Lord Mandelson will not make the decision over whether to sanction a taxpayer bail-out of an imploding British van-maker owned by his friend, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, it has been confirmed. LDV was on the brink yesterday as insiders warned that it would collapse within days unless it rec...

Lord Mandelson was facing a politically fraught decision last night over whether to sanction a taxpayer bailout of an imploding UK van-maker owned by his friend, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. LDV was on the brink yesterday as insiders warned that it would collapse within days unless it receiv...

BMW came under furious criticism yesterday after it said it was laying off 850 agency workers at its plant in Cowley, near Oxford, where it makes the Mini. Union leaders attacked the decision to end the weekend shift, which the company blamed on falling demand. Opposition politicians seized on the a...

There was anger today as BMW confirmed that 850 jobs were being cut by ending weekend working at its Mini car plant near Oxford. The cuts will mostly affect agency workers when they come into force from 2 March when the plant begins operating five days a week, instead of the current seven. Union sou...

The first sign of Honda's imminent departure from formula one – the coughing canary, if you like – came just before Christmas, when the team's bosses gave 24 hours' notice of the decision to cancel their annual lunch for the British media. This was not a tea-and-sandwiches affair at their factor...

One of President Barack Obama's historic contributions will be a grand act of policy jujitsu - turning the crushing economic crisis into the launch of a new age of sustainable development. His macroeconomic stimulus may or may not cushion the recession, and bitter partisan fights over priorities no ...

Cheap car loans to encourage nervous motorists back into the showrooms could be unveiled this week under plans being drawn up by the government to rescue the stricken motor industry. Gordon Brown has privately signalled backing for extending some of the same support for lending now being offered to ...

"Everyone knows someone who works at Nissan," says Elaine Thoms, and she speaks for the whole of Washington and plenty of Wearside towns beyond. Fallout from job cuts at the carmaker, which is shedding a quarter of its 4,900 workforce, is rippling from the factory overlooking Sunderland across the w...

The US government has expanded its bail-out of the US car industry by pledging $6bn (£4.1bn) in support of General Motors's finance arm. Last night the Bush administration announced it was pumping $5bn into GM's finance arm GMAC and lending a further $1bn to GM to help it buy shares in GMAC, which ...

There’s a fair argument to be made that bailing out the Big Three automotive companies for their own bad decisions is just throwing good money after bad, but it turns out that the GOP politicians that killed the bi-partisan auto bailout bill weren’t so much concerned about the money bein...