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.

Today, I happened to be at Toyota’s Tokyo headquarters in order to personally get to the bottom of numbers nobody seems to care about. There was a minor riot in the usually zen-like lobby of 1-4-18 Koraku, Bunkyo-ku. TTAC was there to investigate …

Nissan pulled off an even bigger miracle than Toyota and ended a (this time truly) catastrophic year with a big profit. Today in Yokohama, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn announced that Nissan delivered a pre-tax profit of 535.1 billion yen (US $6.76 billion) for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, “despite natural disasters and currency exchange headwinds.”

When a new generation of the world’s best selling car, and of the best selling cars of all times (accounts differ) rolls off the line at its factory, then this is usually a big deal. This time, it’s a smaller deal. The 11th generation Corolla that started production today at Toyota’s new plant near Sendai in Japan’s tsunami-ravaged north, is a little shorter than its predecessor. It breaks a tradition of carbloat.

Just-Auto issued a breathless press release with the hot news that the nasty Chinese government has said no to a joint venture between Japan’s Subaru and China’s Chery. If this sounds like deja vu to you, then you are an ace analyst. Send your CV to just-auto.

The contract manufacturer Magna Steyr will assemble “a future luxury entry level compact vehicle” for Nissan’s premium brand Infiniti. This according to a joint statement issued by both companies. Production of the mystery vehicle will start in 2014.

As I walk into Toyota’s basement-bunker Tokyo conference room for the annual results conference today, the Toyota people are all smiles. Genuine smiles. Not the frozen polite smiles so common in Japan. Happy, relaxed smiles. Looking in their faces, I read that this will be a day of good news.

For the 11th straight month in a row, Toyota’s Prius topped the list of Japan’s best-selling cars in April. Toyota’s new compact hybrid, the Aqua, known in the U.S. as the Prius c, was a close second.

With the closure of Japan’s last operating nuclear power plant hitting the news over the weekend, people asked me what that means for Japan’s auto industry. My answer: Nothing. The shutdown of the first nukes on March 11 a year ago was much more dangerous than the long scheduled downing of the last. Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn sees a much bigger danger: the power of the yen. The high yen at the currency exchange. And higher yen numbers on the electricity bill.

Imagine what happened if the representative of a large Japanese or Chinese car company would demand that America should close some car factories before easier access to foreign markets would be contemplated. All hell would break loose, and the Seventh Fleet would steam in the direction of the loose cannon – if it is not already there. What happens if the representative of Ford says that Japan should be required to reduce the size of its auto industry before being allowed into regional free trade talks with the United States and eight other countries in the Asia Pacific? Business as usual.

Sales of cars in Japan nearly doubled in April. Sales of registered vehicles rose 92 percent to 208,977 units from 108,824 a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealer Association reports. Sales of separately tallied mini vehicles rose 96 percent, according to data provided by the Japan Mini Vehicles Association. Consolidated, the market rose 93.7 percent. This does not include imports, which will be reported at a later date.

Here some background on the GM/Isuzu tie-up. Japanese wire services such as The Nikkei [sub] and Jiji report that GM approached Isuzu and “informally proposed acquiring a stake” in the Japanese truck maker. The source is an unnamed executive of Isuzu.

According to The Nikkei [sub], GM and Isuzu will start negotiations in early May for a roughly 10 percent share. If the negotiations are successful, Isuzu President Susumu Hosoi and GM CEO Dan Akerson could meet this summer to sign the agreement.

Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn wanted to announce it Monday or Tuesday in person in Beijing. On the other hand, the upcoming production of Infiniti cars in China leaked last week, after Nissan’s worst kept secret had kept the Chinese rumor mill in motion for more than a year. After Gallic shrugs all around, Nissan confirmed today that two Infiniti models will be manufactured locally in China from 2014. Ghosn will have to find something else to feed the media on Monday. Dim sum perhaps?

When I wrote that PSA and Toyota are exploring their sado-masochistic tendencies a tie-up of production in PSA’s ab- under-used Sevelnord plant in northern France, commenters said it will never happen. Others complained about the choice of choice illustrations.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy rode to the rescue of embattled TTAC, and confirmed the tie-up.

