Crunch watch Nov 09: the auto industry in crisis

Welcome to CAR's news aggregator as we round up the seismic change in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour

Monday 30 November 2009
• Saab's future is likely to become clearer tomorrow when the GM board meets in Detroit. It will have to decide whether to seek a new buyer or put Saab into liquidation (Financial Times)
• Don't rule out an eastern bid for Saab: Beijing Automotive is still interested in buying the Swedish car maker despite its joint bid with Koenigsegg hitting the rocks, reports Automotive News. When asked of BAIC's chances, general manager Wang Dazong today told reporters 'stay tuned' (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Rising Jaguar Land Rover sales buoyed Tata Motors' latest results; although JLR lost a net £60 million in the quarter from July to September 2009, it was much lower than the £240m loss a year earlier. Tata hailed the JLR improvement as the highlight of the quarter, as it announced a 218 million rupee net profit (BBC News)
• Alfa Romeo has reportedly dropped the Milano name for its new 147 hatch – Giulietta is now the favoured badge, reports Autoblog (Automotive News via Autoblog)

Friday 27 November 2009
• Magna is seeking at least €400 million from Porsche for cancelling its contract to build Boxsters and Caymans in Austria. From 2012, Porsche is reportedly planning to build the cars at contract manufacturer Karmann, whom VW is buying (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• Honda set a record October production figure last month, spelling an improvement in Japanese car manufacturer fortunes (Detroit News)
• Geely has struck a deal with Ford over the intellectual property in its Volvo acquisition, a European Geely spokesman said today (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• Phoenix Venture Holdings, the company owned by the ex-bosses of MG Rover, has paid back £3 million to the liquidator amost five years after the Midlands car maker collapsed (BBC News)
• GM has outlined plans to chop 354 jobs in Luton; yesterday bosses confirmed that no cuts would be made in Ellesmere Port. On balance the UK appears to have escaped the bulk of the 9000 European redundancies (BBC News)
• The Detroit Free Press has started speculating over who will replace 64-year-old Alan Mulally. Four names are in the hat: Ford Americas president Mark Fields, global marketing boss Jim Farley, manufacturing chief Joe Heinrich and European overlord Lewis Booth (Detroit Free Press via Autoblog)

Thursday 26 November 2009
• Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant is safe under GM's proposed new plan, and to support the launch of the Astra Sports Tourer in 2010, there will be no redundancies but a move to a three-shift operation in 2011

Wednesday 25 November 2009
• Interim Opel Vauxhall boss Nick Reilly today said that the Bochum, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach plants in Germany 'will play an important role' in GM Europe's future (GM)
• Ford today announced its raising prices by an average 2.7% – for the fourth time this year. It's all down to the sliding pound-euro exchange rate, Ford of Britain MD Nigel Sharp pointing to the pound falling by a third compared with 2007 rates (Ford)
• Debt-laden Porsche will post another €1 billion annual loss as it's forced to deconsolidate Volkswagen AG and part of its sports car business from its accounts. Porsche SE posted a group net loss of €3.6bn in the 2008-2009 tax year (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• UK business secretary Lord Mandelson says the car industry must strip out overcapacity if it is to survive in the long term; he claimed there is currently around 20% higher capacity than demand in Europe (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• VW AG chairman Martin Winterkorn and finance director Hans Dieter Pötsch have joined the board of Porsche's holding company, Porsche SE. Winterkorn's appointment as CEO confirms VW's plan to acquire 49.9% of Porsche by the end of this year, with a total takeover by 2011

Tuesday 24 November 2009
• Koenigsegg Groub AB, a consortium led by Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg, has terminated its agreement to buy Saab from General Motors. 'We're obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out of the Saab purchase,' said GM CEO Fritz Henderson in a statement today. 'Many have worked tirelessly over the past months to create a sustainable plan for the future of Saab by selling the brand. Given the sudden change in direction, we will take the next several days to assess the situation and will advise on the next steps next week' (General Motors)
• PSA's new president Philippe Varin is quoted as saying that the 407 and 607 will be replaced by a single model – dubbed the 508. It'd be the first time since the 505 of 1979 that a five-oh designation will have been used (Le Blog Auto via Autoblog)
• General Motors is expected to outline its strategy for Opel Vauxhall in the first week of December; it says it needs €3.3bn to restructure its European wing (Financial Times)
• Shanghai Motor plans to start building the new MG 6 saloon in the UK by the end of 2010; Longbridge has a capacity of 10,000 cars a year, serving as a European launchpad for the new MG's first family car (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• Volkswagen is on course to overtake Toyota as the world's biggest car maker, after it approved the takeover of Porsche and signed off a €25.8bn three-year investment programme (Financial Times)
• VW will buy a 49.9% stake in Porsche's sports car business for €3.9bn by the end of 2009; but the board approved a set of contracts that will see VW and Porsche fully merge by 2011 (Financial Times)
• Although Porsche will add only around 100,000 vehicles to VW's tally of 6m annual car sales, it brings a double-digit operating profit margin (Financial Times)
• Key players in London's electric recharging network are disappointed that Nissan didn't win the bid to provide vehicles for the 2012 London Olympics. Nissan's bid included plans for its new Leaf and other electric vehicles, and would have boosted the recharging network in the capital (Autocar)

