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Carlos Ghosn reappointed Renault Chairman, CEO for 4 yrs Press Trust of India / Paris/ New Delhi May 03, 2010, 16:11 IST French carmaker Renault today said it has re-elected Carlos Ghosn as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company for a four-year period. "Renault's board of directors has re-elected Carlos Ghosn as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for a four-year period, following the renewal of his directorship by the Annual General Meeting of April 30, 2010," the company said in a statement. The company also renewed the terms of Executive Vice President of Purchasing and Leader of the Asia-Pacific Region Hiroto Saikawa for the next four years. He i…
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Sept. car sales down 10.4% in w. Europe; no recovery seen Paul McVeigh New-car sales in western Europe fell by 10.4 percent in September, according to J.D. Power Automotive Forecasting. The UK-based market researchers now expect a 6.4 percent decline to 12.8 million in the region's car sales this year, followed by a 1.8 percent drop to 12.57 million next year as government austerity measures dampen large consumer purchases. "The market continues to compare poorly year-on-year to a 2009 market that was inflated by government scrappage incentives," J.D. Power said in a statement. The company said an annualized selling rate of 12.4 million is weak by historical standard…
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Japanese Auto Makers Drive Ahead With Fuel-Cell Vehicle Programs By Roger Schreffler and Mack Chrysler WardsAuto.com, Sep 29, 2010 9:00 AM TOKYO – Fuel-cell-powered vehicles may join the industry mainstream sooner than anyone thinks due to developments taking place in Asia. “Hydrogen energy and fuel-cell technologies have achieved greater acceptance and are likely to be phased in earlier in Asia, especially in Japan and South Korea, than anywhere else in the world,” writes Peter Hoffmann, publisher and editor of the Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter. Hoffmann particularly is upbeat about efforts by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. “Both auto makers have ind…
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LUXURY CAR DEMAND SHORTENS THE HOLIDAY SEASON FOR GERMAN PLANT WORKERS By Drew Johnson The Christmas and New Year’s holidays are typically a slow time for the world’s automakers, but German luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz and BMW are working overtime to keep up with booming foreign demand. New cars sales have actually declined more than 25 percent in Germany over the last 11 months, but strong demand from China and the United States is keeping production rolling along at full capacity. In fact both Mercedes-Benz and BMW are keep factories open during their normal Christmas to New Year’s shut down. “2010 was expected to be a tough year all round,” John Lawson, a Londo…
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BMW, Mercedes forecast quarterly sales growth as China surges Automotive News Europe -- October 8, 2010 11:46 CET BERLIN (Bloomberg) -- BMW AG and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, the two biggest makers of luxury vehicles, projected higher fourth-quarter sales on surging demand in China. BMW, the luxury leader, today forecast a “double-digit” percentage rise in fourth-quarter deliveries after overhauling the 5-series sedan and wagon. Mercedes said it was “very confident” about continuing growth in the final three months after a record September, when the manufacturer introduced updated CL- and R-class models. “We have exceptional new products and intend to maintain this up…
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GAZ Siber to switch from Chrysler Sebring to MB E-Class?! Russian automotive manufacturer GAZ is being courted by a number of handsome suitors, according to Inside Line. While the company currently produces the Volga Siber at its Gorky Automobile plant, there's some indication that Daimler may want the facility to switch to building the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. The move would kinda sorta be an all-in-the-family affair as the Siber is currently built off of the old Chrysler Sebring platform. With Chrysler out of Daimler's portfolio and Mercedes-Benz looking to take the Russian assault to its rival BMW, the move would make plenty of sense. It would also seem to be a rather l…
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Four Nissan, Toyota SUVs Offer Lackluster Rollover Protection By Bengt Halvorson Deputy Editor August 19th, 2010 2010 Toyota 4Runner TrailEnlarge PhotoSeveral popular mid-size SUVs from Nissan and Toyota—the 2010 Nissan Xterra, Toyota FJ Cruiser, Toyota 4Runner, and Nissan Pathfinder—have earned only lackluster rollover ratings in the latest round of testing from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). But these ratings, just released from insurance-funded testing authority, don't say anything about the vehicles' propensity to roll over (unlike those from the federal government); rather, they gauge the likelihood of serious injury and the amount of structu…
