News watch August 2011: today's auto industry news

Come to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour

Wednesday 31 August 2011
• The two millionth Mini today rolled off the production line at Plant Oxford. British prime minister David Cameron drove the landmark car off the line (Mini)
• Volkswagen says it will sell more than 2 million cars in China this year. It's now VW's biggest global market (Automotive News Europe)
• Don't write Saab off quite yet - a new financing deal is nearing completion, reports ANE. A source tells the industry newsletter that Saab top brass are close to raising more funds (Automotive News Europe) 
• Former US vice president Dick Cheney has revealed in his In My Time memoir that he opposed the decision to save General Motors with a $13.4bn lifeline in December 2008. 'The president [George Bush] decided that he did not want to pull the plug on General Motors as we were headed out the door. Although I understood the reasoning, I would have preferred that the government not get involved' (Detroit News)
• Fiat's head of European sales, Andrea Formica, has quit - just a year after joining Turin from Toyota Motor Europe (Automotive News Europe) 
• Volvo Cars and Siemens have launched an electric mobility partnership. The German electrical giant will help develop the electric motor system, power electronics and charging technology (Volvo) 

Tuesday 30 August 2011
• Group Lotus has announed its latest celebrity sign-up: Gordon Murray joins the advisory council, alongside Bob Lutz, Tom Purves and Burkhard Goschel. He will advise on product strategy, technology and brand for Lotus (Lotus)

Monday 29August 2011
• CAR staffers on rare downtime for the UK's bank holiday: Andy Franklin travelled to Spa for the grand prix, the rest of us got soaked on bank holiday barbecues etc

Friday 26 August 2011
• GM and electronics giant LG Group are teaming up to work more closely on electric cars, the companies have confirmed (Financial Times)
• Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne has confirmed his targets for 2011, saying he won't review them until the third quarter - despite a flat European market (Automotive News)
• BMW and Porsche are complaining it's difficult to recruit skilled engineers - even in Germany. The German engineering trade body reckons there is a shortfall of some 77,000 available engineers for the sector (Automotive News Europe)

Thursday 25 August 2011
• Two of Saab's biggest unions warn they will ask the courts to put the Trollhattan car maker into bankruptcy in a fortnight unless their members are paid. The pressure is mounting on Saab, which is experiencing cashflow problems and may not be able to meet tomorrow's 26 August pay date (Automotive News Europe)
• GM is cancelling overtime shifts at another US plant because of high pick-up inventories. Five Saturday shifts at the Flint, Michigan, factory that were planned for September and October have been axed, to trim stock of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks (Automotive News)
• Insurance giant Admiral saw pre-tax profits in the first six months of 2011 leap by 27% on last year - after rising car premiums boosted revenues. Total sales increased by 50% to more than £1 billion in the first half, a new company record (BBC News)

Wednesday 24 August 2011
• Audi has confirmed it will put its A8 Hybrid into series production in 2012, on sale here in the UK late 2012. It will be powered by a 2.0 four-cylinder petrol engine with the promise of 148g/km of CO2, ZE electric running up to 62mph and 0-62mph in 7.7sec (Audi)
• Chinese car maker BYD saw its shares plunge by 9% in Hong Kong after it reported poor earnings. First-half net income slumped 89% to 275 million yuan (£26m) year on year. Build Your Dreams also warned another possible loss in the third quarter (BBC News)
• Volvo is targeting 50,000 sales in China this year, up from 30,000 in 2010. The company said its Chinese sales rose 62% in the second quarter (Automotive News Europe)
• Audi has increased A8 production by 57%, the boss of the Neckarsulm factory in Germany said. It's Audi's second largest plant and is having to add extra shifts and recruit 500 extra workers (Automotive News Europe)
• Chrysler is investing $72 million in its Toledo machining plant in Perrysburg, Ohio, to prepare it for manufacturing a new generation of torque converters and steering columns (Detroit News)

Tuesday 23 August 2011
• Saab warns it may have to delay paying staff this month; in a statement, it admitted it was taking 'all necessary actions' to collect funds from investors (Automotive News Europe)
• Subaru will call its rear-wheel drive coupe, codeveloped with Toyota, the BRZ. That's B for boxer engine, R for rear-wheel drive and Z for zenith, says Subaru (Subaru)

