We told you late last year how the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid is the hybrid the Toyota Prius wishes it could be. The two models have essentially swapped positions, with eco-minded American consumers now eschewing the pius hatch in favor of the brawnier image and accommodating cabin of the gas-electric compact CUV.

It brings to mind this morning’s QOTD, frankly.

End-of-year sales starkly illustrated the diverging paths of these two models. This week, the automaker is basking in more good sales news, both for hybrids and conventional vehicles. On the electrified front, at the very least, there’s good reason for Toyota to be very optimistic about 2020. (Read More…)

Depending on your interests, “PMC” might denote a brand of ammunition. For others, it’s the nerve center of Acura performance, residing in Marysville, Ohio.

For 2020, Acura, eager to draw eyes to one of its two crossovers, has slapped the abbreviation of its Performance Manufacturing Center on the MDX, then limited availability to make those drivers feel special. Will they feel special, though? (Read More…)

Just as airlines around the world cut ties with China, automakers who do business in the coronavirus-hit country are scrambling to deal with the outbreak — delaying production, keeping employees at home, and crossing their fingers.

Any predictions that 2020 would be a better year than 2019 — a potential springboard year for automakers busily tailoring their lineups to better serve the rapidly evolving Chinese market — are now due for revision. (Read More…)

As Jaguar Land Rover lunges forward with its “Project Charge” turnaround plan, things aren’t nearly as grim as they were a year ago. Which is exactly what the automaker’s parent, Tata Motors, wants to hear.

Despite a softening in global sales, the automaker made progress on many fronts, crediting its cost-cutting and product plan with a return to black ink. (Read More…)

Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2019 earning report, released Wednesday night, gave analysts and investors what they’d been looking for. In the midst of a global production ramp-up, the electric automaker posted a second consecutive quarterly profit ⁠— offering compelling news about a new model in the process.

That vehicle is the Model Y, a Model 3-based compact crossover that’s apparently already rolling off the assembly line in Fremont, California. (Read More…)

I took a walk the other night, taking advantage of unseasonably mild temps to enjoy a little exercise and fresh air. One damp, gloomy block after another passed until I saw her. Under a streetlamp, in front of a drab walk-up. Beckoning to me without saying a word.

I stopped in my tracks and stared, mouth slightly agape ⁠— not unlike George Costanza in that episode with the producer’s 15-year-old daughter.

“Why aren’t you more popular?” I thought. (Read More…)

We’ve kept light tabs on Harley-Davidson over the past few years, typically to chronicle its downward progress in an effort to make parallels between it and the world’s automakers. Despite having its share of ups and downs throughout its long history, the motorcycle brand finds itself with an impressively loyal customer base willing to pay premium prices for its product.

Unfortunately, its key demographic is quickly aging out of the hobby. In response, the company turned its focus towards younger generations. While Boomers living in America remain H-D’s most important clientele, it’s seeking to branch out into other markets and age brackets. It’s also attempting to rebrand itself to achieve broader appeal without torpedoing the heritage angle that has worked so well for it in the past.

When we last checked in with Harley-Davidson, the company had just delayed its all-electric LiveWire — a bike aimed at helping the brand tap into a new market while broadcasting its ability to gaze ahead into the same vague future automakers are now struggling with. H-D has since released its Q4 earnings for 2019.

The prognosis could be better.  (Read More…)

With best-ever sales from the segment-leading Toyota Tacoma, sales of midsize pickup trucks in the United States jumped 22 percent in 2019. That’s nearly nine times the rate of growth experienced by full-size pickup trucks in the U.S. last year, enough to drive market share of the smaller trucks to a 13-year high.

In fact, for the first time since the economic collapse of 2009, more than one-fifth of the pickups sold in America were not full-size trucks.

The Tacoma, which only inched forward in 2019, is not deserving of all the credit. New and reborn pickup truck nameplates contributed 130,000 sales to the midsize ledger over the last 12 months. That was more than enough to dramatically shake up the segment. (Read More…)

Perhaps realizing that his job was done, Michael O’Brien, Hyundai Motor America’s vice president for product, announced his departure from the automaker late Friday.

O’Brien leaves the company he served for nearly 20 years on February 3rd, heading off to pursue “other interests,” the grateful automaker said in a statement. Put in charge of the Korean brand’s product direction, O’Brien played a major role in turning around a flagging sales situation with a surge of crossovers big and small. (Read More…)

The countdown to Mercedes-Benz EQC production last year was preceded by stories about the model’s anticipated range and uncontroversial styling, but when the time came to get EQCs into the hands of buyers, the electric crossover had trouble leaving the launch pad.

Not long after reports emerged of the EQC’s U.S. arrival being delayed by a full year, a German outlet claims Mercedes-Benz has chopped its 2020 production target in half. (Read More…)

While I don’t particularly agree with all the criticisms Lee Iacocca has thrown at Japan, his most polarizing claim (published in Playboy, no less) — that its citizens certainly know Jeep because “they saw enough of them in World War II” — has bizarrely continued to ring true. As far as American automotive brands go, Jeep has been Japan’s favorite for a while. And it only needed to tamp down its relationship to “The Big One” slightly to get there.

However, the sales game is always relative.

Despite being one of the fastest-growing brands on the market, Jeep only netted itself 13,360 deliveries in Japan for 2019. But consistent growth since 2013 has to account for something, especially when the overall market is performing so poorly. At the very least, it shows American brands can make some amount of headway on a nut Iacocca believed uncrackable.  (Read More…)

A near-future of rapidly rising sales is a vision Genesis brand chief William Lee wants to see come true. It has to, if Hyundai’s premium marque wants to stick around.

With its American dealer strategy now up and running and the public debut of the brand’s first crossover vehicle just days away, Lee claims he’s confident great things lie ahead. Is it bad luck for a fledgling marque to issue sales predictions? If it is, Lee isn’t aware. (Read More…)

While Jeep may be a big money maker for Fiat Chrysler, the rugged off-road brand’s products aren’t all doing fabulously. A downturn in consumer enthusiasm has left the automaker with too many Cherokees in its inventory, so something has to give.

Belvidere Assembly goes dark for two weeks this month. (Read More…)

Rich people are just like us: they put on their pants one leg at a time, they walk upright, and they enjoy winters at their villa in the south of France. Okay, maybe they aren’t exactly like us. My villa is in Spain.

One other thing they do? Buy cars, apparently. A quick perusal of 2019 total year sales numbers show that while mainstream makes like Ford and Chevy fell into the red compared to the same timeframe one year ago, there’s no shortage of growth at the big money brands.

(Read More…)

The annual sales volumes of Volkswagen’s U.S. arm, if placed on a line graph, would resemble deep sea swells, rising and falling by significant amounts as the company reinvents itself again and again. Today, Volkswagen of America is an SUV-heavy automaker that really wants you to think about eco-conscious electric cars.

The utility vehicles are here. More are on the way, but so too are a selection of EVs. With 2019 sales now on the books, we can look at the current wave and speculate as to its final height. (Read More…)