The automotive industry is wary of any changes that might be made in regard to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Fortunately for them, little progress has been made during the last few months of negotiations. But that doesn’t create an assurance that changes aren’t still en route. So, manufacturers and suppliers have banded together via various trade groups to voice their opinion on how to best handle NAFTA.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has attempted to make itself appear friendly to the automotive business. Continuing these efforts, Vice President Mike Pence has met with General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Fiat Chrysler’s Sergio Marchionne, Ford North America President Joe Hinrichs, and a handful of other top-tier auto executives. Read More >

Following up on our earlier post about Lincoln’s cryptic tweet (showing eight seconds of pavement and two seconds of half a chrome wheel), internet sleuth Chris Doane Automotive has unearthed some photos which seem to show a redesigned 2019 MKX.

Except this time around, Lincoln is – praise the pharaohs – deploying a real name. What did it select? Nautilus.

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We’ve featured a communist-built car before on Rare Rides; it was an old Czech-made Skoda 120, located in Canada. A specialized importer group brought many cars just like the Skoda into Canada in the 1980s, supplying bare bones Soviet Bloc vehicles to frugal Canadians living in Quebec and some other places.

Today’s Rare Ride was never part of LadaCanada, and lived its life abroad until very recently. Made in Russia, sold in Belgium, and imported to America, it’s a Lada Samara.

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Volkswagen’s American fortune will not come by way of an electric, next-generation Beetle. No, the automaker’s U.S. game plan rests firmly on the success of existing and future utility vehicles. With no new models kicking around to bring to L.A., the automaker decked out its recently introduced second-generation Tiguan in ever-so-edgy R-Line trim and headed to the show.

Featuring an added (but not heaping) dose of visual aggression, the Tiguan R-Line, available in the first quarter of 2018, should give crossover buyers something new to look at while the company fleshes out its lineup with new tenants. It’s early days yet, but it seems the company’s crossover push is already working. Read More >

Hyundai Motor Company has, once again, found itself at the mercy of an unhappy workforce. No stranger to labor disputes, the company hinted that it might scale back its at-home labor in South Korea — presumably aware that the possible response would be negative, which it was. But the timing couldn’t be worse.

The Kona crossover is believed to be the model that will turn things around for Hyundai in the United States, but a new labor strike has put the export vehicle’s production on hold only a week after it started. Read More >

A few days ago, official photos surfaced of the next-generation Lincoln MKC, showing a crossover that had ditched its krill-hungry maw in favor of a new grille in line with treatments found on the Continental and Navigator. Lincoln announced that the refreshed MKC will be shown this week in L.A.

Yesterday, Lincoln dropped a quick teaser video on Twitter, showing several seconds of pavement followed by the lower half of a chrome wheel. Promising a vehicle that will “make a lasting impression,” the video leaves us pondering a question: If Lincoln has officially shown us the 2019 MKC, what else could it possibly have in store?

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Given the way the industry’s going, this website might soon have to change its name to The Truth About Crossovers. Thankfully, the acronym remains the same.

A U.S. design patent granted to Honda on Tuesday reveals that three utility vehicles might not be enough for the Japanese automaker’s American lineup. As car companies both domestic and foreign scramble to fill in gaps in their showrooms, it seems Honda hasn’t yet reached the crossover saturation point. Read More >

None of us can predict the future, but just think of the penthouse-in-Dubai levels of cash that awaits us if we could. Alas, all we can do is follow existing trends and make a best guess.

In the automotive world, the fate of a car model lies at the intersection of sales, industry direction, and emerging technologies. SUVs and crossovers hang like a blade over the necks of all traditional passenger cars, and autonomous vehicles menace everything with a steering wheel. Electric motors threaten to turn the exhaust note into a distant memory. Governments and regulators stand in the shadows, eager to spring forth one day and spoil all of our internal combustion fun. In spite of all of these factors, there’s still bold predictions made every day about the future of the industry in five, 10, 20, 50 years.

