Ford announced Tuesday that it would spend $1.3 billion to retool, update and build a new body shop for its Louisville, Kentucky plant, which produces its Super Duty truck and large SUVs.

The announced spending, which will create 2,000 jobs at the plant, is part of Ford’s new contract with the United Auto Workers — and part of the automaker’s last deal with the UAW, according to Automotive News.

The investment will create an all-new body shop for the aluminum-bodied truck scheduled to go on sale late next year. With an all-new shop, production of the outgoing truck can continue while the new shop gets online, which could help the automaker avoid another shortage when the redesigned truck hits dealers.

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With the CT6 and XT5 hitting the floor soon, Cadillac is working on a new dealer incentive program to encourage improvement of the buying experience at its stores.

Automotive News reports the program could bring as much as $850 million to $1 billion USD “in incremental profit” for the brand’s dealership network over the next four to five years, according to president Johan de Nysschen:

If we want to have a strong brand, we need to have a strong franchise. To do that, it means the dealers are profitable and that they’re able to invest in the business and to build the customer experience.

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Playboy and the Pirelli Calendar had one thing in common (nudity), and as of the 2016 edition of the calendar, they still do (no nudity).

According to Bloomberg, the 2016 Pirelli Calendar has gone in a different direction for 2016, discarding its traditional theme of nude models and actresses for one focusing on 13 women who’ve made a huge impact on society and culture around them.

Shot by photographer Annie Liebovitz (who also has the 2000 calendar on her résumé), the subjects gracing the new year’s edition include musician/poet Patti Smith, tennis phenom Serena Williams, and commedienne Amy Schumer, the latter two posing topless while obscuring their breasts.

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While the rest of the world warms up to our Thanksgiving tradition of football and mountains of potatoes and gravy, we must admit that the world goes on without us some days.

Thankfully, the Internet never forgets. So here’s a roundup of the stories we missed in our Tryptophan-induced naps.

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Editor’s note: This article originally ran September 22, 2015. TTAC has yet to be proven or disproven on these numbers, but hopefully we will learn the truth soon.

In all reality, Volkswagen probably won’t pay $37,500 for each car that cheated its way through U.S. emissions standards, but the German automaker will probably pay thousands for each car to fit a device that would clean up their acts.

The presumed fix would come by retrofitting a Selective Catalytic Reduction (Adblue or urea) system although that wouldn’t be the only fix necessary. Researchers discovered that the Passat TDI that they tested, fitted with the SCR system, was 5 to 20 times over the NO limit — less than the 10 to 40 times by the lean NO filter cars, but still illegal.

The long list of items needed to fit models of the Volkswagen Golf, Jetta, Beetle and Audi A3 doesn’t include the engineering needed to retrofit the cars and the costs to crash test the models after the significant modifications. That’ll add hundreds of millions to the bottom line.

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They say the grass is greener on the other side. I say, just give me more grass on my side; any color will do.

I’m blessed with a job that enables me to work from home and drive a whole bunch of new cars. Strangely, even with a new vehicle delivered to my driveway each and every week, my desire to own a multitude of vehicles of different types – Miata and Wrangler, Mustang and Raptor, Suburban and M5, Volt and 911, Macan and GTI – only seems to increase. In other words, I’m not operating under the assumption that I’d find vehicular happiness if only I could have that vehicle. Rather, I’m under the belief that I’ll source vehicular happiness only if I own so many vehicles that I can always be able to exit my nonexistent garage/barn in the right vehicle for the right moment. This would require a Miata for sudden Friday night trips to the grocery store for children’s Tylenol, a Suburban for the holidays when all the family visits and wants to go out on our nonexistent boat, a Wrangler for those pointless off-road jaunts one takes when one owns a Wrangler, a Raptor for those pointless off-road jaunts one takes when one owns a Raptor and needs to pick up lumber on the way home, a Volt for the commuting I don’t do, a GTI for when we have a babysitter, a Macan for winter weekends away, and an M5 and 911 because, well, why not?

Alas, it is not to be. So we drive a 2015 Honda Odyssey. Read More >

A court ruled Nov. 12 that a lawsuit may continue against Ford for misstating its mileage estimates of its C-MAX and Fusion hyrbid cars.

Ford attempted to dismiss the lawsuit based on its claim that the mileage estimates provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, were in part, an estimate and that “actual results may vary.” Car owners suing the automaker pointed to Ford’s media blitz that included Ryan Seacrest in Times Square with a bunch of billboards and T-shirts with the number 47 on them and “47 Challenges, 47 Days” marketing push and Facebook posts that the cars would achieve a “EPA-certified 47 mpg city and 47 mpg highway ratings for a 47-mpg combined rating” — among many other 47-branded things — when the cars didn’t come anywhere close.*

*Actual mileage did vary.

