Trade News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It's likely more difficult for a dealership to place a subprime auto loan with a financial institution than it was less than a year ago, a chief risk officer for a subprime lender explained at a conference last month.

But the type of vehicle being financed, the speed at which it delivers equity and the existence of a service contract can make a borrower a better credit risk, according to an executive for a large regional buy-here-pay-here dealership group.

These experts took part in a subprime lending forum at the Auto Finance Summit East conference on May 12, following a first-quarter decline in the percentage of credit-challenged subprime customers obtaining auto loans and leases.

"It is as hard as it's ever been to help somebody with special finance lenders," Jesse Powers, finance director for Oakes Kia in North Kansas City, Mo., told Automotive News on May 26.

According to Experian, subprime borrowers were involved in 14 p…

Toronto-based Alpha Auto Group is reaching across the Atlantic with a transformational deal to acquire one of the United Kingdom’s largest dealership groups.

Alpha Auto ownership and the board of Lookers plc, a publicly traded company with 147 dealerships across the United Kingdom and Ireland, announced the big-ticket deal June 20.

Global Auto Holdings Ltd., a special-purpose acquisition company formed by the owners of Alpha Auto to carry out the purchase, will pay Lookers shareholders 120 pence in cash for each share of the nearly century-old dealership group. The agreement values Lookers at 465.4 million pounds (about $588 million).

Kuldeep Billan, executive chairman of Alpha Auto, said the acquisition is a “compelling opportunity” to push into the United Kingdom for the long-term.

“With the U.K. auto retail market undergoing substantial change, including the adoption of new distribution models, we believe that the [combined company] is well p…

Nissan Motor Co. installed a camera surveillance system at the home of former COO Ashwani Gupta so the automaker's internal security team could monitor him, according to the preliminary findings of an investigation into the surveillance, two people with knowledge of the report told Reuters.

Nissan has been investigating a claim that CEO Makato Uchida carried out surveillance of the carmaker's second- in-command to acquire leverage to remove him from the company because of Gupta's opposition to some terms in a new partnership deal with Renault, Reuters reported.

Nissan directors were briefed on the preliminary findings of the investigation into the surveillance claim by U.S. law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell at a board meeting on June 20 at the company's Yokohama headquarters, the two people said.

The preliminary report said Nissan had installed two sets of security cameras at the entrance to Gupta's house in Tokyo's Shibuya ward, the people said.

…

Rear-seat passengers are not well protected by small pickups' safety systems, new moderate overlap front crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found.

The IIHS rated the Nissan Frontier acceptable. The Ford Ranger earned a marginal rating — higher than poor but lower than acceptable — while the Chevrolet Colorado, Jeep Gladiator and Toyota Tacoma all received poor ratings. The ratings only apply to the crew cab versions.

The test propelled vehicles down a 600-foot runway and crashed them into a barrier at 40 mph with 40 percent impact to the front of the vehicle. Driver and rear-seat passenger dummies and cameras in the vehicles helped measure the success of the vehicles' safety systems.

The IIHS rates the vehicles on how well the vehicle's structure held up, injury measures recorded by two dummies inside the vehicles and how well the restraints controlled the movement of those dummies.

All five vehicles provided good protecti…

Ford and Chevrolet topped S&P Global Mobility's 2023 loyalty ranking of mainstream brands for the first four months of the year, while Toyota fell to seventh place, the market research firm said Tuesday. The drop could be due to conquests by Tesla, with migrations to the electric vehicle maker up for almost every mainstream brand.

Toyota is typically "neck and neck" with Ford and Chevrolet, analyst Tom Libby said during a webinar held by S&P. Ford recorded 59.5 percent brand loyalty this year through April, followed by Chevrolet, at 57.1 percent, and Subaru, Nissan, Kia and Hyundai. Toyota was down 5.7 points from the same time last year to 52.3 percent.

"We will obviously have to watch the results going forward, but just in these first four months, Toyota is a disappointment," Libby said.

Though Ford topped the ranking, the brand essentially matched its loyalty from the same time last year, while Chevrolet was up 2.6 points.

The percent…

BMW's smallest crossover is getting an injection to boost performance.

