General Motors Corporation is in trouble lately. It’s market share in the United States is at a 25-year all time low. Sales are down 26% this month compared to October last year.
The troubled car maker, which is the world’s largest automobile manufacturers posted it’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss on Monday. It’s total loss in North America alone has been more thna USD 4.5 billion this year. Click here to read the rest of General Motors in trouble
European carmakers feel that turbocharged small engines are the way of the future, to increase fuel economy and reduce emmissions.
Instead of using a big normally aspirated engine, a small capacity engine with a turbocharger is used so that fuel economy and emmissions is lower, but the turbo can give that required surge of power whenever maneuveres such as overtaking are required. So the engine only behaves like a larger displacement engine when you want it to. Sounds pretty logical right? Click here to read the rest of European manufacturers to go the turbocharged way
Industry rumours say Renault has approached Ford Motor Company for an offer to buy Volvo as it needs to compete with German premium brands, which it cannot do with it’s own large vehicles. Ford declined the offer.
Renault is now looking elsewhere for a premium brand to purchase. Seems that it cannot use Nissan’s Infiniti luxury brand as even though it is well known in the USA, it has no profile at all in Europe.
One brand that might fit the profile is Saab, owned by GM currently.
We also might see another big merger in the future. Carlos Ghosn has been studying the feasibility of forming an alliance with either GM or Ford through means of a share exchange.
Nissan has pledged 10 million yen to victims in Pakistan of the South Asia quake. The money has been donated to the Japan Platform, a Non-profit Organisation that provides emergency relief in natural disaster and refugee situations. – Source
If you’ve noticed, vehicle safety seems to be dominating the topic of my blog posts for a while now. Car manufacturers and consumers are becoming increasingly safety-conscious, taking into account crash test results when purchasing a car.
Beginning 2007 in the USA, car buyers will be able to find out crash test results of their intended purchase much easier than before. Click here to read the rest of Crash Test Results Display
The National Franchised Dealers Association has published the results of the latest Dealer Attitude Survey and Proton topped the charts. Click here to read the rest of Proton tops Dealer Attitude Survey
General Motors is selling it’s 20% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries at significant loss at about USD$ 735 million, compared to the USD$ 1.3 billion it paid in the year 2000.
Click here to read the rest of GM sells Subaru shares to Toyota
Indonesia raised it’s fuel prices almost 87 percent yesterday in efforts to revive it’s economy as oil subsidies took up more than 25% of Indonesia’s yearly budget.
Naturally such a ridiculously high hike in such a short time caused riots and demonstrators burned tires and blocked roads, causing havoc across the archipelago. Before the announcement, their rakyat already knew a hike was coming but rumours were going around that it was going to be less than 50%. Click here to read the rest of Petrol up 87% in Indonesia
This is the Jiangling Motors Corporation’s Landwind X6 four wheel drive which was recently shown at the Shanghai Motor Show.
Click here to read the rest of Jiangling Landwind X6 gets zero in crash test
Porsche shares dropped more than 10% after it announced plans to raise stakes in Volkswagen AG to 20% from the 5% it holds currently.
Looks like investors are not as confident of Porsche’s plan as Porsche are.