That Lexus will come out with a new ES Hybrid, dubbed the ES300h, is no secret. Being an entry level Lexus, it has to watch its price point. It also has to contend with the high yen, most of the Lexi are exported. The Nikkei [sub] thinks it know how Toyota will solve this dilemma, at least partially. Toyota will make the ES300h on the Japanese island of Kyushu, “taking advantage of the site’s proximity to Asian suppliers of low-cost parts,” The Nikkei says.

The Nikkei [sub] must have been having intimate chats with sources high up in Nissan’s tower at the Yokohama waterfront again.

Prematurely perturbing press people at Nissan, the Tokyo wire reports that a new factory will be constructed in China, and that Infiniti cars will be built at yet another factory in China. In the meantime, Reuters cultivated sources at Renault and says that Renault will finally finalize a deal to produce cars in China.

TTACers have known it for quite some while: Europeans won’t get a Prius C / Aqua compact hybrid, they will get a hybrid Yaris. Today, the first one rolled off the line at Toyota’s plant in Valenciennes, in the north of France.

Nissan waited until the second press day of the New York Auto Show. They did not want their all-electric Infiniti sedan to drown in the floods of other reveals. They should not have worried.

A year ago, Carlos Ghosn announced that Nissan is aiming for 8 percent global market share by 2016. This morning in New York, delivering the keynote address at the New York Auto Show, Ghosn said it again:

“We can achieve 8 percent global market share by 2016.”

After a pause, he continued: “Whenever I state this 8 percent goal, I get some skeptical looks.”

They did not know that TTAC’s man in the cold was surreptitiously snapping pictures with his iPhone. Again-elected Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin simply watched while Renault COO Carlos Tavares defaced the hood of a brand-new car with a Magic Marker. Nissan’s COO Toshiyuki Shiga grinned and did not interfere either. This is how they celebrate the opening of a new car factory, this afternoon in Russia.

Not to have another stab at the best “ production, street-legal” Nordschleife lap time. That’s not why they are trading the chilly Eifel for balmy Yokohama. Allegedly, Nissan does not want to work on the 7:24:22 lap time.

Instead, says GT-R program director Kazutaka Mizuno:

Top Gear called it the “Sony Ferrari.” Daihatsu calls it quits. Toyota’s mini car division Daihatsu will stop production of the only convertible minicar on the Japanese market, the Copen.

New car sales in Japan rose 72 percent in March to 751,888 vehicles. Sales of registered vehicles climbed 78.2 percent to 497,959, says the Japan Automobile Dealers Association JADA. Sales of separately reported mini vehicles rose 60.5 percent to 253,929, as indicated by data of the Japan Mini Vehicles Association.

Honda will build its Fit compact at the new Honda factory in Mexico, from where it will be exported to the U.S. and other markets. This is what the company told Hans Greimel, Automotive News [sub] rezident in Tokyo.

Following the many inter-company alliances and dalliances is becoming as cumbersome as covering the couplings in a swing club. PSA Peugeot Citroen is said to be in talks with Toyota. The same PSA that just hooked up with GM is reportedly talking tie-up with GM’s arch nemesis Toyota. They discuss sharing PSA’s Sevelnord plant in northern France, where PSA’s erstwhile partner Fiat pulls out. Still with me?

Renault has realized a new trend: Imports are hot in Japan. Nissan established a new company, Renault Japon Co., Ltd., to import and sell Renault vehicles in Japan, effective April 2, 2012. Previously, Renaults were sold in Japan by a division of Nissan.

While American automakers sit sulking in a corner and complain about mythical import restrictions to Japan, European makers are looking back at a great year exporting their cars to the island nation. While the Japanese market as a whole dropped 14 percent, imports to Japan rose 22.5 percent.

There had been rumors that Honda might flee Thailand after Honda’s Thai operation literally drowned. These rumors have been put to rest . The Nikkei [sub] says that Honda decided to build a second factory in Thailand. The plant is said to be placed into the southeastern part of Thailand where the risk of flooding is lower.

Last December, Toyota and BMW announced “a long-term technological partnership.” Ostensibly, it was about developing batteries together, and about BMW supplying diesel engines, in that order. Four months later, the priorities seem to have changed a little.

Honda, along with other Japanese carmakers, recovered within weeks from a devastating earthquake , tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Nevertheless, Monday morning production strategists pestered the Japanese why they had not relocated to safer grounds. It took Honda half a year to recover from a killer flood that had inundated those safer grounds.

