Looks Like A Record October In India

Meanwhile in India, things look much better. No total sales are in yet, but market leader Maruti Suzuki posted a 39 percent gain in sales to 118,908 vehicles in October from 85,415 a year earlier, reports The Nikkei [sub]. This was the strongest October in Maruti Suzuki’s recorded history.

Read more
The Ultimate Automotive Status Symbol: The Indian-Market Bugatti Veyron
Everyone knows that buying a Bugatti Veyron has a lot more to do with projecting “because I can” status than with the car’s actual abilitie…
Read more
Made In China Jags And Land Rovers

Rumors of Tata’s Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) establishing production in China have been around for a while. With good reason, Jaguars and especially Land Rovers enjoy (fairly) brisk sales in China. Now, these rumors move into the realm of the definitive.

Read more
Tata's Nano Goes to U.S.A. and EU. Again. Maybe

Tata reiterated its threat to invest the the U.S. and Europe with their bargain-basement Nano car. At an event held today in Toyko, Tata’s Vice Chairman Ravi Kant said that “Tata Motors now plans to take it forward to the developed markets in Europe and in the U.S.,” The Nikkei [sub] reports. “Now plans?”

Read more
To Grow In India, Ford Talks To A Chinese Partner

About a year Editor-in Chief, Ed Niedermeyer, reported that GM and SAIC were discussions about co-operating in the Indian market. Then, in May, our overseas editor, Bertel Schmitt, reported how GM China was going to raid their Chinese line up and sell it in India. I dismissed the developments as the first step in GM being “China-centric”. But today Automotive World reports that Zhang Baolin, President of Chongqing Changan Automobile is having talks with Ford (their western partner in China) about extending their partnership from China to, you guessed it, India. “We have discuss with Ford to use their network to expand overseas, but have not yet come to an agreement yet,” said Zhang Baolin, via Bloomberg News. On the topics’ list are things like whose brand to use and what vehicles will be sold in India.

Read more
Toyota Goes All Out In India

Despite government witch hunts ( recently cancelled, supposedly) and subsidized competitors, Toyota is holding its own. Just. But like Toyota said, they’re going on the offensive. They’ve upped the incentives (but are still below industry average) and launching new warranties to confirm their commitment to their products. But they’re also pushing into new markets to offset their reliance on the North American market (and also to make more money). Now one of those markets is India. The formula is very simple there. Cheap, reliable, safe, and cheap. And that’s what Toyota is trying to do. About time. Suzuki is eating everybody’s lunch in India.

Read more
Hans Demant: Mr Suzuki?
Executives at GM Europe were reportedly outraged when “Mr Opel” jumped ship to arch-rival VW, after the Wolfsburg boys entered an alliance with S…
Read more
Fiat's Poor Indian Summer

China isn’t the only big economy coming to play (sorry to burst your bubble, Herr Schmitt). [ED:No bubble. India is 10-15 years behind China, but they will definitely be next. China and India added will be a monster.] Just across the border, India is rising up and quickly, too. Car makers are desperately scrambling to get a foothold in the Indian market. And like the Chinese market, everyone is enjoying record growth in India. Well, almost everybody.

Read more
Luxury… By Tata

So, how does the maker of the world’s cheapest mass-market car go about building India’s first home-grown upscale crossover? First, go buy several small European automakers…

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: The Mahindra America's Been Missing Edition
Mahindra may have screwed up its US distribution deal (OK, somebody screwed it up), but perhaps the problem was simply that the Indian firm hadn’t suff…
Read more
Inside The Collapse Of Mahindra's US Market Plans

