Have you seen an Audi E-Tron (officially, “e-tron”) on the street? This writer hasn’t. Yet the electric Audi crossover has been on offer for a little over a year now, slowly paving the way for an all-electric future.
Available to U.S. customers through special order and to dealers who just wish to keep one around, the E-Tron arrived in early 2019 with 204 miles of EPA-rated range. It’s now back after skipping a model year, with two improvements aimed at broader consumer appeal, if not adoption.
An ongoing pandemic and serious North American sales hit weren’t enough to bring Toyota to a loss in the quarter ending June 30th.
The automaker posted its weakest fiscal first-quarter return in nearly a decade, but last quarter’s operating profit, despite plunging 98 percent on a year-over-year basis, still came out in positive territory. While the road ahead is rocky and paved with uncertainty, Toyota says it was surprised as how quickly it bounced back. (Read More…)
With the upcoming QX55, Infiniti is tearing a page from the Volkswagen Atlas’ playbook. That German manufacturer saw that it had a good thing in its midsize crossover, so it decided to get more bang for its buck by shaving a little length and height from the three-row model, creating a mildly upscale, slightly restyled two-row variant to widen the model’s net.
The QX55 is the same recipe applied to Infiniti’s QX50 crossover — a model that landed with a resounding thud in late 2018, but one whose sales have proven interesting in the grim year of 2020. Why is that, you ask? (Read More…)
Honda reported a $765 million loss in the fiscal quarter ending June 30th, a marked downturn in its financial standing when compared to the quarter before.
Hardly shocking, though, given the virus-related global sales plunge and the production shutdown that afflicted the American manufacturing scene in April and May. Honda’s characterizing it as a “nowhere to go but up” scenario. (Read More…)
Apparently not quite done with monthly sales reporting, Subaru produced two very different tallies for its U.S. and Canadian arms in July. Known for being able to build just as many vehicles as it can sell, the automaker habitually carries one of the slimmest inventories in the industry — and the pandemic didn’t help things on that front.
Domestic factories have been up and running since May, lessening the strain on both dealers and sales sheets, but normalcy remains out of reach for certain industry players. And that group includes Subaru. In the U.S., volume was down nearly 20 percent last month, but north of the border it was an entirely different story. (Read More…)
The not-quite-subcompact CX-30 arrived at just the right time for Mazda, appearing at the tail end of what had been a grim 2019 for Mazda. Just as sales of the new tweener crossover matured, the pandemic hit.
As volumes struggle to regain potency across the industry, the new arrival in the Mazda stable helped the automaker post back-to-back monthly sales increase in June and July, replacing volume lost among the brand’s passenger cars — and then some. (Read More…)
If you’re like this writer, you pine for the long-ago days when walking into a bar only carried the risk of embarrassing inebriation and possibly violent confrontation, not a viral infection that could leave any of us on gasping on life support. We all wish things were normal.
While the coronavirus hasn’t cleared out, you wouldn’t know that looking at Hyundai’s U.S. sales tally for July. The automaker raised eyebrows and bucked the industry trend by posting a year-over year gain last month. (Read More…)
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles revealed a second-quarter loss of $1.24 billion on Friday, down slightly from the $1.8 billion net loss posted for Q1.
As before, the pandemic weighed heavily on the automaker’s finances, though this spring’s two-month shutdown of domestic manufacturing and the revenue drop arising from the virus didn’t spell red ink for its all-important North American region. (Read More…)
Lincoln’s compact MKC transformed into the Lincoln Corsair for 2020, bringing style borrowed from its big brother Aviator to buyers of lesser means… or wants.
Tagging along a year late, a plug-in hybrid variant will join the Corsair trim ladder for 2021, but a new report suggests it won’t be in plentiful supply. (Read More…)
It’s true that the once-hot minivan segment was shrinking rapidly even before the pandemic hit. Since then, things have only gotten worse for a vehicle type once seen as the go-to conveyance for growing families.
How bad is it? Our own Tim Cain recently traded in his Honda Odyssey for a shiny new Ridgeline pickup. We were aghast.
Well, this turn of events hasn’t stopped Honda from putting what it feels is its best minivan forward. For 2021, the Odyssey returns with a fresh(ened) face and new content. But can it budge the sales needle when it goes on sale next month? (Read More…)
General Motors’ second-quarter earnings report is out, and there’s red ink to report.
Hammered by the coronavirus-related shutdown of its domestic manufacturing facilities and a corresponding sales slide, the automaker reported an $800 million loss in Q2 — a far cry from the rosy, $2.42 billion profit it saw a year earlier.
GM’s cash burn was also a five-alarm affair, but one element of the report was hardly depressing at all: the company’s Chinese sales. (Read More…)
Never mind 2020. In the previous decade, Americans purchased more new cars per year than ever before. Roaring out of the recession, U.S. sales volumes ticked upwards year after year, settling above the 17 million marker and staying there for quite some time. Even last year’s haul defied expectations, landing north of that hallowed marker.
It didn’t reverse the increasingly geriatric nature of the country’s fleet, however. American automobiles, on average, have never been older, and they’re now poised to jump rapidly in age. (Read More…)
Already in the unenviable position of having gone its entire life without the presence of a utility vehicle, the now-adolescent Genesis brand has one last hurdle to clear before it can join the rest of its peers.
That hurdle is a delay caused by the spring coronavirus shutdown — meaning that the long-awaited GV80 SUV and its revamped sedan platform mate, the G80, won’t make it to market this summer, as initially planned. (Read More…)
“How bad is it? And how bad is it going to be?”
Those were our questions five months ago when describing the American minivan category’s paltry 408,982 sales in calendar year 2019. At that time, the rate of decline experienced by the segment suggested that, “America won’t even acquire 300,000 minivans next year.”
Enter novel coronavirus and, consequently, a second-quarter in which auto sales in the United States tumbled by a third. For perspective, that’s 1.5 million fewer sales between April and June of 2020 than during the equivalent period one year earlier.
Meanwhile, as quarantines and lockdowns and isolations and shutdowns caused new vehicle demand to shrink, the previously beloved minivan segment saw its share of the U.S. market absolutely crater. (Read More…)
Is there a U.S. assembly plant that’s not currently producing a utility vehicle that doesn’t need one? Perhaps, but that doesn’t describe Volvo Cars’ Ridgeville, South Carolina facility, which builds the new-for-2019 S60 sedan.
A still-shiny plant situated near Charleston’s busy harbor that only opened a year prior to the S60’s launch, the facility shuttered itself in late March as the coronavirus swept into North America, reopening in early May before going idle again a month later. Volvo Cars’ boss aims to get production underway again soon, but there’s a problem. (Read More…)
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