With the “Cash for Clunkers” program, some automakers had their best month of the year. But the week after the program ended sales fell considerably.

Ford said its sales rose 17% last month from the previous year. July also showed increased sales by 2.3 %.

Hyundai said its sales increased by 47% last month compared to the previous year. Honda rose by 10% and Toyota rose by 6%.

The Clunkers program seemed to help the Asian automakers more than the Detroit companies. About one out of every five vehicles was a Toyota, making it the most popular followed by GM, Ford and Honda.

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Toyota, considered the greenest of automakers, is falling behind in the race to go electric.
Mitsubishi started leasing its all electric vehicle in June. Next year Nissan is set to release the Leaf (its electric car). Toyota has said they will not introduce their electric car until 2012. Toyota does plan to introduce a plug in electric gasoline hybrid later this year.

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Last month we learned that GM would be ending its joint venture, New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., with Toyota. Toyota is now going to begin discussions towards dissolving the venture with the “Old GM.” Toyota has been examining the US market after auto sales have been on the down side. Toyota is carefully looking at their options for NUMMI.

Toyota has said that the labor costs are not competitive with other plants in the U.S. such as Georgetown, Kentucky. The UAW has said that part of the reason for the joint venture was to have American employees learn Toyota’s methods of production, which are more efficient.

California represents Toyota’s largest market in the United States. California senators and House members are communicating with Toyota to see is they can keep the plant from closing.

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Fiat, the Italian automaker which owns a 20% controlling interest in the new Chrysler, announced an equal partnership, joint venture with Chinese automaker Guangzhou Automobile Group. The companies announced that they would build a new 173 acre plant in Hunan province with production scheduled to begin at the end of 2011. The plant will cost more than $550 million and will have the ability to manufacture 140,000 cars and 220,000 engines per year after the first phase is completed. Upon completion of all phases production would eventually increase to 250,000 cars and 300,000 fuel-efficient, low emission engines per year. Guangzhou Automobile Group which already has similar joint ventures with Honda and Toyota, stated that it had delivered more than 530,000 vehicles last year.

After 25 years General Motors has ended its joint with Toyota at its plant in Fremont, California. The project, known as the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or Nummi, has manufactured more than 6 million vehicles, including the Corolla sedan and Tacoma pickup truck for Toyota, and the Pontiac Vibe for GM. GM will no longer be producing Pontiacs next year and intends to discontinue the Vibe in August. GM also announced that it did not intend to continue utilizing the Fremont facility after it emerges from bankruptcy, which is expected to occur in late summer, 2009. The venture allowed Toyota to apply its system in the United States and enabled GM to learn from the Toyota manufacturing process. The plant, which has over 4,700 employees, and has more than 5,000,000 square feet of assembly space is the last auto plant operating in California. Toyota has not yet decided whether it will continue to operate in the Fremont facility, and has rejected reports that it was considering building the Prius in Fremont. Both the Corolla and the Tacoma are being assembled and other facilities, the Corolla in Canada and the Tacoma in Mexico.

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Although 8.5 million cars and light trucks were assembled in the United States last year, the traditional Big Three automakers, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors, only accounted for about 5 million of those. The remaining 3 million were built in the United States in American plants for manufacturers such as Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Honda, and BMW. Making it more confusing is that the Big Three also have assembly plants in Canada and Mexico. Thus, American car buyers are faced with the question of whether a car manufactured by a company with its headquarters in Japan, but which has been built in Ohio, as is the Honda Accord, is more American than is a car from an American company headquartered in Michigan selling cars manufactured in Mexico, as is, for example, the Ford Fusion.

Toyota is the leading producer of vehicles built in the United States beating out Chrysler last year by a slight margin. In fact, Honda has been building its vehicles in the United States since as early as 1982 in its plant in Marysville Ohio. And in the 80s and 90s Canadian and Mexican plants were already turning out cars for the Big Three American manufacturers.

Therefore, what is euphemistically called “domestic content,” may not be domestic at all. Domestic content may include parts made in Canada and Mexico. However, while American auto workers are assembling vehicles in American plants for foreign manufacturers, labor is excluded from the determination of what is American-built. Thus, foreign auto manufacturers with assembly plants in the United States cannot factor in the value of American labor, nor be credited for it.

To further confuse matters while, for example, Honda builds its engines in its plant in Ohio for the Acura RTX, the country of origin is still listed as Japan. The reason is that one expensive part, the turbocharger, is actually manufactured and imported from Japan although installed by workers in the Ohio plant.

Clearly, determining whether a car is American-built is confusing and oftentimes misleading.