I believe that, legally, I’m still their U.S. distributor. And I want trucks delivered to our dealersImporting niche vehicles from an unknown foreign automaker has long been a fraught process for US-based entrepreneurs, and John Perez’s attempt to bring diesel-powered Mahindra pickups to the US has been no exception. For four years, Perez’s Global Vehicles distribution network waited while Mahindra sought EPA certification for its diesel pickup engine, and then six days after approval arrived, the Indian firm dumped Perez with little ceremony. Now Mahindra says it will consider giving franchisees to the dealers who paid Perez up to $200k for the right to sell Mahindras, but that it is not obliged to do so. Perez is suing Mahindra for failing to fill an order for pickups, while dealers are considering suing Perez and Mahindra is seeking to end its agreement with Perez so it can distribute pickups through independent dealers. Mahindra’s Roma Balwani tells Automotive News [sub]The current dealers’ contract is with GV [Perez’s distribution channel, Global Vehicles] and hence they do not automatically become Mahindra dealers. However, we would be considering these dealers for our network if they are interested. We will need a new distribution network and soon we will start a dialogue with potential dealers, including the ones who are signed up with GV, if they are interested in signing up with Mahindra.

Read more
BMW Bitch-Slaps Benz. Benz Retaliates

Watching people “Snap” is very funny (when I was at school in the UK they were called “cuss matches”). I learnt some very funny insults. Some insults were so funny, I’ve been banned from reproducing them on TTAC (Ed – We’re a family website!). But nothing lifts the spirits more than watching 2 people going head-to-head, armed with the sharpest, finest “Yo mamma…” insults. But what happens when that element comes to the automotive world? Well…

Even though the luxury car market in India is very small, the players are taking it seriously. So seriously, they’re trying to bitch slap each other. The Hindustan Times reports that Mercedes-Benz and BMW are “trading verbal volleys at each other at every opportunity.” 2 Germans hurling insults at each other in the middle of India? Did someone put a load of magic mushrooms on my pizza? Pee in your curry? Gee, in Germany something like that would get you a “cut it out now!” phone call from the VDA, the “Verband der Automobilhersteller” (formerly “Verband Deutscher Autobomilhersteller”). But in India?

Read more
Strategy For Global Growth: Sell It To The Indians

Speaking of India, it’s about time that GM gets its act together on the subcontinent. If you aren’t somebody in India you are missing the boat. If the augurs augur right, the subcontinent will be the fastest-growing car market in the world.

Read more
GM Uses Chinese Know-How To Master India

Popular wisdom was that foreign companies have to tread carefully in China, lest they’ll be robbed blind of their vaunted intellectual property and thrown by the wayside. Now it has come to the total opposite: GM has made a mess out of India. And they turn to their old Chinese buddies at SAIC to help them out. Not just financially. Technologically. “GM hopes to take advantage of Shanghai Automotive Industry’s expertise in making small, low-cost cars to raise its share” in India, reports The Nikkei [sub].

Read more
India In August 2010: Up 33 Percent

India’s population is right up there with neighboring China. Only a few hundred million less, nobody really knows. In car sales, India dwarfs against China. In 2009, Indians bought 1.43m units, compared to 13.6m units bought by the Chinese. Nevertheless, the market is growing, the potential is huge, and sales are at a record high. Monthly car sales in India surged to an all-time high in August, climbing 33 percent to 160,794 cars. That according to data issued by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), and reported in The Nikkei [sub]. August sales outpaced July’s record of 158,674 cars.

Read more
JLR Looks East For Supplies

DNA India reports that Tata is making a concerted effort to source parts for Jaguar and Land Rover from low cost countries like China, India (duh!) and Poland. DNA’s source for this claim said: “Earlier, Ford used to procure 17 percent from low-cost countries like Poland, China and India, whereas Tata Motors is planning to increase it to 35 percent.” Tata has buys more than just cheap parts. They outsourced low-end design and development work to lower-wage countries. But before you start the “If you thought JLR reliability was bad now…” don’t get too carried away.

Read more
Suzuki Will Teach VW Where The Little Cars Come From

When Volkswagen bought a 19.9 percent share in Suzuki, everybody in the know knew that a much bigger trade was going down. A trade of subcontinents. Suzuki owns nearly half of the market in India, where Volkswagen is a relative nobody. Suzuki is dabbling in China, where Volkswagen rules the roost.

