#SAIC

Next year, the UK will get back a long lost son, who has found adoptive parents in China: The MG. Gasgoo reports that the MG6 Saloon will enter the British market in 2011. That was announced by Chen Zhixin, Executive Vice President of SAIC Motor and General Manager of SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicle Co., at the UK Pavilion of Shanghai Expo, while Ms. Carma Elliot, Consul General of the United Kingdom (UK) in Shanghai, was watching. Just Auto thinks the Chinese car with a British name will be shown to the UK public at the Top Gear Live MPH motor show at London’s Earls Court, on 4 November.

There are increasing possibilities that GM will be owned by two governments: The American and the Chinese. After a lot of rumor and innuendo, Hu Maoyuan, Chairman of China’s government-backed SAIC went on record today and said he does not rule out the possibility of participating in GM’s IPO. That according to Reuters.

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].

Since I’ve been writing for TTAC, I predicted that Chinese interests will eventually go for GM, if and when price and time are right. GM already sells more cars in China than back home. GM expects that huge business to grow by 10-15 percent next year. It stands to reason that China wants on (the) board. There has been talk about limiting the share of “foreign investors” in the GM IPO. “Foreign investors” of course are Chinese, and the true number of foreign investors interested in the GM IPO probably comes down to one: China’s SAIC, GM’s Chinese joint venture partner for 13 years now. And now it’s official.

From a week deep in our “How The Hell Did We Miss That” file comes a Reuters report that shows GM considered floating its IPO on the Hong Kong Hang Seng index. GM’s interest in a Hong Kong float has obvious roots: the company is extremely well-positioned in China, where high savings rates and the prospect of steady local sales growth could have helped bring in both private investors and GM’s partner firms. But according to a Reuters source, GM rejected the idea because it would have delayed the IPO past its Thanksgiving deadline

I don’t think signaling goodwill toward Asia is likely to be a significant enough argument for all the cost and complexity. I don’t want to overstate the cost and complexity but it’s not insignificant

With GM’s IPO S-1 now set for a Wednesday filing, The General is announcing a joint engine development project with its Chinese partner SAIC, spurring on rumors that the Shanghai-based automaker could buy into GM’s forthcoming IPO. Reuters reports that GM and SAIC have signed an agreement to develop a new range of 1.0-1.5 liter direct-injection, turbocharged engines in the vein of Ford’s EcoBoost mills. The ground-up joint engine development is significant because, as the WSJ [sub] reports

it marks the first time when GM and SAIC – partners for more than a decade already – are going to develop “base” propulsion technology, going a step further than simply integrating existing engine and gearbox technologies into automobiles.

GM has already moved much of its advanced technology development to new Chinese R&D labs, and this attack on Ford’s EcoBoost technology is likely to become a global engine. But what does the ever-increasing cooperation between GM and SAIC (which recently bought out GM’s controlling interest in their Shanghai GM joint venture) portend for the GM IPO?

Where would we be without our breakfast cereal, fresh from the Chinese rumor mill? Two days ago, we wrote that Suzuki, Volkswagen, and SAIC are rumored to be working on a three-way tie-up. “Not so,” says SAIC according to Gasgoo. They denied a rumor that was spread by the competition at Suzuki’s Chinese partner Changan Auto.

We’ve always suspected that there’s something bigger driving the (well..) tie-up between Volkswagen and Suzuki than little cars: Big markets. Volkswagen holds the keys to China, where they rule the roost, whatever numbers GM may conjure-up. Suzuki is nobody in China. Suzuki holds the keys to India. Volkswagen is nobody in India. It’s the perfect marriage. Even more perfect with some Chinese help ….

If GM wants to pull off a smashing IPO, they need smashing numbers. There are people they can learn from: Their friends and joint venture partners at China’s SAIC. China’s largest automaker (they have joint ventures with both GM and Volkswagen, can’t get any bigger), said first-half profit may have more than quadrupled from a year earlier, reports Bloomberg. And the secret to their success?

Shanghai Volkswagen, the joint venture between China’s SAIC and Volkswagen, lost its General Manager and three other people in a road accident in Jiuquan, southwestern China’s Gansu province, AFP reports.

Volkswagen is betting big on China. Volkswagen wants to double their production capacity in China to three million vehicles by 2013/14. That is roughly half of their current worldwide production. To do that, Volkswagen will finally build their long rumored, but often denied second new plant in China. A week ago, Volkswagen had announced that they would build a plant with their northern partner FAW in China’s deep south.

This video, of the presentation at GM-SAIC’s 2010 Shanghai Expo pavilion, is not the newest video to hit the web (nor, necessarily, the most exciting), but it’s definitely worth a peek. The world of the future, as imagined by the automaker, is a classical leitmotiv of the industry, and its changes over the years can often reveal deep truths. Granted, this particular show is aimed at the international and Chinese audiences, but the contrast to footage of Futuramas past couldn’t be more stark. See for yourself, after the jump.

Ever since the late 90s, car manufacturers and especially car dealers were scared of the Internet. By the end of the 90s, it was agreed that the likes of Carpoint or Autobytel would turn into huge virtual showrooms and would put dealers out of business. It didn’t happen. The opposite happened. The many car shopping sites drove business to dealers. Ten years later, there it is again: The specter of the wicked disintermediation has returned. Direct sales to customers via electronic media are popping up in the world’s largest auto market.

Expo-nential growth

While (usually foreign) analysts are dead worried about the Chinese car bubble to pop and never to be seen again, Chinese car companies are happily raking it in. Western companies, mortgaged to the hilt, or on government life support, are developing a serious case of China-envy.

China’s SAIC is basking in the glow of another bang-up quarter. China’s biggest automaker told Reuters that their first-quarter net profit rose more than four times from the year-ago result. Detailed numbers will be released with SAIC’s full first-quarter earnings report on April 28. Keep in mind that last year’s results already were 9 times those of 2008. In March, SAIC sold 336,387 units, sales for the first quarter were up 64 percent from a year earlier to 891,795 units. To put it into perspective: All of Germany sold 670,410 cars in the first three months of 2010. SAIC singlehandedly outsold Germany by 221,385 units.