Ratan N. Tata, the ambitious chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. and Tata Motors, had already grabbed headlines in January, when he unveiled the $2,500 Nano, which is already having a major effect on the thinking of other carmakers around the world.

Michael Robinet, vice president of forecasting services for CSM Worldwide Inc. of Northville, said the Nano offers Tata an opportunity to reach a "virgin segment" of buyers not served by any other manufacturer. "The people it is aimed at were riding mopeds," he said.

The unveiling of the Nano fulfilled the commitment by Ratan Tata, who had nurtured the project in the face of universal skepticism about whether he could put an inexpensive vehicle on the road. "It's a car that is affordable, provides transport, meets all safety norms, emission norms -- present and future -- and will be a reliable form of transport and will provide Indian families an 'all-weather' means of safe transport," he said after the car was introduced.

Tata has now turned up the heat on its competitors, Robinet said. Rivals will either have to try to match the Nano or leave the segment to Tata. The core of the Tata Motors engineering team worked in secrecy for more than three years, and the price target was reached by improvisation and not by cutting corners on essentials, Robinet said after the Nano appeared in January.

GM's annual loss of $38.7 billion largely was due to a third-quarter charge related to unused tax credits.

The 2007 loss topped GM's previous record in 1992, when the company lost $23.4 billion because of a change in health care accounting, according to Standard & Poor's Compustat.

Excluding the tax charge and other special items, GM lost $23 million, or 4 cents per share, for the year, compared with a net income of $2.2 billion in 2006, beating Wall Street's expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected GM to post a full-year loss of 95 cents per share.

For the fourth quarter, GM posted a loss of $722 million, or $1.28 per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with a net income of $950 million in the year-ago quarter. Fourth-quarter charges included $622 million to Delphi Corp., GM's former parts division, for its restructuring efforts.

Fritz Henderson said the industry has less manufacturing capacity than in the past and therefore less pressure to sell vehicles cheaply just to move inventory.

It also faces higher raw materials costs, rising technology costs and increased costs from fuel economy and other government regulations, he said.

While the U.S. market still is competitive, "you could potentially see a significant change from what we've seen in the last eight or 10 years," Henderson said during a speech to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit.

Henderson said he didn't know when prices might start to rise, but he sees pressures because costs already have gone up and automakers are spending a great deal on new technology. GM has also reduced its sales to low-profit fleet buyers such as rental car companies, he said.

General Motors' tentative labor deal with the United Auto Workers union includes guarantees that the automaker will continue to build cars and trucks at its remaining UAW-represented assembly lines, according to highlights of the agreement given to the union's local leadership Friday.

In addition, the deal provides for General Motors (Charts, Fortune 500) to pay 70 cents of every dollar of estimated future cost of healthcare coverage for its union-represented retirees and their families.

The local and regional union officials who make up the union's GM Council unanimously endorsed the tentative agreement, which was reached early Wednesday morning, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told a news conference Friday afternoon. The deal, which followed an all-night bargaining session, ended a two-day strike by 73,000 UAW members working at GM.

"It looks like both sides worked real hard hammering out the agreement once we struck," said Chris "Tiny Sherwood, president of Local 652 in Lansing, Mich., after the vote Friday. "They did a good job maintaining benefits. I think it's a very solid agreement and I think the membership will vote for it."

The job reductions, which amount to about 16% of the Chrysler Group workforce, call for cutting 2,000 salaried employees and 11,000 hourly jobs, 9,000 in the Unites States and 2,000 in Canada.

Chrysler said special retirement programs and other termination and attrition programs would be announced separately.

The Newark, Del., Assembly plant will be idled by 2009 and the Cleveland, Ohio, Parts Distribution Center will be idled in December 2007.

In 2007, a shift will be eliminated at the Newark, Del., Assembly Plant and Warren Truck Plant. In 2008, a shift will be eliminated at the St. Louis South Assembly Plant.

The move, which amounts to subsidies of about $23,000 per worker, could help safeguard 13,000 jobs in the state.

