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Crunch watch Dec 08: the auto industry in crisis

By Tim Pollard and Simon Stiel Motor Industry 31 December 2008 14:05 Wednesday 31 December 2008• GMAC, GM's finance arm, said it would immediately revise its criteria for providing loans, after the US government bail-out of the General's credit arm. It will now supply credit for anyone with a score of 621 or more on the Fico scale, the scale used to assess Amercian customers' creditworthiness (Financial Times)• The news means that 80% of US consumers would now qualify for a loan from GMAC – which should improve sales in the depressed US market (Detroit News)• Chrysler is being lambasted for taking out full-page adverts in the American national press thanking the nation for supporting its auto industry. But critics point out this is a fresh waste of bail-out resources, as pages in the Wall Street Journal – one of the titles in which the ad ran – reportedly cost up to $264,000.

Who's Where: Brett Patterson and Rohan Saparamadu join Geely’s Shanghai studio

Brett Patterson and Rohan Saparamadu have joined Geely as chief designers, based in Shanghai. They will both report to the company's design director Ken Ma. Patterson most recently worked as a contract designer at GM Europe's Design Center, Rüsslesheim, and has worked for GM for total of 14 years on a wide range of vehicle development programmes in Australia, Germany, Sweden and USA.

Nissan could leave UK if Britain leaves EU

Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn has warned that Nissan could leave the UK if the public vote ‘yes’ in the EU referendum promised by the Conservatives should they win the 2015 General Election. Ghosn gave the warning to the BBC while he was in London to launch the new British built Nissan Qashqai. New 2014 Nissan Qashqai revealed in pictures UK to become second biggest car maker in EU “If anything has to change, we [would] need to reconsider our strategy and our investments for the future,” he told a reporter.