Monday 22 August 2011
• Ford and Toyota today signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on hybrid pick-ups and SUVs. It's a similar deal to the Ford/PSA deal on diesels - and the Blue Oval promises a new hybrid system codeveloped to reduce the cost of hybrids (Ford)
• Volkswagen is preparing to launch a single-seater electric car - and it'll offer customers a total service package, including carbon-neutral electricity supplies to counter the well-to-wheel argument that negates electric cars' purity (Financial Times)
• In an interview with the FT, Jürgen Leohold, head of research, said the single-seater would be launched 'within weeks'. VW will launch an electric Golf and Up in 2013 and the company wants 3% of its sales to be EVs by 2018
• Mazda has stopped production of the RX-8 rotary engine. The model was pulled from UK ranges earlier, but it's now ending the US too. The Hiroshima, Japan, plant stopped building them in July 2011 (Automotive News)
• Mahindra has become the biggest car maker in India, toppling Tata Motors (Automotive News Europe)
• Two components suppliers owed money by Saab have started debt collection proceedings in Sweden. It owes Kongsberg Automotive, a Norwegian seat manufacturer, and Infotiv, a Swedish consultancy, around 4 million kronor (Automotive News Europe)

Friday 19 August 2011
• Maserati will build its planned SUV in the US, according to Fiat sources. They name the Chrysler plant at Jefferson North in Detroit. It'll be based on the Jeep Grand Cherokee and a concept could be shown at the 2011 Frankfurt motor show (Automotive News)
• British car dealer and parts supplier Lookers has announced a growth in interim revenues to £1 billion. It said motorists were hanging on to their cars for longer in the difficult economic conditions, encouraging more parts and servicing profits (Financial Times)
• McLaren Automotive has a new investor from the East: Singapore businessman Peter Lim has made 'a significant investment in the company' and joins the board of directors (McLaren)
• McLaren now has 35 dealers worldwide in 19 countries. Demand in Asia-Pacific alone accounts for 18 months of future orders, Woking claims (McLaren)

Thursday 18 August 2011
• Ferrari chariman Lucs di Montezemolo has ruled out an electric Ferrari. 'I don't feel they represent an important step forward for pollution, CO2 and the environment,' he told the BBC. 'We are working very, very hard on the hybrid Ferrari. This should be the future and I hope in a couple of years you'll see it' (BBC Newsbeat)

Wednesday 17 August 2011
• Volvo Cars today announced a £58 million profit in the second quarter of 2011 - nearly four times what it made in 2010. Sales were up 27% to 123,919 vehicles, boosted by strong gains in China (up 62%) and the US (up 43%). Year to date, Volvo has sold a fifth more cars than in the first half of last year (Volvo Cars)
• However, Volvo president and CEO Stefan Jacoby warned that the second half of 2011 could be tough - pointing out that economic uncertainty, exchange rates and raw material prices threatened results likely in the remainder of the year (Volvo Cars)
• Debt collectors could today freeze Saab's assets unless it pays invoices totalling £377,000. It has been forced to pull out of the 2011 Frankfurt auto show (Automotive News Europe)
• VW has announced a global sales growth of 12.5% from January to July 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Russia, China and the US are key areas of growth (Automotive News Europe)
•  BMW has unveiled the range of vehicles that will be used during the London 2012 Olympic Games. All cars will be electric, hybrid or diesel-powered (BBC News)

Tuesday 16 August 2011
• The German government is planning a €200 million subsidy of 'showcase' electric car projects. It's a sign the government wants to replicate the nascent UK EV grants (Automotive News Europe) 
• Ford has agreed to pay $10.8 million to settle a seven-year dispute to clean up the historic Rouge Complex in Dearborn, which used to manufacture Blue Oval vehicles as long ago as WW1 (Detroit News)

Monday 15 August 2011
• The new US chief of Jaguar Land Rover, Andy Goss, reckons each of his British companies can achieve 50,000 sales in America annually. Goss, who was appointed on 1 May, says the 160 Jag dealers Stateside will get a new look from 2012 (Automotive News Europe)
• There's a new man in charge of engines at Porsche: Jorg Kerner will head up Weissach's powertrain development from October. Previously he worked at Bosch and Audi (where he headed up the electrification project) and he replaces Heinz-Jakob Neußer, who takes up the same job at VW (Porsche)
• BP cannot find sufficiently skilled engineers in the UK, its head of North Sea operations has warned. It is planning to invest £3 billion on two oil fields in a move which was expected to create hundreds of new jobs, but it's struggling to fill the posts (BBC News)

