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It's a global economy so I'm not sure how significant it is that monthly auto sales in China surpassed those in the U.S. for the first time last month. Especially since GM said it sold a record 1.09 million vehicles in China last year, up 6 percent from 2007...

GM is expected to look into closing more plants than the nine they've already announced. Becoming a scale model of yourself seems the obvious thing to do while demand is down. One thing is for certain, no matter how this all plays out, GM is going to be a smaller concern, hopefully with a lot of growth potential, when this all shakes out. According to the Wall Street Journal, GM is in talks to take back large portions of Delphi Corp, the parts supplier spun off by the auto maker a decade ago, as part of a strategy to line up more bailout funds...

Looks like things could get interesting in the hybrid market. Honda Motor Co wants to price its new Insight hybrid car below $20,000 in the U.S. market, a top executive said on Thursday...

Imagine that, you start to give out money and pretty soon everyone wants a handout and you have to wonder where the end is. U.S. auto suppliers are seeking $25.5 billion in federal aid as falling sales and production cuts push more towards the brink of bankruptcy...

As the EPA considers whether to allow California and 12 other states to set their own emission standards, some are wondering if the resulting cost to Detroit will be a fatal blow. Russ Harding, director of the Property Rights Network at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, seems to think so. Allowing states to set their own tailpipe standards for CO2 is essentially permitting individual states to set fuel economy standards that are more stringent than federal regulations...

On Monday, the plant that assembles the HUMMER H2 was shut down and staff members have been told it will be for at least 15 weeks. A HUMMER spokesperson would not confirm the exact details of the length of the closure, but said, "we will produce more when we get more dealer orders." H2 sales were down more than 50 percent in 2008, with just 374 units sold in December. There are lyrics to the bugle call Taps...

From this morning's NY Times: President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday. Once the EPA acts, automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule. Beyond acting on the California emissions law, officials said, Mr...

Ford is going to begin using 6 speed automatic transmissions in its small cars starting with 2010 models and plans to have them in nearly all their vehicles by 2013. The PowerShift transmissions “will deliver the fuel efficiency of a manual gearbox with the convenience and ease of a premium automatic transmission,” Ford said in a news release. Another step towards the demise of the manual transmission?..

Looks like the incoming President at Toyota is bringing his StickMop to the job. Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, will replace most of its top management later this year as incoming President Akio Toyoda aims to return the automaker to profit, people familiar with the matter said. Interesting to see the contrast between how Toyota is dealing with turning things around compared to the Detroit manufacturers...

AR Index     381.58  -20.66  (-5.14%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  66.57   +0.95 GM        3.93     -0.22 Ford      2.19     -0.45 Dow  8281.22  -192.75   (-2.27%) It's Inauguration Day. New President, new Congress. Should be very interesting to track things over the next six to eight weeks to see how we really feel about all this...