It has been revealed that Volkswagen and Suzuki Motor Corp. are in talks about a long-term co-operation agreement. Rumours of such a tie-up have been going around for some months. According to an official statement, VW will purchase 19.9 percent of Suzuki’s issued shares. In turn Suzuki will use up to half of the amount received from VW to buy a stake in the Wolfsburg company.

Although the two automakers compete in some segments, they reckon they also compliment each other. VW has expertise in diesel technology and hybrid systems while Suzuki is quite strong in the fast-emerging India market. In addition to cars and motorcycles, Suzuki builds marine transportation solutions and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs).

If the authorities approve the transaction, the world’s largest car manufacturing alliance would be created. It would surpass Toyota in terms of sales.

Consolidation seems to be the key industry word again. Recently French company PSA Peugeot Citroën announced it was entering into a cooperative agreement with Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors. Italy’s Fiat already calls the shots at Chrysler LLC while Nissan and Renault have been mates for about a decade now.

Via WorldCarFans

General Motors Company has regained full control of its Opel brand after paying back 1.5 billion Euro in emergency loan, including interest. The move dissolves a trust that held a 65 percent stake in the European carmaker.

“The shares in Adam Opel GmbH were returned to GM,” the German economics ministry said in a statement on Monday.

GM lost majority control of Opel in June, when the German government agreed to provide the Detroit automaker with a 6-month emergency loan to Opel, hours before GM filed for a pre-packaged bankruptcy.

The main idea behind the trust was to monitor Opel’s liquidity and oversee the sale of a majority stake to a new investor. Earlier this month GM’s board of directors decided to keep Opel and restructure it, terminating plans to sell the brand to Magna International.

Via egmCarTech

Japan’s automakers know a threat when they see one, and based on their words, it sure isn’t in Michigan, USA.
Motown is a fleeting image in the Japanese carmakers’ rearview mirrors, which they’re now nervously checking for a budding South Korean juggernaut. Honda CEO, Takanobu Ito, minced no words when he told the Associated Press, “Hyundai is awesome. They are undoubtedly a threat because their products are cheap, and the quality is improving.”

The numbers seem to bear that out, as Hyundai and its corporate sibling, Kia, continue to show substantial sales chart improvements in key markets like the Europe and the US, where it continues to show strong growth while many other automakers look at double-digit shortfalls year-over-year. Nissan’s Shiro Nakamura echoes Honda’s Ito when it comes to identifying Japan’s new boogeyman, “Hyundai is the biggest threat for the Japanese automakers. They have the technology, but they seem to have cheaper labour.”

Hyundai, seen as insignificant by many not too long ago, is catching the Japanese by beating them at their own game – offering a mix of value and quality that’s hard for shoppers to ignore. Japan knows it needs to defend itself, too. After all, once upon a time, they were what Hyundai is now.

We wonder how long it’ll be until we see quotes from Hyundai’s leadership talking about the Chinese the way Honda is talking about them now – the times, they are a changing.

Adapted from AutoSpies

VW CEO Martin Winterkorn is wasting no time in coming up with huge plans for the Porsche brand. VW and Porsche recently announced a deal in which the two automakers would merge into a single, massive automotive business.

First off, Winterkorn wants to raise Porsche’s volume, and raise it by a lot. Porsche sold about 100 000 units in its last fiscal year but stands to see a drop in the current one due to the economic crisis that has hit premium automakers pretty hard. Winterkorn has said that he wants the Porsche brand to be doling out 150 000 units a year by 2013.

And where would all those extra sales come from? It would definitely have to be from lower-priced, more mass appealing products and VW plans to add three new models to the Porsche lineup in order to do that.

It is too early for any detailed sketches of what models Porsche would build. But VW has spoken on what kind of products Porsche should bring to the marketplace.

One would be a vehicle slated below Porsche’s current entry-level model the Boxster. A second could be a “baby brother” to the Cayenne, or a Porsche variant on the VW Tiguan. Although, VW has promised it would not water-down the Porsche name with too much Volkswagen content. These would be models that remain true to the promise of the brand. Such a model may already be in development by Porsche and Audi, although the brands have denied up to now that any such vehicle was in the works.

Lastly, there would be a variation on the new Panamera. Hard to imagine what that would look like, except to speculate that Porsche may want to field a less expensive sedan onto the market to compete more directly against BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Source: WorldCarFans

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