It was an all-around bad year for Nissan, both globally and in the United States. Turmoil and triage was the order of the day, as the automaker was rocked by the arrest and ouster of its former chairman, an escape artist known as Carlos Ghosn, as well as bad blood and intrigue among members of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.

Cooling auto sales in most developed markets further hurt the brand’s profitability, even as the automaker strove to reverse its incentive-fueled market share push in favor of a sustainable path forward. That path is proving rocky, despite Nissan’s willingness to stay the course.

The brand’s 2019 U.S. sales are horrendous. (Read More…)

Not that long ago, we posited that the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic would buck the declining passenger car trend and eke out a sales win in 2019. Several things were working in the models’ favor — name recognition, diversity of choice, and the elimination of domestic rivals.

In this market, in this era, breaking even counts as a win. And that’s just what the Corolla and Civic did last year. (Read More…)

Barely two weeks after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last opened an investigation into a Tesla crash, the federal agency is once again probing a collision involving a Tesla vehicle — this one a fatal incident.

The agency announced this week that a December 29th crash in Gardena, California that killed two occupants of a 2006 Honda Civic will fall under its purview. (Read More…)

The Carlos Ghosn escape saga continues to evolve without any help from the man himself. Stating Thursday that he alone orchestrated his escape from Japan, where the former auto titan was living under house arrest, Ghosn has not offered the full story on how he slipped out of the country and made his way to Lebanon.

What is clear is that Ghosn’s two-part escape involved the use of two private aircraft and a plane swap in Turkey. The operator of those aircraft isn’t happy. (Read More…)

Carlos Ghosn’s escape from Japan seemed an epic affair, but the man who was reportedly smuggled out of the country in a musical instrument case by mercenaries posing as a Gregorian band wants to make one thing clear.

The former Renault CEO and Nissan chairman added to the story via a statement released Thursday. (Read More…)

The mighty Jeep brand is hitting the Consumer Electronics Show next week, and it’s got a new badge in tow. No, Jeep isn’t messing with its namesake script; rather, there’s a new signifier on the way.

As it prepares to tout a trio of upcoming plug-in hybrids at the Las Vegas trade show, Jeep’s electrification effort will see the “4xe” badge filter through the lineup in the coming years. (Read More…)

The smallest Mazda crossover, which happened to be too small for a friend of this writer, enters the new decade with a greatly reduced presence. Not just in America, but overseas, too.

While the U.S.-market CX-3 subcompact stands to lose all but one trim in a carefully calculated move by Mazda brass, a different plan is afoot on the other side of the Atlantic. (Read More…)

The former auto giant who once hosted a Marie Antoinette-themed wedding party at the Palace of Versailles (and later reimbursed Renault for the supposedly “corporate” event) had his wife to thank for being able to spend New Year’s Eve as a free — but wanted — man.

According to Lebanese news outlet MTV, Carole Ghosn was the mastermind of her husband’s escape from Japan, where Carlos was being held under house arrest while awaiting trial. Like his wedding, Carlos Ghosn’s flight from captivity had all the flair of a blockbuster film plot. (Read More…)

Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn’s flight from Japan, where we was awaiting trial on charges of underreporting income and breach of trust, has been confirmed by none other than the man himself.

Late Monday, Ghosn issued a message from Lebanon. (Read More…)

Japanese authorities are attempting to confirm reports that former Nissan and Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn, arrested in Japan in November 2018 and since charged with two counts each of improper financial reporting and breach of trust, has fled the country.

Numerous media reports claim Ghosn, who holds Lebanese (as well as French and Brazilian) citizenship, appeared in Beirut on Monday. How he managed to slip out of the country where he was awaiting trial is still murky. (Read More…)

Earlier this year, when rumors of a forthcoming all-wheel drive Chrysler Pacifica arose, the minivan segment seemed ready to birth a rival to Toyota’s AWD Sienna. Instead, Chrysler ended up debuting a stripped-down version of the FWD Pacifica called the Voyager.

AWD isn’t off the table, it seems, but the traditional form of all-wheel traction is. A new report claims the coming year will bring an electrified AWD minivan from Windsor Assembly. (Read More…)

A brand that’s slowly capturing a greater (albeit still slim) slice of the U.S. new car market stands to gain a new version of a long-running crossover in the coming year. That product is the Outlander, an outdated vehicle whose current generation bowed back in 2012.

The largest vehicle in Mitsubishi’s meager lineup, the Outlander stands to gain size and decidedly non-Mitsubishi underpinnings for its ground-up revamp. (Read More…)

A fairly stylish electric concept car revealed this past year by Kia will become a reality in 2021, the automaker’s European chief operating officer claims. The Kia Imagine, a high-riding, fastback C-segment offering, will be put into production on a dedicated platform not only because the company feels it’s a potentially successful vehicle, but because it has little choice in the matter.

Come 2020, the European Union plan to level punitive fines on any automaker caught breaking its increasingly stringent fleetwide emissions standards. It’s a case of go electric, or pay up. (Read More…)

Tesla’s first foreign assembly plant will make its first deliveries — to a handful of employees — on December 30th, just shy of a goal marker it set for itself at the beginning of the year.

Construction of the automaker’s $2 billion Shanghai facility kicked off back in January with a promise to reach a production rate of 1,000-plus vehicles per week by the end of the year. While the plant’s production rate is not known, it received the necessary regulatory approvals for production in September, with the first Model 3s assembled in October. (Read More…)

Toyota has hinted in the past that perhaps fielding one vehicle per segment is foolish, old-timey thinking. At the same time, automakers have fallen in love with the idea of splitting segments, shoehorning tweener models into any narrow wedge of daylight that appears in their already crowded lineups. General Motors is especially preoccupied with this.

It’s against this backdrop that a new U.S. trademark application filed by Toyota emerges, and the name provided only bolsters speculation that the company’s light truck stable is due for a new member. (Read More…)