The folks at Allpar have discovered an undisguised Chrysler 200 driving around sans camo. Looking like a cross between a Dart and a Chevrolet Impala, the 200 will use the same CUSW architecture as the Dart and Jeep Cherokee, along with the 2.4L 4-cylinder and Pentastar V6 engines.
Comedian Randy Liedtke baked himself an iPhone cookie. While this was certainly a blow struck against the police state known as the People’s Republic of California, for Mr. Liedtke himself, it didn’t work so well.
Wayne County Chief Deputy Treasurer David Szymanski said that on Thursday, Peruvian developer Fernando Palazuelo made the final payment of the $405,000 he bid for the sprawling, decrepit, Albert Kahn designed Packard Plant on East Grand Blvd in Detroit. Palazuelo was the third highest bidder, but when Texas doctor Jill Van Horn’s winning $6 million bid vaporized and Chicago developer Bill Hults only came up with 10% of his $2 million bid, the county accepted Palazuelo’s price. Palazuelo, who is originally from Spain, claims to have had a successful track record of redeveloping distressed properties in Lima, Peru.
The UAW’s troubles with organizing Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plants are well known throughout the auto world, but Unifor, the Canada union that was once known as the Canadian Auto Workers union, now claims that it has enough union cards to hold a vote on representation.
Volkswagen of America CEO and President Jonathan Browning has stepped down from his post, with Michael Horn set to assume the role once held by Browning beginning New Year’s Day 2014.
‘Tis the season for year-end Top 10 lists celebrating and lamenting all things in the world of life, and the automotive industry is no exception. Ward’s Automotive has announced its list of the 10 best engines for 2014, and it’s a turbodiesel-intercooled festival of power this year.
We received a note from Alcoa, a supplier of aluminum, regarding our story on delays with the next Ford F-150. Alcoa’s Monica Orbe sent us this note
While details of future programs and timelines should come from automotive OEMs themselves – regardless of the platform — we can say that Alcoa does not have any issues with its automotive production lines. It is important to note that aluminum is the second most used material to build cars today. Automakers have successfully used Alcoa materials to produce aluminum-intensive vehicles since the mid 1990s.
General Motors will sell off their 7 percent stake in PSA, but will continue joint developing select vehicles and technologies. In a statement, GM’s Steve Girsky said
“Our equity stake was planned to support PSA in their efforts to raise capital at the time of the creation of the GM and PSA alliance, and that support is no longer needed,” said GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky. “The alliance remains strong with our focus on joint vehicle programs, cross manufacturing, purchasing, and logistics. We’re making good progress while remaining open to new opportunities.”
GM and PSA will continue to develop a small MPV type car and a small crossover, while working together on commercial vehicles.
With the demise of Holden’s manufacturing and R&D facilities complete by 2017, General Motors is reportedly looking to kill off the Holden brand and switch over to Chevrolet instead.
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From the Bangshift crew comes this video of a snowblower destroying a Geo Metro. There’s not much more to say about it, so enjoy it. Feel free to comment, as well. If you can’t think of anything to write, you could always write “Wow, I can’t believe somebody fed a Geo Metro to a snowblower!” This particularly snowblower is supposedly nearly forty years old. I’d say it’s held up well, possibly because, unlike the Geo Metro, there was no Suzuki involvement in its construction.
Long-time TTAC readers will recall that we tested a Hertz Penske GT around MSR Houston earlier this year and were thoroughly charmed by the factory-modded Mustang. There’s no doubt that the Penske is significantly superior to a standard Mustang GT, but if resale values for them once they leave the Hertz fleet follow those demonstrated by the 2006 Shelby GT-H, you’ll never get a bargain on one.
However, the black-and-yellow bomber wasn’t the only special-edition Mustang that Ford built for Hertz this year, so if you’re willing to be a little flexible on specification, you can buy a pre-abused Coyote-engined GT Premium for twenty-five grand or less…
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Being teased with a desirable but unavailable variant of a car sold on our shores is as inevitable as death and taxes. Every year, there is some new supercar station wagon, ultra-efficient diesel or hot hatch/rally special that seems just within our grasp. Inevitably we learn that it won’t be making its way to America for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, it boils down to one simple factor: it would cost too much to bring it over.
As expected, the arrival of Mercedes-Benz’s sixth-generation S-Class provided a massive boost in sales just as Mercedes-Benz’s all-new CLA-Class arrived at the bottom of the lineup. Traditionally seen as the market leader, the S-Class has attempted to put aside all doubts by attracting more than 1900 U.S. buyers in each of the last two months. It’s popular.
Though Hyundai has set its sights on some sales gains in 2014 in the European market, the automaker has no plans to defend market share to the death, opting for repeat business rather than taking the Germanic approach of volume at all costs.
-Mike Devereux, Holden’s former Managing Director, in November, 2012
Those ominous words spoken by Mike Devereux last year have taken on an almost eerie significance in light of yesterday’s events. After more than a half century of building cars in Australia, Holden will now become a “national sales company”, ostensibly selling rebadged global General Motors products, manufactured in places like Korea and Thailand.
But veiled remarks about the Australian auto industry aren’t the only words uttered by Devereux that caused us to take notice. At the launch of the latest VF Commodore, Devereux made a vague statement about the Commodore’s future, implying that it would be built on a global platform at the Adelaide factory. While the latter is no longer possible, there’s still hope that the Commodore could live a GM architecture. The only question is, which one?
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