In return, Ford has vowed to invest $866m to upgrade the ancient equipment in the plants.

The firm had threatened to go to other neighbouring states, such as Minnesota and Indiana, which had also been prepared to offer subsidies.

Ford's investment will pay for the retooling of its Wayne assembly plant to produce the new 2008 Ford Focus small car and a $200m investment to produce Ford F150 trucks on the old River Rouge site.

Toyota Motor Corp. trounced the domestic automakers in the U.S. marketplace last month, posting a 25 per cent year-over-year sales increase. General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG each saw their sales slip by a few percentage points, while Ford Motor Co.'s sales gained 4.7 per cent.

GM's sales fell 3.1 per cent last month, but the largest North American automaker put a positive spin on the decline, attributing it to a reduction in low-margin sales to rental companies. The company's car sales fell 6.4 per cent, while trucks, including pickups and sport utility vehicles, were down 0.7 per cent. The numbers include the European Saab brand.

DaimlerChrysler said its overall decrease of 2.3 per cent stemmed mostly from its U.S. subsidiary, Chrysler Group, where sales fell 3.8 per cent. Sales of Mercedes-Benz vehicles rose 13.2 per cent. The automaker was to release more detailed numbers later in the afternoon.

Ford's increase over the same month last year was fuelled largely by car sales, which rose 26.2 per cent, while its truck sales fell 5.5 per cent. The figures are for all Ford brands, including Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover.

California filed a global warming lawsuit on Wednesday against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other automakers, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California was the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions.

The lawsuit also names Chrysler Motors Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler, and the North American units of Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd..

It also charges that vehicle emissions have contributed significantly to global warming and harmed the resources, infrastructure and environmental health of the most populous state in the United States.

"Automakers must do their fair share to protect Californians from global warming. Polluters should pay, and the Attorney General's lawsuit forces them to do that. Passenger vehicles are the single largest global warming polluter in the state, accounting for 27 percent of emissions. The technologies exist to profitably slash emissions while saving consumers billions at the pump. And yet car companies are fighting the state's landmark regulations requiring them to offer vehicles with 30 percent lower emissions by 2016. Ten other states are following California's lead, accounting for one in three vehicles sold in the United States. In a global market increasingly focused on reducing global warming emissions, automakers who do not build clean cars will fail."

A prototype of the five-seater model to be manufactured at the West Bengal plant is undergoing tests at a Tata facility in the western Indian city of Pune, Tata said.

He said the company aims to keep the car's price below 100,000 rupees ($2,200), making it the cheapest car on the Indian road. Currently, Maruti Udyog Ltd., in which Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. holds a controlling stake, makes a compact hatchback that is India's cheapest car, selling for about 225,000 rupees ($5,000).

The Tata project is expected to create about 10,000 jobs at the plant and vendor chains.

Tata didn't say how many cars the proposed plant will produce each year. It also wasn't clear if the company planned to sell the car in overseas markets as well.

GM, the world's largest carmaker by volume, said on Wednesday it would axe one of three shifts at its Ellesmere Port plant, affecting about 900 jobs as it seeks to compensate for an expected decline in sales of its Astra compact model.

The move followed unsuccessful negotiations with labor representatives who wanted to share production cuts across other plants in Germany and Belgium that make the ageing Opel/Vauxhall Astra model.

"Our industry simply cannot afford to stop continually improving productivity in its Western European car plants," GM Europe President Carl-Peter Forster, who angered workers after flagging the job cuts last week, said.

The cuts, to take effect later in the summer, follow plans announced by Peugeot Citroen last month to close its central England plant, eliminating 2,300 jobs, and more than 5,000 job losses when British carmaker MG Rover collapsed last year.

As part of a partnership with the TV show "The Apprentice," GM launched a contest last month to promote the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The contest challenges viewers to create their own digital commercial about the SUV at Chevyapprentice.com. Entrants must choose from a range of video clips and sound tracks and write their own text to create their ad.

