class racetrack.  (Read More…)

Volvo will bring its smaller, compact-sized V40 wagon, its related crossover and long-wheelbase, Chinese-built S60 sedan to America, Autoblog is reporting.

The newest generation of the Volkswagen Golf-sized V40 wagon is being built with the U.S. in mind, Volvo senior vice president Alan Visser told media in the Netherlands. The earliest it could reach the United States would be 2017.

Visser also said the XC40, a compact crossover based on the V40 Cross Country, would make its way to the States shortly after the V40.

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It’s Leopaard, with two A’s.

Last time we had a look at the 10th to 6th most-impressive Chinese carmakers at Auto Shanghai 2015, it’s now time for ranks No. 5 to No. 2. By now, either the carmakers in question have made tremendous progress compared to last year in Beijing, or they are approaching world class. And we’ll start with the “Most Improved” award.

Drumroll, please:

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Chinese Geely is offering up smartphone integration in the most Chinese way possible…by just copying the screen, no matter what the screen orientation. Personal injury lawyers: your Chinese golden egg has arrived thanks to tweaked necks as drivers try to swipe up and down on Tinder.

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While Formula 1 fans contend with the new, quieter turbo era — a result of rule changes regarding power for the 2014 season — Chinese Formula 4 fans may be celebrating in the stands next year when Geely-powered competitors roar off the starting line.

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By 2019, the face of Volvo will change as the Sino-Swedish automaker begins restructuring its offerings, with the new XC90 leading the way.

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If you like your Volvo XC90, you can keep it – as long as you live in China.

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Volvo, with parent company Geely, is developing a lineup of premium A-segment vehicles aimed at the BMW 1 Series and Mercedes A-Class.

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In an effort to sell their wares to Western markets, Geely and their subsidiary Volvo have teamed up to build a subcompact global car aimed at offerings from Ford, Honda et al.

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Hakan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo Car Corp. told the Automotive News World Congress that Chinese built Volvos will be exported “fairly quickly” to the U.S. market. Samuelsson wouldn’t say exactly when but he did say that because of Volvo’s Chinese ownership the company is in a unique position to use China as an export base.  Zhejiang Geely Holding Group purchased Volvo from Ford Motor Co. in 2010. (Read More…)

Geely founder and chairman, Li Shufu

Last week we reported the Geely and Volvo, which is owned by the Chinese car company, will be jointly developing cars and there was speculation if those cars would be sold in America. Now Bloomberg reports that some of those cars will indeed be exported to the United States. That would achieve the goal of Geely chairman Li Shufu that he set when Geely first showed product at the 2006 NAIAS in Detroit. At the same time, Volvo dealers in the U.S. and the company’s American sales unit have been trying to get more Swedish made Volvos shipped here.

Gui Shengyue, current CEO of Geely, said in an interview last week, “Our acquisition of Volvo enhanced our image and overseas consumers are seeing us as an international company. Our deliveries in U.S. and Europe will be banking on those jointly developed models.” (Read More…)

Pilot production begins at Volvo’s Chengdu plant in China

Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., owned by the same Chinese company that bought Volvo Cars in 2010, announced that it will soon start developing cars jointly with the Swedish company. The cars will be intended for the Chinese and export markets and will go on sale in 2015. Geely has ambitions to be China’s largest car exporter. Working jointly with Volvo is seen as giving Geely products some of Volvo’s reputation for safety and reliability.

“We have entered into actual research and development stage and I believe we can see the new product in the year after next,” said Geely Chief Executive Officer Gui Sheng Yue yesterday in Hong Kong.

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., bought Volvo from Ford for $1.8 billion and last year the two companies signed a memorandum to “leverage its full access” to technology to develop vehicles. Earlier this year, Volvo announced that it was going to build a joint R&D center with Geely in Gothenburg. Volvo has also started assembling test builds at its first factory in China, in Chengdu, which will have an annual capacity of 120,000 cars.

Volvo Cars also announced today that it has received approval from the Chinese national government to build two more factories in China. The assembly plant in Daqing, in northeast China, will have a capacity of 80,000 units a year and is hoped to be fully operational some time next year. The facility in Zhangjiakou will be an engine plant and it will supply the Chengdu assembly operation where actual production will begin in Q4 2013. The two assembly plants are not expected to reach capacity for a few years.

Volvo’s global sales are on a downward trajectory. The Geely-owned Swedish marker saw its 2012 global sales drop 6%. In the first four months of the year, sales were down 6.4 percent. Two new factories in China are supposed to bring the turn-around, a feature in Reuters says. (Read More…)

An editor that I know once said something about disappearing into a rabbit hole when you start to read about an automotive topic. You never know where you’ll come out minutes, hours or even days later. Doug DeMuro’s post where he ranked vehicles used as taxicabs elicited a thread of comments about London’s signature black taxis. While some of our more curmudgeonly readers think it’s rather arrogant of TTAC to call our site’s commenters the Best & Brightest (anyone besides me see the irony there?), we do have a well informed readership so I wasn’t surprised to see Geely mentioned as the owner of Manganese Bronze Holdings, who make the distinctive London hacks. The mention of the London cabs, though, pricked my memory. I had recently read that someone else, another company, made London taxis besides Manganese. Then I just had to remember who it was.

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