“Ford implicitly recognized that its advertising campaign was misleading,” U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas wrote in the ruling. Read More >

Ford announced Monday that it would no longer use airbag inflators made by beleaguered supplier Takata. It’s the latest automaker to join a growing list of companies abandoning the controversial parts maker, Automotive News reported.

Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Toyota all announced they wouldn’t be using the airbag inflators, which could explode and spray metal shards into drivers and passengers, after the company’s record recall and fine by the Department of Transportation. Roughly 1.5 million Fords have been recalled as part of the airbag recall that has affected 19 million cars by 12 different automakers.

So far, eight deaths and nearly 100 injuries have been blamed on the faulty airbags.  Read More >

Surely Volkswagen of America, tarnished by daily revelations related to its September diesel emissions scandal, would report an October sales decrease, right?

No, as we discussed earlier this month, incentives and a booming market helped Volkswagen to an October sales increase — of 74 extra sales.

In October 2015, industry-wide sales jumped 14 percent to more than 1.45 million units with above-average improvements from General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Hyundai-Kia.

Further to those results, these are the numbers behind the numbers.

5 x 10K: October marked the fifth occasion in 2015 — the fifth in the last 40 months — in which Ford sold more than 10,000 Mustangs in a single month. October’s total was just the fifth-highest achieved this year so far, but we’ve long since left prime Mustang buying season as the car is traditionally stronger in the spring and early summer. Prior to the Camaro’s return, Ford was selling nearly 14,000 Mustangs per month in 2006. The Blue Oval is averaging 10,632 in 2015. Read More >

After officially giving the Mazda2 its North America reveal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in January, Mazda Canada announced, nearly 10 months later, it will not sell the subcompact hatchback in the country.

“Following a thorough evaluation of the B-car segment, Mazda Canada has decided not to launch the new generation Mazda2 in Canada,” Mazda Canada said in a statement released Monday.

Instead, the company will focus on its CX lineup, including the CX-3, CX-5 and new, upcoming CX-9 to be revealed for the first time this week in Los Angeles.

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We haven’t held back our critique of Toyota’s handling of its Scion sub-brand.

Though Scion held such promise a decade ago, replacing the hot-selling first-generation xB with a mostly ignored, overweight, second-generation xB was a ticket to failure. Allowing the once-popular tC to linger mostly unchanged and mostly unathletic for more than a decade is akin to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. A flash in the pan sports car, the FR-S, wasn’t – couldn’t be – the answer to the brand’s troubles.

Signs of life are once again appearing at Scion, however, and not from the most expected places. Read More >

The battle between Nissan and the French government over the former’s voting stake in the Renault-Nissan Alliance continues on.

This month, after temporarily raising its stake to 19.7 percent, the French government cut back its stake to around 15 percent, which is still enough voting power under the Florange Law to block anything it didn’t like from Nissan and its allies during shareholder meetings.

However, second-in-command at Nissan, Chief Competitive Officer Hiroto Saikawa, expressed it wasn’t enough to go back to “the situation of seven months ago,” desiring “a better balance between the two companies,” a source told Reuters.

Instead, Nissan responded to the draw-down with a proposal establishing a “better-balanced” 25-percent/35-percent crossed shareholding, with Nissan finally having a say after 16 years of merely owning a piece of the company which rescued it from death back in 1999.

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Nine years ago, General Motors began selling two different vehicles off its full-size Lambda platform, the GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook.

Remember the Outlook? Of course you don’t.

By 2007, GM was also selling the Buick Enclave. By the end of 2008, GM added the Chevrolet Traverse.

Now it’s late 2015. GM is still selling the first generation of their Lambda platform crossovers. A lot of them.

GM also continues to sell the six-year-old versions of their Theta platform crossovers, as well. A lot of them. More than they’ve ever sold before. Read More >

General Motors announced Thursday it will import a Buick crossover from China to the United States by the end of 2016, much to the UAW’s disappointment.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the crossover in question, the Envision, is currently produced at a facility in the Shandong province. The Buick brand itself is doing well for itself in China, where it’s GM’s best-known brand, and in the U.S., where the brand is experiencing rapid growth as of late. In both instances, the main draw for Buick is its small and medium crossovers and SUVs.

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Volkswagen will announce Thursday a deadline for whistleblowers to come forward with information related to the ongoing diesel scandal without reprisal.

According to the CBC, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday the automaker is working to gather as much information on the scandal as possible by applying more pressure to employees who may have known anything about what happened regarding the rigging of diesel emissions through software.

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