Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

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Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.

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Even though the BMW 1 Series M Coupe is gone forever, performance-minded 1-Series customers must  have a high-end performance model, even if a lot of them don’t even know if the car is front-drive or rear-drive.

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Chery has asked the Chinese government for its blessing regarding a joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover worth $1.9 billion.

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Exports have been mentioned before as a way to help improve Opel’s precarious near-term fortunes, and now one of Germany’s state-level Prime Ministers is throwing his support behind the export plan.

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You would have to travel far to shoot (bad boy as you are) a Bali tiger. Germany’s Auto, Motor und Sport Magazin did not have to travel further than the Golfanlage Schloss Nippenburg to shoot themselves a Macan. Macan is Indonesian for tiger, better known as the name for Porsche’s upcoming SUVlet. (Read More…)

In case you have surplus cash sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, hang on to it until the end of 2013. This is when Porsche finally wants to crank up production of its Über-Porsche, the 918 Spyder. Porsche has finished the initial prototypes, which are cleverly camouflaged: If you see something whizzing by, and you think to yourself: “This looked just like a Porsche 917 race car,” then you actually saw a 918 in drag. (Read More…)

As TTAC’s official reviewer of all things “emerging market cast-offs sent to Canada”, I’ll be busy again in Q4 2012, when I get my hands on a Chevrolet Trax.

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“On a clear day,” John Z once famously wrote, “you can see General Motors.” The day has yet to come, however, when the works of GM will be made plain to the mortal man. Consider, if you will, the bizarre story of the “Theta” platform in the United States. It’s a huge success; the Equinox and Cadillac SRX (which, we are assumed, is totes different from the Equinox, but we will will discuss that contention below) combined for about a quarter-million sales in 2011. It’s a perfect example of the way GM is supposed to work nowadays: there are two platform variants with very little visual similarity combining to provide high volume in one model and high profit in another. Theta is NAFTA-friendly, with the cheapie being made in Ontario and the luxury model in Mexico. The two models are generally well-reviewed. The obscurity, stupidity, and thrown-darts decision-making which used to characterize the General are nowhere to be seen. What’s to criticize, even here at TTAC, where we typically cast a jaundiced eye on the RenCen fire drill?

Well, there is the minor issue of a third Theta, which is as perfect an example of GM’s undiminished ability to screw things up as the other Thetas are of the company’s ability to get things right.

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With all the rumors about German-built Citroens and re-badged French MPVs, it’s time to do what North American car lovers do best; cast a greedy eye upon vehicles we can’t get, and talk about how much we’d like them.

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