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New Toyota Europe boss tasked with halting sales dip Frenchman Leroy to head carmaker in Europe Luca Ciferri Automotive News Europe -- June 14, 2010 08:44 CET Production expert and recently appointed quality overseer Didier Leroy will become the first European to head Toyota Motor Corp.'s operations in Europe. Leroy's main priority will be to reverse Toyota's declining European sales and repair the automaker's image after more than 1.7 million cars were recalled in Europe as part of the company's global campaign to address safety issues. Leroy, a 52-year-old French native, will become president of Toyota Motor Europe effective June 24. He will succeed current pre…
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Japanese automakers expect higher earnings Christine Tierney / The Detroit News Japan's leading automakers are expected to report higher earnings for the fiscal first quarter begun on April 1 despite weakness in the United States and Europe, two of their major markets. Analysts say a recovery in Asian markets and rising demand in Japan will underpin their results. Nissan Motor Co. is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings on Thursday, followed by Honda Motor Co.'s on Friday and Toyota Motor Corp.'s next Wednesday. "The recovery trend should be firmly in place with marked year-on-year improvement," Deutsche Bank analyst Kurt Sanger wrote in a report. He listed Nis…
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Russian auto sales jump 45+ percent in June, July By Mark Kleis Like the U.S. and other global auto markets, Russia faced a steep decline in auto sales during the economic instability of 2009, and now the market appears to be showing signs of recovery after posting two consecutive months of increased sales nearing 50 percent compared to 2009. The Association of European Business (AEB) has reported the latest auto sales in Russia, and according to a report by Reuters, for the month of July Russia moved 173,171 new cars from dealer lots, narrowly missing the performance in June that resulted in 174,838 sales. These increases, compared to the same months in 2009, represen…
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Toyota, Honda race Daimler to gain hybrid foothold in Europe Automotive News Europe -- October 6, 2010 10:45 CET (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. are rushing to exploit their advantage in hybrid systems to make inroads in Europe. Daimler AG and PSA/Peugeot-Citroen plan to stop them before they have the chance. Toyota began selling the U.K.-built Auris compact hybrid in Europe in July and will add the Lexus CT 200h, a hybrid hatchback designed for Europe, in 2011. Honda will roll out a Jazz hatchback hybrid in Europe next year, adding to three gas- electric models it already sells in the region. Asian carmakers aim to use their edge in hybrid vehic…
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Japanese automakers report production recovery Associated Press Tokyo -- Japanese automakers reported sharp increases Tuesday in global production for the first half of the year, and for June in particular -- with Toyota seeing a 16.2 percent surge, underlining a recovery in auto demand from a dismal plunge a year earlier. Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest automaker, said it produced 739,683 vehicles in June, as sales grew in Japan and abroad, and exports expanded to North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. For the first half, Toyota's worldwide production totaled 4.36 million vehicles, marking a 46.8 percent rise from the previous year -- underlining th…
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Europe's carmakers grapple with low productivity Ola Kinnander and Tim Higgins / Bloomberg News General Motors Co.'s 1,300 workers in Antwerp, Belgium, are fighting for their jobs, hoping for a white knight to rescue the factory from closure. "We're trying to find an investor by the end of this month," said Luc van Grinsven, a union official at the 86-year-old plant, which makes an Astra model for GM's Opel unit. "If we don't, the factory will close at the end of the year." Antwerp is an anomaly. Not a single European automobile plant closed during the recession, while 18 assembly factories have been shuttered in the U.S. since 2008. European governments prevented the…