The 2024 BMW X1 M35i xDrive zips in to U.S. stores in October, starting at $50,895, including shipping.

The 312-hp, M Performance variant runs on a 2.0-liter 4-cylinder motor that accelerates the compact crossover from 0-to-60 mph in 5.2 seconds.

BMW said the engine is the "most potent" four-cylinder version of its latest generation of engines. It features redesigned intake ports and combustion chambers and updates to the camshaft timing, injection, ignition system and exhaust gas routing.

The newest X1 model features M-specific chassis technology — including optional M Compound brakes available for the first time on the M performance model — integrated with all-wheel drive.

The lightweight M Compound brakes have discs composed of a gray cast iron ring and an aluminum chamber and offer stable stopping power under high loads, BMW said. …

Seating and electronics supplier Lear Corp. hiked its 2023 sales outlook Tuesday by about $1 billion after a stronger-than-expected first half of the year for seating.

Lear's yearlong sales guidance is now $22.35 billion to $23.05 billion.

Fewer supply chain problems, more consistent customer assembly lines and higher production in Europe all contributed to higher revenue than initially anticipated, CEO Ray Scott said at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference June 14.

"It's been a long time since I've been this confident in where we're at with the business," Scott said.

At Lear's Seating Product Day on Tuesday, executives emphasized a strategy of vertical integration aimed at reducing complexity and cost as a key reason for confidence in the company's ability to gain market share and improve margins over the next four years.

Lear is capable of sourcing 82 percent of seating components internally, up from 36 percent in 2008, sai…

Longtime General Motors executive Ed Peper, most recently at the helm of the automaker's fleet business, will retire Sept. 1.

Peper, 61, spent 39 years with GM in a variety of sales and marketing roles, including for Cadillac and Chevrolet. He spent more than a decade leading GM Fleet as its U.S. vice president before becoming U.S. vice president of GM Envolve, the automaker's new fleet and commercial business unit launched in May.

He began his GM career in 1984, working as a district sales manager for Cadillac, before moving into other management roles in sales and marketing. He was Chevrolet's vice president and general manager from 2005 to 2009 and Cadillac's general sales manager from 2009 to 2011 before taking over GM's fleet business in 2012.

"GM and its leadership have been wonderful to me and have given me tremendous opportunities to grow businesses," Peper said in a statement. "I loved working with our dealers and customers, and I am so gratef…

Gerald Meyers once described his management style as "buck chaser." And he was just 48 when he became one of the youngest heads of a U.S. automaker, succeeding Roy Chapin Jr. as CEO of AMC in October 1977.

An engineer with roots in finance and manufacturing, Meyers helped create the AMC Pacer and later rose to become chairman and CEO of American Motors, at one time the nation's fourth-biggest automaker.

Meyers died on June 19 at his home in West Bloomfield, Mich., according to the Detroit Free Press. He was 94.

AMC, Detroit's perennial underdog, formed when Nash-Kelvinator Corp. merged with Hudson Motor Car Co. in 1954, and now part of Stellantis, was routinely outflanked by its far bigger U.S. rivals.

The company — known for quirky styling and small cars that were often considered a good value — never reached the scale or profitability of the Detroit 3.

And starting in the 1970s, a period rocked by inflation and surging oil prices, the co…

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Electric truck startup Lordstown Motors has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and put itself up for sale. The UAW fires its top lawyer. Plus, Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke talks about why he is somewhat optimistic about the second half of the year.

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Two online car shopping websites are tapping artificial intelligence technology to enhance the consumer vehicle search experience.

U.S. car shopping resource Edmunds and research and shopping website CarGurus both announced Monday separate versions of a ChatGPT plug-in to assist consumers looking for a new vehicle.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbotdesigned to produce human-like conversational interactions. The automotive industry is increasingly using generative AI tools, as seen with Carvana's AI-generated video histories and General Motors exploring using ChatGPT in new vehicles.

The Edmunds ChatGPT plug-in helps consumers in their car purchasing decisions by offering access to original expert vehicle reviews and local inventory. It is available now to all ChatGPT Plus users in the ChatGPT plug-in store under the name "Edmunds Cars."

Once the Edmunds plug-in is enabled, users can converse with ChatGPT as usual. When a car shopper a…