Over the weekend, hundreds of people used the Internet to circulate thousands of videos that charged GM with contributing to global warming, protested the war in Iraq or just demeaned the Tahoe's quality. Some videos also contained profanity or sexually explicit messages.

Late Monday, GM announced that it would begin screening the ads for "offensive and inflammatory" content but would not remove material based solely on a "negative tone" toward the company.

The contest is a success as a marketing campaign, according to Melisa Tezanos, a GM spokeswoman. Consumers have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have e-mailed commercials over 40,000 times, she said. Chevyapprentice.com has generated 2.4 million page views, and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes. The company anticipated before launching the contest that it may see some negative ads, but Tezanos noted that more than 80 percent of the commercials depict the Tahoe in a favorable light.

Early on we made the decision that if we were to hold this contest, in which we invite anyone to create an ad, in an open forum, that we would be summarily destroyed in the blogosphere if we censored the ads based on their viewpoint. So, we adopted a position of openness and transparency, and decided that we would welcome the debate. (As an aside, we have been truly disappointed by the number of submissions we had to filter out because of their vulgar content.) I won't bore you with the details, but the overwhelming majority of the 22,000 submissions thus far have been earnest attempts at creating positive advertisements.

Delphi (DPHIQ) plans to cut as many as 8,500 salaried workers, or 25% of its white-collar workforce globally, and is seeking to keep just eight of its plants as part of a massive restructuring of the automotive parts supplier.

Delphi also asked a U.S. bankruptcy court judge in New York to void its labor contracts, a step that its unions including the UAW have said could trigger a strike.

Delphi Chief Executive Steve Miller said that the company continues to negotiate with its unions. "We have made considerable progress in recent weeks, and we intend to stay at it until we are finished," he said in a statement.

But the United Auto Workers blasted the move and said it could stall talks.

The new regulations followed President Bush's declaration in January that the U.S. is "addicted to oil," and his call for a 75 percent reduction in Mideast oil imports by 2025. Manufacturers will begin implementing the rules as average gas prices exceed $2.50 a gallon and many consumers are seeking more fuel-efficient vehicles such as hybrids and flexible-fuel pickups and SUVs.

***

"After the Bush administration acknowledged our oil addiction, one might have expected a slam dunk, but this is an air ball," said David Friedman, research director for the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. His group estimated it would only save two weeks of gasoline a year over the next two decades.

The new rules do not apply to passenger cars, which must meet a 27.5 mile per gallon average.

Under the CAFE system, automakers now must meet an average of 21.6 mpg for their 2006 model year light trucks. That average will rise to 22.2 mpg for 2007 vehicles.

Under the new rules, the fleetwide average would reach 24 mpg by 2011, when the largest SUVs will be included in the calculation. The program will be phased in through 2010, with automakers having the option of complying under the old system or using new system.

If automakers use the old system, the targets would be 22.5 mpg in 2008, 23.1 mpg in 2009 and 23.5 mpg in 2010. All manufacturers would need to use the new system in 2011.

If ethanol becomes a considerable part of our energy mix, we may be replacing the Middle East dependency with a fix for Brazilian fuel.

Brazil exports of ethanol grew by 20.7 percent to more than 145 million liters in February over last year, according to the Energy Management Institute. The United States, which is in need of an MTBE replacement, was the primary client, purchasing 79 million liters, up nearly 500 percent over the previous year.

The average wholesale price of ethanol stands at $2.43, which in some areas is up over 80 percent from this time last year. We will have to substantially increase domestic production if that price is to fall back to previous levels.

While Mr. Bush set 2025 as the target date for replacing three-fourths of the oil imported from the Middle East with American ethanol, Brazil already satisfies nearly half of its domestic passenger vehicle fuel demand with ethanol.

After decades of government intervention and subsidies, the industry here is a thriving free market business, complete with ethanol pumps at every filling station in Latin America's largest country. Millions of cars run on either ethanol, gas or any combination of the two. And there's plenty more land available for sugar cane cultivation as the planet's biggest sugar producer gears up to become its undisputed long-term ethanol supplier.

