Toyota Beats GM In First Half Of Year Sales -- Chrysler Devoid Of Salable Models -- Obama To The Rescue!

General Motors Corp., pummeled by falling U.S. sales and high gas prices, lost the global sales lead to Toyota Motor Corp. in the first half of this year, but the churning market makes it difficult to predict which automaker will end the year on top.

Toyota sold 4,817,941 vehicles globally during the first six months of the year, company spokesman Hideaki Homma said Wednesday, beating GM by 277,532 vehicles. Toyota said its global sales rose 2 percent from the same period the year before, while GM's sales fell 3 percent.

It's the second time Toyota has beaten GM in sales in the first half of the year. In 2007, Toyota outsold GM by about 50,000 vehicles, although GM eked out a win for the full year, retaining its 77-year position as the world's largest automaker by sales.

Yahoo News

Things are bad at GM -- sales down almost 20 percent -- and open talk about the possible amputation of under-performing/overlapping brands such as Pontiac, GMC and maybe Saturn and Buick, too.

But the diagnosis is much worse for Chrysler Corp. Some analysts believe that unless a transfusion of money and other resources can be found via a buyout or partnership with a healthy automaker such as Nissan/Renault (or even the Chinese), Cerberus -- the private company that currently owns the sickly husk of Chrysler Corp -- will cut its losses and dump the whole shebang.

Time frame? A year, at the most. Maybe less than six months.
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But GM at least has a few decent small cars like the Chevy Cobalt and Saturn Astra -- and also some excellent mid-sized models like the Chevy Malibu and Saturn Aura.

Chrysler doesn't even have the Neon anymore.

For some inexplicable reason, Chrysler did not invest in a replacement for this once big-selling economy compact. So it has absolutely nothing right now in the way of a 30 mpg or better small car -- at a time when such cars are as hot-selling as V-8 SUVs were five years back.

American Spectator

Presumed Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama told the UAW in a letter that he supports the $4B in federal aid, stating that he would "provide real solutions necessary to help this industry compete and win in the global economy." Obama also promised tax breaks for consumers that purchase ultra fuel efficient vehicles and tax credits for automakers as well. Presumed Republican nominee John McCain opposes the idea of federally backed loans, but he does support tax breaks to those that purchase fuel efficient vehicles and a $300M in prize money for electric battery powered vehicles

Autoblog
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Markets Work -- GM To Build 'Good' Small Car For A Profit!

GM currently owns about 13% of the small car market. With demand for small vehicles increasing with the price of black gold, GM is out to increase that market share. Nevertheless, even if it doesn't increase its share, it plans to make more money off of each small car sold. How? By raising the price, naturally.

The plan is simple: make better small cars, charge more for them. The upcoming Cruze could run you a few thousand more than the outgoing Cobalt, for instance. The test is to see whether cars like the Cruze will be worth the premium. GM Global Design Chief Ed Welburn said, "In North America, we never did a good small car." The General plans to bury that piece of its history... but it's going to charge you, the consumer, for the funeral.

The idea that GM can lasso the small car market while charging a premium, at the same time as slashes its marketing budget by $1.5 billion, takes some effort to swallow. One analyst said that demand for small cars will outstrip supply, so GM could get away with it. However, until we see proof of small GM cars that take bats to the established competition, we'll have to give this plan a "Hmmm."

This is great!  When we looked for a car last year it was hard to find an American model that had quality and safety for the price some of the imports could be had.
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Autoblog -- GM's Plan: Small cars making a big profit

Ford Brings European Production Stateside!

(T)he Wall Street Journal says that Ford is going to make European cars on this side of the pond. However, it isn't merely North American plants that will be changed over, but American plants. The Journal doesn't give any further indication of where those plants might be or what those cars might be, only saying that the strategy could be revealed during Ford's Q2 earnings announcement this Thursday.

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Autoblog

US Attracts More Auto Production

Toyota's got some changes and rearranges underway with its North American facilities to better serve the demands of the market. The biggest news is that Prius production will be coming Stateside, which will help unkink the supply pipeline, if not also lower costs. A new facility in Blue Springs, Mississippi is being readied for the battery-pack-mobile...

