Trade News

In marketing, it’s really easy to fixate on one piece of your strategy. Maybe it’s the piece you find the most fun, or the one that has always performed well, or the one that needs the most help in the moment. There is no problem with occasionally focusing on one area that needs a little push, but thinking of your marketing as separate pieces over the long term can sabotage a cohesive strategy.

In dealership terms, think of how your sales floor, service drive, F&I office, and business offices are often treated like their own separate worlds. However, they affect one another’s day-to-day operations constantly, and they should all work towards the same goal: the success of the whole dealership.

For marketers, working toward that goal means diversity in the methods, services, and solutions we prescribe to help dealers maximize their success. And we need to help the dealer see the connections. It’s understandable that someone could look at two areas as differe…

BRUSSELS -- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group gained European Union antitrust approval for their $38 billion merger after overcoming regulators' concerns about competition in Europe's market for light commercial vehicles.

The European Commission said PSA will extend its van agreement with Toyota by increasing capacity for Toyota and cutting transfer prices for the vehicles, spare parts and accessories.

"Access to a competitive market for small commercial vans is important for many self-employed and small and medium companies throughout Europe," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement on Monday.

The EU had concerns that FCA and PSA would dominate Europe's van market with a combined share of 34 percent, heavily outgunning Renault and Ford, each with a 16 percent share, Volkswagen with 12 percent and Daimler with 10 percent.

This dominance could mean higher prices for customers, the Commission said.

In Se…

When Christenson Chevrolet went away last year, so did Santa Claus.

The dealership in Highland, Ind., near Chicago, had put up a 20-foot fiberglass Santa every year for decades. It even started bringing him out of storage for an annual "Christmas in July" sale.

But that stopped after the Christenson family sold their store to Garber Automotive Group. The new owner wanted to buy Santa, too, but the Christensons held onto it as a memento of their longtime business.

"People were interested in what happened to it and upset on Facebook," Craig Blacklidge, general manager of the store, now called Garber Chevrolet Highland, told The Times of Northwest Indiana. "I figured it was my civic duty to get it back."

Blacklidge discovered that the previous Santa came from Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, which calls itself the world's largest Christmas store, in Frankenmuth, Mich. He bought a new one that's almost identical, except with green gloves instead of bl…

Autonomous vehicles are not simply futuristic options. Though we may not recognize it, AVs have slowly integrated into everyday life. Automakers and tech companies now openly test autonomous prototypes on the road. Perhaps less noticeable, yet far more prolific, are the large number of passenger vehicles on the road equipped with advanced driver-assistance systems. And while not so obvious, automated braking systems, lane-keeping systems and other driver-assist features have already marked the debut of phased automated mobility technology.

The road to autonomous is long and one of incremental progress and deployment dependent upon many variables. While on-road and in-lab testing continues to march forward in the approach to full Level 5 autonomy, challenges to autonomous transportation have remained relatively consistent.

To reach full autonomy, developers must achieve and maintain a robust level of environmental awareness (360-degree perce…

Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein, left, and Group Publisher KC Crain toasted the 2020 Automotive News All-Stars from the stage of Detroit's Garden Theater last week. Instead of the customary in-person gathering, this year's event, sponsored by KPMG, was held via Zoom. The annual list of outstanding performers is selected by the Automotive News staff.

In June, Bob Brockman emailed employees at Reynolds and Reynolds Co. about management changes at the Dayton, Ohio, dealership management system giant.

Brockman, then its chairman and CEO, wrote that he had recently turned 79 and that it was time to plan for the company's future, according to the memo, which was included in a document federal prosecutors filed last week in a California court, where the former software executive faces charges of tax fraud. In the memo, Brockman wrote that Tommy Barras would become Reynolds' president and COO and lead a new executive committee, to which leaders who had reported to Brockman would report going forward.

Yet amid the transition taking place within the upper ranks of the privately held company, one key position remained intact: Brockman said he would continue in his post.

"I plan to focus my time and attention on supporting Tommy and our leadership team to position the company for transition an…

Northtown Automotive Cos. is the "official automotive dealer of the Buffalo Bills." But with the Bills having their best season in 25 years, Northtown also has become known as the team's unofficial trash talker.

The group, which sells new vehicles from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Honda, Toyota and about a dozen other brands, uses a electronic billboard along Interstate 290 to poke fun at the Bills' opponents.

"We know cars and your Carr is broken," the sign read before the Bills beat the Las Vegas Raiders and quarterback Derek Carr, 30-23. "Unplug the chargers," it said last month, ahead of a 27-17 victory over Los Angeles. "Losing is the Pitts, Ben" went up this month, a few days before the Bills handed Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger a 26-15 loss.

The NFL Network featured one of Northtown's taunts, with commentator Rich Eisen calling it "next-level trolling." The message, posted before the Bills beat the New England Patriots, 24-21, read, "Bra…

TOKYO — The star witness for Japanese prosecutors finished testifying against Nissan Motor Co. and its former U.S. human resources executive Greg Kelly this month, portraying a dysfunctional corporate culture in which company boss Carlos Ghosn signed his own paychecks and top brass were afraid to challenge him.

But testimony to date has shown only a tenuous link between Kelly and the alleged scheme to hide more than $80 million in deferred compensation to the former chairman.

The trial continues this week, with Kelly, 64, sitting in hearings scheduled on Christmas Day, which is not a public holiday in Japan, where Buddhism and the native Shinto religions are the main faiths.

Kelly's wife, Dee, who came from their Tennessee home to be with her husband for the trial, said rescheduling the Christmas trial date was a nonstarter with Japanese authorities.

In his testimony so far, Toshiaki Ohnuma, Nissan's general manager of the Secretariat division, w…

FRANKFURT — The drama that played out in recent weeks at the highest levels of Volkswagen Group can be explained with these two facts:

1. VW is in the midst of a generational shift toward a fully carbon-neutral business over the next 30 years.

2. The software-enabled, zero-emission vehicles favored by CEO Herbert Diess will have a dramatic effect on employment at the German behemoth.

In the end, the warring factions reached a tentative cease-fire over the future of the transformation plan and its embattled architect, Diess.

With no clear succession, investors feared his potential departure would paralyze the carmaker. That could have created a power vacuum that risked torpedoing the CEO's ambitious strategy and enveloping the company in further internal strife.

Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch brokered the truce that strengthened the hand of his CEO, whose ambitions include finally achieving a p…