The company is expected to make the cuts at its core Volkswagen business. Its shares jumped 8% to 54.79 euros.

Carmakers are facing difficult times as competition increases, raw material costs rise and consumers prove tough to lure into buying new models.

Ford will cut 30,000 jobs, the boss of General Motors has slashed his own pay and Renault has unvield a new strategy.

"In the next three years up to 20,000 direct and indirect employees within the Volkswagen Passenger Car brand could be affected by this restructuring programme," Volkswagen said.

Google confirmed on Monday that BMW.de had been removed from all search engine results. A spokeswoman said the company could not comment on specific cases but said: "We cannot tolerate websites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results."

The website used "doorway" pages, which can be employed to trick search engines into leading their users to websites that are not directly related to the search terms.

Marc Hassinger, spokesperson for business and finance communications at BMW Deutschland, said the BMW.de doorway pages only redirected users to relevant pages -- for example, one doorway page that frequently used the German word for "used car" redirected users to a page about BMW used car sales. He said this was done so that German web users searching for a second-hand BMW car dealership would find an index of dealerships around the country.

"We can't see a 'manipulation,' which they said was happening regarding those websites," Mr Hassinger said.

The study concludes that young buyers aren't turning to traditional media like television, magazines and newspapers for the information. Lonnie Miller, managing director of the Polk Center, said auto companies need to explore new marketing techniques, such as podcasts, in order to reach young buyers over the Internet and through cell phones.

"Generation Y is tuning out traditional advertising and watching what they want when they want," Miller said in a statement. "Creating breakthrough content and developing relationships with customers through emerging media technologies will separate the winners from the losers in the next five years."

The study also found that first-time buyers are independent decision makers and rarely visit the dealers their parents last used. Sixty-five percent said they made their purchase with no influence from family or friends.

General Motors (GM) lost $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing total losses in a dismal year to $8.6 billion, the automaker said Thursday.

Those losses amount to $8.45 a share in the fourth quarter and $15.13 a share for the year, compared with a loss of 18 cents in last year's fourth quarter and income of $4.92 a share for the full year 2004.

***

"2005 was one of the most difficult years in GM's history, " GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said. "It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed — our huge legacy costs and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with falling revenue."

He said companies need to manufacture "a product that's relevant" and that his administration has discussed new fuel technologies with the nation's top two automakers.

"As these automobile manufacturers compete for market share and use technology to try to get consumers to buy their product, they also will be helping America become less dependent on foreign sources of oil," Bush said.

Despite years of comeback plans and reorganization blueprints, GM and Ford, the pillars of the U.S. auto industry, have decided they have no choice but to shrink their way back to profitability in the face of the unrelenting pressures of a global market. Although Chrysler has had some success in turning around its business, auto experts today focus less on the Big Three and more on what some call the Big Six. Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. have made steady inroads, adding new U.S. plants and hiring thousands of autoworkers into nonunion jobs.

Ford Chairman William C. Ford Jr. said the company has been guided for too long by "business as usual," which he blamed for the company's over-reliance on sales of sport-utility vehicles. "We need to change the business model that's existed for many decades at Ford," he said.

Ford, the nation's second-largest automaker, employs about 123,000 workers in its North American operations. That division lost $1.6 billion pretax in 2005, precipitating its second financial crisis in five years. Ford's U.S. market share declined to 17.4 percent last year, down from 24 percent six years ago.

General Motors Corp., whose U.S. sales fell 4.3 percent last year, said it will cut the prices on about 80 percent of its cars and trucks.

Prices will reduced on all Buick, Chevrolet and GMC models and most Pontiac vehicles, said Mark LaNeve, GM's head of North American marketing, in a statement today. The price cuts take effect tomorrow. Combined with reductions made on some models in August, the changes cover 90 percent of GM's volume, LaNeve said.