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Autoblog -- Prius production headed to Mississippi

CAFE -- It's Gonna Cost You

Earlier this year, the Bush administration surprised a lot of green activists by actually surpassing the already challenging CAFE standards for 2011-2015. While automakers like Toyota, Ford, and GM are quietly going about the business of hitting those targets, BMW is speaking up and saying that the targets are unattainable. The German automaker has asked the Bush administration for an alternative plan that helps out the hardest hit automakers, and the new rules are a punch to the gut for the Bavarian Motor crew.

While the corporate average for cars and trucks is 35.7 mpg and 28.6 mpg by 2015, BMW has to hit 37.7 mpg and 31.7 mpg, respectively. The reason for the disparity is the sliding scale the government used to account for differences in size in each automaker's lineup. Since BMW doesn't sell pickup trucks and it has plenty of small and midsize offerings, BMW has to hit higher fuel economy standards. What the CAFE numbers don't take into account is the fact that all BMWs are RWD, and there isn't a four cylinder engine to be found (in the U.S., yet). The Bush administration says its final fuel economy numbers will become public by the end of the year, and if companies like BMW don't get special dispensations, look for there to be smaller engines on the horizion, or bigger fines. 

Autoblog -- BMW calls CAFE 'not feasible'

Ten months ago, Bob Lutz said GM cars would be $5,000 more expensive if the Bush administration got its way with fuel standards by raising fuel economy 4% every year through 2017. Bush didn't get his way, but Congress did with its newly-signed-into-law energy bill that requires automakers have a fleet average of 35 MPG by 2020. According to Lutz, that's going to be even more expensive: "This is going to be a net average cost of $6,000 per vehicle, which will have to be passed onto the consumer."

Lutz said that the premium would actually range from $4,000 to $10,000, and that "it won't come all at once, because 35 mpg doesn't kick in all at once." No one said that saving the world was going to be cheap -- but $6,000 per vehicle? We look forward to figuring out which vehicles will bear the brunt of the plan. Add $10,000 to the price of a ZR-1 and no one's really going to notice. Add $6,000 to the price of a CTS and, depending on how much more expensive its competition gets, things could get interesting. Add $4,000 to the price of an Aveo and you've probably sent a fair number of buyers elsewhere.

Autoblog Green -- Lutz says new CAFE standards will increase car price by $6 grand

Could GM Be Ahead For Once?

Bob Lutz has come out and said it again: "I would say there's almost no reasonable doubt in our minds anymore that this is going to work." And that isn't just that the Chevy Volt will work -- it's that it will work on time and as promised. In spite of the difficulties GM has had getting Volt technology up-to-speed within its timeframes, the man upstairs is apparently as confident as ever.

The Volt concept car was beautiful and the idea even better, but sometimes it seems GM has good ideas but falls behind on the implementation. I recall hearing first about the concept of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle from GM but Honda now has one in production while GM has a small fleet in test homes. But I could be wrong on that I guess.

Autoblog -- Bob Lutz on Volt: "no reasonable doubt... this is going to work"

U.S. To Start Exporting -- Toyotas!

Toyota has now announced that it will ramp up U.S. vehicle production in Indiana and begin exporting vehicles to other booming markets around the world.

The drop in the dollar, while we have all heard about its negative effects, has the potential for increasing U.S. manufacturing, it may actually have helped keep us out of a recession.

Now if we could drop the corporate tax rate you would see business pick up dramatically!
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Autoblog -- Toyota to start exporting U.S.-built SUVs and minivans

An older example from April 9, 2008:

Thanks to two relatively recent developments – the falling value of the US dollar relative to other currencies and the significantly lower cost structure that GM, Ford, and Chrysler negotiated with the UAW last fall – the domestic auto companies are now hoping to use their lower cost bases to supply US-built vehicles to export markets.
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GM has already announced an agreement with the Chinese government to export the Enclave crossover to China, to help satisfy a buying public that loves its Buicks (you may have heard that Buick sales in China exceeded Buick sales in the US last year).

AutoSavant -- The US is Suddenly a Low Cost Manufacturing Country
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