Monday 23 November 2009
• Spyker Cars has announced it is moving to the UK. It makes around 50 sports cars a year mainly for sale in the US, priced from £180,000. Manufacturing will switch from Zeewolde, Holland to Whitley, Coventry by the end of 2009 – so it can be closer to its main parts supplier CPP Manufacturing (BBC News)
• A rival bidder for Volvo has emerged – former Ford director Michael Dingman is preparing a rival deal to China's Geely. Geely has already been named the preferred bidder for Ford's Swedish concern (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has admitted that it is not feasible to keep all its Italian car factories open. 'The world has changed profoundly; we cannot go back to a reality that doesn't exist any more,' he said. Expect a new strategy announcement in the first quarter of 2010 (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)

Friday 20 November 2009
• The number of cars built in the UK this year is down a massive 38%, at 801,169 in the first 10 months says the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. However, the rate of decline is improving and October's figures were down by a more modest 7% (SMMT)
• Companies across Europe are looking to emerging markets overseas to boost their profits, says the FT. Renault, for instance, aims to earn more than half its sales from emerging markets by 2015 (Financial Times)
• General Motors says it will present its restructuring plan for Vauxhall Opel in December. The plan to remove 20-25% of capacity is equivalent to around three plants (Automotive News, subscription required)
• 'Our plan is very similar to Magna's – I don't think it's worse,' said Nick Reilly, interim boss of Vauxhall Opel after the resignation of Carl-Peter Forster (Automotive News, subscription required)
• GM chairman Edward Whitacre is on a quality mission at the new General Motors. The former chief exec of AT&T is insisting on calling 200 people who've returned GM cars under the new 60-day money back guarantee (Wall Street Journal)

Thursday 19 November 2009
• Italian businessman Gian Mario Rossignolo plans to revive the De Tomaso sports car brand; he bought the brand from a Modena bankruptcy court earlier this month – and he plans a three-model range of aluminium-bodied sports cars (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)
• GM engineers have let slip a few details on the new Chevrolet Volt range-extender hybrid; it'll be limited to 104mph (they've seen 107mph in tests), they're seeing 230mpg in city driving and it will definitely go on sale in 2010, probably for around $40,000 (Detroit News)
• The White House wants a rapid initial public offering of shares in GM to dilute its stake, according to sources. It could happen as soon as the fourth quarter of 2010, assuming GM continues to hit its recovery targets (Automotive News, subscription required)
• President Barack Obama was caught off guard by GM's decision to scrap its planned sale of Opel Vauxhall to Magna, Ron Bloom the head of the autos recovery task force said (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)

Wednesday 18 November 2009
• Lord Coe, the head of the 2012 London Olympics, today announced that BMW would be the tier one automotive sponsor of the Games. It will provide around 4000 cars to shuttle sportsmen, officials and VIPs around the UK during the event
• BMW's Efficient Dynamics, new ActiveHybrids and experimental Mini E electric cars swung the decision, according to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, which is aiming to make London 2012 'the sustainable Olympics'
• GM says it plans to cut capacity by 20-25% in Europe – with job losses of between 9000-10,000. It denied it will enter into a bidding war with European governments over state aid to protect national factories (Financial Times)

Tuesday 17 November 2009
• Nick Reilly, the former Vauxhall boss who has assumed interim control of GM's European division after the resignation of Carl-Peter Forster, is meeting with the UK Government and unions to discuss plans for the British car operations. GM, which is now keeping hold of Opel and Vauxhall, plans around 10,000 job cuts in Europe (BBC News)
• Synergies at Fiat and Chrysler. The Ram brand is to sell a version of the Fiat Doblo in the US (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Volvo will keep the rights to its licensed technologies under Ford's agreement to sell the Swedish car maker to China's Geely. An earlier report by the Wall Street Journal claimed Volvo would build a new plant in China capable of building 300,000 cars a year (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)

