Dig through the dire news about GM floating around this morning’s autoblogosphere, and you just might notice a story that doesn’t quite jive with all the doom and gloom. Bloomberg reports that GM is “in talks with a local partners” to increase its 34 percent stake in GM-SAIC-Wuling, a Chinese light-truck and van maker. As our man in Beijing reports, China is aggressively stimulating its car market (which has bottomed out, by Chinese standards, at 11 percent growth) and GM wants in on the action. Of course there are just a few issues with the move– beyond the fact that GM has no cash with which to make such a deal. SAIC currently owns 50.1 percent of the consortium, and its Chairman Hu Maoyuan tells Bloomberg that it won’t be giving up its majority. “GM and our partner in Guangxi (Wuling) are still discussing how to settle the share transfer,” says Hu. So GM wants to spend cash it doesn’t have to increase a non-majority stake in an overseas joint venture. Non-starter, right? Not according to Ricon Xia, an analyst with Daiwa Associate Holdings…

“Toyota Motor Corp. trumped General Motors (GM) in total car sales during the first nine months of 2008 to become the world’s top car producer for the first time,” the Mainichi Shimbun reports from Tokyo. “Huh,” say you, “hasn’t ToMoCo trampled GM already?” Not exactly, and not officially. But they are kicking ass and GM to the bottom. Unstoppably, one may add. “GM’s sales between January and September in 2008 were down 5.8 percent to 6,655,751, according to figures released by the company on Wednesday. Toyota’s sales for the same period, including those of subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors, were 7,051,029, almost unchanged from last year,” writes the Tokyo broadsheet with a kuso-eating grin on their faces, in the same sentence dispelling rumors that ToMoCo had contracted the galloping auto trade tuberculosis. [NB: Mainichi is one of the top three Nipponese papers,thick with Japanese politicos. Two of Mainichi’s CEOs became Prime Ministers of the Land of the Rising Corolla.] And yet the fat lady has not sung…

Back when GM and Ford claimed that foreign sales would keep them afloat long enough to patch their hulls, turn their ships around and avoid reefs of their own making, TTAC called bullshit. First, we pointed out that the domestics’ American losses were simply too large to sustain with foreign profits. Second, we said overseas car markets were hardly immune to the forces sending the States into the doldrums. And so… The Daily Telegraph reports that rising petrol prices have lowered UK vehicle sales to their lowest level since England won the World Cup against Germany in 1966. “The latest sales figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that the number of new cars registered last month was down 18.6 per cent on the same period last year. Worst hit were luxury marques and 4x4s, with monthly sales of Aston Martin cars down by two thirds in a year, Land Rover suffering a 58 per cent drop and demand for Porsche models 58 per cent lower than August 2007.” Worse– much worse– is yet to come. “The car market is now in real pain, real free-fall,” Professor Garel Rhys, director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University, told the Torygraph. “It is not just the private buyers who are not buying it is also the companies and the fleet side who have decided to pull their horns in, it is a sign of pretty awful times ahead.” Oh, and The Times of India says “Sluggish outlook in India has forced Japanese car major Toyota to revise and extend further its market share target from the country by as much as 5 years.”

As a Jew with a pretty solid claim on owning a functional sense of humor, I have to say that Hadar Goldman, co-owner of the Zarmon Goldman advertising agency in Tel Aviv, is being disingenuous. His company's ad, depicting a wild-eyed Arab sheik wailing on a Nissan Tilda for its [theoretical] effect on his bank balance, is over-the-top, over-the-line and not-so-funny. What if an Arabian agency created an ad that portrayed Jews as money-grubbing shysters? "It's a humorous campaign that was loved by both the Jewish and Arab worlds," Nissan spinmeister Daniella Ribenbach told The Jerusalem Post. Uh, we'd like to see some data on that Danny. Meanwhile, "It's my opinion that Nissan made a huge error by igniting these [racist] instincts," official Hani al-Wafa told Saudi Arabian TV. "In order for Nissan to keep its interests in the region, it must apologize." And so it will.

Does it sound like a good idea to advertise the new Lancia Delta in the U.K. by showing Richard Gere frolicking with some Buddhist monks from Tibet? Odd? Certainly. Cute? Maybe. Problematic? Well yes, if you dislike the kind of lefty vegetarian sanctimonious Hollywood type Gere represents (which I don't). But could this spot really be a reason to apologize? Just-Auto [sub] reports that upon hearing of cockamamie protests from Beijing, Fiat kowtowed to the dictators in the People's Republic. "Fiat Group reiterates its neutrality in connection with any political matter, be it on a national or international basis. To the extent that the Lancia Delta advertising may give rise to misinterpretations of its well established position of neutrality, Fiat Group extends its apologies to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the Chinese people." Yes, it hurts the Chinese Government's feelings that the pro-Tibet Gere is shown in some vaguely positive way in Tibet, or something. And it dismays us that Fiat, a car maker on the ascent, apparently didn't know what it was doing when it OK'd this ad, and obviously doesn't have a pair.