Berlin - European car sales plunged 25.8 per cent in November, data released Tuesday showed as global economic downturn continues to deepen.

Tokyo  - Japan's largest automaker, Toyota Motor Corp, is implementing a series of cost-cutting measures to weather the global financial crisis and its resulting fall in car sales.

Toyota has put a project to develop a diesel motor with Isuzu Motors Ltd on ice, Japanese media reported Tuesday, citing informed sources.

The engine was to be used in small cars for the European market.

Paris - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepared to meet with representatives from the country's auto industry later on Monday, the head of Renault, Carlos Ghosn, said emergency government loans were necessary for the sector to survive the economic crisis.

"What we are demanding from the state is some reasonable financing, over 2 to 3 years, at interest rates between 4 and 5 per cent," Ghosn said in an interview published Monday in the daily Le Figaro.

The car industry is very "credit-intensive," Ghosn said, with two of every three cars purchased on credit. "If the finance crisis continues, you will see one producer after the other fail," he warned.

Bremerhaven, Germany  - Europe's biggest car terminal is bursting at the seams as unsold cars pile up, mirroring the dramatic situation in the automobile industry.

More than 90,000 vehicles are clogging the shipping terminal in the north German port of Bremerhaven, waiting to find new owners.

"We can't move the cars, work on them or deliver them until they find buyers," said Detthold Aden, head of the BLG Logistics Group, which administers the facility.

Roll-on roll-off vessels delivering new cars or loading them up for export have always been a welcome sight in the bustling port. That is not the case for the nine large car carriers tied up this weekend.

The corporate credit rating of automaker Tata Motors has been lowered by Standard & Poor’s (S&P’s), from ‘BB’ to ‘BB-’. S&P’s credit analyst Mehul Sukkawala said, “We've downgraded Tata Motors and placed the rating on credit watch due to the faster-than-expected deterioration in the automobile market conditions.”  

Tata's sales in India decreased 30 percent last month from November 2007, a much higher decline than expected. The decline followed a 20 percent October decrease from 2007. Also, Jaguar and Land Rover, the marquee British brands that Tata Motors bought out early this year, have seen shrinking demand in the key markets of the US and Europe. This is likely to have an adverse impact on Tata Motors’ financial profile.

When the U.S. senate failed on Thursday to pass a $14 billion rescue package for Detroit's three major car manufacturers, it took on the role of Christmas Grinch for autoworkers.

On Thursday, the senate got only a few ‘yes’ votes short of the 60 needed to block a filibuster on the bailout bill, effectively killing any chance of Congress providing a lifeline to the financially drowning automakers this year.

Following when the news was out, markets across the Asia-Pacific region were down more than 3 percent and Japan's Nikkei average and Hong Kong's Hang Seng were both down by more than 5 percent.