While GM’s next-generation SUVs are slated to debut at September’s Texas State Fair, the Cadillac Escalade will get its own launch event in New York City.

Instead, the Escalade will be revealed on October 7th in the Big Apple. There have been conflicting reports over the past year regarding the new truck’s direction. We’ve heard that it will be both more ostentatious and more reserved. October 7th will be the moment of truth.

FMG Holdings, which operates a number of car dealerships in western Michigan under the name of Fox Motors, had planned on spending $57 million turning an abandoned industrial site on Chicago’s North Side into a large Ford store but it has now given Chicago politicians an Oct. 1st deadline to either approve or deny their zoning application after the issue has gotten mired in local politics and injected with the issue of race. (Read More…)

Visteon, the large automotive supplier, continues to reshape itself from a vendor of interior trim to one that focuses on electronics. Visteon announced that it is selling its half of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems to it’s Chinese joint venture partner Huayu Automotive Systems, for ~$1.2 billion. At the same time, Visteon will be buying majority ownership of the JV’s electronics unit, Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Electronics Co., for $68 million. (Read More…)

Continuing its divestment of the shares it obtained in General Motors for bailing out the automaker in 2009, the United States Treasury told Congress yesterday that it has sold $876.9 million dollars worth of GM stock last month, somewhere between 23 and 26 million shares, based on the trading prices during July. By those calculations, the U.S. government still holds about 136 million shares of GM, which closed yesterday at $35.98. At the rate that Treasury is selling off its GM shares, the government’s equity will be completely divested by early 2014. The government originally held a 61% stake in GM following the $49.5 billion bailout, over 500 million shares. By selling some of those shares, Treasury has recouped $34.6 billion of the $49.5 billion. (Read More…)

Ahead of the Frankfurt show, Honda revealed their Europe-only Civic Tourer, a wagon version of Honda’s bread and butter compact. Notable features include a Fit-style “Magic Seat” (that can be folded in multiple ways for maximum cargo carrying) and a tailgate that swings up extremely high – something that will likely be an issue in low underground garages. The Civic’s rivals include established players like the Skoda Octavia, Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf. But Honda is hoping that class-leading cargo capacity and distinctive styling will be enough to entice new customers.

Following labor unrest and increasing costs at their operations in South Korea, General Motors has begun to reevaluate GM Korea’s role in the giant automaker’s production plans. Currently GM Korea, formerly Daewoo, builds about 20% of GM’s global production. The already announced shifting of production of Opel’s Mokka small crossover to the Zaragoza facility in Spain starting in the second half of 2014 may portend other changes in GM Korea’s role. Both foreign and domestic Korean automakers have expressed concern over rapidly rising wages in that country. The strong Korean currency, the won, coupled with those rising labor costs have made Korea one of the more expensive places for GM to build cars. (Read More…)

Sales of passenger vehicles in China were up 11% in July as new assembly plants have opened and as dealers cut prices to clear out inventory before 2014 model year cars start arriving. The state sponsored China Association of Automobile Manufacturers says that wholesale deliveries of automobiles, SUVs and multipurpose vehicles were up to 1.24 million units in July, beating analysts’ expectations. Among the companies that have opened up assembly plants this year in China are Ford, PSA Peugeot Citroen and Chinese owned Volvo. (Read More…)

After a continuing effort to reduce reliance on fleet sales in the U.S. market, all three domestic American automakers reported declining fleet sales in July while they were up significantly at Nissan, Toyota and Hyundai-Kia. Chrysler fleet sales were down 36 percent from the same period last year, Ford was down 9 percent and GM down 6 percent. In terms of units, the domestic brands’ fleet sales were down 15,300 vehicle. Meanwhile, sales to fleets were up 34% at Toyota, up 43% at Hyundai-Kia Automotive and a whopping 87 percent at Nissan’s North American operations. (Read More…)

The first wrongful death lawsuit concerning the sudden acceleration of Toyota cars to go to trial has started with opening arguments. According to Bloomberg, the lawyer for Noriko Uno’s family said that Toyota knew that their gas pedals could get stuck and that the company was liable for her death because Uno’s 2006 Camry did not have a brake override system. The Toyota that Uno, 66 at the time of her death, was hit by a car that ran a stop sign. Her Toyota subsequently accelerated down the wrong side of the road for 30 seconds before hitting a tree, causing her death. (Read More…)

The age of the American car and light truck fleet is the oldest it’s ever been, according to data firm R.L. Polk. Polk said in 2012 the average age all light vehicles on U.S. roads was 11.4 years, up from 11.2 years in 2011, and 10.9 years in 2010, the eleventh straight annual increase.

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Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewanza is stepping down as the CAW gets ready to merge with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). The resulting organization will have more than 300,000 members.

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TTAC readers looking to debate the “mid-size vs. full-size” truck matter have more fodder now that GM has unveiled a teaser photo of their new mid-size trucks.

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China has become an area of tremendous potential for companies as the nominally communist country has embraced capitalism. The hybrid result, according to Ford CEO Alan Mulally, is in some ways an improvement on what’s been a pretty sluggish and inefficient democratic process elsewhere in the world.

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Defying analysts’ predictions that Tesla Motors would report a quarterly loss of $0.17 a share, the EV startup instead announced that it had a second quarter profit, after adjustments, of 20 cents a share, according to non-GAAP principles. On the news, Tesla stock went up 13% in after hours trading.

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Infiniti G37

Consumers will still be able to order the Infiniti G37 until the end of 2013, despite the looming introduction of the all-new Q50. According to Automotive News, the Nissan owned brand is doing this so as not to create a disruption – the G37 sedan is Infiniti’s best selling model. In 2012, G sedans made up about 40% of the brand’s total sales in the U.S., with 45,828 being sold. The Q50 went on sale across the U.S. this week. Both it and the G37 are assembled in Japan. The decision to keep the G37 in production and on sale, at least temporarily, was made after consulting with its 200 dealers in the U.S. on the launch of the Q50. (Read More…)