General Motors announced Monday that it will invest $336 million in the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant to begin production of the Chevrolet Volt electric car in 2010.
GM said that brings its total Volt-related investments in Michigan to $700 million, covering eight facilities.
[...]
Maybe tiny Suzuki Motor Corp. no longer has to be concerned that sales for its American Suzuki Motor Corp. unit have been evaporating towards near-nonexistence: information from Europe says the burgeoning Volkswagen Group has plans to take over Suzuki by the end of the year.
A [...]
General Motors made official a number of key leadership changes, including the elevation of Mark Reuss, a 46-year-old engineer and "car guy," to president of GM North America, Nick Reilly to president of GM Europe and Vice Chairman Bob Lutz becomes an advisor on design [...]
General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz is being reassigned to a new role and some younger execs will be moved up in the continuing shake-up of the management ranks, being outlined later Friday morning.
Chairman Ed Whitacre, who [...]
First it was one-off exotic-car builder Koenigsegg Group. With that deal part of history, a new one-off exotic-car maker, Netherlands-based Spyker Cars NV, formally confirmed yesterday it is talking to General Motors Co. about acquiring GM's twisting-in-the-wind Saab Automobiles.
Spyker [...]
Chrysler Group LLC is taking part in an interesting politically-oriented promotion with a TV film - opening on the Chrysler brand's Website Thursday - supporting a movement advocating the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, pro-democracy leader in Burma and 1991 Nobel [...]
U.S. auto sales clocked in about flat in November compared with a year ago -- and in line with widespread expectations that the market will only gradually creep upward for at least the next year. But industry executives and analysts mostly chose to interpret the [...]
General Motors Co. Chairman Ed Whitacre, now acting CEO, told employees Wednesday that it may take up to a year to find a replacement for Fritz Henderson, who was ousted by the board on Tuesday, according to a report by [...]
General Motors' just-ousted CEO Fritz Henderson had been slated to speak at the Motor Press Guild's breakfast Wednesday to kick off the Los Angeles auto show's press days. But a day earlier, Henderson got the boot. GM's marketing chief Bob Lutz was called upon [...]
General Motors' Bob Lutz said the first Chevrolet Volts will go on sale in California beginning late next year, fulfilling GM's long-held promise that the Volt would be in production by November 2010.
Lutz, speaking to the Motor Press Guild at [...]
In a significant signal of the cost pressures on global manufacturers, Daimler AG announced Wednesday that its Mercedes-Benz premium-vehicle division will transfer some production of its entry-level C-Class sedan to the U.S.
The company said "additional production" of the C-Class will [...]
General Motors' CEO Fritz Henderson has resigned and government-appointed chairman Ed Whitacre has assumed control as interim CEO of the automaker. A search for a CEO begins immediately, Whitacre confirmed late Tuesday at a hastily scheduled press conference at which he refused to answer questions.
[...]
General Motors Board of Directors said Tuesday it has received "expressions of interest in Saab" and will evaluate those potential bids through the end of December.
"At that time, we will determine whether a suitable arrangement for Saab exists," GM said in a [...]
Ford's sale of Volvo to Chinese automaker Geely appears to be edging toward completion, as major hurdles are cleared.
Geely, the preferred bidder for Ford's Volvo unit, reportedly is seeking at least $1 billion in loans from Chinese banks to finance its bid for [...]
Higher Incentives on 2010 models, luxury cars, Hondas, Toyotas and General Motors' orphan brands along with an increase in leasing and lease deals pushed the average automaker incentive in November beyond that of October and that of November a year ago.
Edmunds.com estimates the average incentive at $2,713 per vehicle [...]
If you thought you missed out on best-of-the-year car deals on Black Friday, forget about it. If last year is any indication, December is the best time to get a great deal.
Neither Fridays nor November are the best times to get the biggest discounts on cars and trucks, according [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-ditch effort from Ford Motor Co. Monday to reverse an $82.6 million decision in a product-liability case involving the Ford Explorer, according to the Wall Street Journal.
