In a business that hocks products worth tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, you’d hope the professionals reviewing those products would provide facts and honest, valuable personal opinions to readers.

Those hopes have never fully panned out in the automotive industry, as we learned most recently with CleanMPG’s Wayne Gerdes a few months ago and a scathing story that detailed an OEM paying a social media influencer $300,000 for a few photos.

But how pervasive is the payola problem in automotive journalism? And do you even care?

That, Mercedes proclaims turbochargers are the future, and woke bae BMW wants to build your safe space … after the break!

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You may’ve noticed an ad campaign by General Motors touting the toughness of its steel cargo bed in comparison with Ford’s aluminum cargo hold. The Chevy came out battered and bruised, but Ford’s aluminum-bodied F-150 incurred multiple lacerations. GM, in its comparison, proclaimed itself the winner.

Then late Friday, a plucky upstart called Honda (you may know the company for its motorized bicycles and electrical generators), threw massive shade on the Detroit rivalry using the same test.

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Elon Musk is declaring the controversy that erupted over reports of Tesla Model S suspension failures to be over, done, finished, finito.

The Tesla founder and CEO fired off a string of tweets late Friday, saying that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration was done looking into the matter, and added that the majority of complaints were found to be fraudulent.

Yesterday, TTAC examined the details of the case that sparked accusations of a serious Model S safety issue and a cover-up on the part of the automaker. The firestorm of controversy, ignited by a Daily Kanban blog post by ex-TTAC editor Edward Neidermeyer, centered on a Pennsylvania man whose 2013 Model S experienced an unusual upper ball joint failure. (Read More…)

You remember Lebanon Ford — the suburban Cincinnati Roush Performance dealer that suddenly began offering the country’s greatest performance bargain early last month?

Well, its 727-horsepower supercharged Mustang GTs are now flying off the lot (at the insanely low price of $39,995), and the once-sleepy Ohio dealer has become a nationwide performance mecca, Automotive News writes. (Read More…)

General Motors Canada announced today, along with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, that it will bolster engineering and software development efforts in Canada with a 700-job strong hiring initiative.

The work in question will focus on autonomous driving software and controls, connected vehicle tech, active safety and vehicle dynamics technology. (Read More…)

by Mark Stevenson and Bozi Tatarevic

A day after former TTAC editor-in-chief and current Daily Kanban blogger Edward Neidermeyer hit out at Tesla regarding suspension failures and Tesla’s supposed customer bullying through a goodwill agreement on Wednesday, the electric vehicle manufacturer hit back.

According to Neidermeyer’s post, a 2013 Tesla Model S owner on the Tesla Motors Owners forum experienced a ball joint failure at around the 70,000-mile mark, and the owner referred to Tesla for a fix. The automaker offered what’s commonly known in the industry as “goodwill assistance,” which covered half the $3,100 total cost of the repair, as the Model S was out of warranty.

However, the vehicle owner and Neidermeyer took exception to part of the written goodwill agreement as it seems to include a non-disclosure clause, which Neidermeyer contends could dissuade other Tesla issues from reporting issues to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and subvert the federal vehicle issue reporting process.

Is Tesla silencing its customers via threat of litigation? And is this ball joint issue even a problem in the first place?

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Honda’s hybrid sport hatch, the lackluster CR-Z, may have mastered the art of invisibility in the marketplace, but it couldn’t hide from company executives.

The model looks to be on its way out in Japan, according to Carscoops, with Honda now offering a ‘Final Label’ edition of the slow-selling vehicle. (Read More…)

Reuters is reporting that Gawker Media, parent company of automotive website Jalopnik, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

A judge recently ordered the company to pay $140 million in damages after it aired a 2007 sex tape featuring former wrestler Hulk Hogan, who then sued Gawker for invasion of privacy. The company had requested a stay, but was denied based on the terms they laid out.

The New York Times reports that Gawker Media will now put itself up for sale, according to a source close to the matter. The source claims the company is starting a yet-to-be announced auction, and that digital media company ZiffDavis already submitted a starting bid of $90 million to $100 million. (Read More…)

A new status symbol will soon arrive in the U.S., and its ride height promises to be as jacked as its price.

After tempting Americans buyers from overseas since last year, the Michael Bay-worthy Mercedes-Benz G550 4×4² should begin arriving stateside next spring, the automaker announced. (Read More…)

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne likes to keep people guessing, which is no surprise to those following the rapid-fire product changes at his company.

With his company’s fortunes buoyed by sales of thirsty Ram and Jeep vehicles, Marchionne remains fascinated and distrustful of electric automaker Tesla, telling Britain’s Car Magazine that the future of propulsion likely lies somewhere else.

The question is, what’s Marchionne doing about it? (Read More…)

To keep up with demand for its midsize pickups, General Motors signed a deal to have Navistar International Corp. take on the task of assembling its commercial vans.

The agreement, released yesterday, will see Navistar assemble the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana in a Springfield, Ohio plant starting early next year. Booting the vans out of GM’s Wentzville, Missouri plant frees up capacity to build more Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups. (Read More…)

The new Fiat 124 Spider may be thought of as a spiritual successor to the classic Fiat 2000 Spider. It’s no secret, however, that the new car is really a re-skinned Mazda MX-5 Miata powered by the same engine as the current Fiat 500 Abarth. The only parts truly new to the Fiat are some exterior panels. That’s not a […]

“An old man turned ninety-eight,
He won the lottery and died the next day” – Alanis Morissette

General Motors’ Buick Verano didn’t make it to 98, but after turning the grand-old age of 5, the entry-level Buick sedan will join a congregation of defunct Buicks in Detroit’s vehicular graveyard. It would seem easy enough for the second-generation Verano to make its way over from China, where Buick is GM’s darling brand. In the interests of products that GM believes will produce higher U.S. volumes with superior margins, namely E-badged crossovers, the Verano’s North American days are over.

It’s not too difficult to understand why. In the United States, Buick reported 45,527 Verano sales in the model’s second full year, 2013. Just two years later, Verano volume in 2015 was down 30 percent from that peak. Buick is on track in 2016 to sell fewer than 27,000 Veranos in America. Sales of Buick’s more popular entry-level model, the Encore subcompact crossover, are up 21 percent this year. Already in 2016, through only five months, Buick has sold 30,330 Encores in the United States.

Yet north of the border, the Verano’s demise is indeed ironic. Just days before Automotive News revealed that GM would end the Verano’s North American run with an abbreviated 2017 model year, GM Canada revealed that Verano sales had risen to an all-time high in April. (Read More…)

There is a new Honda Civic on a new platform with a very well-equipped Touring trim available. The tenth-generation is a hot seller and it claimed top sales honours among passenger cars in April.

Yet sales of another car, based on the old Honda Civic’s platform, are on the rise. Indeed, sales of the Acura ILX, admittedly updated for 2016 but very much a close relative of the ninth-generation Civic, have risen nine percent in a car market which tumbled eight percent through the first five months of 2016.

Why? (Read More…)

If you weren’t in on the secret, much of this morning’s presentation at the Park Hyatt Aviara would have made no sense. A series of four FCA personnel stood up to talk about the new 124 Spider, which was behind them to stage right. On stage left was a pristine Euro-bumpered 124 Sport Spider from […]