It’s safe to buy Ford again. Ford as in the F share. After trading at close to $15 in April, it could be had below $10 yesterday. A bargain. Or so it seems. (Read More…)

Hawaii’s Supreme Court ruled in September that speeding tickets issued on the basis of laser speed gun readings were not valid (view decision). The high court followed up this ruling in March by overturning a case where the officer in question claimed he used pacing to estimate the speed after the laser evidence was thrown out (view decision). Dozens of motorists convicted by lidar evidence are now being forced to take their case to the Intermediate Court of Appeals in order to clear their names.

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So Tesla lost $30m last quarter. Do you know who made $20m in profits on Tesla in one day? (Read More…)

An odd collection of 35 companies and organizations, amongst them the correspondence school Benesse, and the convenience store chain Lawsons, established an association yesterday in Japan to promote electric vehicles. It’s called “APEV,” as in “Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles.” (Apparently, beyond Japan.) There is only one problem … (Read More…)

GM has been showing off all kinds of future product at its day-long “Global Business Conference,” as it drums up support for its upcoming IPO. Sadly TTAC was not invited, but a wealth of exciting news is percolating through the autoblogosphere. Like this item: Compact MPVs are a big deal.

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The Fisker Karma hybrid sedan may be debuting in about two days and counting, but what does a debut mean? According to the Detroit News, Fisker spokesfolks are already saying that

the “first few customers” will get Karma vehicles by the end of the year, with full production to start in the first three months of 2011.

In other words, we’re afew days away from a Potemkin launch, in order to keep the Department of Energy from looking like a misinformation peddler. The DOE said the Karma would be on sale this summer way back when it lent Fisker $530m. Whoops!

What, you didn’t know that Amarok is Inuit for “Wolf”? Anyway, Forget Mahindra. Third-world compact diesel pickup fetishists can move their misplaced hopes for US-market salvation on Volkswagen’s Amarok. Not because VW is particularly likely to bring it to the United States, but because Auto Motor und Sport just posted a bunch of photos of the new single-cab version. Plus this sweet angle on the double-cab model. All this Eskimo wolf needs is a fire hydrant. And some magical way of passing EPA tests without an expensive diesel-scrubbing system. Not to mention a free pass on the Chicken Tax.

Either CNN Money’s Chris Isidore just rained all over GM’s IPO parade with his headline The auto rebound is a myth, or GM’s IPO is going to need a lot of support from abroad. With GM planning on dropping billions of dollars worth of stock on the market, investors interested in supporting US-market growth have quite a bit of cold water to deal with. Isidore’s piece is a good place to start. As has been the case for some time, GM’s real growth opportunities appear to be in developing economies like the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries. The Chinese are notoriously cash-rich, and hold a special affection for General Motors which is the second-largest foreign automaker in China. And with Chinese sales outstripping America’s sluggish sales, China is already GM’s most important market. GM’s Chinese partner SAIC recently took a majority stake in their “Shanghai GM” joint venture and was given the keys to GM’s Indian market operations for its trouble. Why wouldn’t Chinese firms like SAIC move on a chunk of GM’s equity when it goes to market? Given how perennially popular US sovereign debt has been with Chinese investors, why wouldn’t a Chinese corporation love to become business partners with the United States government? But how would Treasury react? Would the White House rather hold onto GM than let Chinese investors take it piece by piece? Or is this all just too terribly paranoid to consider?

TTAC reader JeremyR writes:

My trusty 20-plus-year-old Accord is getting a bit long in the tooth, and I’m starting to think about a replacement. While the car will be used primarily for commuting, I’d like to maximize the “fun to drive” quotient while respecting some other requirements:

* must have a manual transmission
* must be reasonably efficient (30mpg+ highway)
* must be reliable (though I don’t mind occasionally getting dirt under my fingernails doing some maintenance)
* must be able to seat four in reasonable comfort (the back seat should be adequate to transport two adults across town)
* should be a five-door hatch (but other configurations will be considered)
* should be under $10K (USD)

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Chrysler’s Ed Garsten breaks the last bit of bad news TheFirehouse will ever have to spin:

I wanted to let you know that on Wednesday we’ll be closing the doors at TheFirehouse.biz, our media-only blog…

We had a great time posting things you wouldn’t dare put in a news release. Things like “Friday Night, Gotta Go,” an explanation of the company’s potty break policy in response to a minor flap at one of our competitors. When coverage of recalls at domestic automakers seemed out of whack, compared with coverage for recalls by foreign companies, we listed every recall by a major Japanese competitor that had previously won a free pass in the press, and pointed out that indeed, they had recalled many, many more vehicles than the Detroit bunch.

Our biggest blowout was calling out “Big Oil” for artificially propping up fuel prices.
Over time we were playful, pointed, and took great glee in “guiding” journalists towards positive results hidden in those monthly sales reports.

The brick and mortar firehouse during the auto show has been gone for a couple of years, a victim of financial realities, and now we’ve made the tough, but logical decision, to shutter the virtual version.

O Noes! Where, oh where will the internet get its coveted Chrysler spin on the automotive industry?

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