Mercedes-Benz continues its long march forward in China. In February, “Benz” (as the locals call the brand here) racked in a 160 percent growth. 7,200 additional Benzes graced China’s roads by end of February.

With more than 15,300 units sold in the first two months of the year, up 155 percent, Mercedes-Benz calls itself the fastest-growing luxury brand in China, Gasgoo reports.

Imports of the S-Class grew by 115 percent in February, cementing China as the world’s biggest S-Class market. The new generation S-Class is extremely popular amongst China’s well-to-do. (Read More…)

The biggest storyline right now for America’s bailed-out automakers is how little they’ve been able to capitalize on Toyota’s stumbles. While Ford and Hyundai made hefty sales gains last month, both GM and Chrysler’s performances were distinctly unimproved by Toyota’s woes. And now that Toyota is launching major incentive packages to recover lost sales momentum, Detroit has no remaining incentive to not revert to the bad old practices of incentive dependence. With GM and Ford diving into the zero-percent war, Global Insight’s George Magliano tells Automotive News [sub]:

Incentives are going to be here into the third quarter. We’re not going to wean consumers off incentives any time soon. We’re stuck with it. They’re all jockeying for position… After clunkers everybody backed off incentives. Now they’re going to the whip again

It’s a little-known fact that nearly half of the 2,000 or so dealer franchises that GM began winding down during bankruptcy were Cadillac stores, most of them located in rural areas. The General’s plan was to focus Cadillac’s dealer network on  standalone stores in major metropolitan areas, following the strategies of more premium luxury competitors like BMW and Lexus. But having marked 922 largely small-town Caddy dealers for death, GM saw 2009 sales of its luxury brand fall 15 percent, or twice the rate of Buick and Chevrolet in the same period. The lesson: small-town Cadillac dealers (like attempts to sell the brand in Europe) are worthwhile after all. Automotive News [sub] reports, the majority of those dealers being reinstated are small-town Cadillac dealers. Will Cadillac’s brand integrity suffer by having to serve the small-town American market as well as competing with the European brands? Probably, but at least Caddy dealers can take heart knowing that things could still be worse: they could be Lincoln-Mercury dealers.

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Remember when Akio Toyoda, coming back from the U.S.A. went to Beijing in a hurry? China is an important growth market for Toyota. Toyota had been doing well in China, last year they sold 709,000 units, about the same as GM China if you don’t count the Wuling vans. Suddenly, Toyota is falling from grace in the Middle Kingdom. For the first time in years, Toyota dropped off the top 10 list of the best-selling cars in the Chinese market last month, reports Gasgoo, citing data released by China Passenger Car Association. (Read More…)

BMW and Daimler don’t really like each other. As Herr Baron Schmitt put it, “Daimler engineers view their colleagues as boorish Bavarian upstarts. BMW engineers think Daimler is a congregation of has-beens”. Bluntly speaking, there’s no love lost between them. Which makes the following news that much sweeter to the “Bavarian upstarts”. And which makes the has-beens gnash their teeth. (Read More…)

For the first time, monthly car sales in India exceeded 150,000 units according to February numbers released by SIAM, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers [via The Economic Times of India]. Those figures represent a 33% improvement over Feb. 2009. Analysts attribute the sales bump to people pulling the trigger in advance of expected higher taxes in the national budget. Indian automakers anticipate that the increased demand will slow as prices rise due to higher interest rates and new emissions standards.
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Further in the Toyota caper, there are new reports of sudden acceleration – in Toyota sales.

Toyota buyers seem to have a big case of the bashing fatigue. And they are coming back in droves. Toyota said (via The Nikkei [sub]) that “its new cars sales in North America jumped around 50 percent from a year earlier in the first week of March due to recently introduced sales incentives.” (Read More…)

Chinese bought 46 percent more cars this February than in February 2009. This according to official data by the China Association of Auto Manufactures (CAAM), as reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua.

The avid TTAC reader is not surprised. A week ago, we predicted numbers along these lines, simply by looking at GM China’s February sales report. Amongst observers of the Chinese market, GM sales (all of them, including Wuling) have turned into a reliable leading indicator. A dubious honor: GM China usually is only a few percent ahead of the market, which doesn’t translate into a rapid gain of market share. This month is not much different: GM China’s February sales rose 51 percent from a year earlier, only 5 percent ahead of the market.