Read more
Suzuki Tries To Stay Ahead Of Indian Market

Suzuki is to India what Volkswagen was to China. Earliest foreign entry into a huge an untapped car market. Like Volkswagen in China, Suzuki built a dominant position in India early on. Suzuki owns half of the Indian market. Unlike Volkswagen, two-thirds of Suzuki’s operating profit is estimated to come from India. Volkswagen lost their commanding share of China (and made it up with volume) when the market exploded, attracted competition, and overwhelmed VW’s capacities. A mistake Suzuki seeks to avoid.

Read more
Tata Gives Suzuki Headaches

Suzuki has a little bit of a problem keeping up with the demand in the frisky Indian market. If you can’t deliver, you lose market share. Suzuki’s share of the Indian market already slipped below their usual 50 percent. And guess who’s giving Suzuki headaches? Tata.

Read more
Suzuki Racing To Stay Ahead Of Partner Volkswagen

Suzuki is hustling to avoid needing more help from partner Volkswagen. For instance in India, a market VW covets. Suzuki used to own more than half on the Indian market. In the recent months, that share slipped a bit. Not because customers in India don’t like Suzuki. Suzuki can’t keep up with the demand. Customers have to wait for months to get delivery of popular car models such as the Swift hatchback and the Swift Dzire sedan, reports The Nikkei [sub]. Suzuki is finally doing something about it.

Read more
Ford Looks East For Growth

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Ford is enjoying booming sales in India for their small car, the Ford Figo. Sales of the small car purpose-built for the Indian and other emerging markets jumped 267 percent from last year. Ford is staffing up for it. Well, Ford is now going to take the plunge in India. Well, at least they’re planning on it.

Read more
Breaking: Mahindra Dumps US Distributor
Just days after Mahindra’s diesel-powered compact pickups were approved by the EPA for sale in the US, the Indian automaker apparently canceled its dis…
Read more
EPA Approves Diesel-Powered Mahindra Compact Pickups

After numerous delays and a lawsuit by Mahindra’s US distributor, the Indian firm’s diesel-powered compact pickups have been approved by the EPA, reports the WSJ [sub].

Read more
Mahindra One Step Closer To Ssangyong

I know that stories about who will buy a down and out Korean carmaker called Ssangyong are not a major click-through magnet. Therefore, just for the record: Ssangyong selected India’s Mahindra & Mahindra as the preferred bidder to acquire a majority stake. And just in case, they named India’s Raghav Industries as the secondary preferred bidder, says The Nikkei [sub].

Read more
Indian's Mahindra After Korea's Ssangyong

India’s Mahindra & Mahindra is putting in a binding bid to buy a majority stake in troubled South Korean automaker Ssangyong Motor. Ssangyong went bankrupt in 2009 after China’s SAIC dropped the ball. They nearly went up in flames, when militant workers incited a riot and threatened to blow up the paint shop.

Read more
VW's Indian Division Outsourced To Suzuki?

Running a multi-national car company the size of, say, General Motors, Ford or Toyota means having lean, efficient operations. In the SUV/light trucks segment, turning a profit is easy. Because of the inherent profitability of these products, your operations don’t need to be that efficient to turn a decent profit. Where you really need to concentrate on profits is the other end of the scale. The small car market. This is where raiding the parts bin, nicking a platform from another division and moving production to a low cost country are taken as read when producing a plan for your next small car. But what if you’re trying to break into a market where small cars need to be firmly in the “four figures” price bracket? Well, this is the problem that Volkswagen is having in India. Like China, every car maker wants a piece of this Asian Tiger Elephant, but Volkswagen just simply doesn’t have the presence there to make their cars profitably. Or do they?

Read more
VeeDub Is On A Roll

Speaking of German car companies doing exceptionally well despite a tanking German car market, there is of course Volkswagen.