California resident Benetta Buell-Wilson and her husband sued Ford in 2002, [...]
Forward-thinking Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., recently told financial analysts he is taking a page from history past in creating a new business model for the high-tech company. Oracle is going vertical.
And Ellison is not alone in turning back to the century-old vertical integration strategy whereby a company [...]
The conclusion by trackers of overly-hyped Black Friday holiday shopping revealed a trend seen in the auto industry all year: shoppers are looking but in the end, spending less and buying only when they find a bargain.
Automakers monitor shopping patterns as consumer spending makes up 70 percent of the [...]
Lending by U.S. banks - the lifeblood of the auto industry -- fell 2.8 percent in the third quarter, the largest drop since at least 1984 and the fifth consecutive quarter in which banks have reduced lending, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued Tuesday and reported on by [...]
Thanksgiving week saw the blow-up of yet another deal for a cast-off General Motors Co. brand, but unsurprisingly, nobody's yet declaring Saab Automobile a dead turkey.
A Bloomberg News report from China early Monday had Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC) president Wang [...]
The "value" message always has been a given.
But now after seemingly completing its second major brand-co nfirming objective - convincing the public and third-party metrics-makers it builds quality products - Hyundai Motor America is off on its next mission: to [...]
Just as General Motors was about to seal the deal to sell Saturn to the Penske Automotive Group on Sept. 30, French automaker Renault, which had pledged to supply small vehicles to the venture, backed out, an executive involved in the negotiations told a [...]
Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it will repair and replace accelerator pedals on 3.8 million recalled Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the United States to address the issue of pedals being jammed by the floor mat, potentially causing unintended acceleration.
As an interim step, Toyota said it will [...]
General Motors confirmed Tuesday that its planned sale of Swedish automaker Saab to Koenigsegg Group AB has collapsed with Koenigsegg terminating the sale.
What's next for Saab has yet to be determined.
"We're obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out of the Saab [...]
General Motors last week began sending out 1.8 million pieces of direct mail to what the automaker calls its "free-agent customers" -- customers orphaned by the wind-down of Pontiac and Saturn and the proposed sell-off of Hummer and Saab.
In this first of [...]
Leasing may have been down, but it isn't out.
After all but abandoning leasing for the past year, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC each have reported either a re-entry or expansion in the leasing business. And other manufacturers who never got out of the game [...]
After the sales plunge in the auto market began in earnest in the fall of 2008, automakers scrambled to reduce production schedules, sell off swollen inventories and otherwise deal with a drastically contracting U.S. market.
Now, after months of production cutbacks orchestrated by many automakers and the summer's outsized demand [...]
It's early, admit General Motors prognosticators, but November could hit a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate of 11 million vehicle sales, making it the highest level this year outside of the Cash for Clunker months of July and August.
GM's top analyst Mike DiGiovanni told media in a conference call Thursday that [...]
At the request of General Motors' new chairman, Ed Whitacre, the automaker's top engineers are calling the couple hundred customers who are returning or exchanging their GM cars under the 60-day money-back guarantee policy to find out why.
Mark Reuss, GM's recently [...]
In order to prod soccer moms across the nation to plug a visit to the BMW dealership into their Blackberrys, BMW North America Inc. this week nonchalantly announced the price for its first "full" hybrid-electric vehicle, the ActiveHybrid X6: $89,725.
Welcome to hybridization [...]
November is living up to its reputation as one of the worst months of the year for car sales, prompting automakers to launch holiday promotions in an effort to end one of the worst years for sales on a slightly higher note.
November sales in the U.S., both retail and fleet, are [...]
Think of four words you might use to describe a Hyundai Sonata. Got 'em? Did any of the following come to mind: "Sharp"? "Distinctive"? "Aggressive"? "Radical"? If not, then perhaps you haven't seen the all-new for 2011 Hyundai Sonata because [...]
