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Crunch watch August 09: the auto industry

By Tim Pollard, Alex Michaelides, Ben Pulman and Freddie Fulton Motor Industry 31 August 2009 10:00 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 31 August 2009• Bank holiday today in UK; staff on a well earned break from Crunchwatch!Friday 28 August 2009• Toyota will stop producing vehicles at the New United Moor Manufacturing plant in California next March. Company officials and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the decision, which comes in the wake of factory partner GM’s announced that it would abandon the venture back in June (Detroit News)• Tengzhong may finalise its deal to buy Hummer from GM next week, well placed sources told AN (Automotive News, subscription required)• German economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg says it is 'hardly realistic' for GM to keep hold of its European outfit Opel and Vauxhall (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)• Ford's US cop car favourite, the Crown Victoria, is going to cease production in 2011 (Detroit News)Thursday 27 August 2009• Nissan and Chrysler have abandoned plans to build cars for each other in the wake of Chrysler’s alliance with Fiat.

Frankfurt 2011: 2012 Subaru XV gets unveiled

2012 Subaru XV arrives on the Frankfurt stage We did moan – which we have been known to, from time to time – about the tease for the launch of the 2012 Subaru XV at Frankfurt. We moaned because we couldn’t see the point. We couldn’t see the point in Subaru teasing the XV with art photos, particularly when those photos showed a production XV which looked exactly like the concept XV.

General Motors will prep plants in 2012 for next-generation pickups

General Motors will begin retooling assembly plants next year to build the next generation of its full-sized pickups, GM's U.S. sales chief Don Johnson said. "We have some scheduled plant downtime in 2012 as we convert to the next generation of our pickups," he said.