Word: auto
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Amid the gruesome news generated by the world's auto industry these days, this bit of information almost reads like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year on year in February, the country's Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) announced on March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed VDA president Matthias Wissmann, amounted to the highest level of sales in the month of February in a decade...
...hard to fathom why. Carmakers are grappling with an extraordinary shortage of credit and customers. Sales in Europe - where the $700 billion auto industry accounts directly or indirectly for 1 in 10 jobs - dropped to a 15-year low last year, with little sign of picking up in 2009. Toyota announced on March 11 that 4,500 workers at its British factories would see their pay and hours slashed 10% for a year starting in April. The German and British governments are still in talks with GM over potential aid for the U.S. automaker's beleaguered European subsidiaries, Opel...
...domestic carmakers. In Germany, sales of the Volkswagen Polo and Opel Corsa have been boosted by the government's initiative, but a surge in orders for Italy's Fiat and Renault of France means "two-thirds of the additional sales are imported cars," says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, an auto-industry expert at the University of Duisburg-Essen. "And most of the German cars which are booming are at least partly produced elsewhere...
...ended." That same prospect has angered some in the industry. Christian Streiff, boss of France's PSA Peugeot Citroën, warned such incentive schemes have an "inverse effect" - they essentially guarantee an implosion in the market once the subsidies stop. (See the best cars from the 2009 Detroit Auto Show...
...voice is the culprit, such as on “Don’t Let Me Stop You,” in which she strains herself trying to match her words to the music, resulting in strange inflections and awkward embellishments. The occasional use of Auto-Tune and other vocal effects on tracks like “If I Can’t Have You” only adds to this impersonal feel. Successful enough to afford the best production and good enough to show off her bare voice she has no reason to cover her powerful vocals. It seems...