Monday 16 November 2009
• It's official: Mercedes has bought a 75.1% stake in the Brawn F1 team, will rename it Mercedes Grand Prix
• Merc will continue to supply engines to McLaren until at least 2015, but will sell its 40% stake in Woking over the next two years
• Deal funded by Mercedes owner Daimler (45%) and Aabar Investments (30%). Remaining quarter stake shared by current investors, including Ross Brawn and Nick Fry
• Ross Brawn will continue to be team principal, but neither driver has been announced yet: Rubens Barrichello has already signed for Williams, newly crowned world champ Jenson Button is weighing up his options and has been linked with McLaren
• Mercedes is due to hold a press conference today to announce it is buying into the championship winning Brawn F1 team (Autosport)
• GM will today announce it is to start repaying a $6.7 billion US government loan by the end of the year. It is due to begin making $1bn quarterly instalments to the US Treasury – but it also has to start repaying the Canadian government a $1.4bn loan at a rate of $200 million per quarter (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Jaguar Land Rover is poised to announce a £170 million five-year credit agreement with GE Capital. The asset-backed distribution finance facility is said to ensure that JLR starts making money from its finished vehicles the moment they roll off the line – rather than when they are sold by dealers (Financial Times)

Friday 13 November 2009
• Mercedes has announced German pricing for the SLS AMG. The supercar costs €149,000 (£133k) before 19% VAT is added, which takes the total to €177,310 (£158,000) (Mercedes)
• Peugeot Citroen has raised its earnings forecast for the fourth quarter of 2009 to a 30% higher above last year, despite last month reporting lower-than-forecast third-quarter sales (BBC)
• German sports car maker Porsche has announced a £3.9bn pre-tax loss for the year ending July 31, down from £7.6bn profit the previous year. Porsche has been forced to write down the value of options on shares of Volkswagen AG, and it will close its main factory for 18 days before the end of 2009, to offset shrinking demand (Bloomberg)
• Merc boss Dieter Zetsche believes that the luxury market will recover fastest from the global recession. Mercedes' US sales in October were up 20% versus the same period last year, and Zetsche accounts for the recovery by explaining the fall in luxury car purchases as a lack of mood, rather than purchasing power (Forbes)

Thursday 12 November 2009
• GM will release its third-quarter financial results on Monday, the first time it has provided details of its finances since it emerged from bankruptcy in July (Detroit Free Press)
• The UK government is going to create an Automotive Council to strengthen engagement with the car industry and set a long-term plan for its development (SMMT) 
• Northern Lights Energy, an Icelandic investment company which has committed to build in Iceland the first nationwide charging infrastructure in the world before the end of 2012, has signed a deal with electric car company Reva. The pair will develop Reva's new NLE model for the Icelandic market. Customer deliveries are due to start at the end of 2010 (Reva)

Wednesday 11 November 2009
• Honda UK has announced it plans to cut 500 further jobs at its Swindon factory. The plans have angered the plant's workforce, which already accepted a paycut earlier this year (BBC)
• GM chairman Ed Whitacre has said that General Motors could pay back its US taxpayer loans sooner than expected, with repayments possibly even starting this year (Detroit Free Press)
• Classic car owners could lose money if they chop in their vehicles as part of the government's £2000 scrappage scheme, rather than selling them for their market value (The Telegraph)
• Opel and Vauxhall has a new boss. Brit Nick Reilly, currently in charge of GM's international operations, has also assumed immediate charge of Opel/Vauxhall while a new CEO is sought after the departure of Carl-Peter Forster (GM)
• SsangYong plans to launch its small C200 SUV in 2010, along with the yet-to-be-revealed D200 and Q200. The company hopes to emerge on December 11 from receivership granted to it by a South Korean court earlier this year (Ssangyong)

Tuesday 10 November 2009
• Brawn GP boss Ross Brawn has admitted he doesn't expect his team to be sponsored by Richard Branson's Virgin Group next season, though he has hinted that a tie-up with Mercedes is fairly certain (Daily Telegraph)
• Renault-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn has said that the company's new low-cost car being built in India with Bajaj will be cheaper to produce than the Tata Nano, though Ghosn also conceded that there is a difference between cost and price (BBC)
• Shares in Volkswagen (reported earlier this week to be the world's largest car maker based on production in 2009) have dropped 8.1% after news that Qatar's sovereign wealth fund planned to sell 25m preference shares in the car maker (BBC)
• Cadillac will put the Converj concept car into production as a range-extender vehicle (Detroit News)