Friday 12 August 2011
• Porsche has hit a record sales month in China. It sold 2484 vehicles there in July - a fivefold increase over the same month in 2010. China is now Porsche's second biggest market globally (Porsche)
• Tata Motors has issued first-quarter profits lower than anticipated by analysts. But sales of Tata cars dipped 9% - and Jaguar sales dropped 27% in the three months to the end of June (Automotive News)
• Premium car makers such as Mercedes, BMW and VW are more likely to weather the stock sell-off storm, reports ANE. It said the current equity slump would hit mass-market car makers such as Renault more hard than the high-end marques (Automotive News Europe)
• Saab's new 9-3, due in 2012, may drop the name in favour of something more resonating with the company's history books. North American president Tim Colbeck said the car is likely on sale in early 2013 (Automotive News Europe)
• However, Saab is still at risk of bankruptcy proceedings from unhappy suppliers. Reuters reports that Spanish auto panels maker Matrici S Coop was preparing a bankruptcy request, claiming it was owed €2 million (Automotive News Europe)
• Ford is shuffling its global product development team: Barb Samardzich is moving from the US to head up Ford of Europe's product development, reporting in to Stephen Odell, CEO of the Blue Oval's activities in Europe (Detroit News)

• Thursday 11 August 2011
• Jaguar Land Rover today posted a £408 million operating profit in the last quarter ending on 30 June. Sales stood at 62,090 cars across both brands, up 5% on last year (Jaguar Land Rover)
• New CEO of Bentley Wolfgang Durheimer admitted to CAR that the company had made a loss in 2010. 'We lost money in 2010,' he told us. 'But we should make money in 2011
• Durheimer said Bentley would play an important role in VW's plan to become the world's number one car maker by 2018. With the proposed SUV planned for launch around 2014, sales of Bentleys are likely to soar beyond the previous 10,000-a-year record - possibly as high as 30,000 per annum

Wednesday 10 August 2011
• Citroen is boldly planning to move its DS range of semi-premium models more upmarket to target Audi and BMW. Buoyed by sales of 110,000 DS3s in 16 months, it is now pushing ahead with its DS4 and DS5 models (Automotive News Europe)
• Meanwhile, ANE reports that GM plans to move Opel and Vauxhall more upmarket to tackle VW, while Chevrolet mops up sales at the budget end (Automotive News Europe)
• Chinese customers still don't trust local cars in the premium sector, reports the FT. It points out that aspirational Chinese buyers are lapping up European exec brands - the S-class and Cayenne both sell more in China than anywhere else in the world (Financial Times)

Tuesday 9 August 2011
• Range Rover's new Evoque is selling at a 15% premium, reports What Car?. It found dealers selling cars at £5500 over list price (What Car?)
• The plunge in global stocks has given car makers in the US a hammering. GM stock fell 6.6% yesterday, Ford plunged 8.4% (Automotive News)
• UK supermarkets are entering a fuel price war, reports the Mail, after Asda and Morrisons cut 2p a litre from the price of unleaded (Daily Mail)
• The organisers of the 2011 LA auto show say they will have '17 significant world debuts' at the 16-17 November international press days (LA Auto Show)

Monday 8 August 2011
• Alfa Romwo will return to the US market in late 2012, CEO Sergio Marchionne promises. The first 4C sports cars will arrive in America next year, but the full relaunch is slated for 2013 when Alfa's compact SUV arrives (Automotive News Europe)
• Good news at Saab: a white-collar union, Unionen, has stopped bankruptcy proceedings against Saab, after its workers were paid on Friday (Automotive News Europe)
• Sales of used tyres are rising because of increased rubber costs, the Detroit News reports. It says natural rubber cost 75 cents a pound in 2009 - but hit $3/lb last year. It now costs around $2.30, but many motorists are looking at secondhand tyres (Detroit News) 
• GM has leapfrogged Toyota to become the world's biggest car maker in the first half of 2011. GM sales rose 9% to 4.536 million - VW is second at 4.13m, and Toyota is at 3.71m (Automotive News Europe)
• AN says the second wave of Chrysler launches will be crucial - its new Caliber replacement will show whether Fiat properly understands its US partner. The new model will be launched in 2012 and will be basd on a Fiat platform with Italian engines (Automotive News)
• BMW sales are up 8% in July, driven by growth in China and the US. Munich today reported sales of BMWs, Minis and Rolls-Royces hit 129,094 in July - a record (Reuters)

Friday 5 August 2011
• High drama at CAR HQ as the September 2011 issue goes to press. Afraid News Watch slipped by the wayside...

