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From Reuters:

General Motors Co killed its minivan in the U.S. market thanks to its soccer-mom stigma, but the automaker has carved out a high-priced niche for the vehicle as a chauffeur-driven executive ride in China.

While many American families have shifted to crossover vehicles that offer space similar to minivans without the perceived dowdiness, China’s business elite like the Buick GL8′s roominess and features for getting around in the world’s largest auto market.

“The market for this really only exists in China and it’s a niche that we pretty much dominate here,” Lowell Paddock, vice president of planning for GM’s international operations, told Reuters last week at the Shanghai auto show.

Sales last year for the GL8 were 52,127, what Joseph Phillippi of AutoTrends Consulting called a “rounding error” in China’s 17.2 million light-vehicle market. Sales have hovered in that area the last several years for the Shanghai-built minivan.

While a far cry from the 336,000 minivans GM sold in the United States in 1999, the Buick minivan is proving quite popular with its Chinese customer base since its launch there in late 1999. GM stopped making minivans for the U.S. market in the fall of 2008.

“The demand for the GL8 is just huge. It’s unbelievable,” GM’s China chief Kevin Wale told reporters in Shanghai. “So many people ringing me up, saying, ‘I’ve ordered one. Can you get it to me quicker?’”

GM has looked at bringing the minivan back to the U.S. and Canadian markets using the GL8, but officials acknowledge for now the plan is for it to remain on sale only in China.

“They’ve looked at it on and off as long as I’ve been out here,” Wale said of U.S. officials. “They’ve made a fundamental decision that says demand for that type of product’s not strong enough. We say that’s fine. We’ll just keep selling out here.”

The vehicle, built at a plant GM operates under a joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor Corp , generates a “boatload of money” because it is based on an old U.S. minivan platform that does not require a lot of investment, Phillippi said. However, it would likely be costly to upgrade the GL8 to match current U.S. safety and feature requirements.

“I doubt whether the electrical or electronic architecture could handle the kind of hardware and technology you’d want to put into it to make it for the U.S.,” he said. “I love the car, but it may be impossible without massive investment.”

For instance, Susan Docherty, head of sales and marketing for GM’s international operations acknowledged the vehicle lacks the third-row, fold-flat seats U.S. car buyers prefer.

However, the newly redesigned GL8 and its still-available predecessor, the GL8 First Land, can boost sales in China as it lures some luxury-seeking customers, she added. The minivans sell for the equivalent of $35,000 to $58,000 in U.S. dollars.

Any additional demand in China could be met by boosting output as much as 30 percent at the Shanghai plant by adding another crew of workers, GM executives said.

Paddock emphasized no changes would be made that would disappoint the GL8′s core Chinese executive customers. GM even markets the GL8 in China as “business class on wheels.”

“We wouldn’t tamper with that to meet another market’s requirements,” he said. “It’s important that that be spot on in the China market.”

At a time when GM is focused on building cars it can sell globally, China executives at the U.S. automakers are perfectly happy to keep the GL8 a China-only story.

“There is still space for local programs and because of the size of the (Chinese) market they can be very successful,” Wale told Reuters.

On a recent visit to Great Wall Motors over in Baoding, I had a chance to press their PR man on the possibilities of a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), no firm answers were given and the coy grin kind of gave away the meaning behind the answer “They [JLR] are talking with lots of different automakers right now….”

Jaguar Land Rover is in talks with potential Chinese partners to set up an assembly plant in the world’s largest auto market, its chief executive said on Tuesday.

“We are still in discussions,” Ralf Speth told Reuters on the sidelines of the week-long Shanghai Auto show. “It takes time and we want to do it thoroughly.”

The company has contacted several Chinese automakers including Jiangling Motor Corp Ltd , which is 30-percent-owned by Ford Motor Co , and Great Wall Motor Co Ltd .

Jaguar Land Rover sold about 30,000 cars in China last year.

Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India’s Tata Motors Ltd , is among a very few top-line global brands that do not have manufacturing arrangements in China, where BMW AG , Audi AG and others have already racked up stellar sales.

Kevin Wale, president of GM China, reiterated the importance of Chinese market to GM and GM Chinas future development vision at the Shanghai Auto Show.

Baojun 630, a self-developed model of SGMW, one of GM’s joint ventures in China, was unveiled before the Shanghai Auto Show. SGMW denies the model is based on Excelle platform, and says the car’s chassis, exterior and interior are new designs. Baojun’s brand position will be lower than Chevrolet, and it helps to fill GM’s gap in entry-level vehicle sector and enrich GM’s brand lineup. Kevin revealed that the company will launch more products under Baojun brand in future.