Although sales of truck-based SUVs are down from their peak of nearly 3 million units in 2000, "the total SUV market keeps growing," said Ford's George Pipas.

The growth of SUV sales is coming from so-called "crossovers" or CUVs, which are car-based vehicles. In fact, Pipas predicted that crossover sales would surpass SUV sales in 2006, nearly three or four years earlier than previous projections.

Currently, about 2.45 million traditional SUVs have been sold through 2005 versus sales of 2.24 million CUVs, and the sales figures for those segments will flip next year, Pipas forecasted.

Mazda has just announced that it will be bringing several never-before seen vehicles to crown its display at the 2006 North American International Auto Show which takes place this coming January. Aside from showing updates to the Mazda6 and the all-new MX-5 roadster, it will be bringing a pair of economy-sized concepts and a unique design study. Mazda will also be debuting its all-new CX-7 crossover utility vehicle.

The Kabura Concept is the third and final vehicle in Mazdas global design trilogy. This three-part series is a showcase of the many cultural influences that surround each of its design studios. Named after the Japanese term used for the first arrow into battle, the Kabura was styled and built at Mazdas design center in California. It follows the European-designed Sassou subcompact and the Japanese-designed Senku concept.

Based off of the MX-5s floorpan and powertrain, the Kabura is a lightweight, rear-wheel drive sports car designed to emphasize the pleasures of driving, without sacrificing versatility. Mazda has already proven this point twice over with its current generation of sports cars - the astonishingly practical four-door RX-8 and the latest MX-5 with its impressively sized trunk. Fans of Mazda no doubt look forward to seeing what surprises are in store with the Kabura.

"Ford and GM are now in a race to shrink," John Casesa, Merrill Lynch's automotive analyst, said in a note to investors. Ford's "much anticipated restructuring plan appears more ambitious than we expected and more sweeping than GM's recently announced plan."

He expects Ford to cut 10 assembly and components plants and up to 30% of its 98,000-employee unionized workforce in the USA and Canada. It would trump similar plans announced last month by General Motors, which plans to cut up to 30,000 workers, because Ford is smaller than GM.

Ford confirmed that its board tackled the plan as part of its regularly scheduled two-day meeting, but company spokesman Tom Hoyt reiterated Thursday that no announcement is expected until next month.

....

Five to 10 plants will be shuttered - "but closer to 10," he said in an interview. The biggest targets are likely to be plants making vehicles nearing the end of their life cycles.

Barnes, a 29-year veteran of UPS who started sorting packages while in college, told me how UPS expects to save $600 million per year through package flow technologies, which will enable a reduction of 100 million travel miles in the U.S. alone, which equates to 14 million gallons of fuel, he said. The package flow optimization includes constant wireless communications via the DIADs, smart labels (including RFID in the future) and preloading vehicles and directing drivers according to advanced analytics that calculate the most efficient routes, including avoiding left-hand turns, based on the package load.

GM: -11.3 percent
Ford: -18 percent
DaimlerChrysler: -6.6 percent
Toyota: +5.5 percent
Honda: +6.4 percent
Nissan: -7.7 percent
Subaru: +.5 percent
Suzuki: +13.5 percent
BMW: +7 percent
Isuzu: -53.2 percent (Ouch!)

General Motors Corp. will eliminate 30,000 jobs and close nine North American assembly, stamping and powertrain plants by 2008 as part of an effort to get production in line with demand and position the world's biggest automaker to start making money again after absorbing nearly $4 billion in losses so far this year.

The announcement Monday by Rick Wagoner, GM's chairman and CEO, represents 5,000 more job cuts than the 25,000 that the automaker had previously indicated it planned to cut. United Auto Workers union leaders called the cuts "extremely disappointing, unfair and unfortunate."

The 30,000 job cuts represent about 9 percent of GM's global work force of about 325,000 people.

GM said assembly plants will close in Oklahoma City, Lansing, Mich., Doraville, Ga., and Ontario, Canada. GM also listed Spring Hill, Tenn., as a plant closing even though one production line will remain open there. A shift also will be removed at a plant in Moraine, Ohio.