Thursday 4 August 2011
• GM today posted a $2.5 billion profit in the second quarter of 2011. It's the General's sixth consecutive quarterly profit since exiting bankruptcy in mid 2009. Revenues rose 19%, swollen by strong recovery in the US (Automotive News)
• Opel and Vauxhall also bounced into profit - with a $102 million net gain in Q2 - compared to a $160m loss a year earlier. European sales rose from 315,000 a year ago to 340,000 (Automotive News Europe)
• New car sales in Britain continue to fall. July's figures were out today and they slipped 3.5% on a year ago. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders forecasts a 5% drop on last year, predicting a full-year figure of 1.93 million (SMMT)
• UK insurance giant Axa has called on the Government to stop the upward spiral of car policy costs. In June it became the first UK insurer to stop selling to lawyers details of its customers who've made claims - it's part of a racket pushing up personal insurance claim costs (BBC News)

Wednesday 3 August 2011
• Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has hinted that he'll step aside from the helm of his US outpost in 2015 or 2016. In a Q&A with analysts, he said Chrysler's future 'will be up to the guy after me - after 2015 or maybe a year later,' reported AN (Automotive News)
• An investment company has taken a 'substantial' stake in Swedish Automobile, Saab's parent company. GEM Global Yield Fund will acquire about 5 million new shares, giving it a 17% stake in Saab. It could raise around €6.5 million, analysts estimate (Automotive News Europe)
• Meanwhile, Marchionne - him again - predicts that the US won't break through the 13 million sales barrier in 2011. He also confirmed his ambition to start building Alfa Romeos in the US, hopefully by 2012 (Detroit News)

Tuesday 2 August 2011
• Kia's first half results are out - and the Korean car maker is in strong growth. Sales were up 20% to 1.2 million, revenues rose 31% to 22,238 billion Korean Won. Although European car sales have fallen in the first six months by 2.4%, Kia's rose by 0.7% to a record 137,000 vehicles (Kia)
• Skoda has recorded record sales, revenue and profit in the first six months of 2011. Sales revenues were up 25.7% to €5.4bn, operating profit increased 81.5% to €412m, and 454,698 vehicles were delivered, an increase of 20.1% (Skoda)
• Toyota has reported an enormous 99% drop in quarterly profits after the tsunami. In the quarter to the end of June, net profits fell to 1.1 billion yen (£8.7 million). But it's raised its full-year forecast for sales and profits (BBC News)
• It's Toyota's first quarterly loss in two years (Automotive News Europe)
• Audi may expand its engine facility in Hungary, according to local media reports. The Gyor plant made 938,000 engines in the first half of the year (Automotive News Eruope)
• Ford has recalled 1.2 million pick-ups over a fire worry. It affects certain derivatives of F150, F250 and Lincoln Blackwood trucks (BBC News)
• Chinese car maker JAC Motors plans to build a factory in Brazil to increase its influence in south America's biggest market. It's spending between £379m-£550m on the new plant (BBC News)

Monday 1 August 2011
• Porsche reports an operating profit of €1.07 billion in the first half of 2011 – up from €675 million in the same period last year. Deliveries leapt 37% to 60,529 vehicles – meaning Porsche is on track to set a new sales record in 2011 of more than 100,000 cars (Porsche)
• How did Porsche sell so many cars? It shifted 28,000 Cayennes, 12,000 Panameras, 10,000 of the 911, 4000 Boxsters and 2000 of the Cayman (Porsche)
• Volkswagen is reviewing its plans to cooperate with Suzuki. 'The strategic cooperation is developing more slowly than expected and is not currently being implemented with the desired level of intensity,' VW's chief financial officer Hans Dieter Poetsch told investors (Automotive News Europe)
• Fiat's boss Sergio Marchionne is piling in to the American market with its growing control of Chrysler – where Nissan's Carlos Ghosn feared to tread, reports ANE (Automotive News Europe)
• Honda has reported an 88% plunge in first-quarter profits after the earthquake in March. It made a net profit of 71.7bn yen (£248m). However, it's recovering fast and predicts full year earnings will rise by 35% (BBC News)

By Tim Pollard, Ben Pulman and Sarah-Jayne Harrison