Trade News

The Federal Trade Commission followed its June proposal to regulate dealership advertising and add-on products with an Oct. 20 plan to curtail bait-and-switch pricing and charges for valueless items across multiple industries.

"The FTC's at it again," said Randy Henrick, a compliance attorney for Ignite Consulting Partners.

The FTC auto retail plan unveiled in June sought to combat bait-and-switch advertising with a requirement for dealerships to disclose an "offering price" — an out-the-door amount before government fees or taxes the retailer would honor for any consumer. Dealerships also would be banned from selling any accessories or finance and insurance products that "do not provide coverage for the vehicle, the consumer or the transaction, or are duplicative of warranty coverage for the vehicle."

The FTC on Oct. 20 followed up its dealership-specific bait-and-switch regulations by starting on rules to attack what it called "…

Pennsylvania's next U.S. senator lives in a century-old former Chevrolet dealership outside Pittsburgh.

John Fetterman, a Democrat who defeated TV doctor Mehmet Oz last week in the nation's most expensive Senate race, converted two floors of the Superior Motors building in Braddock into his family's home. Their main living quarters are where the service department operated, and ramps that employees used to drive cars between floors still provide access to a rooftop patio.

Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, bought the space in 2013 during his 13-year stint as the city's mayor. The couple, who have three children, had to have an abandoned Chevy taken out of the building by crane, according to a 2020 profile in Pittsburgh Magazine.

"I suspect I'm the only mayor in America that can say he lives directly across the street from a steel mill," Fetterman said in a 2017 video by PennLive.com. "I count Andrew Carnegie's steel mill as my neighbor.…

The estimated number of vehicles axed from automakers’ production plans this year because of the microchip shortage fell slightly last week.

In its latest estimate, AutoForecast Solutions said 3.9 million vehicles have been cut by automakers worldwide this year, a slight improvement from the 3.93 million units it reported a week earlier. 

The numbers are a welcome reprieve for the industry. Looking ahead, microchip availability could improve next year as demand in other sectors eases, said Sam Fiorani, AFS vice president of global vehicle forecasting.

“Moving some of the production capacity to automotive chips could ease the tight supply and might shorten the production bottlenecks, possibly by the middle or late in the new year,” Fiorani wrote in an email.

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com

GRAZ, Austria — As I often say: Starting a car company is really hard — that's why basically only one outside of China has been successfully launched and sustained in the last half-century.

One of those that tried and failed was Fisker Automotive, which offered a luxury plug-in hybrid but didn't last long, largely because of supply chain woes and a lack of cash.

Henrik Fisker's second shot at an eponymous automaker, Fisker Inc., is also coming out at a time of great economic turbulence. But it's also a very different company: electric vehicles, not PHEVs; aiming for mass-market, not luxury, appeal; defining the brand with ecological sustainability from the start.

And this time, he has his wife with him in the C-suite.

Geeta Gupta Fisker — who has a Ph.D. in biotech and organic chemistry — is a force in the young company, which is not a surprise given that she is the CFO and COO. But more important is how her talents complement her husband's. Whil…

It was probably just a matter of time until someone put a motor in an office chair.

That someone turned out to be Volkswagen, which built a five-wheeled vehicle for cubicle dwellers. The VW electric chair — er, that may not be the best name for it — has a top speed of 12 mph and a range of more than 7 miles. It has LED lights and turn signals, and a rearview camera to catch the boss sneaking up from behind.

It's not available to buy, but VW says consumers will be able to take it for a test roll at select Norway dealerships.

"The chair is designed to give those who work in an office a feeling of what it's like to have a car from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles as your workplace," a brochure reads. "You can drive, honk, and listen to music — even signal as you take a turn into a meeting room."

If an after-work soiree breaks out, the LEDs can be turned to Office Party Lights mode. And if the 300-cubic-inch trunk isn't large e…

The National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers has a new leader.

Hugene Fields, an industry outsider who has worked in the nonprofit space for 15 years, was named president during the organization's convention in Miami last month.

Fields, 35, takes the reins from Damon Lester, who had been at the helm since 2006. Lester, who joined NAMAD in 2002 as its vice president of operations, became a dealer himself in 2021 when he bought Nissan of Bowie in Maryland.

Lester became president not long before the economy faltered and caused the number of minority-owned stores to plummet. Minorities owned 1,805 dealerships in 2005, according to NAMAD data, but the Great Recession took hold soon after and sent this tally spiraling to 875 by 2011.

After that tough stretch, the numbers have been on an upward swing. The industry saw the biggest gain last year in minority-owned dealerships since 2012, adding 109 rooftops to bring the total to 1,366.

Even Legoland is joining the electric vehicle revolution.

Legoland Florida Resort used Lego bricks to create a life-size replica of the Ford F-150 Lightning as part of its ongoing partnership with area dealers.

The Lego Lightning took more than 1,600 hours to build and is made of about 320,740 pieces. It's the same size as the real thing — more than 19 feet long and 6 feet high — and weighs 3,730 pounds, a little more than half as much as a driveable one.

It has working headlights, taillights and turn signals. Legoland made a time-lapse video showing its builders constructing the truck, which has a basic steel frame inside to keep the bricks from collapsing because of their weight.

The theme park outside Orlando has had a relationship with Ford Motor Co. through Southern Ford Dealers since its 2011 opening. The regional group sponsors an attraction that lets kids drive cars through a miniature town, and Legoland has bu…

Let's acknowledge right upfront: It might be a tell that a luxury brand's designers and marketers live in a different world than the masses when they decide that an airline seat should represent the pinnacle of technology and comfort. But that is what Bentley is calling its most technologically advanced and comfortable seat yet, which debuted this year as an option in the extended wheelbase version of its 2023 Bentayga crossover.

Each climate-controlled and fully adjustable "airline seat" constantly measures its occupant's temperature and humidity and adjusts automatically to one of seven preselected comfort levels. The seats in the rear of the Bentayga EWB also feature what Bentley dubs a "postural adjustment system," which employs 12 electric motors and multiple pneumatic valves to constantly change the way the seat interacts with its occupant, improving comfort and reducing fatigue.

The multiple servos and pumps are well-hidden beneath a luxurious and plus…