Kevin also denies the rumor that GMC will be made by FAW-GM. He said that FAW-GM’s Changchun plant will start production in the second half of this year, but GMC is not included in its production plan.

GM China also released its 2011-2015 plan at the auto show. The company plans to double its annual sales to about 5 million units by 2015 by launching more than 60 new or upgraded models. It will make full use of the R&D capabilities of its local R&D center, PATAC. It also aims to lead in the electrification road of China’s auto industry and work on realizing vision of sustainable urban transportation.

From Xinhua:

The Shanghai Auto Show 2011 is set to conclude on Thursday with a “good harvest” for luxury brands, such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maybach.

The most eye-catching car was perhaps Aston Martin’s One-77 from the United Kingdom. Five cars of this luxury model, which reportedly numbers only 77 worldwide, were provided especially for the Chinese market. All of the five were sold before the official opening of the Auto Show.

The car was priced at 47 million yuan (7.2 million U.S. dollars), the most expensive among the top 10 luxury cars at the eight-day event.

A widely spread story at the fair recounted how a Chinese man, aged more than 30 years old, came to the Aston Martin booth and had a glimpse at the exhibits. Only minutes later, he ordered a compact sports car valued at nearly 4 million yuan and then swaggered off.

According to HIS Automotive, a market research firm based in the United States, 727,227 high-end cars were in use in China last year. The figure is expected to reach 909,946 this year, and 1.6 million in 2015.

Media reports showed that more than 1,000 Ferrari cars are driven in China, which is expected to become the second largest market for the world’s leading sports car supplier.

Last year also saw the sale of more than 120 Aston Martin cars in China, with an average annual sales growth of 50 percent in the country over the past few years.

Industry insiders believe that Chinese buyers of luxury cars at the Auto Show were probably private business owners and offspring from wealthy families.

According to research by the world’s leading consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, luxury goods consumers in China are much younger than their counterparts in other countries. Such consumers are often between 18 and 34 years old in China, whereas their peers account for less than 30 percent of total luxury goods buyers in Britain.

Further, around 25 percent of luxury goods consumers are willing to buy without any discount, while the proportion was only 6 percent in Europe.

Each week, our German correspondent slices and dices the latest rumblings, news, and quick-hit driving impressions from the other side of the pond. His byline may say Jens Meiners, but we simply call him . . . the Continental.

This edition of The Continental is brought to you from Detroit, where I spent a week following the New York auto show, attending a wonderful and touching memorial service for David E. Davis, Jr. (followed by a splendid gathering of many of the industry’s great names) and generally catching up with my colleagues at Car and Driver in Ann Arbor. It also provided a nice opportunity to sample some vehicles not sold in Europe, such as the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor (needs to be louder) and the Infiniti M56 (rough around the edges, but really fast). The trip to and from New York was undertaken in Car and Driver‘s long-term Nissan Juke, a car that I liked a lot less than most of my colleagues. It is quick, but it doesn’t sound sporty at all, its gearbox is notchy, and the interior looks and feels downright cheap. The gimmicky G-force meter, which doesn’t provide actual numbers, does not make up for the lack of real sporting qualities.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini made a brief appearance in a speech delivered by UAW chief Bob King in front of the Automotive Press Association here on Tuesday. They provided context for a diatribe against Michigan governor Rick Snyder and his attempt to cut back on the privileges enjoyed by the UAW. This union has arguably played a pivotal role in bringing Detroit’s auto industry to its knees, despite King’s description of the UAW plants as shining examples of quality and productivity. King now hopes to play a role in the non-unionized transplants of foreign carmakers, with whom he holds “confidential meetings” on the matter. His calculation: Should one of them fall, the “social pressure” on the others will bring them down as well. King’s vision? A seat on the board of every American automaker, such as his “brothers and sisters” in Germany enjoy.

It was an interesting speech. How can you have a democracy without collective bargaining, King asked rhetorically, and went as far as likening policies that aim to liberate the industry from the stranglehold of the unions to “human rights violations,” which would be exposed globally. Preparing to hold trials?

Premium Tidbits

Audi is—rightfully—promoting its A7 Sportback as an automotive designer piece. I just wonder why it is displayed in the bright ads (like on a huge display on Broadway in New York) with the S-line package, which adds boxy front air intakes and is an afterthought to the clean design of the standard A7.

Cadillac is going to be part of the trend towards customization and individualization, the brand’s marketing director Jim Vurpillat tells me. Some of it is going to be factory-installed, some dealer-installed, but “we won’t do 5 million variations like BMW,” he submits jokingly. The German carmakers, of course, have been known for their endless options lists, which generate handsome margins but also add incredible complexity to the manufacturing process.

