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Some say he has chopsticks for fingers, and cries tears of soy sauce... all we know is, he's called the Stig. With a bad taste left in our mouth from China's sad attempt at Top Gear earlier this year, it appears the good old boys from the original BBC Top Gear have finally made the trek to Beijing to show us how it's done.
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Chinese automaker Chery has entered a 50-50 joint venture with investment firm Israel Corp to launch Qoros, a new made-in-China car brand which aims to “combine German design quality and craftsmanship with Japanese convenience and functionality”. Former Volkswagen AG executive Volker Steinwascher will serve as vice chairman of the new brand which aims to generate annual sales of about 150,000 vehicles a year by 2016, half of which will be exported to Europe. more ›

General Motors has just announced a new deal to bring the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid electric car to China at the 9th Auto Guangzhou show, currently running until November 28th. more ›

Yesterday in Chengdu, A woman in red dove off a bridge right into the path of speeding vehicles, whose apathetic drivers then appeared none too willing to lend a hand. more ›

The sight of a BMW Mini police car parked outside a police station in the city of Tianjin has raised eyebrows among residents there. When a journalist from Southern Metropolitan Daily arrived at Binhai District's Tanggu Road police station where the car was parked, her requests for an interview was rebuffed by the duty officer who said he could not reveal his chief's cell phone number, and that "you can say whatever you like about it on the internet." Well, she went back to her office, put up what he said on the paper's Weibo, and the tweet has since been shared close to 4,000 times. more ›

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Our favorite roadshow philanthropist is at it again! Billionaire and rogue disaster relief respondent Chen Guangbiao (陈光标) made headlines again this week when he mercilessly bashed a perfectly good Mercedes-Benz to smithereens with a giant robotic arm, all in the name of the environment! more ›

Now that China has become the world's largest car market, Chinese government officials pursuing quality instead of quantity to make the next great leap forward. more ›

In his latest blogpost, Jonathan Watts, The Guardian's Asia environment correspondent, shares with us three startling figures:

First, the number of cars on the planet has just passed the billion mark. Second, almost half of the new growth is in China. Third, Toyota managed to sell only one Prius in China last year. That's right. The world's most commercially successful hybrid car has found only one buyer in the fastest growing market. SUV sales, by contrast, are surging.

Chinese drivers, our heart goes out to you (when you're not trying to kill us on a daily basis). We know of the Book of Job-like struggles you face just to get your hands on a car, now one of the main face-maintaining/wife-snagging accoutrements in contemporary China. Import taxes and price markups are absurd: the starting cost of a 2011 BMW 650i Convertible in the United States begins at 550,880RMB ($85,550 USD), while the same car in China starts at 2,039,000RMB ($316,650 USD). more ›

Also known as "dogging" (or is that a term for sex in a public place in general?), bumping uglies in your car has been a favorite pasttime of pimply teens and enthusiastic lovers since the dawn of the automobile. Apparently that trend has arrived with full force in China, where it is known as "car quaking" (车震, chēzhèn). Thanks to this post circulating on the Chinese internet, we now have a map of the best places in Shanghai to grab a park 'n' pet. more ›

"Shanghai's car plate prices hit a 30-month high yesterday despite there being less bidders. Dealers said the price has been rising for six consecutive months and prompted buyers to offer higher bids. The lowest price for a plate at this month's auction was 48,500 yuan (US$7,461), up 1,100 yuan from a month earlier, according to the organizer Shanghai International Commodity Auction Co. The price was the highest since January 2008 when a new auction system was launched. The average price also gained 1,155 yuan to 48,855 yuan for June. The local government offered 9,000 car plates this month, the same amount for May. But the quota has been increased from February's 7,500 and 8,000 for April after the average price surged 26 percent this year. For June, the number of bidders was 22,474, lower than the 25,708 last month." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Photos by Peter Lee. more ›

CNN's Eunice Yoon speaks to top honchos of foreign carmakers at the ongoing Shanghai Auto Show and asks them why they're creating China-only brands.
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China's got talent -- no kidding! Look what we've got in Taizhou, Zhejiang province -- a man driving not one, but two bumper cars on a busy city street. And the uniquely talented individual even tries to overtake a car at the lights! Fortunately for the other motorists, traffic police caught up with the man before he created any mayhem, and told the poor soul having the time of his life that bumper cars are meant for the amusement park and not, erm, meant for the roads. And fortunately for us too, surveillance cameras were on hand to catch all the action. Enjoy:
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"As the transport chief, a third of my time is spent on the ground at construction sites and projects. As you may know, 94% of Yunnan is comprised of hills especially around Nujiang and Diqing. Transport is not very convenient, and if there isn't enough horsepower, you can't even get around. Hence, it's best to equip ourselves with good vehicles, so as to ensure safety. It's unrealistic to have public servants to go down to the villages in vehicles that cost less than RMB250,000." more ›

