Ford will be giving away its SYNC AppLink to any automaker or Tier 1 supplier, as it looks to make SYNC the standard for in-car connectivity systems.
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What a sexy bride! A year ago, GM acquired seven percent in moribund PSA. A year later, PSA announces truly horrific results. PSA’s global car sales dropped 16.5 percent for the year. Its market share in Europe is down 0.5 points to 12.7 percent. There is a big black hole where there used to be a profitable Iran business. (Read More…)
The French government is pushing PSA Peugeot Citroen to buy Opel, says Le Monde, which claims to have its information from sources at the French Finance Ministry and in the entourage of France’s President Francois Hollande. Buying moribund Opel would allow PSA to stand up to “ogre Volkswagen” which “has chosen to eliminate PSA,” as an informant told the Paris paper.
(Read More…)
“Chevy Runs Deep” is being dropped as the Bow Tie Brand’s marketing slogan of choice, as the last vestige of the Joel Ewanick area has departed the RenCen.
We’ve taken a fair number of potshots at the General lately, but some times the company and its ad agencies get it right. Watch this and tell me you don’t kind of want a DTS at the end of it….
December sales in GM’s largest market China are likely to be less than exhilarating. The indicator: GM’s Chinese joint venture partner SAIC told Reuters that its December auto sales rose 7.1 percent from a year earlier to 350,380 vehicles.
This is much less than the 16.9 percent growth achieved in November. In the same month, GM’s China sales were up 9.7 percent. (Read More…)
The General attracted all kinds of flak for its growing inventory of full size trucks. When we raised the issue earlier in the year, we were chided for yellow journalism and blatant bias. Months later, the MSM woke up to the story, and when the Detroit News wrote that GM’s pickup truck inventory was “much higher than the less-than-100-day supply considered ideal for full-size pickups,” even the diehards accepted that the inventory may be a mite rich.
That problem just went away. Poof, gone, just like that. (Read More…)
GM reports “the company’s highest December sales in five years,” with deliveries up 5 percent to 245,733 vehicles. For the year, GM’s U.S. sales are up only marginally. They rose 3.7 percent to 2,595,717 units. In a market expected to be up around 14 percent, this will translate into a serious drop of market share. (Read More…)
Swedish clothing store H&M offers a generous 30-day return policy that urges customers to Buy It Now, Return It Later. Looks like Vauxhall will be following suit.
We have been saying it since May, but it took Bloomberg (along with the rest of the copypasting media) until a few days ago to realize that GM’s reign as the World’s Largest Automaker is coming to an end. GM regained the title in 2011 from a tsunami-ravaged Toyota. Toyota has been bouncing back strongly ever since. Toyota’s worldwide production is up 30 percent for the year, while GM was seen treading water when they last published global numbers in October. (Read More…)
Sold!
GM’s Opel took another step towards a possible bankruptcy. Opel sold six European facilities to the American mother , says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The real estate includes an engine plant in Hungary, a development center in Turin, Italy, a factory in Gliwice, Poland, a transmission plant in Austria, and other “activities” in the UK and Russia, the paper says. The FAZ received a “no comment” from Opel, but no denial. Opel is not rolling in money, despite the sale. (Read More…)
Those mysterious gas engines of course are gasoline-fed “three-cylinder engines, designed to comply with Euro VII emissions standards entering force around 2019,” says Reuters. The wire heard from Peugeot that the engines “will bring big savings for both partners.” Further details were not given. (Read More…)
One of the most conspicuous absences from GM’s full-size truck reveal was the lack of any hybrid variants. The highly-touted but slow selling hybrid full-size trucks and SUVs were never intended to be the darlings of America’s truck space, but they played an important behind the scenes role for the company.
It has been repeatedly suggested that GM should use its ample profits to buy back the shares held by the U.S. government (don’t forget the Canadians.). Finally, GM listens to reasons. Or, possibly, strong suggestions from Washington. GM will purchase 200 million shares of GM common stock held by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for $5.5 billion, or $27.50 per share, the company said in a statement The share buyback is part of the Treasury’s plan, also announced today, to fully exit its entire holdings of GM stock within 12 to 15 months, subject to market conditions. (Read More…)
It did not take a high degree of intellect when we recommended last week to wait for a better deal if you are in the market for a Chevy or GMC pick-up. GM threw its vaunted fiscal discipline in the wind and is piling cash on the hood of trucks that are piling up on dealer lots. (Read More…)
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