#BertelSchmitt

Automatic high beams have been around since I drove a 70’s era Cadillac DeVille, probably longer. At the Geneva Motor Show, Volvo shows a new and improved automatic high beam. Fitted into the S60, V60 and XC60, Volvo’s Active High Beam Control shields cars in front of you from the brights.

“It may require a miracle to pull off the Fiat chief’s latest gambit,” Reuters writes. To get Fiat out of its rut, Sergio Marchionne has a risky plan: “Take his sporty Alfa Romeo brand global with more expensive models and triple its sales volume by 2016 – after years of losses.”

That plan, says Reuters, “represents Fiat’s only real hope of combating a collapse in its home market and breathing new life into idled factories.” What if it turns out as a bust? “Should it fail, and the new cars flop, the company that Italians view as a cornerstone of their economy will have little choice but to put thousands of employees out of work and tip entire communities into turmoil.”

Bad omen for Europe: The German car market, considered one of the healthier in Europe, was down 10.5 percent in February, compared to the same month in the prior year. News from other European volume markets are worse.

As expected, sales of Japanese cars in China took a nosedive to levels not seen since the days after Japanese cars and dealerships were torched last September. Sales of Nissan and Toyota are down a whopping 46 percent. No, it’s not a new flare-up of anti-Japanese riots. This time, it’s the effect of the Chinese Lunar calendar.

Zerohedge chart shows GM stuffing the channel at a frightening rate

Zerohedge, the website that caters to short sellers, has been monitoring GM for symptoms of a relapse to the Bad Old. One of these symptoms is channel stuffing, defined by Investopedia as “a deceptive business practice used by a company to inflate its sales and earnings figures by deliberately sending retailers along its distribution channel more products than they are able to sell to the public.”

Zerohedge has a chart depicting an increasingly overflowing channel, and it looks bad. Let’s have a closer look.

This was tough month for the panel of analysts polled by Bloomberg: Analysts who previously monopolized the top ranks of the list blew this one. February was won by three bankers: Peter Nesvold in first, followed by Brian Johnson, and Patrick Archambault.

Watch out! Wired unearthed plans by al-Qaida to turn your, yes YOUR car into firebombs, and if that doesn’t work, create vehicular disruption with massive oil slicks by way of “lubricative oil” applied to America’s highways. Says so in a PDF document called “Opel Source Jihad.” (No link, because THIS ONE definitely is NSFW. If nudie pics get you fired where you work, accessing that one will get you waterboarded. Anyway, the link is on Wired, and we did warn you.)

Wired thinks this is part of the general race to the bottom:

I have been trying to make heads or tails out of yesterday’s contradicting news about the big deal between Opel and the unions, and so does German media. So much is clear: The truth and GM’s press release about a “successful conclusion” of the negotiations with the Opel works council are miles apart. There is no deal. Unions and Management are still in negotiations, the negotiations will continue this coming week. Then, the workers have to vote. It does not look good: Bochum’s works council is dead set against the deal. It gets worse.

Crazy double digit gains have given way to solid single digit growth (on top of the crazy gains of last year). More importantly for American makers, pickups and SUVs are moving. Stay with us throughout sales day for updates of the sales table.

Isn’t the Internet wonderful? Now industry types can trade barbs directly, without going through unreliable journalists. Ed Whitacre still needed to write a book (or more like he had it written) to put down Bob Lutz, Dan Akerson et al. Bob Lutz, however, has his own blog, hosted at Forbes, and boy does he take revenge on Whitacre:

Japanese automobile sales were down eight percent in February 2013, compared to the same month in the prior year. This according to consolidated data by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association and the Japan Mini Vehicles Association.

I shall not be moved: Opel union chief Einenkel

Messy, messy, messy: Can’t even close a proper deal with the unions. GM and the unions have an agreement. It is basically as reported this morning. The deal has the signatures of management and unions. One signature is missing, reports Die Welt: That of Bochum works council chief Rainer Einenkel.

3D printing is all the rage, and it caused a huge uproar when people started making guns with 3D printers. It was just a matter of time for really lethal stuff to be 3D-printed in your nerd-neighbor’s basement: A car.

Going to Barrett-Jackson to buy a classic car is for sissies, says the Wall Street Journal. Real men collect tanks. Not Hummers. Tanks.

The number of private tank collectors in the U.S. is estimated to be between several hundred and 1,000. It’s a growing hobby, says the paper.

GM is planning to build up to 36,000 Chevrolet Volts and other plug-in hybrids for worldwide delivery this year, 20 percent more than in 2012, “two people familiar with the effort” told Bloomberg.