A 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II, adorned with over a million Swarovski crystals is on display at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich, Germany. (Read More…)

The legendary Nürburgring, purveyor of records an dreams, is dead. Well, it’s clinically dead, but it might be brought back to life. What else would you do with a 16 mile road that goes nowhere in the middle of nowhere? The Ring is bankrupt. Out of money. Can’t pay its bills. Broke. Bust. Pleite. (Read More…)

GM throws fresh troops in Opel’s losing battle. For keeping more money, Opel has a new CFO. For eventually making more money, the Rüsselsheim automaker has a new R&D chief. (Read More…)

How would you feel if you start your new job and people greet you by speculating who will replace you? This is how Thomas Sedran must feel. Only hours after he has been made the new interim CEO of Opel, German media speculates who will be next in his ejection seat in Rüsselsheim. The roster of likely candidates is not encouraging. (Read More…)

Opel has a new CEO, the second in a week, and he will soon be out of a job: As expected by TTAC,  GM named Thomas Sedran as interim CEO of Opel, replacing the current interim CEO Stephen Girsky, who replaced the not quite interim CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke. (Read More…)

The summary execution of Opel chief  Karl-Friedrich Stracke, and the mess this has created, is front page material in the German press today. The fingers point in the direction of Detroit. Detroit has no clear strategy and changes directions like soiled underwear. The fingers also point at an impulsive Dan Akerson who is out of his depth.

According to Germany’s Handelsblatt, the firing of Opel chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke went down like this: (Read More…)

After putting Opel CEO Stracke abruptly out to pasture, one would think that his (allegedly interim) successor Steve Girsky has a new plan to rescue Opel and to spare GM shareholders further losses. Not so. The new man will keep the old plan. “GM fully supports the current plan to strengthen Opel and improve its operational competitiveness,” a spokesman for Opel told Reuters. (Read More…)

Volkswagen has published group sales for June and the first six months, and they are better than those of most other European makers. Global deliveries for the half year are up 8.9 percent to 4.45 million. June looks surprisingly good with sales up 11 percent to 798,500. Nevertheless, Volkswagen looks like no threat to the leading positions of Toyota and GM. (Read More…)

Porsche’s soon-to-be 100 percent owner Volkswagen is making money hand over fist. At the same time, the German tax payer is contributing  43.67 million euros to the expansion of Porsche’s plant in Leipzig, Germany, where the new Macan will be made starting in 2014. This has attracted the attention of EU competition regulators. (Read More…)

By 2015, Audi wanted to overtake BMW and become the world’s largest maker of premium cars. These plans have been postponed. Not until 2018, but until 2020. The road ”is getting bumpier,” Audi CEO Rupert Stadler told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and said that world domination now will happen “by 2020 at the latest. It is not about overtaking BMW tomorrow or the day after, but to seize and secure the top position.” (Read More…)

Volkswagen wants to be the world’s biggest, most profitable, most innovative, and most loved automaker by 2018, and everybody at Volkswagen has been sworn-in to do their share. US managers promised that they will deliver a million sales a year to the group. It’s a tall order.  To get there, “American consumers will need to buy a lot more new Volkswagens, Audis and Porsches,” Reuters says. (Read More…)

They have been together for a while. Behemoth Volkswagen and tiny, but bigger than life Porsche shared technologies and booths at auto shows, Volkswagen generals are in key positions at Porsche. Fitting the German Zeitgeist, they lived together without being formally married. This will be rectified in a few weeks. (Read More…)

Germany’s new car market recovered slightly in June. Sales were up 2.9 percent to units, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. (Read More…)

GM has blamed Western Europe location for Opel’s woes, unions, the economy. Opel has a brand crisis, and the crisis is “a self inflicted-wound,” says Christiaan Hetzner, Reuters’ man in Frankfurt, Germany, in an article on why Opel is in so much trouble. “Reputation is seen as the problem, not cars.” The recent attempts to move the Opel brand up-market ripped those old wounds open and could kill the patient. (Read More…)

“At the Nürburgring, there is always a car that passes me. It is a BMW.“ So said Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda today as he announced a deepening of the relationships between Toyota, and the company that makes those cars that pass Toyoda on the Ring. The surprising part: BMW and Toyota will jointly “develop architecture and components for a future sports vehicle.” (Read More…)