If you noticed your neighbor adding a glistening new Genesis model (the midsized one or the bigger one) to their driveway in the past month, you’re a member of a very small group.

Genesis, the luxury marque born of Hyundai, didn’t sell many vehicles in August, but that’s all part of the plan. The brand’s executive director claims there’s less than a month’s worth of vehicles currently in the U.S., but once those ships arrive, look out. Actually, a better way of phrasing that is: “prepare yourself for things to occur in a gradual and measured fashion.” (Read More…)

Big Tesla news inevitable comes at odd times, usually at the very end of the week, and most often at night — at least here on the East Coast. And so it was that late Friday afternoon, following another bizarre week of Elon antics (and two high-profile departures), Tesla CEO Elon Musk upset the negative news cycle by announcing a shakeup of his company’s upper ranks, including the appointment of a president of automotive.

What does a president of automotive do? A hell of a lot, it seems. Besides overseeing all of the company’s automotive operations, newly promoted Tesla veteran Jerome Guillen must also keep the sometimes dodgy supply chain running smoothly. His other big role involves removing stress from Musk’s life. (Read More…)

Not concerned with offering all-wheel drive, Nissan’s recently launched Kicks subcompact knows its ground clearance, styling, and low, low entry price is what customers will take notice of, not its perceived off-road prowess. It doesn’t have any (though on dry and flat boulder-free trails, it would probably do fine).

After Nissan unveiled its pricing in the U.S. and Canada, we noticed that the normal north-of-the-border markup was missing in action. As a result, buying a base Kicks S in Canada is just eight bucks pricier than an American purchase ($17,998 vs. $17,990). Both Canada and the U.S. love their big trucks, I said at the time, but this little ute will do better north of the border.

It’s always nice to be proven right. (Read More…)

The one and only styling refresh bestowed on Tesla’s Model S involved the removal of its phony grille, with CEO Elon Musk claiming the blacked-out nose had done its duty in luring — and lulling — nervous customers. The subsequent Model X went without, and the Model 3 looks like that masked disfigured girl in Eyes Without a Face.

Mercedes-Benz isn’t on the same page. Perhaps believing that Tesla buyers tolerate the lack of grille only because the vehicles are Teslas, the German automaker has vowed to pretend there’s an internal combustion engine and radiator behind the face of each of its electric vehicles. (Read More…)

Today’s installment of “This Week in Elon” sees the Tesla CEO appear on the top-rated Joe Rogan Experience podcast and partake in drug consumption that’s legal in the state in which it was filmed. One hopes Musk didn’t pile into his Model S afterwards and drive away while baked.

Normally, what happens in an executive’s private life remains private until it hits the papers ahead of an impending trial, or perhaps fills the pages of a tell-all bestseller. This being Musk, however, questionable antics seem to occur all the time, usually in a public forum, and shareholders, analysts, and no doubt the company’s board aren’t too pleased with it.

It’s not on the same level as Lee Iacocca showing up on the Merv Griffin Show and railing a line of blow, but Musk’s podcast appearance, combined with two high-profile departures, sent Tesla shares tumbling. (Read More…)

A lengthy Medium post penned by Darren Palmer, director of product development for Ford’s Team Edison, went live yesterday, no doubt at the request of Ford PR types and company brass. (It was shared on Ford’s media page.)

In it, the Ford product veteran goes on about the challenges facing his team of electric vehicle developers, mentioning, “The stakes are high.” Are they ever. With 16 fully electric vehicles on the way by 2022, joined by 24 electrified vehicles, that’s a heavy plate to carry. Despite having nearly 20 years of hybrid vehicle exposure under its belt, large swaths of the buying public remain confused by electrified powertrains (“Will my PHEV leave me stranded with an empty battery?”) and anxious about EV range. It takes time — a lot of time, apparently —  to change hearts and minds. The U.S. EV take rate is less than 1 percent of new vehicle sales.

However, what created a splash on Thursday was not the revelation that building and selling EVs to the American public is hard, but the image accompanying the post. (Read More…)

Chevrolet has finally unveiled the production version of a model bearing a name it trademarked quite some time ago. The Colorado ZR2 Bison is an extra-brawny variant of Chevy’s off-road truck — a collaboration between General Motors and aftermarket manufacturer American Expedition Vehicles (AEV).

It was clear to everyone and their mother that GM was prepared to further plumb the butch end of the midsize truck market. Recall the Colorado ZR2 AEV SEMA concept from the 2017 SEMA show. Certainly, with Toyota planning upgrades (including a snorkel) for its 2019 Tacoma TRD Pro, the domestic automaker wasn’t about to see the Colorado positioned as an also-ran.

Looking at the Bison, it seems GM took Ford’s 2018 Detroit auto show put-down to heart. “Real trucks don’t have fascias,” said soon-to-be-ousted North American president Raj Nair. (Read More…)

As far as safety recalls go, this one’s pretty sizeable, and it impacts a company that’s seen a lot of money lost on safety recalls in recent years. Ford Motor Company has announced the recall of nearly two million examples of the world’s best-selling vehicle to prevent the seemingly unlikely occurrence of seatbelt-related blazes.

