Dongfeng-Nissan President Kimiyasu Nakamura watches Yao Bin, Huang Kai Fong, and Ye Lei
Yesterday, Nissan’s affable China president Kimiyasu Nakamura brought a Chinese delegation home to Yokohama, to explain to a largely skeptical Japanese press why Nissan had started a new brand in China with joint venture partner Dongfeng. The brand goes by the name of Venucia. Nissan is not the only one doing that. Nearly every foreign joint venture partner in China either has established a Chinese brand in China, or is intensively thinking about it. (Read More…)
The Japanese car market that has been on a multi-month winning streak could be slowing down quite soon. The reason: The record run on new cars also ran down the government’s subsidy budget in record time. The Japanese government currently is paying a bounty to everybody who buys an environmentally friendly (read: most of them) new car. Thought to last through September, the subsidy-kitty now is expected to be empty by the end of July, The Nikkei [sub] reports. (Read More…)
After four years in the reds, Mazda is trimming its workforce. Mazda will cut a quarter of its sales management staff in Europe and the U.S., in the current fiscal, The Nikkei [sub] heard while checking up on a press release outlining organizational and personnel changes at the Hiroshima carmaker. (Read More…)
Domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses in Japan rose 66.4% from a year earlier in May, data provided by Japanese industry groups show. (Read More…)
Two weeks ago, I covered the arrival of the 11th generation Corolla in Japan. In Japan, the sedan is called Corolla Axio, the station wagon variant is called the Corolla Fielder. My report caused consternation amongst some readers who do not expect the arrival of the new Corolla before 2014. Instead of simply accepting that TTAC is ahead of its times, some readers ordered me to do better research. Your wish being my command (this time,) I went back to the scene of the alleged research crime to sit down with the car’s creator, Toyota Chief Engineer Hiroya Fujita. I asked him to explain to the Best and Brightest the birds and the bees of the new Corolla.
I also drove the car around the block a few times. (Read More…)
In the days and weeks after March 11 2011, when a giant fist wiped out large swaths of Japan’s northeastern coast, and sent the power grid into a near-coma from which the Japanese patient has yet to recover, electric and hybrid vehicles were pressed into a new mission as emergency power supplies. People in the stricken areas used the batteries of their Toyota Estima hybrid minivan, or the much bigger battery of the Nissan Leaf, as a power source for cell phones and laptops when the regular power was out. Ever since, Japanese became infatuated with the idea of rigging a car to a house – to power the house, if needed. One year later, houses are ready to take charge from a car. (Read More…)
Rather than expand production in North America, Subaru is taking a contrarian route and expanding their manufacturing in Japan – even as everyone is scrambling to get out.
Imagine barreling down the road in a hot prototype. Now you don’t have to imagine anymore, because these pictures, taken on the first day of the annual conference of the Japan chapter of the SAE, show you in graphic detail what your workplace would look like. Like a mess.
It is a little bit like showing breasts at a plastic surgeon congress: At the annual meeting of the JSAE, the Japanese version of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Subaru totally disrobed its BRZ and shows it to a strictly professional audience. (Read More…)
And now for the Italian section of our collection of tasteful tie-up art. Mazda and Fiat not quite tied the knot, but they became engaged. Mazda and Fiat signed “a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development and manufacturing of a new roadster for the Mazda and Alfa Romeo marques based on Mazda’s next-generation MX-5 rear-wheel-drive architecture,” Mazda says in a statement. (Read More…)
Infiniti formally opened its new world headquarters in Hong Kong today. This marks “the first time the city has been selected for the headquarters of a car manufacturer,” as Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post notes. A staff of approximately 100 will trade Nissan’s swank building in Yokohama for even swanker digs in the Citibank Tower in Hong Kong’s high-rent Central district. Heretofore under Nissan’s wings, Infiniti makes its own nest in a dedicated headquarters for the first time in the brand’s history. Its mission: Triple Infiniti sales by 2016. (Read More…)
Once a year, there are people who compete for who gets fastest up a mountain. The mountain is Pike’s Peak, and the occasion is the International Hill Climb. It will happen on July 3-8, as it did every year since 1916, only interrupted by the occasional world war. This year, one of the most interesting races could take place on battery power. (Read More…)
Yesterday, we introduced you to a matte-black LFA and a baby-blue sticker that led us to the car’s owner. There was another sticker on that car. A round red one. If the global automotive industry should copy anything from Japan immediately and now, then it’s that round sticker.
Eons before social networks came upon us, the automotive industry became obsessed with maintaining customer relationships, creating traffic and maintaining customer loyalty in showrooms and service departments. Bazillions have been spent for that effort. Millions of them went into my pocket, which, years after leaving the lucrative business, still enables me to work for TTAC and not go hungry. The ingenious Japanese solved it all with that sticker. (Read More…)
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