A rigorous new roof-strength standard means a lot fewer new models earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's "Top Safety Pick" award for 2010.
This year, just 27 individual models were named Top Safety Pick by the IIHS, compared with last year's [...]
In a recent meeting with automotive media, Nissan-Renault chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn said Nissan intends to stick with fullsize pickups in the U.S. and also said there is a future for other trucks and SUVs in Nissan's model range, including the Quest minivan.
The fullsize pickup [...]
Engineers at General Motors Co. working on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle yesterday told the media development remains on track and that the start of production for GM's game-changing, fuel-saving 4-seater now is less than a year away.
When GM unveiled [...]
The good news after General Motors Co.'s report on its financial health was released Monday: the "new" General isn't dying.
But the patient's long-term prognosis, admitted CEO Fritz Henderson, isn't exactly a clean bill of health just yet.
"When you come [...]
Dieter Zetsche, Daimler AG chairman and head of the German automaker's Mercedes-Benz passenger-car division, said yesterday in a media conference in New York that it "remains to be seen" if the U.S. economy really is improving, adding that "there is some (economic) data causing concern."
[...]
Top executives at General Motors Co. and Chrysler LLC have both gone out of their way in the past week to say their once-bankrupt companies are positioning themselves to pay back the tens of billions of dollars loaned to them by the federal government.
The man charged with overseeing the [...]
The Nissan-Renault alliance is making a major push to accelerate the adoption of fully electric vehicles despite persistent skepticism the public - and the world's vehicle infrastructure - is ready to adopt such a paradigm shift, says the alliance's chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn in a guest editorial at Edmunds.com's [...]
Criticism of its unconventional looks nothwithstanding, Honda Motor Co. Ltd.'s new Crosstour 4-door hatchback seems to be causing a stir in the marketplace as consumers try to determine just what the Crosstour is - and how to categorize it versus other types of vehicles.
[...]
General Motors Co.'s Buick division today released images and information for the 2011 Buick Regal and is openly billing the new-age Buick as a sport sedan.
Given the new Regal's origins with GM's second-generation global midsize chassis that was engineered by Adam Opel [...]
The distractions for much of the year surrounding the Volkswagen Group's ownership tussle with Porsche AG didn't stop VW from achieving a significant global milestone: VW this month surpassed Toyota Motor Corp. as the world's largest vehicle manufacturer.
The United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper reports IHS Global Insight figures as indicating [...]
With luxury automakers taking a beating from the global recession and the geared-down "new" economy left in its wake, some are writing the epitaph for premium cars.
But in a meeting with the media this week, BMW North America LLC officials said that although the economic meltdown indeed has caused [...]
General Motors has made remarkable strides since emerging from bankruptcy July 10 and is "better positioned for success than I thought was possible" then, said Ed Whitacre in his first public speech since becoming GM chairman in July.
"We're getting into a fighting shape. [...]
China's Geely Holding Group Co., selected by Ford as the lead bidder for Volvo, has developed a turnaround plan for the money-losing Swedish brand that centers on China but also sets ambitious goals for sales in Volvo's traditional markets of Europe and North America, [...]
French automaker Renault will take on Tata Motors' Nano, currently billed as the world's cheapest car, with "an ultra low-cost" car designed by Renault and built by its partner in India, Bajaj Auto beginning in 2012, a year later than originally planned.
"The cost of this car will be lower [...]
General Motors will invest nearly $100 million in a Canadian plant and call back all laid-off workers to boost production of its Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports.
The investment will be made in CAMI Automotive Inc., a [...]
General Motors' decision to keep Opel has ruffled political feathers and rankled the union rank and file in Germany, but it is - and always was - the right business decision for the automaker.
While it is in dire need of restructuring that [...]
