Jeep Cherokee units keep piling up at the Toledo, Ohio factory, as Chrysler attempts to iron out production issues, but according to Yahoo Autos, none have been delivered yet.
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Tis better to own a Leaf or an S than to rent one, it seems. According to Enterprise Holdings Inc., known for driving around in cars wrapped in branded brown paper for some reason, customers who rent electric-only vehicles from their lot soon return their sustainable rides for a one with a sustainable range based on the number of (gasoline and diesel) fuel stops along the way.
Months after TTAC started to relentlessly bleat about the glut of money flowing into the auto loan sector, the mainstream media is finally taking notice. Automotive News is finally expressing some worry over the factors that we’ve been discussing for some time: car loan terms are getting longer (to help keep payments low), subprime lending is increasing and an expected rise in interest rates could put an end to the new car market’s exuberant performance.
It’s not just oil, water and other precious resources that we’re running out of here on planet earth. Apparently, we’re a little short on automotive nameplates too. If you believe the reports in industry trade pubs, we’ll eventually be overrun by obscure alphanumerics as the number of trademark-ready monikers gradually thins out. Scarcity isn’t the only factor behind it either. Frequently, nameplates get retired, and an all-new version of the previous car is re-introduced with another combination of numbers and letters – just like Nissan is planning to do with the Skyline after 56 years of production.
Pricing for the Cadillac ELR has been announced, and the swoopy Caddy coupe with the Voltec powertrain has been stickered at an astonishing $75,995, not including the $7,500 federal tax credit as well as other incentives.
One can make the argument that there will be a market for a premium plug-in that wealthy buyers can write off as an expense in one form another, personally, I think GM is out of their mind.
The United States Department of Energy will today auction off Fisker Automotive’s loan from the federal government, on which the moribund hybrid car startup defaulted. Last month the department said that it would hold the auction after “exhausting any realistic possibility” that it could recoup all of the $168 million still that Fisker still owes.
The following article is long. Some of you will decry it as fiction outside of the space this website normally reserves for stories and others of you will lament its presence on what is supposed to be an automotive news website. Maybe you are right, but the truth is that I read a lot and my mind is constantly pulling at a million disparate threads of information and tying them together in ways that make unusual patterns. Some of these things have coalesced this week into the following piece and so I have offered it to the editors to see if they think it has a place on our esteemed pages. If you are seeing it, then they have given it the green light and all I can do is ask you to indulge me.
Articles about the future used to show up in the newspapers and the magazines with surprising regularity when I was a kid. They were great reading and were almost always accompanied by large, full color illustrations by noted artists like Syd Mead that fleshed out the words out surprising detail. In virtually every case, despite much of the turmoil going on in our country in the 1970s, those articles painted a picture of a better, brighter future. Now more than a third of the way through the second decade of the 21st century, we all know that things didn’t turn out quite the way those old articles imagined but that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to predict what is coming. I can’t help but think that a better tomorrow really is right around the corner. Read More >
More drama in the ongoing Volkswagen unionization fight in Chattanooga: Volkswagen USA is not keen on the union, while Volkswagen’s management board is divided on the matter. One thing that seems certain is the prospect of a secret ballot vote on the union, according to Reuters.
Long time Evo writer Harry Metcalfe has left the magazine to work for Jaguar Land Rover, in a role that is the dream of journalists everywhere: helping to develop halo versions of their current and future model range.
GM Canada’s CEO is expressing apprehension over the way cheap auto loans are fueling vehicle sales in Canada.
The nearly decade long wait for the new Cadillac Escalade is over, with the 2015 model debuting in New York city at a special event hosted by GM. Our friends at AutoGuide.com attended and graciously shared their live shots with us.
The Audi Q3 won’t be coming to the United States for a couple of years, according to Car and Driver. The issue stems from the Q3’s approach angle, which is not sufficient to be classified as a “light truck” in America. Why does this matter? Well, CAFE of course. Crossovers, as car like as they may be, are more beneficial for auto makers looking to meet CAFE standards, and Audi isn’t going to all this trouble to have the Q3 come over as a car.
Fiat’s recent North American downturns have caught the attention of many automotive industry observers, particularly those who never believed Fiat had a high-volume future on this side of the Atlantic.
There’s no better way to keep brand volume high than by introducing new models. Consider the new CLA250, which helped Mercedes-Benz to a 6.6% year-over-year increase in September. Without the CLA, Benz volume was down 3.3%.
An “unidentified buyer” in a “private transaction” reportedly acquired the 1963 TdF (not the bike race) winning Ferrari GTO for fifty-two million dollars.
Other GTO owners are fielding offers in the $40M to $50M range for their cars. If you are one of those people, this sale amounts to brilliant news and will no doubt give you an even greater sense of satisfaction at having purchased at prices ranging from $7500 (out of an old R&T classified) to $6M (the “ridiculous” price set during the previous collector-car bubble). For the rest of us, this is bad news — but not just because it means you’ll never see a LeMans Ferrari in LeMons.
While your humble Editor-In-Chief was brake-torquing his mighty 560SL — about which more will be said in the near future — over to the liquor store to pick some Alizé for some morally-challenged females, Mercedes-Benz USA was holding quite a party for the CLA Press Drive. I’m reliably told it was the most upscale event in history to feature a vehicle priced head-to-head with the Ford Fusion. I’m also reliably told by the same people who told me about the event that the cheapest Benzo is the bee’s knees and just totally awesome in every respect.
We’ll see.
But there’s already one bit of off-message news emerging about the transverse-engined Teutonic travesty:
Read More >
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