The technology is another step in a much broader auto industry trend that is making collision repairs ever more costly, a kinder way of saying manufacturers are building throw-away cars. It means that more cars are totaled when they have relatively modest damage, particularly if they are more than five years old.

Although BMWs can certainly be repaired, it requires a degree of sophistication and cost that may be unprecedented.

BMW will certify auto body technicians only if they are employees of BMW dealerships, using BMW-approved parts, tools, adhesives and rivets. Though independent shops can buy equipment and get training, they are not allowed to say they perform certified repairs, BMW's official seal of approval.

"It is a game," said Don Feeley, owner of three independent body shops in Riverside. "Absolutely, they are shutting auto body shops out of their business."

1. 1995 Honda Civic
2. 1989 Toyota Camry
3. 1991 Honda Accord
4. 1994 Dodge Caravan
5. 1994 Chevrolet Full Size C/K 1500 Pickup
6. 1997 Ford F150 Series
7. 2003 Dodge Ram Pickup
8. 1990 Acura Integra
9. 1988 Toyota Pickup
10. 1991 Nissan Sentra

Common Sense:
The cheapest form of defense is to simply employ the anti-theft devices that are standard on all vehicles: locks. Lock your car and take your keys.

Warning Device:
Having and using a visible or audible warning device is another item that can ensure that your car remains where you left it.

Immobilizing Device:
"Kill" switches, fuel cut-offs, and smart keys are among the devices which are high and low tech, but extremely effective. Generally speaking, if your car won't start, it won't get stolen.

Tracking Device:
On the higher end of high tech are the newer devices which can alert you—and law enforcement—the moment an unauthorized user moves your vehicle.

For the first time, the German manufacturer joined Ford, General Motors and a who's who of Japanese and South Korean automakers in displaying accessories and concept cars at the Specialty Equipment Market Association show here. They're hawking chrome racing wheels, chrome-tipped exhaust pipes, race-tuned suspensions and souped-up engines.

At stake: the chance to reach hot rodders and style meisters whose customizations are at the heart of the estimated $31 billion accessories market. A Volkswagen booth at the trade show was a must, says spokesman Steve Keyes, because the company's accessories business is growing so fast. Dealers sell eight times as many custom wheels as a year ago, he says. Now, the company is targeting tuners, the amateur mechanics who boost engine performance and rev up interest in aftermarket products. "We're looking at how we can become more tuner-friendly," Keyes says.

General Motors (GM), which instigated employee prices in June, saw sales fall 25.9% in October. Trucks and SUVs, which are among the biggest revenue makers for the automakers, were down 33% at GM, including the profitable Cadillac Escalade, which was down 49%. "Although a slowdown after the record sales of the last several months was expected, October was a difficult month for us and the industry," said Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of sales and marketing for North America, in a press release.

Ford (F), which sells twice as many trucks as cars, posted a 25.7% drop in sales. Truck sales were down 31.6%. Car sales were down 11.0%, but could have been worse. The automaker rolled out three new cars in October — the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr. Their sales totaled less than 7,000.

DaimlerChrysler's (DCX) sales were down 2.8%, but car sales boomed 21.9%. Chrysler Sebring was up 126%.

GM did its best to make the H3 fuel-friendly, equipping it with a relatively small (3.5 liters) 220-horsepower, five-cylinder truck engine (from the Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon). It doesn't help much, though. Our 300 miles of untrafficked rural-road and interstate driving gave a bottom line of 14.7 miles per gallon. The full-time all-wheel drive and 4,700-pound curb weight are among the culprits for such a high rate of fuel consumption.

Bathroom monitoring is just one of a number of "incredibly stupid ideas" being floated by automakers, said Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates, a manufacturing consulting firm in Troy. Munro said a number of suppliers have told him that Ford and General Motors Corp., which is also trying to battle back from deep losses, are beginning to explore small ways to save money.

