#UK

GM has turned its Ellesmere Port plant into “a no-go area for media amid ongoing speculation over its future,” says The Guardian. Staff and suppliers have been told to avoid reporters. “Attempts to photograph Astras awaiting delivery at the site’s distribution centre prompt a visit from security guards who ask the Guardian to desist,” says the paper.

After years and years and years of rumors and premature announcements, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has finally, honestly, cross your heart and swear to fry, “finalized a joint venture agreement with Chery Automobile Co to manufacture and sell vehicles in China,” Reuters reports.

There is nothing wrong with updating the logo of a car company once in a while. At Volkswagen, we did it about once every twelve years, to the joy and enrichment of corporate design houses and makers of backlit signage. But did you ever notice that the Volkswagen logo changed? You are not supposed to. The holy grail of logo updating is doing it while the world remains oblivious and thinks it’s the old one.

Jaguar blew that bigtime, says the branding blog BRAND NEW. Boy, did that logo update ever get noticed.

Dacia showed off their Lodgy MPV today, giving more fodder for Dacia fans who became aware of the brand via their slavish devotion to Top Gear. The Lodgy is a small minivan available in 5 or 7 seat configuration and sold under a Romanian auto brand certain to go on sale in the rest of Europe, but maybe not in the UK.

The slow exodus from Japan continues. Driven out by the strong yen, which turns exports into a money loser, Toyota is building out capacities abroad. Toyota will invest €265 million ($354 million) into its existing plants in Turkey and the UK. 1,900 new jobs will be created, 400 in Turkey, 1,500 in the UK.

Advocates of diverting tax money raised from motorists on mass transit insist doing so is essential for protecting the environment. Data published in August by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) show that buses outside London produced an average of 221 grams per kilometer of greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than the figure given for small gasoline-powered cars, 210. Small and medium diesel-powered cars also beat the bus with scores of 172 and 215.

“Perhaps those who criticize lone car drivers should turn their attention to empty off-peak buses instead,” Association of British Drivers environment spokesman Paul Biggs said in a statement. “Although buses provide an important public service, even London can only manage an average occupancy of around fifteen passengers. Modern efficient cars outperform buses not just for CO2 emissions, but for genuine pollutants as well.”

Earlier this year, when Tesla sued Top Gear for libel (allegedly committed way back in 2008), I argued that Tesla was likely to lose the case. And sure enough, The Guardian reports

Electric sports carmaker Tesla Motors has lost a major part of its high court libel claim against the BBC’s Top Gear programme, but is still suing the corporation for malicious falsehood over an episode that showed the company’s Roadster model running out of battery in a race.

Ruling at the high court in London on Wednesday, Mr Justice Tugendhat said that no Top Gear viewer would have reasonably compared the car’s performance on the show’s airfield track to its likely performance on a public road.

As the Saab/Spyker/Swedish Automobile mess falls deeper into chaos and hopelessness, Saab’s erstwhile knight-in-shining-armour, Vladimir Antonov has been slowly backing away from the ugly scene. Indeed, his firm CPP Holdings was supposed to buy Swedish Automobile’s Spyker Supercar division, but that deal has been on hold while Swedish Automobile concentrates on keeping Saab alive. And though the Birmingham Post reports that CPP still plans on buying Spyker eventually, it’s clear that having washed his hands of the Saab situation, Antonov is looking elsewhere in order to secure a Victor Muller-free future. But could Britain really offer a loaded young Russian an appealing sportscar brand to sink his hard-earned (or not, whatever) cash into? Anyone know what TVR is up to? Actually, it seems Antonov has gone one better than TVR, and has secured the right to make an “all-new” Jensen Interceptor from the ex-Jaguar plant at Browns Lane, Coventry. Does it get any more wealthy-Russian-trying-to-make-his-mark-on-the-British-sportscar-scene than that? According to Autocar, the new Interceptor will feature aluminum chassis and bodywork, with an attendant “ultra-exclusive” pricetag, and will be shown sometime next year ahead of a 2014 rollout. Because, oligarch.

Now that Carl-Peter Forster has given notice, another German executive of Jaguar takes center stage: Ralf Speth, chief executive officer of Jaguar Land Rover Plc. Being born in the U.K. as a son of a German diplomat, Forster speaks flawless English with those Teutonic undertones that fit a car CEO well.

After we wrote a bit about that new supercar company called Eterniti, and the people behind it, while Twitter was infested by odd operators, my phone started to ring in Beijing.

“Don’t you know who Kenny Chen is?” If you’ve spent some time in the auto biz in China, you can’t avoid that.

“Didn’t you hear that he bilked people out of their down-payments on cars?” We had heard such nasty rumors.

Today might be the day the car industry loses its unconditional infatuation with social media. Like congressmen (especially half clothed congressmen), the auto industry could soon avoid social media like we avoid social diseases.

“This is all very annoying,” complains an exasperated Mark Carbery from London. “This Twitter matter turned into a real problem, for us and for other companies in the industry.”

Eterniti spokesman Carbery is a seasoned industry veteran. He started as the PR Manager for Toyota UK and worked for Daewoo and Michelin before hanging out the shingle for his own consultancy shop in bucolic Barnwell, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire PE8 5PS, UK.

Today he may be rethinking his career choice.

Yesterday, we ran a story about that new mystery British supercar from Eterniti. We had to draw our own conclusions, because we could not reach the company. Today, I received an email from Mark Carbery, who is the spokesman for Eterniti. The mail isn’t really bursting with information, but here it is: