AUTO

Luxury car dealer H.R.Owen said it expected to return to profitability in 2010 and predicted better trading conditions, lifting its shares more than 6 percent on Wednesday.

General Motors has extended a December 31 deadline for bids for its Swedish car brand Saab, which will restart some production lines in January after a shutdown, Saab said on Wednesday.

General Motors Co is offering huge incentives to its dealers to speed up the sales of leftover inventory from its Saturn and Pontiac brands, that can push up the automaker's December sales, the Wall Street Journal said.

General Motors unit Opel said new registrations of its cars rose to the highest level in four years in 2009, when government-backed scrapping incentives bolstered a floundering European auto industry.

China's Geely would barely lay a finger on Ford Motor Co's Volvo if it succeeds in acquiring the Swedish luxury car brand, the firm's top executive was quoted by state media as saying on Friday.

Spyker Cars' chief executive expects a decision in days on whether the company has been successful in a bid to buy Sweden's Saab Automobile from U.S. parent General Motors.

Ford Motor Company's exit from luxury car brands is nearly complete. The sale of Volvo Car Corp. to the parent company of Chinese automaker Geely is expected to close by June of 2010, more than three years after Ford began to dismantle its premium auto group which once included Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin.

Chris Liddell has been hired by General Motors to serve as its vice chairman and chief financial officer.

The Swedish government and Saab officials held crisis talks about a threatened closure of the iconic auto brand as a Monday evening deadline loomed on a renewed buyout bid from Dutch and Russian-backed Spyker Cars.

General Motors said on Sunday it would evaluate several new expressions of interest for its Swedish unit Saab, including a fast-track bid from thwarted Dutch suitor Spyker Cars .

General Motors Co Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre said on Friday that GM has paid $1 billion to the U.S. Treasury and $192 million to the governments of Canada and Canadian province Ontario.

Opel labour leader Klaus Franz said talks with management over an upcoming plan from General Motors for the future of its European unit Opel should be finished by mid-February.

U.S. lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems Inc said it is forming a joint venture China's top carmaker SAIC Motor Corp to develop, make and sell battery systems for electric vehicles.

The head of Japan's auto-making lobby said on Thursday he feared that the U.S. market would remain weak and would not reach total sales of 11 million vehicles next year.

Chrysler will keep open through 2011 its Sterling Heights, Michigan, plant near Detroit that it had once planned to close at the end of 2010, a United Auto Workers vice president said on Thursday

General Motors Co said on Thursday that Brian K. Sweeney would be the new general manager of its Buick and GMC brands after his predecessor lasted nine days on the job.

German carmaker Daimler AG expects to use short working hours in response to weak demand for passenger cars in the first quarter of next year, Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche told Reuters on Thursday.

French carmaker Renault is in talks with German rival Daimler and others about partnerships to cut costs as the industry tries to become more efficient exiting the downturn.

General Motors' European arm Opel will launch hybrid models within five years as part of a campaign to overhaul and freshen its product line, GM Europe head Nick Reilly told a German magazine.

General Motors Co Chairman and acting Chief Executive Ed Whitacre said on Tuesday luxury car maker Spyker is the only remaining party with which GM is negotiating for the sale of its Saab brand.

Volvo, the world's second biggest truck maker, said on Tuesday its deliveries fell 37 percent in November on a year ago, and down 7 percent on the previous month, with no signs yet of an upturn.

Indian vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra has bought two small Australian firms to build its aerospace capacity so it can compete for large orders from airline manufacturers modernising Indian defence forces.

Volkswagen is poised to expand its automotive empire by making a full takeover bid for German truckmaker MAN SE, a German newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing an unidentified company executive.

Shares of Rockwell Automation Inc rose as much as 3.6 percent to a new 52-week high on Monday after a J.P. Morgan analyst said the maker of factory-control systems could be a good fit within General Electric Co's industrial lineup.

Toyota Motor Corp will begin selling affordable plug-in hybrid cars in 2011, upping the ante on General Motors and Nissan Motor as they aim to take the lead in the field of rechargeable cars.

Ford Motor Co Chief Executive Alan Mulally said in a CNBC interview on Thursday that he had talked this week with General Motors Co Chairman and Chief Executive Ed Whitacre.

Dutch sports car maker Spyker Cars NV remains interested in buying Swedish auto brand Saab from General Motors and is not aware of any deadlines imposed on the process, a spokesman for Spyker said.

General Motors's turnaround plan for its European carmaker Opel will likely be completed only in January, GM Europe President Nick Reilly wrote in a blog posting on Thursday.

Tata Motors plans to acquire Japan's Sumitomo Corp's 53.5 percent stake in truck and bus maker Swaraj Mazda in a deal worth up to $54 million to boost its commercial vehicles business, the Economic Times reported on Thursday.