"It's a giant throwback to the bad old days of the '70s and '80s, when you squeezed the guy at the bottom of the heap any way you could," Munro said. "That only causes lots of discontent, and only someone from Harvard could think of something as stupid as monitoring bathroom time."

Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said the 48-minute bathroom break limit is spelled out in the UAW contract that covers local plant rules.

"We are managing our business according to the local agreement," Gattari said.

At stake is the survival of Delphi, a global giant with 185,000 employees and annual sales of $28 billion, and the wages, benefits and jobs of its 33,000 unionized workers across the United States.

In its Chapter 11 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, Delphi said a "substantial segment" of its U.S. manufacturing base will be sold off or phased out over the next two years. The company will also move to slash union wages up to 60 percent, cut health care benefits and free itself of pension obligations to tens of thousands of employees inherited when Delphi was spun off from General Motors Corp. in 1999.

"They just snatched the American dream from thousands of people," said Don Thomas, a veteran of 29 years at a Delphi plant in Rochester, N.Y. "Nobody wanted to believe it until it happened."

His bleak assessment was echoed by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said she was "profoundly disturbed" by Delphi's decision to file for bankruptcy. The loss of hundreds of thousands of factory jobs in recent years has left the state with a 6.7 percent jobless rate -- one of the nation's highest.

Sales of large gas-guzzling SUVs for GM and Ford declined significantly last month as U.S. gasoline prices soared well over $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

"There is legitimate pressure on some utility categories and I would describe those as the traditional truck-based utilities," GM's Ballew said.

SUV and truck sales at GM were off 30 percent. Sales of its large Chevrolet Suburban SUV were down nearly 57 percent.

Sales of traditional SUVs at Ford were off 51 percent compared with last September. Sales of Ford's large Expedition SUV fell 60 percent, while its mid-size Explorer was down 58 percent. Its F-Series pickup trucks were down 30 percent.

In the Ford case, NHTSA has received more than 550 complaints of engine fires from the cruise control switch. There have been allegations of three deaths in cases cited in news reports or lawsuits in Iowa, Georgia and Arkansas.

The affected vehicles include: 1994-2002 model F-150s, 1997-2002 Expeditions, 1998-2002 Navigators and 1994-1996 Broncos equipped with factory-installed speed control.

"We have a solution that fixes the problem and we're confident that this is going to be the right remedy," said Ford spokeswoman Kristen Kinley.

Ford said its inquiry found that brake fluid could leak through the cruise control's deactivation switch into the system's electrical components, leading to potential corrosion. The corrosion could lead to a buildup of electrical current which could cause overheating and a fire.

Mr Ross said: "The lions will take an interest in peculiarities on cars and we always keep a close eye on the cars coming in.

"With Smart cars and sometimes Mini Coopers the lions definitely raise an eyebrow. It sparks their interest because of their size.

"We had an incident of two ladies in a car being chased by lionesses.

"It must have been quite frightening for them, but we always have staff in a vehicle by the lion enclosure to deal with any problems."

That would require a significant increase in U.S. hybrid sales. A total of 83,153 hybrids were sold in the United States last year, according to R.L. Polk & Co., a Southfield, Mich. -- based firm that collects and interprets automotive data. The Toyota Prius hybrid dominated that market, with 53,761 new Prius cars registered.

Press said Toyota will meet its goal by aggressively introducing new hybrid versions of its lineup. The company launched two hybrid sport utility vehicles this year -- the Lexus RX 400h hybrid in April and the Toyota Highlander hybrid in June -- and will introduce hybrid versions of the Lexus GS sedan and the Toyota Camry next year.

In addition, Press said Toyota has 10 hybrids under development.

Detroit's latest marketing gambit -- employee discount prices for all -- is proving to be more than a one-month wonder, drawing heavy showroom traffic so far in July after propelling GM to a record June, according to dealers and analysts.

While there's no shortage of concern that today's sales party will mean tomorrow's hangover, dealers are elated that customers continue to snap up end-of-model-year cars and trucks that otherwise might have gathered dust.

