Last month Hyundai agreed to a union demand to end night shifts in the company’s Korean factories but it added graveyard shifts to their American plants. In Europe and North America third shifts are returning as companies try to wring out the maximum number of vehicles from their existing capacity. In August, Jaguar Land Rover added a third shift at its Liverpool plant to keep up with demand for the Evoque. In North America, the big American car companies shed lots of excess plants as they went through their financial crisis and to keep up with the rebound in sales as the economy starts to grow they have added night shifts to many of their assembly operations. (Read More…)

Hakan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo Car Corp. told the Automotive News World Congress that Chinese built Volvos will be exported “fairly quickly” to the U.S. market. Samuelsson wouldn’t say exactly when but he did say that because of Volvo’s Chinese ownership the company is in a unique position to use China as an export base.  Zhejiang Geely Holding Group purchased Volvo from Ford Motor Co. in 2010. (Read More…)

Can you spot the Chevrolet SS in Chevy’s display at the 2014 NAIAS?

Unless you’ve lived through it, you have no idea what it’s like to slog through the colossal Detroit auto show media preview. There were something like 50 new vehicle reveals spread out over two days, a press conference every 45 minutes or so. In the blur it’s easy to miss something. Fortunately, I live in the Detroit area so if I manage to not get photos or video of an important reveal or new-to-the-NAIAS vehicle, I can always go back during the Industry Preview that follows the press days. While reading Derek Kreindler’s NAIAS recap I realized that one of the cars that I missed was the Chevrolet SS performance sedan. A couple of months ago our colleague Bark M speculated that General Motors was not trying very hard to sell the new $44,000 SS. After photographing the SS at the NAIAS, I think that Bark M might have been on to something. (Read More…)

Please welcome Juan Barnett to TTAC.

While sitting in a Mossy Oak Ram, a very-real and very-camouflaged version of Ram’s 1500, I watched the all-new Chrysler 200 roll on to the stage in Detroit. After crowning the 200 as Chrysler’s flagship sedan (Sorry 300!) in his speech, the Chrysler executive went on to tell the crowd that they were likely familiar with the 200’s platform, because of cars like the Alfa Romeo Giulietta.

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Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne threw down the gauntlet for Jeep during an interview on Detroit’s WJR-AM at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show, proclaiming that the Rubicon-rated brand will move 1 million units onto the trails and highways by the end of this year.

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Acura might be next to jump on the B-segment crossover train, with a new model based on Honda’s Vezel apparently under consideration. Automotive News reports that Acura is considering such a model for China, and possibly other markets, given the popularity of models like the BMW X1 and Audi Q3. The vehicle in question would be built in China for the Chinese market, but there’s no word on whether it would be produced in Japan for other markets. The SUV-X concept, above, previewed such a vehicle, but was shown only on the Chinese auto show circuit.

“You can have any car you want. So long as it’s a Toyota or Honda.”

My parents had offered to split the costs of a new car with me back in 1994. That matching policy eventually included an awful lot of disclaimers and exclusions.

“No V8! No V6! No turbo! No stick! No convertible! No small car! No! Nein! Nyet!”

I eventually settled on a red Toyota Camry Coupe that served me well for 12 years and nearly 240k miles. It’s still on the road, which is funny because my brother, who had an equal bent on the Toyonda reliability supremacy, did something unusual recently.

He bought an Audi. Then he did something even stranger than that… he bought another.

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A year ago, Qoros, the startup car company based on the business model of building cars in China with European engineering and Israeli capital, showed it’s first car, the compact Qoros 3 Sedan at the Geneva International Motor Show. In two months, Qoros will again use the Geneva show to debut a new car, this one the Qoros 3 Hatch. It is based on the same modular platform as the Qoros 3 Sedan and draws heavily on that model while showing what the company calls a “youthful evolution” of the company’s signature design elements in a more sporty direction. (Read More…)

Car shopping used to be so simple: you could buy a truck or a car. Then came the wagon, minivan, sport utility and the latest craze: the crossover. There’s just one problem with the crossover for me however: it’s not a crossover. With a name like that you’d assume that a modern crossover blended the […]

Yesterday, we saw a junked Jensen Interceptor that I photographed during a trip to Los Angeles. Today, I’ll follow that up with another rare import from the same yard: a Maserati Biturbo Spyder! This is only the second Biturbo in this series, after this ’84. (Read More…)

Rivaling Jack’s tales of his harem in the “Most Unpopular Subject Matter on TTAC” Sweepstakes is my constant references to rap music. What I perceived to be a wink-and-a-nod to younger readers who enjoy hip-hop was succinctly summed up by one commenter who wrote “It wouldn’t be a Kreindler piece without a [deleted perjorative for white wannabe rappers] reference”. Although I resolved to tone down the “shout-outs”, an recent piece by Bloomberg demonstrates that there is a time and a place for a knowledge of hip-hop music.

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With Nissan product boss Andy Palmer confirming that the IDx concept car will go into production, the auto world is rejoicing over the prospect of another affordable sports car. But Palmer also let slip some interesting news about the next Z, which will also see a reduction in engine size.

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The launch of the Chrysler 200 means Chrysler has to make some decisions about its future; and the most likely course of action for them is to kill off the Dodge Avenger, right away.

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Ever wonder how product planning really works? It turns out that product planners aren’t just hired to sit around and tell car companies what to build. Apparently you have to do things like work with data and make Excel pivot tables. Which is why I’m still working here. But the 2015 Hyundai Genesis gives us an interesting example of what drives product planning decisions.

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The 2014 edition of the North American International Auto Show was supposed to be one for the record books. With the industry roaring back to life amid record sales, profitable home team brands and free from the yoke of government ownership, great things were expected from this year’s show. Instead, many felt it fell flat. Aside from the 2015 Ford F-150, possibly the most significant introduction of the decade, the product introduced at the show was interesting, but hardly memorable.

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