GM CEO Dan Akerson and his dispatched-to-Europe fixer Steve Girsky emphatically denied that its loss-making Opel arm is up for sale or might be merged into a joint venture with equally loss-making Peugeot. Read More >
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The rest of the world is becoming just as crossover obsessed as North America, and in the premium segment, a crossover is an absolute must for any car maker. PSA’s most recent round of efforts have been pretty poor, using the Mitsubishi Outlander as a starting point, but for their upscale DS brand, PSA is starting from scratch.
Auto sales in China rose 10.88 percent in March to 2,035,100 units, data of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show. Analysts expected a more robust rise after sales grew 15 percent in the January-February period. Read More >
Scott writes:
Hello –
Saw a Dex-cool question you posted previously, and figured I would try my own. We have a ’06 Malibu Maxx SS. Basically the car runs hot, but not all the time. I have been religious about flushing the cooling system and using only the correct fluids. Read More >
California Congressman Darrell Issa wants to investigate the Department of Energy’s loans to nearly-bankrupt Fisker after the company laid off most of its employees and retained bankruptcy lawyers last week.
So-called “range anxiety” is the biggest — perhaps the only — issue being discussed in the electric-vehicle debate nowadays. Whether it’s a Leaf crapping out at the sixty-mile mark or a Tesla Model S driving in circles around a parking lot to drain the battery for theatrical purposes, electric cars and range potential are linked in the minds of most potential buyers by a true Gordian knot.
If the people at Phinergy are correct, that knot can be sliced by a sword constructed from charged aluminum plates — and the resulting rewards would be spectacular, to say the least.
What do the Volvo XC60 and Lexus RX F-Sport have in common? Not much. Yet. Today’s vehicles aren’t just built on “modular” platforms, sharing parts with other vehicles from the same manufacturer, they are also “parts bin creations.” You’ll find the same power mirror switch in a Chevy, Jeep, Peugeot, Citroën, Lancia, Lincon and many more. That’s because car parts are like Lego pieces, made by a handful of car parts companies and designed to be everything for everyone. It’s cheaper for everyone to design one switch, one control module, one key fob and just alter some of the plastics and a connector to suit your new car design.
A Reuters article on Hyundai’s recent quality problems raises an interesting question. Has the company grown too fast following an unprecedented image makeover?
GM will resume advertising on Facebook, nearly a year after it ceased running ads on the social network.
The end of Q1 2013 in the United States saw numerous competitors in the mid-size sedan segment duking it out for the Number 1 spot. North of the border, the situation followed a familiar pattern as well; the race for the sales crown was dominated by compact sedans, rather than mid-sizers.
Over the last two years, attacking Lincoln has become tremendously “in.” This is because doing so will cause everyone to agree with you, which is sort of like when people complain about drivers in their hometown. Seriously: no matter what major city you visit, the drivers there are “the worst,” according to local residents who have obviously never visited Italy.
The latest industry observer to attack Lincoln is David Kiley, who wrote an editorial yesterday for Autoblog entitled “Lincoln needs a farewell address, not a new marketing plan.” This received a generally warm welcome, which mirrors the one Kiley will get in tomorrow’s Detroit Free Press for writing an op-ed piece called “Detroit Drivers Are The Worst.” The latter story would probably win him a Pulitzer, except the committee is in New York and they are absolutely certain Manhattan drivers are the worst.
The only problem is that all of the Lincoln doubters are wrong.
Before you say it, I’m well aware of what you’re thinking: I must be crazy. Regular readers already know this to be true, since I owned a Range Rover Classic. But for those who need more proof, here it is: I have absolutely no idea how Lincoln will come back. I won’t lay out a marketing plan as Kiley did, despite announcing in his title that Lincoln doesn’t need one. I just know they will.
This essay on Delicious Tacos, about the life and death of an $800 Mercedes-Benz diesel sedan, drove home one of the unfortunate realities of living in a snowy climate: it’s nearly impossible to find anything for $800 that hasn’t been completely consumed by oxidization.
Long feted as “the next China,” the Indian car market turned into a big disappointment: India’s annual car sales fell for the first time in a decade in the financial year just ended, Reuters says.
“Carmakers in India, two years ago the world’s hottest growth market after China, have seen high interest rates, rising fuel prices and prolonged economic gloom turn an industry recently growing at 30 percent a year into one plagued by huge discounts, showrooms full of unsold cars, and chronic overcapacity.” Read More >
Researchers are quickly getting disenchanted by the high price of lithium-ion batteries, paired with a growing number of high-profile incidents involving smoke and fire, Reuters says in an in-depth analysis. Some are looking way beyond Lithium-Ion. Some go back to technology that is older than the car: Lead-Acid. Read More >
A few months ago, we discussed what Nissan/Renault’s Carlos Ghosn calls a “structural decline” of Europe: Missing car buyers, brought on by a sudden decline of births around 1970. A population peak that now sits smack in the middle of the prime new car buying age, which in most of Europe is between 40 and 60 years, will retire in a few years, throwing Europe’s car industry in turmoil. Daimler, which has some of the oldest buyers, is beginning to feel the pain. Read More >
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