Remember that 2008 ad by Citroen featuring a scowling Chairman Mao? This time, yet another carmaker in another country has done it again. In a new ad for its Trezia model, Subaru Italy has used a feminised image of Chairman Mao to sell the car, which promises “a high driving position and superior internal space worthy of a revolution”. Needless to say, the Chinese aren't happy. In fact, they're so unhappy that the potential deal between Subaru and Chery to manufacture the Forrester here may be called off.
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The rumormill got cranking on this one after a China-based car blog announced that they heard it straight from the horse's mouth: a CCTV employee confirmed that production has already started on a Beijing-based Top Gear. If true, China would follow Russia, Australia and the U.S. in churning out their own versions of the massively popular UK-based TV show. Considering Top Gear already takes up a maddening amount of slots on Shanghai cable's only English-language channel (ICS), they've apparently got no problems with approval from the up-and-ups. A China version of the show could produce some interesting results, considering the auto industry here is marred with low popularity overseas and an often terrifying safety record. [Update: Confirmed! To be hosted by Beijing comedian and TV host Cao Yunjin, who says the pilot episode will include a race between a Cadillac and a donkey to see who pushes millstones faster.] more ›

Heads up Ferrari-lovers, you may want to get yourself down to the Pearl Tower fast. To celebrate the 999th Ferrari sold in China, the luxury sports maker put on a huge exhibition, showing 15 of its coveted car models next to the Oriental Pearl Tower. more ›

Just in time for the close of the Expo, the driverless van that left Italy in July has arrived! Let’s hope it bought a ticket! more ›

Or at least that's what we can deduce from the recent crash test performed on Chinese automaker Geely's CK1 saloon by Latin American NCAP crash tests. They received a zero out of five stars, and driver protection was labeled as "poor for most body regions." The car has no airbags, as is "standard" for the region apparently, and the NCAP discouraged Geely from simply adding them, stating that the structural weakness of the car was such that they wouldn't do any good anyway. more ›

The Mid-Autumn Festival is almost upon us, and as with any country-wide holiday in China, we can expect huge amounts (millions upon millions of people moving around!) of traffic both in and out of Shanghai. So what's Shanghai going to do? Block roads around Expo, apparently. more ›

Chinese automaker Geely will soon usurp Tata Motors' crown as producer of the world’s cheapest car. Geely is developing its own mini car, called the Gleagle IG, that will be even more affordable than Tata’s Nano. With a $2,250 price tag, it beats the Nano by almost a grand. more ›

Sleek, fast car, check. 3G capabilities, check. Attractive people (one male, one female, both not Chinese), check. A clear jingle? Er.... more ›

So, if you're a beautiful cross-dresser, you sadly won't be making it big on China's Got Talent, thanks to a bunch of narrow-minded producers and judges. However, one particularly lovely lad-lassie doesn't need a nationwide TV contest to showcase her beauty -- she's got crowds at her feet at a Chengdu auto show, where attention focuses more on her than the cars. Potential auto buyers think she's beautiful -- judge and appreciate for yourself, below: more ›

G.E. Anderson over at ChinaBizGov brings our attention to the shanzhai electric cars he discovered while in Baoding City, Hebei Province. more ›

Zhejiang car maker Geely is in the headlines this week for its acquisition of the loss-making Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo. The deal could turn out to be a win-win situation -- Geely could turn around the Swedish premium brand on the back of rising demand from a strong Chinese market, and Volvo, with its reputation for safety could help lift Geely's brand in global markets.
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Yes, this video, called "Shanghai's Drifter Girl," is quite obviously a viral ad. In fact, it's probably by the same people who made the whiny Shanghainese girl in a Buick showroom video. But hey, this one is shorter and considerably sweeter so I give it an A+. I wish I knew how to parallel park a car, much less park a Cadillac CTS by slamming on the handbrake and squealing it into a perfectly sized space. Apparently I'm not the only one - it's gotten over a million hits on Youku so far. more ›

So, apparently China’s expressway system has more than doubled in length in the past decade. It’s so long, in fact, that it should soon overtake the interstate highway system of the United States as the world’s longest. What's the impetus for such rapid lengthening? more ›