Lincoln is pondering a performance line to underscore that it is serious about its status as a premium brand. Nothing has been decided, but I think it would be great to have performance variations of the MKS and the next MKZ.

So whom do premium brands benchmark? I asked around for a bit, and it emerges that Audi tops the list by a wide margin, followed by BMW. Lincoln takes a close, analytical look at Lexus and Cadillac as well. Conspicuously absent from the list is Mercedes-Benz, which should give the former global standard of automotive quality and engineering something to think about.

Audi will continue to race with diesels at the 24 hours of Le Mans, the most fascinating race on the planet despite its impossible media-credentials policy. This year, Audi will use a single-turbo, 3.7-liter, V-6 diesel instead of last year’s twin-turbo, 5.5-liter, V-10 diesel. Power is rated at around 532 hp, and the racing experience will be utilized for series production development. Good.

Somewhere beneath the Mondeo parts and camouflage, the next-gen Fusion is taking shape.

More than five years after its introduction, the Ford Fusion remains one of the Blue Oval’s most popular models, but the end is in sight for the current car. Ford is hard at work on the next generation of its mid-size sedan, which will finally ditch its antiquated Mazda-based platform and ride on bones shared with its European counterpart, the Mondeo.

Keep Reading: 2013 Ford Fusion Spy Photos – Future Cars

Fiat recently announced that the relaunch of the storied, sporting Alfa Romeo marque in the U.S. would be delayed—again—until roughly 2013. This postponement was attributed to Fiat’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, expressing dissatisfaction with the design of the upcoming Alfa Romeo models, including a new mid-size sedan.

Whether you’re an Alfista or not, though, you probably know that Alfa has been teasing, hinting at, implying, and outright confirming a return to the U.S. market ever since the brand left in 1995. That retreat was made in the face of horrendously low sales and a merited reputation for rotten quality, although, to be fair, Alfa sales have always been weak here, with the company’s high being just 8201 units in 1986.

To commemorate the latest delay, we’ve assembled a timeline of Alfa’s declarations of an American return; it begins in 2000, when the company entered into a partnership with General Motors. And for historical context, we’ve added some world events that occurred during the same time span.

Every sound a car makes in movies like Fast Five starts here.

California City is one of those places with no apparent reason for being. It’s stuck out in the middle of the Mojave Desert where it’s brutally hot in the summer and windstorms will sandblast the paint off your car any time of the year. Fewer than 15,000 people live here, and if they didn’t have jobs at Hyundai’s nearby proving ground, a lot of them would leave. But California City has an airport. And since that airport is never, ever busy, it’s the perfect place for Peter Brown to record car sounds.

Keep Reading: The Sound and the Fury: How Hollywood Gives Vehicles a Voice – Feature

The end is here. The California Mille participants have completed the four-day, 1000-mile journey, wrapping up yesterday in downtown Sonoma. All but one entry completed the challenging route—the lone exception being a stunning 1939 Jaguar SS100 that suffered a blown head gasket halfway through the journey. Unsurprisingly, none were in stock at the local Kragen. Cooling and electrical problems affected several Alfa Romeos and Jaguars, but were deftly remedied by the two master mechanics along the way.

Wednesday’s open track session at Thunderhill Raceway was a highlight of the run, with most of the participants taking to the track for spirited touring laps. This rather unlikely track session pitted the likes of a Peking-to-Paris-modified 1936 Chrysler Imperial Airflow against Alfa Romeo Giuliettas, the Airflow leaning precipitously through the off-camber corners in its attempts to match the lap times of the smaller, nimble European sports cars. Much to the dismay of some participants, the Toyota support vehicles (a Sienna and an Avalon) handily passed most of the vintage sports cars—a testament to the incredible capabilities of modern cars when compared with their decidedly less-able predecessors!

The Mille’s route culminated in a stunning scenic tour down Ridgecrest Boulevard, offering crystal-clear panoramic views of the Pacific as well as the San Francisco skyline. Photos can be found in the gallery below.

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Grippier tires and—finally!—grippier seats mark the C6’s last full year of production.

Regular (and even irregular readers) already know this, so for those who are unfamiliar with this institution, an introduction: Hi, we’re Car and Driver, and we hate the seats in the Corvette. Today, Chevy’s plastic fantastic isn’t so much a sports car as it is a budget supercar. But, in our every encounter with it, we come away just as appalled at its seats as we are amazed at its capabilities.

Keep Reading: 2012 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 / ZR1 – Car News