Mazda is not doing too well. Stuck with most of its production in high-yen Japan, woefully underrepresented in emerging markets and without the scale necessary for long term success, Mazda is expected to announce a 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) loss for the fiscal year that ends this March. Mazda has three options for survival: Pray, bet on Skyactiv, and save wherever you can. In the save wherever you can department, Mazda says sayonara to commercial vehicles.

Long faces in hachi-roku land. Following a multi-year propaganda campaign, expectations for an “affordable” sports car collide with hard (currency) realities.

Volkswagen received a legal black eye from its estranged Japanese partner Suzuki. Volkswagen had taken a silly trademark fight all the way to the General Court of the European Union, and lost today, Reuters says. This is unrelated to the divorce proceedings between Volkswagen and Suzuki, but it definitely comes at an inopportune time.

When, some seven weeks ago, the Nikkei had the rumor that Nissan would revive its Datsun brand for low cost cars, targeted at emerging markets, official sources at Nissan – not surprisingly – had no comment.

One not so charitable source at Nissan conceded that “this time, the Nikkei is less on crack than sometimes.” Another more diplomatic source said: ”I guess you can expect a press release soon.”

That press release arrived today.

Toyota is getting frisky. Per a press release, Toyota U.S.A. reports brisk sales of the game-changing Prius c compact hybrid. Then, TMS goes on to say that “In its first three days on the market, it sold 1,201 units, making it one Toyota’s fastest-selling vehicles and eclipsing Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf sales for the entire month of February.”

The other day, I walk (don’t ask why and what for) through Tokyo’s red-light district, known to connoisseurs as Kabukicho, and I spot some HUMMERs curbside. HUMMERs are not new to the neighborhood. In Japan, HUMMERs used to be popular with certain groups, known as the Yakuza, who also frequent Kabukicho.

However, they had H2s, not the HUMMERs I saw.

Merriam-Webster Definition of CANARD: a false or unfounded report or story

Car & Driver horrified lovers of unadulterated driving fun with the news that “just 6000 Subaru BRZ sports cars will be allocated to the U.S. for the 2013 model year.” The source of that report is somehow suspect: “A Subaru dealer.” Car and Driver’s telephone budget must have been cut. The magazine consulted Subaru’s website that says that the BRZ will be built in “extremely limited quantities.” Car and Driver also checked with an old C&D article that said that “Subaru thinks that 5000 ­ to 7000 per year would be enough.” Thus having performed its journalistic duty, Car and Driver ran with the story of a BRZ that will be available in homeopathic quantities only. Which, I assume, should trigger a run at dealerships.

Today, at 2:46 pm, Japan came to a stand-still, again. Trains and subways stopped. People did fold their hands, faced in the general direction of the northeastern coast of Tohoku, and said a silent prayer. Japan and the world marked the one year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that left whole towns razed, more than 19,000 people dead or missing, 344,000 people displaced, and a large area around the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi power plant off-limits for decades, if not permanently.

Writers often like to equate the power released by the quake to the nuclear bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Depending on who you read and believe, it was anywhere between 31,700 and 600 million Hiroshima bombs. Large parts of the coastal areas are dotted with huge, neatly stacked piles of rubble which nobody wants to take and nobody knows what to do with. The devastation was so big that it turned into an attraction on Google Earth. Considering the immense damage, it is amazing how quickly the country did rebound. On Friday, I visited what was presented to me as an emblem of the amazing turn-around, Toyota’s plant in Kanegasaki, Iwate Prefecture. Here, 1,700 employees are working overtime to build Toyota’s Aqua / Prius c, for which everybody is screaming.

It hasn’t been much of a secret that Opel is working on a small car, called the Junior, to take on BMW’s Mini, or Fiat’s 500. As a matter of fact, Opel had been working on the Junior since 1982. Way back when, the interior of the Junior had been designed by a new arrival in Rüsselsheim, a freshly graduated Chris Bangle. People who expected to see a Junior in Geneva were disappointed. Instead,”General Motors will launch its new small car, the Junior, at the Paris show next autumn,” just-auto was told in Geneva.

The bigger news: The Junior “will be strictly for Europe and unable to challenge the global success of the Mini, or take on the Fiat 500 in America, engineering head Rita Forst admitted” to just-auto.