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Europe's carmakers face an anxious second half August 3, 2010 - 12:01 am ET European automakers have been buoyed by better-than-expected first-half results as the region's car sales largely held steady despite the phasing out of government incentives, but the good news won't last much longer. Volume manufacturers selling cars in Europe believe the second half of the year will be difficult due to the ending of incentives and the introduction of tough austerity measures in European countries hit by fiscal crises. What's worrying companies is that they are not sure how bad it will be. Credit Suisse's David Arnold said: "The question is how does the second half play out.…
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EU’s Struggling Economies Yet to See Recovery in Car Sales, Prices By Keith Nuthall WardsAuto.com, Aug 16, 2010 9:00 AM Passenger-car prices in Eastern Europe have tumbled along with vehicle sales as a result of the global recession significantly faster than in Western Europe, impeding attempts to create a unified automotive market that spans the continent. A key benefit of the European Union for the auto industry was supposed to be the tariff-free sale of vehicles between its 27-member states. By removing the bureaucratic barriers preventing such purchases, the EU has tried to create one unified auto market for its combined population of 500 million people. But sur…
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Nanotech Standards Coming to European Auto Industry By Keith Nuthall and Mark Rowe WardsAuto.com, Aug 2, 2010 9:00 AM As auto manufacturers start to realize the utility of incorporating parts and components using nanotechnology to improve their performance, the European Union is looking hard at special regulations to protect the public and the environment from nanoparticles. These miniscule materials are a double-edged sword. They allow plastics, textiles, alloys and coatings to have new and highly marketable properties, but they also can behave in unexpected ways, passing through human skin into the blood or even brain. How they interact with nature is not understood…
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Subaru's winning streak continues Automotive News -- March 1, 2010 - 12:01 am ET Sizzling Subaru, whose 15 percent U.S. sales increase was the biggest for any brand last year, got more good news last week -- this time from Consumer Reports. Meanwhile, Chrysler Group, the biggest sales loser last year among car groups, was walloped by the magazine. Subaru and Honda tied as class leaders in the magazine's Automaker Report Cards, published in Consumer Reports' 2010 annual auto issue. Honda had earned the top rating by itself in the three previous years. Last year, Subaru was second. The overall score for each automaker is based on the average of its vehicles' overall sc…
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NHTSA probes BMW Z4, Mazda3 over steering issues By Drew Johnson The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched a new investigation involving the BMW Z4 and Mazda3 over steering concerns. The NHTSA’s probe is looking into a possible power-steering defect. The NHTSA has received a total of 107 steering complaints involving the 2003-2005 BMW Z4 and 33 complaints against the 2007-2009 Mazda3. One of the BMW complaints resulted in a crash while three of the Mazda3’s reported cases ended in a collision. According to the NHTSA, the BMW Z4’s “steering wheel sticks, binds or locks up, and requires increased steering effort resulting in difficulty controlling …
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Europe's carmakers say economy is far from stable Automotive News Europe -- February 24, 2010 08:54 CET FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European auto industry does not expect a quick recovery this year, said Dieter Zetsche, president of the Brussels-based industry body ACEA. Zetsche, who is also CEO of Daimler AG, warned that sales of commercial vehicles that closely follow the economic cycle would "at best be flat" after dropping by one-third in 2009. "If the economy looks better in 2010, it's only when compared with 2009. And that's why it is so critically important not to endanger whatever little stabilization has been achieved," he said in prepared remarks at the 2010 …
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BMW, Mercedes plan smaller vehicles for U.S. Diana T. Kurylko Automotive News Europe -- October 4, 2010 06:01 CET PARIS -- BMW and Mercedes-Benz will bring to the United States several vehicles based on platforms smaller than what they currently sell there. BMW will bring a new front-wheel-drive family of cars in a class known as UKL, a German abbreviation for lower-compact-class cars. "It will be a relatively big segment because we have several body styles," Ian Robertson, BMW AG board member for sales and marketing, told Automotive News last week at the Paris auto show. He didn't disclose what body styles BMW is developing but confirmed that the vehicles will …