The Volkswagen group sold more than 3.5m units worldwide in the first six months of 2010, besting the pretty darn good numbers of the same period in 2009 by about 15 percent, Martin Winterkorn said to Reuters. He predicts (and that’s an easy call based on the half year results) that the Volkswagen group will see record car sales in 2010. What’s driving the new Wirtschaftswunder? The weak Euro, of course. And the strong position of Volkswagen in boom markets such as China.

Nevertheless, VW doesn’t want to rely on the vagaries of the foreign exchange.

Read more
As Gas Prices Go Up, India Goes On General Strike

Know what to do next time you see a higher price at the pump? Don’t buy gas on May 15? How lame. Learn from the folks in India. According to the BBC, India’s opposition parties have called a general strike against fuel price rises, and “normal life has been disrupted in many parts of India.”

Read more
And The Barber Of Chennai, Figo, Figo!

Suzuki, Hyundai and Tata are the King Dongs (that WASN’T a spelling mistake, BTW) of India. Suzuki controls over half of the Indian car market. Hyundai and Tata have major chunks, too. Whatever is left is divided up amongst the smaller parties. But why have Indians put their rupees in the hands of Suzuki, Hyundai and Tata? National pride? Hardly. Suzuki and Hyundai come from a little further east. Nope. The reason is because they all excel in one thing. Small, cheap cars. The majority of Indians are relatively poor and don’t have much money to spend, so when they make a purchase as big as a car, it HAS to provide value (Indians LOVE a bargain as the video shows). If further proof were needed that India loves small, cheap cars, then this next story should put it beyond reasonable doubt.

Read more
Where Are Those NSFWing Mahindra Pickups Already?

Since EPA certification has not been obtained, we were worried the delays would continue. We want to begin sales in December as Mahindra stated to the press on May 17th. Our sole intent was to get Mahindra focused on not missing another deadline. We simply wanted to protect you, our dealers, and your investment in the Mahindra brand.

That’s what John Perez, President of Mahindra’s US-market distributor Global Vehicles wants to know. Perez is suing the Indian manufacturer of the compact diesel pickups and SUVs to make sure his dealers dealers don’t miss a fourth blown sales deadline. Mahindra, according to Global’s suit, has not yet filed official EPA paperwork for any of its vehicles. December launch, huh?

Read more
Suzuki To Build More Cars In India Than Back Home

India is supposed to be the world’s next growth market. For one company, this is already more than true: For Japan’s Suzuki. The Maruti Suzuki joint venture owns more than 50 percent of India’s market. And soon, Suzuki will build more cars in India than back home in Japan.

Read more
Jaguars. Soon Made in China

Over the next few years, life in the UK is going to be pretty – austere. The Centre-Right government has been in power barely a month, and already they’ve slashed the budget by £6.2 billion. That was just the scalpel, wait till the axe comes. So, with a possible second recession in the offing, it’s time for some good news. And here it is…

Read more
Mahindra Buys Out REVA, GM Takes EV Spark Development In-House

GM’s plan to develop an electric version of its (previous-generation) Chevrolet Spark city car for developing markets had been dependent on a joint development deal with REVA, the Indian firm responsible for such vehicles as the REVAi (known to Brits and Top Gear fans as the G-Whiz). But with the AP [via BusinessWeek] reporting that Mahindra & Mahindra has bought a 55 percent stake in REVA, GM’s deal to use REVA’s technology in its Daewoo-developed hatchback appears to be off. GM had already scaled back its cooperation with REVA, delaying the planned release of the Spark EV and focusing on fleet testing the car. But, says GM India President Karl Slym

Now we’ve stopped the test fleet as well. We were doing it purely as something to learn. Now there’s no real benefit to that. We may as well stay with the GM solutions.