Some Big Three dealers are reporting July sales are up as much as 50 percent from a year ago.

The problem is not the quality of the Phaeton--it's the quality of the VW badge. And it's the mediocre reputation Volkswagen dealers have, especially when compared with the better reputation of Audi dealers, who are located right across the showroom floors. But perhaps more than any other factor, the Phaeton's sticker price is driving people away.

VW is known for cheap, populist cars, and always has been. Put it this way: if General Motors decided to build a $70,000 Saturn, would you buy it? Neither would we.

Women of the baby boom generation have made no small effort to seize the freedoms once reserved for men, so it is not surprising that as this vast group graduates from the soccer-mom years, many are doing what men have traditionally done at midlife: buying a sexy and indulgent car meant more to trumpet their liberty than to haul kids around.

In recent years there has been growth in sales of "fun" or extravagant cars among middle-aged women that are a far cry from family leviathans like the sport utility vehicle or minivan. Industry analysts report sales of luxury vehicles are up for women over 45, and dealers report that more of them are walking into showrooms with more interest in horsepower than trunk space.

South Korean auto manufacturing will rise 44 percent to more than 5 million units by 2012, with 2.1 million produced in factories overseas, a report said Tuesday.

The predicted steady growth would give brands such as Hyundai, Daewoo and Kia a 7.8 percent share of the global market, the Yonhap news agency said, citing research by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade.

South Korean makers made 3.47 million automobiles last year, and the figure will rise to 4 million by 2007, the report said. Output will reach 4.8 million units by 2008, after which production will slow slightly, the it said.

The Mini Cooper S convertible features a supercharged engine and a smooth six-speed manual. Extremely agile handling makes it enjoyable to drive. Operating the convertible top is as easy as pushing a button, and the top features a halfway-open setting that acts as a large sunroof. The Mini Cooper S ($29,820 as tested) is equipped with a supercharged, 168-hp, four-cylinder engine that delivers spirited performance and returns 25 mpg overall, the best in this test group. The six-speed manual transmission shifts accurately. Overall braking performance is excellent. But its ride is choppy, and the view through the small rear window is obscured by the rear seats. The 50/50 rear-split seats fold down to expand the minuscule trunk.

The Camry Solara is as practical as a convertible gets. Based on the Camry sedan, the Solara carries over the comfort and quietness of its sibling. The convertible top is well-insulated and the interior fit and finish is impeccable. But, like many convertibles, the vehicle suffers from body quiver. The Solara SLE ($31,147 as tested) comes with a 225-hp, 3.3-liter V6 engine that delivers ample performance and 21 mpg. The five-speed automatic transmission is slick and responsive. Overall braking performance is very good. The Solara’s trunk was the largest among the six convertibles in this group.

The only question is-which Bush are we going to get on this issue? The "let's not and say we did" Bush who provides lip service to alternative fuels while signing an energy bill-like the current one pushed by House leaders-that commits 94% of its funds to the oil and gas industries, or the resolute cowboy Bush who can embrace new ideas so crazy they just might work.

S and P said it was cutting its ratings for GM's long-term debt to "BB" from an investment-grade "BBB," and Ford's to "BB plus" from "BBB." Both GM and Ford have been suffering from mounting competition and disappointing sales of their aging sports-utility vehicle (SUV) product lines, at a time when US petrol prices are at all-time highs.

On GM, S and P said: "The downgrade to non-investment grade reflects our conclusion that management's strategies may be ineffective in addressing GM's competitive disadvantages."

The credit risk agency had a similar message for Ford.

The newest Lamborghini, Murciélago is named for a Spanish bull that was spared for its valor by the famed matador Rafael Molina "Lagartijo". That was in 1879, when Murciélago was put to stud, fathering a line of fighting bulls that extends to the present. The bull’s namesake, Lamborghini Murciélago, runs fast and reaches a top speed exceeding 205 mph. It is all-wheel drive, with a m