Today, we’re asking you to peer into the Magic 8 Ball and make a prediction of your own. A very specific prediction, to be clear, and it only needs to involve one model: the next U.S.-market sedan to die. Read More >

If you ask any terrible motorist how skilled they are behind the wheel, the response is often the same. “Oh, I’m a great driver,” they’ll say with a self-assured smile. Meanwhile, you’re left holding back a series of screaming rants that involve first-hand accounts of why their claim couldn’t possibly be accurate. But what about the rest of the country?

As it turns out, the general consensus in the United States is that most people think they’re a fine driver. But things get a little more complicated when you drive into people’s habits behind the wheel. In a recent survey, Driving-tests.org found that 60.8 percent of surveyed Americans thought they were an above-average driver. While that percentage can only be an impossibility, some of the claimed behaviors were slightly better than a comparative sample of international respondents.  Read More >

The hard-done-by sedan, once as commonplace as weeds, junk mail, and shattered dreams, doesn’t need any more of a push as it shuffles towards its waiting grave. The buying public is already killing the segment through neglect. Last month, the once-Godlike midsize sedan fell below 10-percent market share in the U.S.

It’s grim times for the traditional sedan, be it compact, midsize, or land yacht. However, anyone hoping for a plateau or even a sales revival is kidding themselves, according to a study by KPMG. The advent of technology will only push more buyers away from sedans and towards their one true love. Read More >

You would think you’d be happy when a peer succeeds and goes on to greater things, but the reality is often a little grimier and less magnanimous. Genesis has been a sore subject around Hyundai Motor Company ever since the automaker spun it off into its own brand. However, this has less to do with its role as an elite nameplate and more about how to manage it as part of the greater whole.

Earlier this month, dealers expressed their dismay by walking out of a meeting with Hyundai Motor America’s executives — which included CEO Kenny Lee and COO Brian Smith. The incident didn’t last particularly long and the conference eventually got back on track, but it proves there’s unresolved issues as to how the Genesis brand should be handled. Read More >

The American automotive industry is facing a problem that has nothing to do with supplier relations or regulatory handicaps. Apparently, domestic auto workers are getting addicted to drugs at an alarming rate. As a Michigan native, my childhood frequently included evenings at the local bowling alley where shop rats would go to tip back a few after the end of their shift. But, with the exception of an occasional “funny smelling cigarette,” you never really heard about anyone having troubles with more illicit substances.

However that’s exactly what the Detroit Three appear to be faced with, according to George Washington, an employee-assistance representative for General Motors. Washington claims line workers are becoming addicted to opioids and even crystal meth at a frequency that’s causing concern.   Read More >

Though we wrote about the Sterling brand in a previous QOTD post from earlier this year, we’ve never covered one as a Rare Ride. It’s not often one finds a Sterling for sale these days, as most examples fell into disrepair and disuse by the late 1990s. But B&B commenter FreedMike managed to find a very tidy Sterling for sale at a dealer in Wisconsin, which is near Canada.

Come have a look at the not-quite Honda from Blighty.

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Like BMW, which aims to keep gas-powered M cars in production for as long as humanly possible, Porsche is also making a commitment to motoring purity in the face of new technologies and government overreach. That circular device positioned in front of the driver? Porsche wants to keep it there.

The specter of Big Government and Big Safety conspiring to kill non-autonomous motoring is a real fear, one that’s been talked about more than a little here at TTAC. Call it the Red Barchetta scenario.

Porsche seems aware of it, too, though it tiptoes around the entity at the center of the issue. Nevertheless, the automaker claims a future Porsche “will be one of the last automobiles with a steering wheel.” Read More >

“Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” For years, this was the missive put forth by race teams and gearheads within the bowels of OEMs who were looking for a slice of the budget. It worked for a time, especially in the halcyon days of the 1960s and ’70s.

Is it the same today? I’m not so sure.

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