General Motors vacated the continent in fine style last year, flushing the Vauxhall and Opel brand to Groupe PSA in a deal worth about 2.2 billion Euro. However, it turns out Ren Cen remains as a lingering presence in moving metal across the pond.

All this was spurred by a tweet by David Shepardson of Reuters revealing The General sold about 3,000 vehicles in the first nine months of 2018, compared to 684,000 during the same period one year ago. This makes sense, given the sloughing of Vauxhall/Opel.

Since the word “Europe” shows up exactly zero times in GM’s Q3 earnings report, it left your author wondering: what models comprised those sales? Not the ones I thought, as it turns out.

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Production of crew cab and double cab variants of GM’s full-size 2019 pickups is already underway, but the automaker won’t fully turn off the taps on the older-generation models until after the middle of next year.

GM provided a run-down of its pickup production plans Wednesday, assuring those who aren’t fans of the new Silverado’s styling that there’ll be a toned-down alternative available for some time. (Read More…)

Wednesday morning, General Motors announced third-quarter 2018 earnings “reflecting profitability in all core operating segments.” Operating profits were at $2.5 billion, with North American profit margins hovering around 10.2 percent thanks to healthy truck sales. All in all, things were looking pretty good.

Then GM announced a plan to extend buyouts to salaried employees in the region with 12 or more years experience in order to cut costs. Roughly 18,000 salaried employees are said to be eligible for voluntary severance packages. The reason? General Motors says it wants to do this while the company is still healthy, which sounds like a pretty strong hint that bad times are ahead.  (Read More…)

Each one of you here in the peanut gallery learned to drive at one point or another. And whether that was via a proper driving school, or, perhaps for the older types, at the wheel of a friend or relative’s car, the memories are there just the same. Today we talk driver’s education and the car which withstood your naive mistreatment. It’s story time.

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General Motors appeared to endorse the Trump administration’s fuel economy rollback, at least to some degree. In a federal filing made public on Monday, the largest U.S. automaker said Obama-era rules that targeted fleetwide fuel efficiency in excess of 50 miles per gallon by 2025 were “not technologically feasible or economically practicable.”

Interesting, considering GM CEO Mary Barra recently called for for the adoption of a national zero-emission vehicle strategy. However, the document also had GM saying it was “troubled” that the current administration appears so keen to abandon federal incentives on electric vehicles after the 2021 model year.  (Read More…)

For the most part, the major benefit of brand loyalty is not getting into an argument with your family members at the dinner table. Grandpa worked for General Motors, Dad buys Chevy exclusively, and you decided not to buck the trend. You even bragged about Aunt Beth helping you get a sweet deal on that new Malibu, while everyone nodded in approval between bites of turkey.

However, there are more tangible rewards for sticking with a singular auto brand. Now that the Western market has surpassed peak growth, manufacturers know that it’s going to be a lot harder to reel in new customers. They’ve decided to shift tactics by offering incentives to existing customers in the hopes that they won’t leave them the next time they need a fresh vehicle.  (Read More…)

It looks like General Motors won’t enjoy its tax incentive advantage over Tesla for all that long. The maker of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt plug-in hybrid (“extended-range EV,” in GM parlance) told Green Car Reports it will pass the 200,000-unit green vehicle threshold this quarter, meaning a halved federal tax credit for those vehicles starting in April of next year.

No longer will the base Bolt sticker for under $30,000 after factoring in the $7,500 credit. (Read More…)

General Motors CEO Mary Barra took to the USA Today op-ed page Friday to advocate for a national zero-emission vehicle strategy — NZEV, for short. The automaker is calling for the ZEV program already in effect in California and nine other states to become law across the United States, thus making it mandatory for OEMs to field a certain number of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, or pay a price.

Were the proposal to became the law of the land, you can only imagine the reaction from Ford’s rival in Auburn Hills. (Read More…)

Exactly were the Cadillac XT4 lands in terms of sales volume remains to be seen. The brand recorded its first sales of the just-released compact crossover in September, with 212 examples leaving U.S. lots.

