Trade News

Saturn, General Motors' experiment at matching the wizardry of Japan's car manufacturers, took nearly a decade to expand beyond small cars with the midsize L-series. It debuted on March 31, 1999, at the New York Auto Show and went on sale that summer.

The L-series, derived from a heavily modified Saab 9-3 and Opel Vectra chassis and platform, was Saturn's first crack at shaping plastic body panels onto a midsize car. It was available as a sedan or wagon with the 2000 model year.

The car's 2.2-liter, dual-overhead-cam four-cylinder engine made only 137 hp. The engine, featured on the LS and LS1 sedans, as well as the LW1 station wagon, was all-new and exclusive to Saturn. The New York Times called it the best small engine GM had offered in the United States and the company's quietest small dual-cam engine yet to date.

The LS2 featured a British-built, 3.0-liter V-6 that was a variant of an Opel engine used in the Cadillac Catera and…

A press release leaked online Monday revealed that Volkswagen of America will use the brand name “Voltswagen” to differentiate its line of electric vehicles, which began deliveries to U.S. dealers this month.

Automotive News has independently confirmed the authenticity of the planned change with a person familiar with the company's plans, and that it is not an April Fools' Day joke. 

The person said the change is in keeping with the company’s “all electric” future in the U.S.

CNBC reported, according to the leaked release, which had been dated April 29, 2021, the name change would cover all of the automaker’s U.S. operations, though the new Voltswagen of America would continue to remain an operating unit of the larger Volkswagen Group of America.

An email to VW of America CEO Scott Keogh was not returned.

The name change is not expected to carry upward to the parent company in Germany, Volkswagen Group. The brand will maintain its rece…

General Motors CEO Mary Barra is being called out by leaders of Black-owned media companies for refusing to meet with them.

The group of media owners -- which include Byron Allen, founder and CEO of Allen Media Group; rapper and actor Ice Cube, who owns the pro-basketball league Big3, production company Cubevision and Contract with Black America; Roland Martin, CEO of Nu Vision Media; and Junior Bridgeman, owner of Ebony Media -- took out a full-page ad in the Detroit Free Press on Sunday accusing Barra of ignoring multiple requests to meet, and the automaker of allocating less than 0.5 percent of their ad spend to Black-owned media. GM said that figure isn't accurate.

“Mary, you have asked us to meet with your Chief Marketing Officer, Deborah Wahl. We have absolutely no interest in that because when Deborah was Chief Marketing Officer of McDonald’s, in our opinion, Black Owned Media was, once again, severely neglected, minimized and discriminated against. To …

A Toyota store on the ground floor and residential units above it. Price Simms Auto Group CEO Adam Simms discusses the proposed $279 million mixed-use project in Walnut Creek.

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What does Zeekr even mean? The word can’t be found in any dictionary yet Zhejiang Geely likes it so much that it’s applied for several dozen sub-brands under the moniker, commercial registration data show.

One of those brands is for an electric vehicle. That makes sense -- while Geely is China’s biggest manufacturer of local-branded conventional automobiles, it’s plowing resources into EVs, like all carmakers. But it’s also applied to use the Zeekr name for air conditioners, clothing, furniture, fast food, beer and even firecrackers. What is the company playing at?

Geely isn’t changing direction, quite the contrary. The Hangzhou company is making a renewed push into EVs under the Zeekr brand, and may absorb its existing Geometry EV brand into the mix as part of that. But just as Tesla aims to create an aura and lifestyle around its brand, so too does Geely wish to snare consumers and convert them. Imagine, a Zeekr car owner could wear a Zeekr hoodie while driv…

Volkswagen said its new Amarok pickup will be clearly different in design from the next Ford Ranger pickup it will be based on.

VW's commercial vehicles division has released a sketch of the new pickup, which it will launch next year.

The design hints at a beefy, off-road performance version in line with the Raptor top-spec model of the current Ford Ranger.

The Amarok will be developed and built by Ford as part of a wider agreement between the two companies.

"It's not going to be just a fantastic pickup. It's going to be a genuine Volkswagen too -- with clear DNA in both technology and design," VW Commercial Vehicles CEO Carsten Intra said during the unit's annual media conference on March 25.

The pickup will be "exactly what our customers would want," Intra said.

Ford said in January that it will build the Amarok at its plant in Silvertown, South Africa, where it is investing $686 million to raise annual production capacity to 200,0…

BEIJING -- Great Wall Motor Co., China’s biggest maker of SUVs, plans to roll out its first hydrogen-powered SUV this year.

The company will also deploy its hydrogen-powered cars during the Winter Olympics in China next year, Zhang Tianyu, head of FTXT Energy Technology Co., a Great Wall subsidiary, said in the city of Baoding on Monday during a media briefing to outline the automaker’s hydrogen strategy.

Great Wall has invested 2 billion yuan ($305 million) over the past five years to develop hydrogen power-related technologies that can be used for vehicles as well as marine and rail transport, Zhang said. Founder Wei Jianjun added that Great Wall will invest another 3 billion yuan over the next three years and plans to become a top-three seller of hydrogen-powered automobiles by 2025.

“Development of the hydrogen-related industry will move forward as quickly as that for electric vehicles,” Wei said.

Great Wall has been stepping up spending to tr…

MILAN -- Stellantis will halt production at its plant in Melfi, southern Italy, between April 2 and April 12 because of low demand triggered by the COVID-19 crisis, and not because of the global chip shortage, the UILM union said on Monday.

A spokesman for Stellantis confirmed the plant would be closed during this period. All of Melfi's more than 7,000 workers will be put on a furlough scheme during this time.

Production at the plant, which makes Jeep Renegade and Compass models and the Fiat 500X utility vehicle, has been repeatedly disrupted due to weak demand and semiconductor supply shortages.

The FIM CISL union said last week the company was considering permanently closing one of its two production lines at the Melfi plant to address excess capacity in Italy.

UILM spokesman Gianluca Ficco said on Monday the company told unions the latest Melfi production freeze was specifically due to low demand and not a result of the global chip shortage.<…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Sales bounce back, mostly

You can expect some outsized scrutiny as the pundits try to make sense of the U.S. sales numbers coming out Thursday.

Comparisons to what happened a year earlier will be skewed. That's because sales tanked after the coronavirus shut down the U.S. in mid-March of 2020.

To cite just two reminders of a month we'd rather forget: Toyota sales dropped 37 percent and American Honda plunged 48 percent. Only three brands posted gains for the entire quarter. And this was after January and February gave a strong start to the year.

"There's not much use in looking at last March," said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive.

For what it's worth, Cox projects a 50 percent increase in light-vehicle sales for the month and an 8.7 percent gain for the first three months of the year.

But there are always trends worth noting below the big numbers. And here are some that Chesbrough …

Pedestrian deaths have risen by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. The executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association analyses the long-running challenges and provides fresh details on a troubling rise in fatality rates during the first six months of COVID.

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