After a day-long session in which executives from Chrysler Group LLC and its managing partner Fiat S.p.A. made public the company's financial and product strategies that will carry it forward for the next five years, the overall impression is of a plan based on optimistic growth assumptions [...]
The chief of General Motors European operations, Carl-Peter Forster, plans to leave the company after this week's u-turn that calls for the automaker keeping rather than selling Opel. European media reports claim. GM's head of all international operations Nick Reilly is [...]
Hoping to mitigate crash-related injuries to a vehicle's rear-seat passengers, Ford Motor Co. unveiled what it is calling the auto industry's first seatbelts with integral air bags that inflate in an accident to provide additional protection.
The new rear-seat inflatable seatbelts will be offered for the [...]
After Chrysler Group LLC detailed an all-encompassing, five-year business plan to a horde of analysts and the media Wednesday, most left the company's headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., wondering whether it was fair to judge the plan outlandish or merely wildly [...]
At Chrysler Group LLC's unveiling of its 5-year business plan at its headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI, today, CEO Sergio Marchionne laid to rest a few rumors about the new joining of Chrysler and Fiat S.p.A. One of them was the long-rumored ambition for Fiat to use the alliance to [...]
Outlining a 5-year plan to move Chrysler forward, managing partner Fiat S.p.A. will couple the Chrysler brand with Fiat's premium Lancia cars in some international markets.
"Lancia and Chrysler have many things in common," said Michael Manley, Chrysler's president and CEO, Jeep brand and lead [...]
At a giant confab Wednesday to unveil its 5-year business plan, Chrysler Group LLC ended months of speculation by detailing how the Fiat 500 subcompact will be initially sold in the U.S.
The 500 - a runaway hit in Europe for Fiat S.p.A., [...]
The original Jeep -- the Jeep Wrangler -- will serve as the anchor of the brand, the brand's keeper Mike Manley told the 400 media, dealers and analysts attending the meeting at which Fiat is rolling out Chrysler's five-year plan.
Special models and [...]
Fred Diaz, head of the new Ram truck brand and Chrysler's sales chief, said the goal of newly created division will be to increase truck sales by 50 percent in the next few years, from today's 280,000 to 415,000.
The brand will launch a new ad campaign called "My Name [...]
Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, in kicking off a six-hour business meeting outlining Chrysler's five-year plan, said Chrysler is in better financial shape than the media and outsiders suggest.
He said Chrysler has boosted its cash reserves by $1.7 billion from the [...]
Chrysler Group LLC is underway right now with what is one of the year's most crucial auto-industry events: the company's plan moving forward for the next five years under management by Italy's Fiat S.p.A.
Chrysler is revealing new models it's working on, how it plans to fix and improve its [...]
Ralph Gilles, Chrysler's head of design and CEO of the Dodge division, laid out the division's future product plan at the marathon meeting outlining Chrysler's five-year plan under Fiat.
The biggest news is that Dodge finally will introduce a new B-segment hatch in the [...]
General Motor board of directors, meeting in Detroit Tuesday, has voted that the automaker keep its European subsidiary Adam Opel AG in light of the improving environment for GM and the importance of Opel and Vauxhall, its British entity, to its global strategy, the [...]
U.S. auto sales in October turned in a performance reminiscent of what can now be called the good old days before last year's market collapse, about even with October 2008 but up 13 percent from September.
October saw the first year-to-year sales increase -- [...]
Incentives paid by automakers dipped in October from September and a year ago as they launch new 2010 models, which don't need them yet, and wind down 2009 models, Edmunds.com reports.
The average automotive manufacturer incentive in the U.S. was $2,468 per vehicle sold in October 2009, according to Edmunds.com [...]
Automakers report October sales on Tuesday and those reports are likely to show some signs of life.
Edmunds.com forecasts the Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) of car sales will come in at 10.3 milllion to 10.4 million, the year's highest level aside from the summer's Cash for Clunkers months of July and [...]
