As all-new 2018 Toyota Camrys begin to trickle into Toyota’s U.S. dealers over the coming weeks, take a close look at the VIN.
It’s viewable through the windshield on the driver’s side. See that first number? It’s likely a 4, which means this Camry was built in Georgetown, Kentucky.
But there’s a chance that the VIN on the new 2018 Camry sitting on your local Toyota dealer’s lot doesn’t begin with a number at all.
You’re looking at the once-coveted J-VIN. Ooh la la. Read More >
Humpback. Tailback. Silverback.
Paperback. Greenback. Kickback.
Payback. Setback. Buyback.
Notchback. Liftback. Hatchback.
Fastback.
Elmar-Marius Licharz, the director of mid and large car model lines at Volkswagen, makes it very clear that the 2018 Volkswagen Arteon, a successor to the Volkswagen CC, is not a hatchback. Read More >
One month ago, former Hyundai Motor America sales vice president Derrick Hatami departed Hyundai and ended up in a similar role at Volkswagen of America: executive vice president for sales and marketing.
Hatami moved into his new office on June 12, 2017. Less than two months from now, and two years after Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal erupted in September 2015, Hatami’s new boss will move into his new office. Imported from Skoda, Werner Eichhorn moves to Volkswagen’s North American region as the chief sales and marketing officer.
Together with Hinrich Woebcken, who became CEO of Volkswagen in North America in April 2016, seven months after #dieselgate broke, Hatami and Werner Eichhorn form the nucleus of an all-new sales team at Volkswagen of America.
And not a moment too soon. Read More >
“But in some cases, the traditionalists are going to
maybe pine over the squarer shape of the previous four iterations.”
– Jaguar Land Rover Australia Managing Director, Matthew Wiesner
The Land Rover Discovery, known for a time in North America as the LR3 and then LR4 whilst alphanumeric nomenclature was deemed necessary if one was to steal market share from the Lexus GX460, is a box.
Or rather, it was a box. For nearly three decades, through the Series I and Series II and then the LR3 and LR4 that ran for a dozen years or so, Land Rover’s sub-Range Rover was squared off. Hard lines. Rectangles. Right angles. No Bangles.
Land Rover has rediscovered the Discovery name in North America, but the brand did not manage to rediscover the Discovery’s styling themes. And on the other side of the world from Land Rover’s Coventry HQ, Australia’s Jaguar Land Rover boss is vocalizing a major concern.
“The new shape is certainly going to test some of the traditional owners of Discovery,” Matthew Wiesner told CarAdvice.
CAR Magazine’s automotive insider, Georg Kasher, has confirmed Ferrari’s first utility vehicle will be unveiled in 2021. Codenamed F16X, the Ferrari SUV/crossover/high-sided vehicle will be a partner vehicle of the GTC4Lusso successor, itself a direct descendant of the Ferrari FF, Ferrari’s first all-wheel-drive vehicle.
Ah, it’s all coming together now. The FF was a trojan horse.
If the 2021 Ferrari F16X comes to fruition, it will be over the proverbial dead bodies of all those Ferrari executives who have denied the possibility of a Ferrari SUV. “We will not play with SUVs,” current CEO Sergio Marchionne said earlier this year in Geneva. “It’s not that we’re not planning an SUV for now — we’re not planning one at all,” former CEO Amadeo Felisa said in Frankfurt in 2015.
But a Ferrari SUV has nevertheless been long rumored, and the rumors were stoked when marketing chief Nicola Boari discussed at length earlier this year the way in which a Ferrari SUV would need to create a new segment.
Indeed, according to CAR, Ferrari’s first foray into the utility vehicle arena will be different: aluminum architecture, suicide doors sans B-pillars, a likely hybrid powertrain, and a price tag of roughly $350,000. Read More >
“We created that segment,” BMW CEO says of the sector in which the BMW X3 arrived before Acura, Audi, Infiniti, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Volvo.
“The No.1 approach and target I clearly have is, there shouldn’t be anyone besides us who is No.1,” Krueger told Automotive News Europe.
In the U.S., where Krueger’s goals (expectations? demands?) for the South Carolina-built BMW X3 are lofty, the X3 ranked a distant fifth in the category in 2016.
But Krueger ain’t kiddin’ around. Read More >
ALG says new vehicle prices averaged $32,900 in June 2017, up 2 percent from last year and a record high for the month of June.
Yet month after month, for six consecutive months to begin 2017, automakers are witnessing fewer and fewer buyers walking into dealers after sales shot to record levels in calendar year 2016.
Incentives, at $3,550 per car, are an effective lure. But that doesn’t change the fact that buyers are paying, on average, $33,000 and borrowing, according to Edmunds, $31,000 in order to finance a purchase.
How do car buyers afford the highest prices on record? By stretching the payment period to the longest terms ever: 69.3 months in June, Edmunds says. Read More >
Maybe, we told you in early May, you’ll soon be able to get a deal on a Subaru Outback.
As new vehicle demand gradually shrinks in America, every automaker wants to grow their market share in order to maintain steady sales output. “Sure, there are fewer buyers,” the automaker says, “but we’ll grab more of them.”
