After a streak of 11 consecutive years of U.S. sales growth for Subaru, a period in which the brand doubled its market share to 4.1 percent, “We’ll start a new streak next year,” the brand’s U.S. CEO Tom Doll says of 2020.

At any other point in history, the declines reported by Subaru over the last few months would be calamitous. Yet Subaru’s year-over-year losses in 2020, a year torn to shreds by COVID-19, have not been as severe as anticipated. Moreover, bright spots have been more numerous than expected.

The company, as a result, is now planning for 2020 to end as the brand’s sixth-best on record.  Read More >

Hyundai and its sister automaker, Kia Motors, want to hear from you. Well, maybe not you, but someone with electrification expertise and a startup in tow.

As the automakers prepare a series of upcoming electric models, the automakers, joined by their battery supplier, have issued a challenge. Read More >

Fielding a full range of passenger cars is soooo yesterday, man. Almost no one does it anymore. Certainly, no American automaker, anyway.

Across the pond, Jaguar finds itself at a fork in the road. The sedan market is drying up, and along with it, sales of its compact XE and midsize XF models. The XJ is going electric, so that’s a decision already made.

But what to do at the bottom end of the market? Read More >

Is Mitsubishi about to try on Fiat’s shoes? After the Japanese automaker’s CEO presented a new business plan that aligns with the goals of its alliance bunk mates late last week, it’s starting to look that way.

The Mirage maker, suddenly eager to save cash and firm up its foundation, plans to pull back in the North American market, preferring instead to focus on Southeast Asia and other overseas environs. It’s not that the brand wasn’t growing its sales in the U.S. and Canada; it was. Its dealer network was steadily adding stores, too, and 2019 was the brand’s best sales year since 2007.

What we ask you today is: should “pulling back” turn into pulling out? Read More >

When Sir Thomas More coined the term “utopia,” he lifted two words from Ancient Greek that roughly translate into “not a place.” Turns out people from the 16th century still understood satire, perhaps better than we do today. After all, we are the ones operating under the assumption that we can remap society in order to build consequence-free transportation network without a shred of humor to keep us grounded.

We may not need satire in this instance, however. A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health asks questions about how just effectively the shift to autonomy will benefit society as a whole. Industry leaders have broadly framed the shift toward self-driving as kicking down the door to an idyllic universe where no one wants for transportation, with autonomous taxis serving as the first wave of this planned paradise. The reality may be vastly different that what’s being sold, however.  Read More >

Once upon a time, crew cab pickups were for logging crews in the Pacific Northwest, not families. That’s obviously changed. Whereas the typical pickup configuration was a regular cab, long-bed setup (efficient!), times change, and with it the take rates of various truck configurations.

In the eventful 2020 model year, it seems the buying public has never had less use for once-common body styles. It’s four doors, or get lost. Read More >

Bavaria-based BMW says it aims to cut roughly 6,000 positions from its lineup on account of coronavirus complications. Times are tough and the manufacturer needs to tighten its belt, just like many of its peers.

The alley-oop that precedes the slam dunking of these jobs into the wastebasket will be tempting retirement packages for those of a certain age. But BMW also said it is interested in offering younger people financial assistance for full-time higher education with a guarantee of a job when they’re done — offering some amount of hope.  Read More >

There’s a big to-do coming up in Tesla’s social calendar. Dubbed “Battery Day,” the occasion seems to have something to do with…well, you can probably read.

Battery Day, on which Tesla will presumably storm the beaches of electrification technology, is slated for September 15th — the same day as a postponed shareholder meeting. Read More >

If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you can keep people isolated in their homes without any negative consequences whatsoever.

Sure, we’ve seen articles from scientific journals like The Lancet warning that similar experiments run on a much smaller scale resulted in psychological stress and disorder, including low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, general irritability, emotional exhaustion, paranoia, drug abuse, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, but where’s the evidence of that happening this time?

Don’t answer that.

Employers the world over are already seeing the benefits of remote work and have begun to consider how to make it a long-term proposition. In addition to protecting companies against any new COVID-19 outbreaks, stay-at-home orders mean paying for less office space and utilities. Automakers are starting to think this is a pretty sweet deal — especially with productivity not having taken much of a hit — and are now considering whether to extend at-home employment indefinitely.  Read More >

Rare Rides recently featured this car’s successor — the lovely Zagato-built Flaminia coupe from 1965. Today we’ll jump a decade prior and take a look at Lancia’s flagship offering from the Fifties.

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Nikola, the electric vehicle startup with no functional or sellable product to back up its insane valuation, just got a reality check from JPMorgan. The Wall Street firm has warned investors of a pullback of the company’s sky-high share price — an action that pretty much guarantees that exact outcome.

After catapulting into the stratosphere two weeks ago, Nikola’s stock stands to sink by nearly a third, the bank warns. That result would no doubt be gratifying for those annoyed by overvalued companies who promise investors the sun, moon, and stars.

Read More >

Mitsubishi watched as its U.S. and Canadian volumes rose steadily over the past several years — growth hampered by a limited product lineup and so-so vehicle quality. Still, it was growth, and Mitsu made sure to celebrate each year-over-year sales increase.

Well, that was then, and this is now. As a member of an alliance dominated by Renault and Nissan and hit hard, like many others, by the coronavirus pandemic, the future holds a different strategy for the Japanese automaker. For the U.S., it also seems to hold fewer Mitsubishis. Read More >

Don’t you love it when an automaker comes out with a survey? Served up with a huge grain of salt, such surveys are only published when they reinforce a conclusion the OEM already wishes to make, and always in the service of marketing.

There’s a Ford F-150 coming on June 25th, and it seems the Blue Oval now wants to talk to you about sex and booze. Read More >

For better than three decades, Chevrolet sold Americans full-sized sedans with angular lines and — in most cases— V8 engines. Beginning in 1959 (or even earlier, depending on how strict you are about the definition of “angular”), a big rear-drive Chevy box sedan was the most mainstream American motor vehicle… and that came to an end in 1990, after which the Caprice got a new cetacean body on the old 1977-vintage chassis.

These late Box Caprices have become very tough to find in junkyards, so I decided to document this picked-over example in Colorado before they’re all gone forever. Read More >

At this point, if Ford wants to keep the upcoming Bronco and Bronco Sport under wraps until their respective unveilings, it had best invest in surplus anti-aircraft batteries — or just never leave the confines of company-owned production facilities. Even those walls have proven a porous barrier, however.

As the weekend dawned, drone-provided aerial spy photos appeared of the two dissimilar Broncos congregating with a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 out in the desert, far — at least, one would assume — from prying eyes. Read More >