Ford Motor Co. reported it earned a profit of $997 million in the third quarter, with its North American operations posting its first profit since the first quarter of 2005. The automaker said the results put it on track to be "solidly [...]
Don't look now, but gasoline prices have crept up to their highest level of 2009. Typically that means trouble for the auto business, but if gas prices stay high, this time the outcome may be different.
Demand for fuel-efficient vehicles seems to be, drastically more challenging nationwide fuel-economy standards are [...]
Alan Mulally might have reckoned he left union discord behind when he left aerospace giant Boeing Co. to become Ford Motor Co.'s president and CEO in 2006. But this weekend's resounding dismissal of Ford's desired concessions from the United Auto Workers union may [...]
In exchange for becoming the operating partner and 20-percent owner of Chrysler Group LLC, Fiat S.p.A. said it would work to incorporate its new efficiency-enhancing powertrain technologies into Chrysler-badged vehicles and other models the two companies may introduce into the U.S. market.
[...]
While Chrysler and Fiat designers were working quietly behind the scenes to jointly develop new models, transportation design students in Italy were doing the same.
The two final vehicles selected by the students to develop into models have been revealed. Perhaps [...]
Today the Department of Transportation and White House chose to respond to an analysis Edmunds.com released Wednesday that looked at auto sales this year and what sales volumes would have been had the popular Cash for Clunkers program never existed.
At issue is one point of the analysis showing [...]
The White House and Department of Transportation claim Edmunds.com got it wrong in its Cash for Clunkers analysis released Wednesday. That analysis shows each incremental sale from the government's Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program -- sales that wouldn't have occurred without the program -- cost taxpayers $24,000. [...]
October car sales are expected to come in at the highest level of the year except for during the summer's frenzied Cash for Clunker months, Edmunds.com forecasts.
Industry sales, being reported on Tuesday, are expected to total 830,000 vehicles, almost even with a year ago and up 11.4 percent from September. That would push [...]
Surging Kia Motors America is planning to get more than auto assembly out of its new plant in West Point, Georgia, that goes on stream next month to build the 2011 Sorento crossover: the West Point plant will feature prominently in Kia's pre-launch [...]
Too much good news is turning out to be a bad thing for Ford Motor Co.
The good news apparently has convinced members of the United Auto Workers union that things are hunky- dory at Ford, and there's no reason for them to give the automaker [...]
Less than 1 percent of the vehicles bought under General Motors' 60-day moneyback guarantee program have been returned.
Susan Docherty, GM's vice president of U.S. sales, said 142,000 vehicles have been sold under the program with 449 customers opting for the guarantee instead of the $500 cash rebate. Of those, four have returned [...]
General Motors predicts the Seansonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) of car sales in October will come in at 10.7 million total vehicles, including heavy- and medium-duty trucks. On a light vehicle basis, GM forecasts at 10.5 million SAAR.
GM's top analyst Mike DiGiovanni told [...]
Ford Motor Co. set a new record in Popular Mechanics Automotive Excellence Awards by winning more categories in a single year than any other automaker in the history of the awards.
Ford vehicles winning 2010 awards, which recognize the best [...]
Ford Motor Co.'s confirmation that it has chosen a group led by Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Group Holding as its preferred bidder for Volvo came as no surprise. Geely has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for the Swedish marque, which Ford [...]
The state of Delaware was the scene of some historic and trend-setting events this week, as the "old" business entities of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC both sold cast-off assembly plants as the companies as part of [...]
This summer's so-called Cash for Clunkers program cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold, according to an analysis by Edmunds.com.
Nearly 690,000 vehicles were sold during the Cash for Clunkers program, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), but [...]
It's no secret that Subaru has been one of the biggest automotive success stories of 2009. During one of the worst economies on record, the brand has bucked the industry's downward trend of sales to steadily gain U.S. market share, climbing [...]
Ford Motor Co. secured its position as the only Detroit automaker with world-class reliability, according to Consumer Reports magazine's 2009 Annual Car Reliability Survey.