Read more
Toyota Cuts Production In Bangkok, Adjusts Worldwide Output

While bullets fly in Bangkok, Toyota announced today that production at a Toyota plant near Bangkok will cease by the end of May. Toyota says the plant closure has nothing to do with the public unrest, it should be seen on the context of the reorganization of Toyota’s global operations, says The Nikkei [sub].

Read more
Renault Loves India


A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the world largest “ democracy” is being built up to a global small car hub. It seems the car world has even bigger plans for the Asian tiger cub. Business Week reports that Renault is planning to double the number of parts it gets from India. Sudhir Rao, COO of Renault’s India unit says that Renault will buy about €250m ($317m) worth of parts from the Indian subsidiary. Renault isn’t the only company that is looking to India for cost savings. Naturally, where Renault goes, Nissan follows. But Fiat and Ford are also interesting in using Indian parts.

Read more
Small is Big in India

China’s is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most exciting markets in the world (Especially for Bertel, it keeps him in Lederhosen and Japanese bar trips). Many companies are throwing their efforts into the Middle Kingdom. Buick is, to all intents and purposes, a China-only brand. Volkswagen declared China to be “Volkswagen’s second home” and Ford’s sales are rocketing there. However, while all eyes are on the fastest growing economy in the world, something fundamental in happening just across the border.
Read more
Don't Call People When They're Driving, Or Else…
… you’ll get covered in red food coloring? Or is this ad by Mudra Group for the Bangalore Traffic Police trying to say something else? Meanwhi…
Read more
Renault Divorces Mahindra & Mahindra

The emerging car market in India isn’t emerging fast enough to keep some car companies alive. Three years after Renault started to build its low-cost Logan in India, Renault is pulling out. The ho-hum sales come as no surprise to the attentive TTAC reader. As previously noted, India sells in a year what China consumes in a month in terms of cars.

Read more
Nano Develops Burning Desire

Eleven Nanos were puttering down India’s National Highway 8 on their way to the dealer (don’t they have car haulers there?) when one of them burst into flames, reports India’s Deccan Chronicle. These cases of spontaneous Nano combustion seem to pile up.

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: Speaking Of Downsizing… Edition

Japan’s Mag-X [via Autoten] brings us this rendering of a Toyota low-cost car, said to be planned for a 2012 launch in India’s hot-hot entry-level car market. Expected to weigh about 1,322 lbs, Toyota’s Tata Nano-fighter is said to have an 800cc two-cylinder engine mounted out back (alá Nano).

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: You Get What You Pay For Edition

Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words, but this one is good for at least two whole life lessons. First: you get what you pay for. If you buy the world’s cheapest car, as insurance agent Satish Sawant did, it might just burst into flames on the drive home from the dealership. Second: Google Adsense has no sense of irony.

Read more
Toyota Loses Critical Prius Court Case

“If we lose that case, we will lose heavily” said Toyota in Delhi’s High Court. The judges had no sympathy for Toyota’s pleadings. Their decision might impact seriously on Toyota’s plans to market the Prius in 40 countries worldwide. As if Toyota doesn’t have enough problems with recalls and class action suits, now this:

Read more
Carlos Ghosn Native?

Carlos Ghosn was in India on Tuesday, juggling a lot of eggs and covering a lot of bases. The official reason for his visit was the opening of the new Renault-Nissan plant in Chennai, but Ghosn’s arrival set off a flurry of R-N related news in the Indian press.

Read more
Tata's Busy Week

Last week was an eventful one for Tata Motors. First, Daimler announced that it had completed selling off its 5.34% stake in the Indian automaker, for USD $422 million. Investors including Citibank and Tata Sons, the largest current Tata Motors stockholder, acquired the shares. Daimler explained the move by saying that it is now well enough established in India in terms of passenger and commercial vehicles, to no longer need an equity share in a local company. Daimler already builds CVs in Pune and its new CV plant in Chennai will go online in 2012. Daimler and Tata have a relationship that dates to 1954, when Tata started assembling Mercedes-Benz trucks. The two companies started local assembly of M-B cars in 1994 under the Telco joint venture.