Offered with just a single engine (a healthy turbocharged 2.0-liter four) and single transmission (nine-speed automatic), the XT4 is Cadillac’s desperately needed entry in the premium compact CUV market — a hot segment where Cadillac’s tardiness puts it at a disadvantage. But perhaps this XT4 is just a starting point.

A rendering spotted on Cadillac’s XT4 show-and-tell page suggests the brand may hold loftier performance expectations for the little ute. (Read More…)

In what might be one of the quickest shifts to a styling change in recent memory, it appears Chevrolet might be into the idea of fixing the gaping maw on its Camaro SS by repositioning its bowtie.

Gee … if only someone had mocked up such a fix in the form of a hastily-cropped image. Oh, wait! That’s right! We did just that last week.

Thank you for listening, GM.

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Usually, talk of an extended warranty is waved off as a money-making scam by thrifty buyers in the final moments of a sale. And, usually, it’s the dealer offering the coverage. The buyer sees their total amount owing skyrocket on the finance manager’s computer and quickly signs for the agreed-upon amount, thankful to have escaped the building with his or her original payment calculations intact.

Uncertainty lies years down the road, but the thrill of new vehicle ownership muscles those fears to the back of the mind as the driver motors home, fingers crossed.

General Motors wants buyers to embrace that extra peace of mind, but it wants the coverage to come from the factory, not from a dealer extended warranty or service contract. On Monday, the automaker announced an extended factory warranty for vehicles spanning its four brands, and, right on cue, complaints arose from those tasked with selling the cars. (Read More…)

When GM released EPA-estimated fuel economy for its 2.7L Turbo full-size pickup engine today, many of us were taken aback. For a four-cylinder (yes, it is a four-cylinder, and the omission of this info from GM materials is glaring), we expected a higher MPG figure. Perhaps not significantly higher, but enough to create a greater gap between it and its cylinder-heavy contemporaries.

A combined rating of 21 mpg is what buyers can expect from the 2.7-liter unit, which sends its 310 horsepower and 348 lb-ft of torque to the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic. (The 4WD model is not yet rated). That torque figure beats the naturally aspirated V6 found in both the GM and Ford camps, and comes close to Ram’s Pentastar motor. If gas mileage is top of mind, however, it’s a much closer race. (Read More…)

The Texas plant producing General Motors’ body-on-frame SUVs is clean and green, even if the vehicles it builds are anything but Prius-like.

In August, the 43 turbines of Southern Power’s 148 MW Cactus Flats Wind Facility became operational in Concho County, Texas. GM, along with General Mills (the tastier GM) both have contracts to purchase power from the facility — in GM’s case, some 50 MW of it per year. That means it can now claim its Arlington, Texas assembly plant is 100 percent powered by renewable energy. The Environmental Protection Agency just placed GM at No. 76 on its list of the country’s largest green power users.

It’s amazing the kind of tree-hugging press one can get for a factory that essentially builds dinosaurs. (Read More…)

The Buick Cascada, known to Europeans as the Opel Cascada, appeared on North American shores for the 2016 model year, offering buyers (and renters) a pleasant, four-seat replacement for the discontinued Chrysler 200 drop-top.

Now wholly owned by France’s PSA Group, not General Motors, Opel plans to ditch the model once 2019 is up, meaning America stands to lose its last non-sports car convertible. It would also knock the Buick brand down to five models. (Read More…)

Last year, news broke that General Motors was getting back into the defense business. The automaker had a slick new military fuel-cell concept and was in the process of setting up GM Defense LLC in Washington, D.C.

It’s now one year later and the automaker has appointed retired Maj. Gen. John Charlton as the subsidiary’s new president. He will report to GM Defense CEO Charlie Freese, a 15-year GM veteran and fuel cell technology expert. The unit’s stated goal is to focus upon “helping GM better anticipate and react to the diverse needs of global aerospace and defense customers.” But it’s also bringing the automaker back into mil-spec work for the first time since 2003, when it sold everything it had to General Dynamics for a cool $1.1 billion.  (Read More…)