Global Motors

For the first time in its 102 year history, General Motors sold more vehicles in China than in the United States. GM was narrowly edged by Toyota as the world's largest automaker, a position held by GM for 76 years until 2007 when Toyota took the lead. GM sales were up 29% in China, 12.4% in Russia and 10.4% in Brazil.

Nummi reopens

Toyota has announced a joint venture with Tesla to reopen NUMMI and hire 1000 workers. While this does not reinstate the facility to its pre-closure size, it is welcome news in recession ravaged California. Previous posts about the NUMMI closure are here and here.

Car proxy wars

We have previously posted here and here about the silly attempt to make car manufacturers proxies in the union/anti-union wars and in the red blue game. Bob Herbert's NYT opinion piece provides fuel and a black hat portrait of Toyota and its decision to close NUMMI and the impact of job losses in California.

Toyota facts

In an interesting follow up to yesterday's post about bashing labor as a cause for Toyota's ills, WNOL posted the this analysis of the political players. Key point, the investigators do not include "rust belt" senators arguably more beholding to American carmakers.