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Marchionnne says next European car merger may involve French Bloomberg News April 13, 2010 06:01 CET ROME (Bloomberg) -- Fiat S.p.A. CEO Sergio Marchionne said the next European auto merger may involve a French manufacturer. “The next merger will probably be French,” Marchionne told reporters in Rome today, when asked what the next industry consolidation move could be. “They tried with Mitsubishi and they will try with someone else,” the CEO said, referring to PSA/Peugeot-Citroen, the French carmaker that ended talks last month over a proposed equity swap with Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corp. PSA also has an engine partnership with BMW AG. The companies said in Febr…
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Toyota and Japanese under attack in Europe as Koreans close in Toyota is on the retreat in Europe as well as America, as its reputation for writing the book on quality was trashed by the recall debacle. But the noise surrounding the global recall of 9.4 million Toyotas and upmarket Lexus vehicles has drowned out a deeper and wider malaise which started way before the unintended acceleration crisis hit last year, and which also involves most Japanese companies operating in Europe. Their market share has been declining for some time and the South Koreans are taking it. Hyundai and its sister company Kia of Korea are using the old Japanese play book against the originator…
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Why China's rise is good and bad for Germany July 20, 2010 - 11:00 pm ET Douglas A. Bolduc Douglas A. Bolduc is a special correspondent for Automotive News Europe BMW's, Mercedes-Benz's and Audi's German plants are running at full speed right now. The reason: wealthy car buyers in China currently have an insatiable desire to own German luxury cars. "There are more than 900,000 millionaires in China and many of them are bursting to show off their wealth," Sascha Gommel, a Frankfurt-based analyst with Commerzbank AG, told Bloomberg last week. To keep up with the demand in the world's largest car market, Daimler has hired 1,800 temporary workers and added Saturday shift…
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Mahindra Tries To Dump Its Importer, U.S. Launch Left In Limbo By Richard Read Reporter August 27th, 2010 Things were going so well for Mahindra: Americans were ready for the pickups they'd been promising, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the company's diesels the green light, and Mahindra's U.S. importer, Global Vehicles, had put together a nationwide network of dealers to sell the trucks. Then things went south -- but not, as Georgia's Global Vehicles was expecting, Deep South. Yesterday, in a very brief post to its U.S. website, Mahindra said it had dropped Global as its American importer. Tensions between the two companies had been on the rise since Glob…
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Europe's premium flagship sedans return to health, flaunting new technology Europe's premium top-of-the-range car manufacturers are defying logic as they pick themselves up and dust themselves down after the great slump of 2009. You would think that the days of these massive, gas guzzling, hugely expensive behemoths - like the Mercedes S class, BMW 7 Series, Audi A8 and Jaguar XJ - would be numbered. After all, the days of conspicuous consumption are surely over for a while at least. And new regulations in the European Union and United States will soon start forcing car manufacturers to drastically cut fuel consumption. When these carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rules we…
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Fiat's Marchionne could talk auto spin-off in April March 3, 2010 14:46 CET GENEVA (Reuters) – Italian industrial group Fiat S.p.A. could discuss spinning off its auto activities when it presents a five-year strategic plan next month, CEO Sergio Marchionne said on Wednesday. Such a move could unlock value for the company and cheer the market. There has been regular speculation on the possibility of Fiat listing its auto activities separately. These include its Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia brands as well as U.S. carmaker Chrysler, in which Fiat has a 20 percent stake. "Let's talk about it on April 21," Marchionne told reporters on the sidelines of the Geneva auto show w…
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European car market drops for third straight month July 15, 2010 08:16 CET FRANKFURT (Reuters) -- The European car market fell in June for the third straight month as the artificial boost from scrapping schemes across the continent continued to abate, hurting sales for Fiat S.p.A., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. Registrations of new vehicles in the European Union dropped 6.9 percent to 1.34 million units last month driven mainly by sharp declines in Germany and Italy, according to data published on Thursday by the European industry association ACEA. Hardest hit among major brands was the Fiat marque, heavily dependent on both its domestic Italian market as well…
