Car sales slump shows eurozone fragility; Six years to fix Greece; Globaliser Toyoda dies at 100

1 Car sales slump show eurozone fragility (Gwyn Topham in The Guardian) Slumping car sales across the EU in August have underlined the fragility of the eurozone economy, with the cumulative figures for the year to date at a record low. The UK remained the only major European market to record more new passenger car registrations in 2013 than last year, with 10.9% more sales this August than last.

Across the EU, sales dropped to 653,872 vehicles in August – traditionally a slow month but a figure that still remains 5% lower than in 2012. For 2013 so far, the total stands at just 7,841,596 – the lowest figure since the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) started compiling them in 1990.
Despite the downward trend, analysts believe the picture could soon improve for car manufacturers. Mark Fulthorpe, an automotive analyst at IHS, said: "The general sense we get is that we are now bumping along the bottom. At least in the car market, the rate of decline has slowed.

2 Six years to fix Greece (BBC) Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the debt-ridden country could return to pre-crisis living standards within six years. "According to most [experts], we will not need a couple of decades, not a couple of generations, but only six years," he said. International lenders are due to conduct a new audit of Greece, where strikes against cuts are under way.

Greece's economy has shrunk by 23% since 2008, and international lenders expect it to diminish by a further 4.2% this year. The country has received two aid packages totalling about 240bn euros ($321bn) and will need about 10bn euros more to cover a funding gap.

In rare good news for the economy, a finance ministry official said the government expected its budget gap over 2015 and 2016 to be "well below" 2% of GDP thanks to a strong tourism season this year. Mr Samaras said his government had implemented "sweeping reforms" and the country was now "going through the end of the recession". 

3 Globaliser Toyoda dies at 100 (Yoshio Takahashi & Chester Dawson in The Wall Street Journal) Eiji Toyoda spent half his life managing Toyota Motor Corp. and played an integral role in Japan's rise to the top of the global auto industry while restoring the founding family as leaders. Mr. Toyoda, who died on Tuesday just days after his 100th birthday, had a 15-year tenure as president during which Toyota cracked the US auto market by offering small, high quality cars that Detroit had neglected.

After touring Ford Motor Co.'s main plant in the US in 1950, Mr. Toyoda returned home with the idea of tailoring the mass-production methods he saw to Japanese standards. It became the basis of Toyota's efficient production that he promoted as kaizen, or continuous improvement, and led Toyota to become the world's largest auto maker by volume and one of Japan's most profitable companies.

After a failed early attempt to appeal to US buyers, Toyota succeeded with its 1968 Corolla model the year after Mr. Toyoda took over as president. Over its nearly 47 years on the market, the Corolla has become the world's most popular car, with more than 40 million sold. To avoid an escalation of trade friction between the US and Japan in the 1980s, Mr. Toyoda oversaw creation of a joint production venture with General Motors Corp. in Fremont, Calif., called New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. It was Toyota's first production site in the US; it now has six US assembly plants.

The Toyoda family changed the company name to Toyota in 1936 mainly for marketing reasons—believing it sounded crisper and more modern than the fairly common family name. Eiji Toyoda became president of Toyota Motor in 1967 and in 1982 he was named chairman of the reunified Toyota Motor Co. with Shoichiro Toyoda, son of the founder, as president. Eiji Toyoda stepped down as chairman in 1992 and served as honorary chairman until 1999, when he assumed the ceremonial post of honorary adviser until his death.