Archive for the ‘China’ Category

Just when you think the auto world is ending in an onslaught of grim grey Korean econoboxes ... life gets better. And sometimes you just can't make this [stuff] up.

Take last Friday's little news item from WardsAuto, for example. A Russian company that was supposed to assemble copies of a Japanese Toyota from Chinese kits has instead been building and selling the little Tiggos itself. Oh, the horror.

We can do no better than to excerpt the salient points of a few sentences that lay out the dastardly deed:

"It has come to our attention that...entities in Russia have been assembling and/or distributing Tiggo vehicles without our...

It's been widely reported that Chinese automaker Geely is putting the finishing touches on an offer to purchase Volvo -- and frankly, when we saw yesterday's release about Chinese astronauts' love for the Volvo S80L, we thought the deal was done. However rumors have surfaced that a group of Swedish businesses, called Konsortium Jakob AB, is aggressively raising funds for its own bid. There are even rumors that Volvo Truck Corp. has put money in the kitty, though the company denies it. That's an awful lot of speculation so early on a Tuesday morning. [AutoCarUK]

In The Graduate, the future was all about plastics. From Warren Buffett's perspective, however, the future may be all about China: everyone's favorite eccentric investor recently made a $230 million investment in Chinese automaker BYD, and now, just ten months later, BYD's stock price has soared, and Buffett's shares are worth $1.02 billion. Even better (for China): when the public learned of Buffett's bellwether investment, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index jumped 10%. We'll see how Buffett feels about HUMMER and Volvo when/if they make their alleged transpacific voyage. [Reuters]