The recall, affecting 1,995,776 trucks in North America — 1,619,112 of them in the United States, is the result of 17 documented fires or reports of smoke in 2015-2018 model year F-150 regular cabs or SuperCrew models sold stateside. Another six incidents took place in Canada.

The fires originated inside the vehicles’ B-pillar, with the seatbelt pretensioner as the source of the issue. While the life-saving device works properly to restrain the front-seat driver and passenger in the event of a crash, it’s what occurs after the device’s deployment that has Ford worried. (Read More…)

If there was ever an engine type best associated with my youth, it was the V6. Most of my parents’ cars had ’em, the car I drove to high school (and bought not long after) had one, my friends’ cars had ’em. It was a V6-filled world — and one that now looks pretty distant in the rear-view.

Volkswagen has let slip details of its 2019 Passat, and the changes coming to the final model year of this generation means another V6 engine option drops from the automotive landscape. That leaves just two models in the non-premium midsize sedan space that still offer six cylinders beneath their hoods, and one of them is on its final pass around the sun. (Read More…)

This topic keeps worming its way into your author’s brain, and it remains a regular point of discussion in the TTAC Slack chat room. How could it not? Ford announced the demise of its non-Mustang passenger car lineup earlier this year while simultaneously declaring that no customer would be left behind.

No one’s being cut loose from the Ford family, CEO Jim Hackett remarked. Ford’s just reinventing the car. Okay…

Now that Dearborn’s plan to import the lightly crossoverized Focus Active from China has bit the dust, entry-level customers (meaning those without much dough, or those in the mood for downsizing and good fuel economy) can choose from the base, front-drive, three-cylinder EcoSport and not much else. What a choice. Maybe a low-end Escape, if those exist? We’re already well into the $20k range now, before tax, admin, and freight. (Read More…)

We’ve all seen movies set in the perpetually grey, bitterly cold Soviet Union (later Hollywood films featuring Russia were apparently allowed to show sunlight), but if you lived north of the border a few decades ago, it wasn’t just the weather that looked familiar.

Lada Canada imported Iron Curtain cars for two decades (1979 to 1997), offering rudimentary, pinko automobiles to Canadian cheapskates for very few kopeks. Your author recalls entering the high school library at the dawn of the internet age and slowly booting up the Lada Canada website, where a five-door Samara was advertised for $4,995. Few of these showed up on local roads, as Hyundai offered slightly better no-cost transportation options.

However, there was one Lada vehicle that can truly be considered a classic, and it’s the one everyone remembers best. Sadly, after more than 40 years of production, the virtually unchanged Niva (now known simply as the 4×4) seems destined, like the Berlin Wall, to pass into history. (Read More…)

The diesel emissions scandal that continues swirling around Volkswagen’s German workforce is merely a far-off cloud for the folks at Volkswagen of America. Sunny skies reign, thanks to a decision to go heavy into “Americanized” crossovers.

Sure, the Jetta and Golf families continued their downward trajectory, joined in the descent by VW’s Passat sedan, but those lost sales are more than made up for by two nameplates: Tiguan and Atlas. Break out the iced tea. (Read More…)

Without rivalry, there wouldn’t be sports, and the Atlantic Ocean probably would have been crossed for the first time by a multinational team assembled sometime in the late 1930s, backed by a top-heavy bureaucracy.

Rivalry, at least outside the workplace, is usually fun, and the fierce competition among Germany’s luxury marques remains an interesting one, simply due to the length of time this has been going on. U.S. sales figures from August show that Mercedes-Benz, which muscled out long-running best-seller BMW from its lofty perch in 2016, has at least some reason to be worried about its rival reclaiming lost ground. (Read More…)

Without its juggernaut Jeep division, Fiat Chrysler would find itself in deep trouble. We’re talking Mitsubishi, circa 2013, sorts of trouble. On a year-to-date basis, all of FCA’s brands save for Jeep and the low-volume, niche Alfa Romeo took a sales tumble in the United States. It’s the same story north of the border.

In both countries, Jeep is FCA’s knight in shining armor (coming to its financial rescue), only in Canada it’s not enough to boost flagging year-over-year sales. FCA’s volume sank 10 percent in August, while in the U.S. it rose 10 percent. Year to date, FCA’s up 5 percent in the U.S. and down 14 percent in the Great White North.

Why such a disparity between sales directions? It seems to come down, at least partly, to Jeep posting far greater gains in the U.S. than in Canada. Even within the division, there’s quite a difference between what buyers in both countries want. (Read More…)

Mercedes-Benz has started pre-production on the first vehicle of its electric EQ model range, this one based on the GLC platform and called — what else? — the EQC. It’s a tony but not outlandish electric crossover for posh (but maybe not that posh) types who like the three-pointed star appearing on the front of their vehicle but kind of feel guilty about their carbon footprint.

Luckily, owning an electric car means never having to think about upstream emissions or other unpleasantness that took place before the assembled materials made it to your vehicle.

The EQC, according to M-B, falls under the automaker’s “Progressive Luxury” theme, promising lots of high-tech creature comforts and convenience, as well as an emission-free driving experience. However, it’s starting to become a crowded EV market out there, and some buyers might take exception with one particular aspect of this vehicle. (Read More…)