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China takes lead as GM's No. 1 market

It's happened. General Motors' biggest vehicle market - at least in terms of new model sales - is China. According to TheDetroitBureau.com, GM and its various Chinese joint venture operations enjoyed a 10.6-percent sales increase in the first half of 2013, selling almost 1.6 million units in the market. That puts GM China about 200,000 units ahead of its US sales totals over the same period - this, despite indicators that the communist nation's economy is losing momentum.
TDB notes that like GM, rival Ford has also enjoyed a robust 2013 in China thus far, with its sales up a whopping 47 percent to 407,721 units sold - 75,254 of them in June alone. Between the two US automakers, passenger car sales for the first half of 2013 are up around 14 percent, well ahead of the rest of the industry's 10-percent growth estimates for the market. Some of the sales growth may come as a result of an overall anti-Japan sentiment in China, though the American brands have long outsold their Japanese counterparts in the country.
By The General's own predictions, China will only continue to grow in sales importance. The company has designs on selling over five million cars a year in the market before the end of the decade, a total that figures to dramatically widen the gap versus its US totals - even if America's auto market makes a full recovery to the the salad days of over 17-million units a year.

2015 Ford Mustang to make world debut on Dec. 5 [w/video]

Between a bevvy of spy shots, speculative renders and insidery images from the halls of Car and Driver, we've got a pretty decent idea of what the 2015 Ford Mustang might look like. Still, we're excited to see the real deal as soon as possible.
Turns out that Ford has told us just when that first official look might come, too, although it has chosen somewhat of a backdoor fashion for dropping the news.
The video below popped up on the Ford Mustang YouTube channel this morning, promoting a social media effort called #MustangInspires on. The video and hashtag ask fans of the pony car to share pictures of the car - or "photographic stories of inspiration" - on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But the truly interesting part of the video description is that which mentions taking "the cover off the all-new Mustang" on December 5. Consider our calendars marked.

Ford Transit production fires up, American Pickers among first takers

Not long ago, the History Channel showed a seemingly unending stream of World War II documentaries, but it made a switch a few years ago to include an increasing mix of 'reality' programming. American Pickers was one of the early attempts at this new formula, with cameras following hosts Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz around the country in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter as they tracked down collectibles and "rusty gold" for their Iowa shop, Antique Archeology. The show has since gone on to become one of the channel's most popular programs.
Starting in the new episode airing tonight, the affable hosts will swap their Benz for a 2015 Ford Transit, a nicely timed bit of marketing to coincide with the launch of the model's assembly at the Blue Oval's Kansas City Assembly Plant, which also kicks off this week. Ford is touting 2,000 new jobs created as part of its $1.1-billion investment in the plant.
No strangers to product placement, the guys from American Pickers say their switch away from the Sprinter is because they wanted to balance cargo capacity and fuel economy to make the most of their cross-country jaunts. They opted for the largest Transit available with a long wheelbase, extended body and high roof, giving them 487 cubic feet of cargo room. Hauling power comes from a 3.2-liter, five-cylinder diesel engine with 190 horsepower and 346 pound-feet of torque and a six-speed automatic transmission with rear-wheel drive. Fittingly, the van wears the same Antique Archaeology logo over white paint as their old Sprinter.