Monday 9 November 2009
• VW is now reported to be the world's largest car maker, based on vehicle production so far in 2009. It has produced 4.4m units versus Toyota's 4m (The Guardian)
• Recently departed GM Europe CEO Carl-Peter Forster is set to take charge of Jaguar-Land Rover, according to sources in Detroit and Frankfurt (Sunday Times)
• Porsche has appointed a new head of its finance division, after Holger Haerter was dismissed (along with company boss Wendelin Wiedeking) in July. Lutz Meschke, previously boss of Central Controlling for Porsche AG, takes over a chief of Finance and Operations, as well as Purchasing and Procurement (Porsche)
• Rolls-Royce’s latest Middle East showroom has opened in Doha, on the exclusive man-made Pearl Island, in a ceremony that included the unveiling of the company’s new Ghost saloon (Rolls-Royce)
• Citroen has introduced a new 1.6-litre petrol C5 and a 160bhp 2.0-litre diesel. The former saves customers £40 VED, and the latter £25 (Citroen)

Friday 6 November 2009
• Now it's official: chief executive of GM Europe, Carl-Peter Forster has stepped down, it was announced this evening. He will however 'advise the business during the transition to find a new CEO,' a statement said (GM)
• GM Europe boss Carl-Peter Forster is poised to quit after parent company GM reversed the deal to sell to Magna (Financial Times)
• GM vows it can repay the remaining €900 million of the €1.5 billion bridging loan from the German government (Financial Times)
• Magna has gone away and licked its wounds – and is now unlikely to seek out another car maker to buy. Co-CEO Don Walker told AN they would consider buying other suppliers instead (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer has raised Audi's full-year sales prediction from 900,000 to 920,000 vehicles. Sales are bouncing back in the US and China (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)

Thursday 5 November 2009
• New car registrations in October 2009 were up 32%, marking the fourth consecutive month of growth. To date, over 1.6 million cars have been registered in 2009. The SMMT says that a fifth of new sales are supported by the Government's scrappage scheme (SMMT)
• So far in 2009, Ford has sold more cars in the UK than anyone else: 272,530. Second place is held by Vauxhall (207,256 cars sold), VW comes in at third place with 134,278 vehicles registered (SMMT)
• Toyota’s projected losses have been whittled down to ¥200bn (£1.3bn) from ¥450bn (£3bn) for the year to March 2010, fuelling optimism in the growth of the global car industry (Guardian)
• GM's plan to cut 10,000 European jobs announced last night is part of a drive to cut costs by 30%. Around one in five of Opel and Vauxhall's 55,000 staff face the chop (Radio France Internationale) 

Wednesday 4 November 2009
• GM announces plans to cut 10,000 jobs at its European division, Opel Vauxhall. The announcement came within 24 hours of its dramatic U-turn, when it ditched the deal to sell to Magna and decided to keep its Euro outfit for itself
• Chrysler is outlining its five-year plan in Auburn Hills today. CAR will report on developments once Sergio Marchionne has completed his presentations (Automotive News, subscription required)
• Toyota today confirmed it is pulling out of Formula One motorsport to save money. The world's largest car maker posted its worst ever financial results in the year to March 2009 and similar losses are expected tomorrow for the latest periods (BBC Sport)
• GM's decision last night to hold on to Opel/Vauxhall and not sell to Magna has infuriated German politicians, reports the BBC. Chancellor Angela Merkel heard the news as she flew back from top-level meetings in the US (BBC News)

Tuesday 3 November 2009
• BMW reports a sharp drop in third-quarter profits, blaming a big fall in consumer spending. Net profits slumped 74% to €78 million - yet BMW expects to turn a full-year profit (BBC News)
• Japanese tyre maker Bridgestone has announced it's pulling out of F1 at the end of next season to save costs. It's already cut its spending on grand prix by 30% last season (Financial Times)
• Lada parent Avtovaz is looking to cut 25,000 staff as sales plummet and debts mount. It won a government bail-out in June, but debts still stand at $2.1 billion (Financial Times)
• Ford's announcement this week that it turned a $1 billion profit in the third quarter signals a real turnaround in Detroit, argues a News commentator (Detroit News)
• Wall Street rebounded after the Ford profits announcement – and Blue Oval shares rose 8% (Daily Telegraph)


Monday 2 November 2009
• Ford Motor Co is considering exporting cars out of the US market, to take advantage of the weak dollar, manufacturing flexibility and global vehicle platforms (Reuters)
• Vauxhall will pay the VAT on any new UK car purchased before the end of November, in a scheme designed to boost sales of 2009-registered cars (Vauxhall)
• Ford today revealed a $997m net income over the third quarter of 2009, and expects to be fully profitable by 2011 (Bloomberg)
• A new colour-coded grading system has been launched to help second-hand car consumers buy as green as possible. The scheme is similar to one already in place for new cars (What Car?)

By Tim Pollard, Ben Pulman and Chris Erasmus