Will there be a Green Mile edition?

The slow-selling Volkswagen Beetle is living on borrowed time, if a tweet by industry insider Autoline can be believed, but aside from nostalgia, why should the world mourn a vehicle that few buyers want?

In the wake of the disruptive and wildly expensive diesel emissions scandal, Volkswagen needs sales in a big way, and they’re not getting them from the Beetle. Seven months out from the diesel revelations, Volkswagen’s sales are still dropping, and the Beetle’s popularity with buyers has all the power of, well, an original Beetle engine. Read More >

More autonomy is coming to North American Volkswagen operations, thanks in part to dealer protests calling for exactly that.

Today, Volkswagen established a new North American Region (NAR) encompassing Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, headed by no-longer-interim Volkswagen Group of America president and CEO Hinrich J. Woebcken (who replaced departing CEO Michael Horn in March). Read More >

Orders of the life changing, marriage-saving Tesla Model 3 are poised to hit 400,000, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne doesn’t think they’ve got the right stuff.

Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s vice-president of business development, confirmed the number of orders at an electric vehicle conference in Amsterdam yesterday, two weeks after the low-priced model’s glitzy unveiling, Electrek has reported. Read More >

After partnering with the Russian company Sollers for the past five years and investing more than $1 billion into car and engine factories, Ford Motor Company is betting on a Russian rebound and still sees the beleaguered country as a long-term play.

Amid GM’s retreat from Russia, Ford stuck to its game plan by spending cash on new models and plants in that country, presumably to avoid a catch-up situation similar to the one it faced in China. According to Automotive News, the commitment paid off in the first quarter of 2016, sending sales up by 93 percent in a market that saw a 17 percent decline over the same period. Read More >

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chairman John Elkann, like the company’s sweatered CEO, is making come-hither eyes in the hopes of luring a suitor.

FCA needs a partner to turn its lofty debt pile into capital, so Elkann wants other automakers to know just how thrilled he’d be if they helped FCA save $10 billion a year, he told shareholders of the investment company controlling FCA (via Bloomberg).

The problem, he lamented, is that other automakers are all wrapped up in trying to develop autonomous technology, often with outsider help. Like a wallflower with a heart of gold, FCA feels ignored despite having a lot to offer.

Read More >

Hyperloop Technology’s co-founder and chief technology officer Brogan BamBrogan, who is a real person and not a Bond villain living in a volcano lair, choose yesterday’s SEA International Congress talent meetup to push the Elon Musk-conceived technology, Automotive News has reported.

BamBrogan’s company is dangling job opportunities in front of the Detroit crowd in a bid to lure new henchmen auto industry talent into its fold.

The former Chrysler and SpaceX engineer’s message to the Detroit audience was clear. To paraphrase Seinfeld — this technology is real, and it’s spectacular.

“We’re calling this our Kitty Hawk moment,” BamBrogan told them.

Read More >

Changes to the Tesla lineup have never come at a more rapid pace.

After revealing the new face of the Model S yesterday, and two weeks after unveiling the Model 3, Tesla has kept the news flowing by ditching the 70 kilowatt-hour battery in the base Model X for a 75 kWh juice pack — and bumping up the price to match.

The all-wheel-drive SUV doesn’t get any faster with the upgrade — the 0-60 mph time is still six seconds — but the 75D can now travel 17 miles further on a charge, going from a 220-mile range to 237 miles.

Read More >

If there’s about $450,000 burning a hole in your pocket, Ford wants you to get in line for the new GT.

The application process for the 2017 and 2018 model years of the carbon fiber supercar kicked off today, and along with it, a very selective customer screening process.

Ford will sell a limited number of GTs each year, produced by Canadian firm Multimatic, so it could be a long wait if you don’t make the cut this time around. Ford anticipates first deliveries will begin late this year, with applications ending on May 12. Oh, and Russia? You can’t order a Ford GT, unless you have a friend buy it for you in an eligible country — like, say, China.

Read More >

It’s a bit like Scooby-Doo meets A Clockwork Orange.

Graduate students at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) spent two years working with Toyota to create the ideal vehicle for the next age demographic to leap into the car-buying fray: Generation Z.

No, we’re not talking about some stodgy Millennial born in 1985, with his cardigans and Dodge Journey. Generation Z refers to the cohort born in the late 1990s (at the earliest) onward, and these are the people automakers are going to start targeting right … about … now.

Read More >

Executives at Mini are busy mulling what to introduce next, and it’s increasingly looking like that model will have a trunk.

Unlike a car modeled after a young man wearing a backward ballcap, a sedan is a logical addition to the brand’s future lineup, and comments made to Autocar by Ralph Mahler, vice-president of product development, make it clear there’s a serious business case for a three-box Mini.

Read More >

A small Cadillac is coming in about three years, but it won’t be built in Michigan.

General Motors is scrapping a $245 million investment in its Detroit-area Orion Assembly plant in favor of moving a future Cadillac’s production to its Fairfax plant in Kansas City, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Orion’s plant communications manager Chris Bonelli, confirmed the move, but stated, “We’re not confirming the brand or type of product yet.”

Read More >

Grilles are so 20th century.

As we speculated last week, Tesla has put a new face on its Model S, doing away with the faux grille designed to trick people into thinking there was something combusting under the hood.

The new front end is a corporate amalgam of the both the recently unveiled Model 3 sedan and Model X SUV. Tesla apparently thinks that society has progressed enough to accept the disappearance of an air-sucking mouth at the front of a car.

Read More >

Apparently, it’s Technology Tuesday here at TTAC, so we can bring you news of a device that will kick your deeply held fears to the curb.

Vehicle hacking has been an issue ever since a Jeep Cherokee had its steering, transmission and brakes commandeered last summer, and an Israeli firm is now offering protection against keyboard warriors, according to CNBC (via Business Insider).

Read More >

After announcing earlier this year that it wanted someone else to take care of its problem patients, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is performing surgery on the slow-selling Dodge Dart lineup.

The Fiat-based compact will be pared down from five offerings to three, outfitted to offer the features customers want at a strategic price, with no engine overlap between models. It also means the end of the “Obama Dart” — the high-mileage Aero edition produced to satisfy the U.S. government’s bailout conditions many years back. More on that later.

Read More >

Like an actor who just can’t cut it, the third-row seats in Tesla’s Model X could fold under pressure, meaning the automaker now has to recall all of the SUVs it has delivered to date.

About 2,700 Model X vehicles sold in the U.S. will be heading back to Tesla for a fix after internal strength tests revealed that a rear seatback could slip. As a result, the company is cautioning owners not to seat anyone in the third row until repairs have been made.

The tests were being conducted prior to the model going on sale in Europe.

Read More >