Our imaginary road trip with great music (see Part 1 here and Part 2 here) continues with music usually thought of as “classical.”
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Image courtesy of Mstyslav Chernov: http://tinyurl.com/k8atv8o

“Cool photo. Is that your grandpa or something?” Mark pointed to the sun-bleached black and white photo that hung on the wall of the garage. A smiling, grease-stained man in mechanic’s overalls stood proudly in front of a 1950s dirt-track racer. Sitting at his feet was a trophy.

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Audi is likely to beat BMW’s i8 to the laser-headlight punch with a rather expensive limited edition.
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(Cory Crelan returns, with more SE-R mayhem — JB)

The plan was a simple one- sell Sentra SE-R #1 and keep the SCC project Sentra SE-R. A bout of bad indigestion was a good comparison to what happened next… just when you thought it was over there was another cramp, pain in the gut, or worse.
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“A world in which the leading petrostate is a liberal democracy,” The Economist sniffed recently, “has much to recommend it.” Yet it would appear there’s an unexpected side effect to fracking’s political and economic benefits.
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To paraphrase Tony Judt, Toronto is not the great Canadian city – that will always be Montreal. And I’ll be going there next week to test out the Canadian-exclusive Nissan Micra.

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After all was said and done and the dust settled on FCA’s presentation of future plans to investors a couple of days ago, many of us were still left wondering – what does FCA really have in store for Brazil? We all know what the “F” in FCA stands for and there’s a reason why it comes before the “C”. Part of that is the success Fiat has enjoyed in Brazil – which was heavily emphasized in the Fiat brand presentation. Brazil is a good indicator for Fiat’s plans in the Latin American market, and the rest of the globe.

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At this week’s FCA investors conference, the floor was opened up to a Q&A session for journalists and equity research analysts. One scribe asked FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne about the prospect of a mid-size pickup, and Marchionne’s answer confirmed what many of us already knew.

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No, that title is not a misprint. Fuji Heavy Industries, which current builds the Toyota Camry at an Indiana assembly plant, will stop producing the mid-size sedan for Toyota starting in 2016.

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The original Volkswagen Passat, which was essentially an Audi 80, was sold in the United States as the Dasher. We saw this two-door diesel Dasher at a Northern California wrecking yard last year, then this first-cousin gasoline-burning ’75 Audi Fox a couple months back, and now we’re heading back to California for a super-rare four-door diesel Dasher. (Read More…)

Volkswagen appears ready to announce where its upcoming mid-size SUV — based upon the CrossBlue concept from the 2013 Detroit Auto Show — will be assembled.

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Re-appointed through 2018 last month by Renault-Nissan shareholders by a margin of 85 percent, CEO Carlos Ghosn has adjusted his sights on Volkswagen, General Motors and Toyota in an effort to take one of their spots as a member of the Global Three.

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2007 was a nutty time for my car business when it came to buying parts and supplies.

All the auto parts stores around my dealership were busy blowing their financial brains out in the pursuit of commercial business. I was retailing all the good cars I could find at the auctions, and it wasn’t long before I started to see an armada of amazing deals come to my door.

12 free gallons of coolant (8 store brand concentrates, 4 Dex-Cool) at Autozone. 16 quarts of free synthetic motor oil plus 24 more quarts of conventional oil at O’Reillys. Advance Auto Parts would guarantee the lowest price. Then O’Reillys offered “cost plus” deals that I could barely even fathom. While the parts stores were busy slashing each other’s throats, I was steadfastly collecting all the cheap and free products that came from the marketshare bloodbath.

Armor All, Meguiars, Turtle Wax, auto care products that were trying to get a retail presence… all were practically free for the taking if you were willing to keep up with the offers. 2007 netted me enough auto care products to handle the next three years of my business.

This ended in early 2008, and by 2009, you could often get better deals by lurking at the Bob Is The Oil Guy web site. That’s when I started noticing a nasty trend. Things started to get a bit too cute with the rebates.

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Outgoing Ford CEO Alan Mullaly appeared at his final annual investors meeting in Wilmington, Del. to a standing ovation from shareholders, proclaiming he had “no regrets” about his eight-year service at the helm.

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(Note: header image changed based on whim of E-I-C pro tem, some will understand why — JB)

Detroit Free Press reports former General Motors vice president of communications Steve Harris has been called out of retirement to help guide his former employer through the fallout of the February 2014 ignition recall crisis “for a limited time.” According to spokesman Greg Martin, Harris’ “deep background with GM and proven experience” will be of great benefit to the company. His second return the company — the first in 2006 at the request of then-CEO Rick Wagoner after leaving in 2003 — comes on the heels of successor Selim Bingol’s resignation in April of this year.

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