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European troubles could rattle Fiat Chrysler expects to see April sales jump BY GREG GARDNER FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER Chrysler expects to report its first substantial monthly sales increase in the U.S. in more than two years Monday, but CEO Sergio Marchionne is shifting attention to Fiat, where problems are deepening. The European half of this new alliance is facing change nearly as wrenching as Chrysler's government-backed bankruptcy. Car sales in Italy are expected to fall about 15% this year because the government stopped paying consumers to replace dilapidated old vehicles. Fiat is separating its car business from Iveco trucks and CNH farming and construction e…
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Small Japanese SUVs outpacing supply in Beijing 04/28/2010, 2:19 AM BY MARK KLEIS While attending the ongoing Beijing Auto Show, consumers are being presented with seemingly countless options of electric and hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Outside of the show, however, consumers are opting for gas-powered SUVs and shunning hybrids and electric vehicles at dealers. According to Gasgoo, several Toyota and Honda dealers in Beijing are complaining of shortages of small SUVs, while hybrid vehicles are having to be sold at a loss to clear them from dealer lots. Beijing Honda dealers explain that customers in Chaoyang, a district of Beijing, must wait two months to receive the…
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Daimler, BMW Surge on ‘Bottomless’ Appetite for German Luxury July 16, 2010, 6:05 PM EDT July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Daimler AG’s E-Class Mercedes-Benz, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s new 5-Series and Volkswagen AG’s revamped Audi A8 are attracting wealthy buyers in the U.S. and China, prompting the German carmakers to boost deliveries. Daimler raised a full-year forecast yesterday after second- quarter profit beat analysts’ estimates. BMW this week lifted its 2010 sales and earnings projections. Audi’s first-half increase in vehicle sales beat both BMW and Daimler’s. “The Chinese appetite for German nameplates is absolutely bottomless,” said Sascha Gommel, a Frankfurt-base…
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Troubles in Europe challenge new Fiat-Chrysler CEO BY GREG GARDNER FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER Chrysler expects to report its first substantial monthly sales increase in the United States more than two years Monday, but CEO Sergio Marchionne is shifting attention to Fiat where problems are deepening. The European half of this new alliance is facing change nearly as wrenching as Chrysler’s government-backed bankruptcy. Car sales in Italy are expected to fall about 15% this year because the government stopped paying consumers to replace dilapidated old vehicles. Fiat is separating its car business from Iveco trucks and CNH farming and construction equipment, both of whic…
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PSA resists merger, answers Marchionne with sales growth April 23, 2010 06:01 CET PARIS (Bloomberg) -- PSA/Peugeot-Citroen, the carmaker predicted by Fiat S.p.A. CEO Sergio Marchionne to be the next European candidate for an auto merger, has won more time to prove that it can go it alone. Marchionne announced Wednesday plans to separate carmaking from its industrial units such as trucks and construction equipment to facilitate future alliances, saying he has a “long list” of further candidates for partnerships. PSA CEO Philippe Varin says he plans to build on its looser industrial cooperation with the Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi Motor Corp. and similar pacts with Fiat…
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C&G's 25th birthday is coming up in August of this year and I wanted to give you some updates. I haven't been posting as much lately, but that doesn't mean I'm not here. I am working on a massive overhaul of the site ahead of our 25th birthday. Background: The Invision Community software we are on is V4. Support for V4 is tapering off rapidly as V5 was released over a year ago. V5 is a major change to how the software operates and as a result many of the plug-in authors who wrote software that I purchased for us have abandoned their projects. This has put me in the position of holding off on V5 until I can get certain things built or replaced. In the…
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