The interesting part is the alleged why.

“This is Infiniti’s design language for the next 10 years to come,” says Francois Bancon, and points at a laptop that shows pictures and strategy of the INFINITI EMERG-E, a concept car that debuts today in Geneva.

We are in Yokohama, on the fifth floor of Nissan’s corporate world headquarters, while Infiniti’s first range extended mid-ship concept sports car is unveiled in Switzerland. It is there, I am told “to provide a glimpse into Infiniti’s future.” The future is undecided. This car may, or may not come.

The design of the car oozes seductive sex. That, thankfully, will rub off on the whole Infiniti line, I hear.

Will the Emerge lead Nissan to a range extended future? “Not necessarily,” says Bancon, with the best sybillinic smile he can muster.

When Toyota announced an ambitious sales plan for 2012, and the intention to raise sales in Japan by 36 percent, a common reaction was: “Excuse me?”

In February 2011, sales of passenger vehicles excluding minivehicles had been down 14.3 percent. Sales in Japan had been down for most of the year, as a result of cut subsidies. When smaller inducements came back in fall, sales were up again. We are comparing with a low base. As matters are coming back to normal we better get used to a stretch of double digit gains.

Compared to the low base, Toyota’s plan is entirely doable. So far, the market complies and Toyota is on target.

Toyota says that a group of trial lawyers that sue Toyota for money “manufacture controversy where none exists and use media outlets like CNN as tools to serve their narrow, self-interested agenda.” Toyota thinks that “CNN is party of and party to an attempt by lawyers suing Toyota for money to manufacture doubt about the safety of Toyota’s vehicles in the absence of any scientific evidence whatsoever.”

Toyota makes noises that it may sue CNN. What happened?

We have been keeping one eye on the Nissan/Renault plans for low cost cars for a while. All indications have been that the alliance is working on a car that could sell in the neighborhood of $5,000 and still make a profit. The secret of doing this is spreading the development effort over as many units as possible.

Today, The Nikkei [sub] writes that Nissan will resurrect its Datsun brand in order to sell low-priced cars in emerging markets. According what the Nikkei “learned” without naming sources, the cars will initially be built and sold in India, Indonesia and Russia. Allegedly, Nissan hopes to “achieve annual sales of 300,000 Datsuns a year soon.”

We have been saying for quite a while that Honda looks a bit pale around the nose. The Nikkei [sub] agrees. According to the Tokyo business paper, Honda blew it by relying too much on the U.S. market, by ignoring the emerging markets, and by disregarding the fact that Japan has a love affair with 0.6 liter midget-mobiles, a.k.a. kei cars. All of this has to change in a hurry, and Honda’s turn-around hinges on the success of a new kei car, the N Box. Says The Nikkei:

While strolling around in Nissan’s Tech Center, looking for secret cars, I lucked into this: Nissan’s first EV. Along with its Chief Engineer. Both retired.

Today, Nissan had invited distinguished guests, from the Governor of Kanagawa province all the way to the chief of the local fire department, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Nissan Technical Center. Nissan’s main R&D hub is a city of 9,500, nestled into the foothills of Mount Fuji and surrounded by hills that keep it away from prying eyes. To get there, you must drive through a tunnel. Let’s see what we find here …

Unlike other car companies that perfected the slow reveal to a tantalizing and sometimes agonizing strip-tease, Infiniti had sworn to keep its EMERG-E study fully clothed until it bares all at the upcoming Geneva Auto Salon. This plan was toast on Saturday night when pictures purloined from an official Infiniti press kit appeared “on the Internet,” as Carscoop claims.

“Don’t ask me how” those pictures got out, sighs Yokohama-based Infiniti spokesperson Nathalie Greve.

Hammered by the tsunami, the Thai flood and a monster yen, the Japanese car industry is looking back at one of the worst years in modern history. Amazingly, Japan’s top three, Toyota, Nissan and Honda survived the year intact, and are looking at a profit.

Of all Japanese automakers, Mazda is bleeding the most.

Everybody in the business knows that the BYD S6 SUV is a blatant copy of the last generation Lexus RX350 SUV. The rip-off is so blatant that BYD even registered a European patent for their carbon copy. If you don’t look close enough, pretty much the only parts that differ are the grille and some BYD badges. Mei wen ti! No problem!