Of 51 Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln models, 46 had average or better reliability, the magazine said in an announcement made Tuesday [...]
Fisker Automotive, the new-age startup company aiming to sell an expensive and high-tech extended-range electric vehicle next year, confirmed it has purchased an assembly plant in Wilmington, DE, from Motors Liquidation Co., the entity holding the assets of the former General Motors Co.
[...]
The new compensation plan for General Motors Co. CEO Fritz Henderson made the headlines last week after particulars of the ruling from Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's "pay czar" became known. But there were many other interesting details in that report - [...]
Ford could run short of Ford Edge and Ford Flex models due to a labor dispute at a supplier plant in India that has forced the automaker to close its Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant.
Ford closed the Canadian plant, which makes the [...]
Sometime right after the middle of this decade, just about everyone decided luxury crossover vehicles were going to be the industry's next big profit center.
Sales of traditional body-on-frame SUVs were falling off after a brief but consumer-mindset-shifting run-up of gasoline prices [...]
General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC executives are having their salaries cut - and like the often petulant professional-sports millionaires their typically outsized senses of worth so closely resemble - are at the same time getting some religion about responsibility [...]
With another week gone by, October sales look to be on track for Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) in the low 10 million range, according to the latest data from Edmunds.com, which issues a more detailed forecast later this week.
General [...]
The "old" General Motors Corp. - now known by the name Motors Liquidation Co. - could be on the verge of completing a deal that would bring in some revenue to pay back some of the former GM's creditors, according to a report [...]
Anyone - or is it everyone at this point - hoping for an October finish for the saga of General Motors Co.'s sale of its Adam Opel AG European operations will have to wait at least a while longer.
In a blog at GM's website, John Smith, GM's group vice [...]
Chrysler Group LLC's Dodge Ram pickup has been the company's biggest - literally and figuratively - success story since the launch of the "big rig"-looking light-duty Ram in 1993. That new-generation Ram reinvigorated Chrysler's market share in the segment in which it was a distant No. 3 [...]
The industry's best deals right now are in luxury cars, sports cars and convertibles as well as leftover 2009 models, according to Edmunds.com.
As for brands, Lincoln, Saab and Volvo are offering great deals, as are Pontiac and Saturn, which [...]
Ford Motor Co. is moving production of its small Kuga crossover from Europe to the U.S. to take advantage of lower labor costs and the weaker dollar, Bloomberg News reports.
Ford will shift Kuga production from Germany to Louisville, where Ford makes trucks, in October 2011, says [...]
Three Tata Nanos reportedly have caught fire due to a short circuit in a steering column switch, the Times of India reports.
As a result, India's Tata Motors, which bills the Nano as the world's cheapest car, has called two of them back for [...]
A stake purchased in Chinese automaker/batterymaker BYD is paying off for billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. last September paid $230 million for a 10-percent stake in BYD. Since then, the stock has risen from the $1.21 a share that [...]
After dismal September car sales due to the hangover from the government's Cash for Clunkers program, auto manufacturers have ramped up incentives in October as they have ramped up production to refill the inventory pipeline, according to Edmunds.com.
The incentives show [...]
At the first-ever "Business of Plugging In" conference in Detroit Tuesday, industry interests studying the development and marketing of plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles said the question of who is best to develop and manufacture batteries for plug-in hybrids for now seems to [...]
Former Ford executive Wolfgang Reitzle has been named chairman of the supervisory board of auto supplier and tiremaker Continental.
A lieutenant of former Ford CEO Jacques Nasser and head of Ford's now-defunct Premier Automotive Group, Rietzle is chief executive of Linde [...]
Daimler AG beat analysts third-quarter earnings estimates and improved its cash flow, largely on the success of the new E-Class.
Daimler made about $700 million before interest and taxes, the automaker reported. That was nearly a $2.2 billion swing from a loss [...]