Decreased demand has a tendency to increase competitiveness. Not surprisingly, Subaru anticipated the need to more dramatically increase incentives on the least-incentivized cars in America as 2017 progressed. Even an in-demand automaker such as Subaru is going to struggle when rival automakers are routinely dropping prices by more than 10 percent.
Thus, according to ALG, Subaru’s average discount per vehicle shot up 63 percent, year-over-year, in June 2017. Read More >
Today we feature the second entry to our Domestics Abroad series. Here’s where we take a look at the international models proffered around the world that wear a domestic company’s badge on the grille, but are not offered in their brands’ domestic markets. This is ground zero for “you can’t get that here.” All nameplates you’ll see in this series are current production models.
We kicked off this series with Ford, and its 13 qualifying models. Our second entry is Chevrolet, which also places second in number of models.
Here are Chevrolet’s nine entries, in alphabetical order:
Revealed in Canada earlier this year, the fifth-generation 2018 Hyundai Accent will not be offered in the United States in hatchback form.
In formally announcing the discontinuation of the Hyundai Azera in the company’s product lineup release yesterday, Hyundai also provided a level of detail regarding the 2018 Accent. Standard is a five-inch touchscreen; a seven-inch screen with Android Auto/Apple CarPlay is available. In a first for subcompacts, Hyundai’s Smart Trunk Release will have you waving your toes at the Accent’s bumper.
But in surprisingly harsh language from its own maker, Hyundai says the Accent’s “hatchback body style has been dropped.”
Dropped.
Like a client who doesn’t pay. Dropped. Like a walk-on who couldn’t crack a roster full of future NBAers. Dropped. Like an unnecessary subcompact bodystyle in a subcompact market that’s down 19 percent so far this year.
♪ Stand by your cars (temporarily),
And show the world you love them (temporarily) ♪
– Not Tammy Wynette
Mitsubishi Canada has decided to double the length of its comprehensive warranty and the duration of its roadside assistance, standing by its products like never before, and like nobody else, in celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary.
The celebration won’t last. Mitsubishi’s willingness to stand by its products for a decade goes only so far. One-upping Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 campaign pledge, the “10-10-10” plan — 10-year/160,000-kilometer comprehensive coverage and 10-year/160,000-kilometer roadside assistance, in addition to the existing 10-year/160,000-kilometer powertrain warranty — is a limited-time promotion.
“For the summer of 2017, we’re making the best warranty in the business even better,” says Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada CEO Tony Laframboise.
Thus, this is the summer of Outlanders, Canada. The summer of RVRs, Canada. The summer, I dare say, of Mirage. Read More >
In a release yesterday detailing the company’s 2018 lineup, Hyundai confirmed that U.S. market availability of the Hyundai Azera will be discontinued.
But have no fear, dear lover of affordable large sedans. The 2017 Hyundai Azera is not yet thin on the ground.
Roughly 1,000 Azeras are currently sitting on dealer lots across the United States, enough — at the Azera’s recent sales pace — to last until mid-fall.
The Azera doesn’t deserve to meet such a tragic end, but its demise is one we knew about long before Hyundai’s official announcement on July 5, 2017. U.S. sales plunged 82 percent over the last decade. Read More >
The Volkswagen Golf was the best-selling new vehicle in the United Kingdom in June 2017, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
So what, you say, the Golf is historically a European powerhouse, a fine car by all accounts, just one that’s not entirely suited to American sales success.
But for the Golf, typically a top five car, to earn outright best seller status in the UK, something had to give.
At just the right time, when the Ford Fiesta was at a weak point, the Volkswagen Golf stepped up with a 29-percent year-over-year increase despite shrinking demand across much of the UK market. The result: the Golf ended a Ford Fiesta streak that had been in good standing for 29 months.
Read More >
Nissan reported 34,349 U.S. sales of the Rogue in June 2017, a 17-percent year-over-year increase that drove the Rogue to its third monthly victory in America’s SUV/crossover sales race this year.
But June was the first time since March in which the Rogue — sales of which have now increased in eight consecutive months — topped the utility vehicle segment.
What propelled the Nissan back into the top spot after a two-month hiatus?
Another Rogue. Mysteriously missing from Nissan’s June sales report, despite six weeks of sales activity, was the Nissan Rogue Sport, known in other markets as the Nissan Qashqai.
Disappointingly, for the purposes of U.S. sales reports, Nissan is combining sales of the Rogue and new Rogue Sport. Thus, we’re left to wonder whether the Rogue, on its own, was America’s best-selling SUV/crossover in June or if the Rogue requires an asterisk alongside its position in the victor’s column. Read More >
March 2017 marked just the third occasion in three years in which Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Ram P/U line outsold the Chevrolet Silverado in the United States.
One month later, in April, Ram did it again.
Then in May 2017, Ram made it a threepeat, outselling the traditional No. 2 pickup truck in America by more than 1,000 units. By the end of May, the Silverado was only 5,055 sales ahead of the Ram on year-to-date terms, a narrow gap which served to highlight the possibility that the Ram could outsell the Silverado for the first time ever in calendar year 2017.
But June 2017 marked an end to Ram’s party, at least for the time being. General Motors reported 50,515 Chevrolet Silverado sales in June, a 2-percent year-over-year uptick and 7,442 more sales than FCA’s Ram truck lineup managed.
How did GM manage to end the trend? By earning less money per truck, naturally. Read More >
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