Toyota plans to more than double its exports to South Korea to 20,700 vehicles this year, says The Nikkei [sub]. The cars come from places that used to be import nations for Toyota: The U.S. and Europe. After announcing plans to export U.S.-built cars to South Korea, Toyota now is looking to bringing made-in-Europe cars back to Asia.

The early 90s were tough times. Stock markets had crashed, real estate bubbles had popped, budgets were slashed. The fabled Daytona 24 hours endurance race survived (barely) with Rolex as a sponsor.

In 1992, the field was down to 49 cars, one of them a newcomer from Japan, Number 23, fielded by Nissan’s Nismo (Nissan Motorsports International) factory team.

Mazda’s stock jumped 6 percent today in Tokyo on news that the Mazda CX-5 crossover SUV is available at Mazda dealers in Japan. Mazda plans for 1,000 units per month to be sold in Japan, and Mazda President Takashi Yamanouchi told The Nikkei [sub] that he expects annual global sales to reach approximately 200,000 units.

The massive wave of recalls that brought some 9 million Toyotas back to the dealers, amidst a frenzied coverage by a sometimes hysteric media, did less damage to the brand than imagined. A study from North Carolina State University shows that Toyota’s safety-related recalls that began in 2009 had little to no impact on how consumers perceived the brand.

Which country is Toyota’s second largest export hub? If all goes according to the wishes of Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motor North America, then that will be North America. Toyota has an annual production capacity of 1.8 million vehicles in the U.S. alone and wants to export increasing numbers to the world, Inaba told The Nikkei [sub].

The trip had been keeping the gaggle of foreign reporters that cover the Japanese auto beat awake for weeks.

“Are you going on THE TRIP???” “Yes. Did you hear Toyota is actually PAYING for flight and hotel?” “REALLY?” “I kid you not.” “NO WAY!”

Not prone to believing in miracles, I called Toyota to find out what flight and hotel to book. “Oh, no. We’ll take care of you.” Unheard of.

Was it luck? Was it hard work? A mixture of both? After escaping a near collision with fate in Iwaki, and not even getting its feet wet in Thailand, Nissan emerges as the most successful after the trials brought on by the unholy triad of tsunami, flood and yen. We said this a while ago when we compared 2011 production numbers of Japan’s majors.

Today, we go to Yokohama to check the balance sheets.

Toyota U.S.A., Inc. today announced pricing for the 2012 Prius c subcompact hybrid. They were not kidding when they had promised that the car would start at below $19,000.

Today, I heard at Toyota’s October-December results conference that TMC lost 240,000 unmade (and some made) cars to the Thai flood. After the conference, I asked Toyota spokesman Dion Corbett how many cars Toyota had lost to the tsunami.

I expected a bit less than a million. To my surprise, Corbett said: “150,000.”

I could not believe it. And I spent the rest of the day twisting arms until I knew how that happened.

Today, Toyota announced its October-December 2011 results to reporters packed into its basement meeting room in Koraku-en, Tokyo. Like most Japanese companies, Toyota is on a fiscal year that spans from April to March the following year. The reporting quarter was the third of the 2012 fiscal. It was surprisingly good. From October to December, TMC had an operating profit of 149.7 billion yen ($1.95 billion,) up 51 percent to from a year earlier. It gets better …

A few days ago, 24/7 Wall Street published yet another list of the best selling cars of all times, kicking the perennial Ford F-Series to second place. We usually stay away from these lists, they just produce flame wars, especially when the methodology remains as dubious as in “we looked at best-selling car data from a number of sources.”

However, powered by the Huffington Post et al, the list went viral. And there you have it: “Toyota Corolla becomes world’s most popular car with one sold every 40 seconds.”

Toyota took that to heart today and added a second shift to its Blue Springs, Mississippi plant. It makes the Corolla in America. And yes, in the press release, Toyota confirms that the Corolla is “the world’s best-selling car of all time.”

The Blue Springs plant has an annual capacity to produce 150,000 Corollas. According to our monthly sales snapshot, the Corolla disappointed in January, whereas the new Camry is selling well. In 2011, Corolla U.S. sales had been down 9.7 percent. (With the Ford F series solidly in number 1.) So why a second shift?