Read more
GM's Foreign Relations Suck

Over the daily Toyota runaway stories, it’s easy to forget the plight of GM and its children abroad. If you think that’s the idea, then you are a miserable conspiracy theorist, and you should stand in the corner. With that in mind, let’s check in with GM and its worldwide siblings to see how they are doing.

Read more
Volkswagen And Suzuki Beginning To Breed

Volkswagen and its freshly hitched 20 percent bride Suzuki will have a sit-down next week to “flesh out their joint projects by welding together a number of ideas,” reports The Nikkei [sub] from an earnings briefing in Wolfsburg.

The Nikkei guesses that Volkswagen will provide hybrid and electric-vehicle technologies to Suzuki. In turn they are interested in know-how on manufacturing subcompacts at low cost. As far as distribution goes, the two will most likely compare notes on China, where VW is strong, and on India, where Suzuki rules the roost.

Read more
One Ford? "All New" Figo Launches in India

Sales recently began in India for Ford’s “all new” Figo. The launch of the Figo, a five-door sedan/hatchback, was a supposed to be a big deal. It is Ford’s first car designed specifically for the Indian market, and it was introduced by Mullaly himself in India last September. It’s built in Ford’s refurbished Chennai plant, where production started up in early February after a $500 million investment. In addition to producing cars for the local market, where sales are booming and compact cars, the so-called Sub B segment, make up 70% of the sales volume, Ford intends for the Chennai plant to be a supply hub for their Asia, Pacific and Africa operations.

Read more
Record Car Sales for India, Rising Prices Anticipated

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.

Read more
Suzuki (And VW?) Wants Bigger Footprint In India

India is going to be an economic powerhouse, just like China. With 1.1 billion people, that’s a lot of potential customers for your goods. Suzuki knew this, which is why they pushed hard in India. Suzuki is the undisputed market leader in India. Whenever there are developments in that market, we should probably listen. Listen up:

Read more
Daimler Dumps Tata

Uh-oh. Daimler must be needing money really bad. Reuters has on their wire that Daimler is trying to sell their complete 5.34 percent share in Tata Motors for cheap. They are offering the package at a discount of 4 to 7 percent below the stock’s Monday close, and hope to raise $429 million.

Read more
Nissan: Small Is Beautiful

Renault is using their Dacia subsidiary to produce cheap cars for Eastern Europe and other emerging markets (such as Germany, where Dacias had been snapped up during the Abwrackprämien-orgy.) Meanwhile, Renault’s Japanese twin Nissan is starting to feel a little left out. Yes, they have the Nissan Pixo, which is a rebadge of the Suzuki A-Star, which is built in India (and was recalled recently), but Nissan seems to want something of their own and they want the Indian truck manufacturer Ashok Leyland to help. Sounds easy enough …

Read more
GM Officially Out Of Control In China

Everybody who’s ever worked in China knows that some things take some time. Nothing that is announced today, happens tomorrow. There are applications to be made, documents to be “chopped.” Sometimes, this process takes forever, as it seems to be the case with Hummer. Sometimes, things move a bit faster. Last December, we reported that GM would sell a crucial one percent of the 50:50 holdings of GM China to their joint venture partner SAIC to bring the shareholdings to 51 percent SAIC, 49 percent GM.

As China’s new year (that of the tiger) came around, China’s biggest automaker SAIC Motor Corp has won regulatory approval to acquire the crucial 1 percent stake in Shanghai GM, Shanghai Daily reports today via Gasgoo. The matter has been officially filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday. It’s official now. General Motors officially has been relegated to minority shareholder in its key venture in the world’s largest auto market. SAIC is now calling the shots.