Aficionados of the Chinese bubble theory are now on their feet, shouting “I told you so!” Sales in January had shot up by 115.5 percent. In February, the growth was less than half.  Obviously, the bubble must be bursting. No so fast. (Read More…)

One of the arguments in favor of GM Chairman/CEO Ed Whitacre’s use of AT&T corporate jets is that “given the role he plays and the decisions that need to be made worldwide, you want this guy to be working 24/7.” But like so many of the “answers” we’re given about GM’s turnaround, this merely raises another question: besides learning such arcane auto-industry jargon as the term “segment,” what exactly is Ed Whitacre doing at GM? Thus far, the answer seems to be “firing executives,” as the last several months have seen a number of executive reshufflings at the RenCen. And though GM’s bailout left a number of GM lifers in positions they had mishandled prior to bankruptcy, the recent firings and re-orgs aren’t simply motivated by the desire to revitalize GM’s corporate culture. A look inside Whitacre’s reign of terror shows a more traditional GM impulse at play: the desire for quick spikes in volume.
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Chrysler once again topped Edmunds’ True Cost Of Incentive index last month, despite failing to significantly improve its sales over February 2009’s miserable showing. The only upside is that Chrysler basically held even with reduced incentives, as the entire industry is spending about 14 percent less on incentives than it did a year ago. Another interesting point of analysis from Edmunds:

Comparing all brands, in February smart spent the least, $341 followed by Scion at $426 per vehicle sold. At the other end of the spectrum, Lincoln spent the most, $5,568, followed by HUMMER at $5,195 per vehicle sold. Relative to their vehicle prices, Saturn and HUMMER spent the most, 14.9 percent and 13.6 percent of sticker price, respectively; while Porsche spent 1.4 and smart spent 2.3 percent.

But Toyota and GM will help carry those numbers up next month, with huge incentive spends planned. Meanwhile, after many automakers found religion about retail sales last year, fleet sales are back in a big way. And they’re no longer seen as something to be ashamed of.

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When we reported that unintended acceleration in general and Toyota in particular are not a big topic in Europe and Japan, the answer was: “What do they know? They use their excellent public transport system and drive less.” (A myth, by the way. Unless there are mandatory annual odometer readings, nobody knows for sure. But the generally accepted average number of miles driven by year and car is 12,000 in the U.S.A. In Germany, the industry works with a 20,000 km average. Which is 12,427 miles.) The only countries halfway accepted as comparisons were Australia and Canada. Well, their numbers are in. (Read More…)

Toyota and GM have both announced 0% financing on 2010 models, reports Automotive News [sub]. GM will offer the 60-month financing deal on 55 percent of its new models, while Toyota will offer the same terms on its Camry, Corolla, Matrix, Avalon, Yaris, Highlander, RAV4 and Tundra (not including hybrids). According to GM’s Susan Docherty, Toyota’s woes had nothing to do with the decision to offer finance deals, telling AN [sub]:

Obviously, with our hot launch products, we don’t need to put 0 percent financing for 60 months on that. That 0-for-60 will be primarily on products like our pickups. That’s completely in line with what our marketing strategy is. We’re going headstrong into truck month for both Chevrolet and GMC, which is a traditional play that we have normally done during March.

And no wonder: GM’s truck sales were flat in February. According to Automotive News [sub], Toyota will also offer several lease and dealer cash deals which vary from region to region.

Subaru crushed it again this month [via PRNewswire], with the Outback and Forester both breaking 6,000 units of sale and overall sales up 38 percent. Suzuki, not so much [full release here]. Despite a recently-launched (and relatively well-received) C-segment sedan, the Japanese brand managed to sell only 1,375 cars last month. That’s fewer units than the Jeep Compass, and only slightly better than the Dodge Nitro and Buick Lucerne. On their own. Suzuki’s one sick puppy! Details after the jump.

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Hyundai’s sales improved 11 percent last month according to the company’s sales release [via EarthTimes], while Kia’s release claims a 2.3 Percent improvement [via PRNewswire]. Elantra was down slightly, and Veracruz fell by over 50 percent, Azera/Amanti are down and Sedona is way down. Otherwise, it’s all sunshine and flowers. Hit the jump for details.

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Chrysler sold exactly 399 more vehicles in February than it did in February of 2009, which would be a respectable performance if the comparison weren’t with one of Chrysler’s worst months on record. GM may be tentatively nosing its way out of the bottom of a sales trough, but Chrysler is treading water at unsustainable levels (CEO Sergio Marchionne has said he “needs” Chrysler to sell 1.1m units in the US this year). Considering that a huge amount of Chrysler’s sales release [PDF format here] is spent detailing the company’s many consumer incentives, Marchionne’s goal of turning ChryCo into a 1.1m-unit, incentive-less juggernaut seems less realistic with every passing month.

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