Read more
Forster CEO Of Tata

Last November, we reported that Carl-Peter Forster had stepped down as CEO of General Motors Europe, in protest over GM’s interruptus of the Opel/Magna deal. We also reported that Forster may take a job at Tata in India. All in due time …

Read more
Hyundai Says Tata To Second Place In India

Hyundai are on fire at the moment. They’re posting good profits at a time of economic instability, their quality & reliability is winning them awards and customers like what they see in their showrooms. However, that magic formula seems to be losing its lustre elsewhere in the world. The Hindu Business Line reports that Tata Motors have snatched number 2 position from Hyundai in the Indian market. Sucks to be third!

Read more
Suzuki's Indian JV Sells More Cars Than Suzuki Produces
It’s obvious that Suzuki isn’t surviving the global downturn on US sales. Stateside, the Japanese automaker’s sales fell over 50 percent la…
Read more
Jaguar/Land Rover Boss Departs As Tata Takes Over

David Smith, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover has left the company for reasons that JLR and parent firm Tata refuse to elaborate upon beyond telling the Beeb that Smith’s departure is “not linked to the recent breakdown of talks with unions over pay and pensions.” Since the sale to Tata, Jaguar has been negotiating a two-tier wage system and pension reform with workers at its four British plants, but talks stumbled to a halt just days ago. So, that’s definitely not why Smith left suddenly.

Read more
In The Midst Of An Auto Goldrush, Is India Headed For Overcapacity?

Optimism is a rare commodity in the auto industry these days, and nearly all of it comes from the so-called BRIC nations of Brazil, India, China and (to a lesser extent) Russia. India in particular is being targeted as one of the few growth opportunities for the industry’s global players. Nissan/Renault, Volkswagen, Honda, Ford and GM have all recently announced major initiatives to target growth in India’s entry-level market, and GM even gave up control of its Chinese operations in order to beef up its Indian presence. But, as the Hindu Business Line reports, India could be staring down the kind of overcapacity that is causing so many headaches for automakers in mature markets.

Read more
Japan Expands Into Growth Markets

Japanese car manufacturers, reeling from a doubly whammy at home (down 9.3 percent) and in the U.S.A. (down 21.2 percent) are looking increasingly to growth markets such as China (up 45 percent) and India (up 18.7 percent.) Large players like Nissan, Honda and Toyota in China, and Suzuki in India, have been there for years. Now there is a virtual stampede. A collection of news from today’s Nikkei [sub]:

Read more
Honda Exec: Chinese and Indian Automakers Could "Blow Up The Distribution Chain"

The prospect of US launches by Chinese and Indian auto brands like Tata and BYD have at least one of the established US-market players in a paranoid froth. Honda VP John Mendel revealed a few of the nightmare scenarios that keep him up at night to USA Today [UPDATE: more on Mendel’s fears at Automotive News [sub]]. One, inspired by BYD’s plans for a 2010 US launch without a distribution channel in place, is that newcomers could skip the dealer model altogether. Mendel worries that “warehouse stores or electronics stores” ( sound familiar?) could be used to cut dealers out of the loop, “blowing up” business-as-usual for US distribution strategy.

Read more
Jaguar Facing A Lot Of Ifs

With more than 30 years of advertising under my belt, I’m no stranger to spin. Once in a while, I’m impressed by the gumption of some spinmeisters. This is one of those times.

So I read at Reuters that Jaguar is “ready to leap back to pre-crisis sales.” Reuters quotes Jaguar Land Rover’s head David Smith, who said: “In the past, Jaguar built more than 100,000 vehicles per year. We can return to such levels once the crisis is over.” Reuters says Smith gave those optimistic remarks to Germany’s Wirtschaftswoche.

So over to Wirtschaftswoche I go. At first, I think I found the wrong article.

Read more
  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
  • EBFlex The best gift would have been a huge bonfire of all the fak mustangs in inventory and shutting down the factory that makes them.Heck, nobody would even have to risk life and limb starting the fire, just park em close together and wait for the super environmentally friendly EV fire to commence.