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After 13 years as president, Forrest Heathcott said Tuesday he will retire in early 2021 from JM&A Group, one of the largest providers of finance and insurance products in the U.S.

He will be succeeded by Dan Chait, 53, president of sibling company Southeast Toyota Finance. The company is the captive lender to Southeast Toyota Distributors, the independent distributor of the automaker's vehicles to 177 dealers in five states.

Heathcott, 63, joined JM Family Enterprises in 1993, holding positions at JM&A Group as well as Southeast Toyota Distributors and its finance arm.

He said he began discussing succession plans with JM Family executives more than a year ago.

"I have been in this business for 42 years, since I graduated from college, and it is time for me to enjoy my family and interests and allow someone else to bring new ideas and energy to the position," he said in an email to Automotive News.

Heathcott most recently navigate…

Beginning Sept. 1, 1998, all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. were required to have airbags on both sides of the front seat to protect driver and passenger, as required by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.

As a result, frontal airbags have been standard equipment in all passenger cars since model year 1998 and in all SUVs, crossovers, pickups and vans since model year 1999.

The concept of airbags has been studied since the 1950s.

Walter Linderer of Germany sought an application for a rudimentary airbag.

In the U.S., industrial engineering technician John Hetrick, inspired by inflatable protective covers on Navy torpedoes, patented a design for a "safety cushion assembly for automotive vehicles" in 1953. He later sent sketches of the device to Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Chrysler, which never responded. However, GM and Ford did undertake airbag research in the 1950s.

In…

For the 2021 model year, Bentley has freshened the Bentayga, an SUV that has been critical to the British automaker since it first arrived in the U.S. in 2016. With the update, Bentley is launching the V-8 variant first, which has 542 hp and 568 pound-feet of torque. Inside, a new sleek digital instrument cluster is found along with a high-resolution 10.9-inch touch screen, with standard wireless Apple CarPlay. Here's a roundup of initial Bentayga reviews from the automotive media.

"How does the 2021 Bentley Bentayga drive? Why, exactly the way it's supposed to. The 542-hp twin-turbo V-8 toils in silence until you boot (or perhaps we should say Gucci-loafer or Louboutin-heel) the pedal, at which time it musters all the power you could ever want in such a vehicle. Bentley claims a 0-60-mph time of 4.4 seconds, but it's the always-ready, always-on nature of the boosted V-8 that really stands out: Power is perpetually ready. The V-8 is the only power choice for now, by …

FRANKFURT -- Continental plans to cut or transfer as much as 13 percent of its workforce to reduce costs by at least 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) a year, deepening restructuring as the coronavirus adds to pressure on the auto industry.

Some 90 percent of the restructuring measures, which could affect 30,000 jobs, will be implemented by 2025, Continental said. Its domestic German operations will be hit hard, with about 13,000 positions moved to other areas or eliminated.

The industry is facing the biggest crisis in 70 years and parts suppliers are “hit particularly hard,” CEO Elmar Degenhart said in the statement on Tuesday

The auto industry is suffering from the fallout from COVID-19 at the same time it faces pressure to invest in new technology as the combustion era gradually draws to a close and car-sharing services gnaw at demand.

The company, which was already targeting changes that could affect 20,000 employees before the pandemic hit, aims…

Lithia Motors Inc. has purchased another six dealerships — the remaining Houston area stores in the John Eagle Dealerships portfolio.

The move helps the nation's third-largest new-vehicle retailer grow its import brand presence in Texas.

Lithia said Tuesday that the stores — two Infiniti, three Honda and one Acura outlet — would generate $600 million in annual revenue.

Last month, Lithia bought four John Eagle Dealerships in the Dallas and Austin, Texas, markets and said the combined 10 Texas dealerships would add $1.1 billion in annual revenue to the company.

"The John Eagle acquisitions improve Lithia's density in the South-Central region and expands our network with a dominant presence in four of the top five largest metropolitan markets in the United States," Lithia CEO Bryan DeBoer said in a statement.

Lithia did not disclose the purchase price for the latest deal but said it paid for the stores using free cash flow and existing balanc…

Joe Medulla said he hopes that Sabine River Ford in Orange, Texas, can reopen in some capacity within 24 to 48 hours.

Nearly a week after Hurricane Laura made landfall Aug. 27 as a powerful Category 4 storm, Sabine River Ford has power, albeit from a generator, but no Internet service, said Medulla, general sales manager.

Customers have begun to call about nails in vehicle tires and needing an oil change so they can leave town, he said, and the dealership wants to help.

Across the state line in Louisiana, the road to reopening is longer for Volkswagen of Lake Charles, where Medulla also is general sales manager. The city was hit by strong winds during the hurricane. Nearly every vehicle on the dealership's lot was damaged, he said, from blown-out windows to scratched hoods where debris looks to have hit. Medulla said he has heard electricity could be out for at least a month, if not longer, and he hasn't heard when water service will be restored.

Join Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein for a daily podcast series about the coronavirus crisis. He’ll speak with industry experts, insiders and Automotive News reporters about how the virus is impacting and reshaping the automotive industry.

Automotive News reporter Hannah Lutz on how GM and its dealers are coping with stains the automaker believes fishflies left on redesigned Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs while they were stored near a lake in Texas and how the bug situation has added to dealers' inventory woes.

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While 3D printing is likely never going to be able to produce fenders fast enough for high-volume production, at least one type of the technology — binder jet printing — is making big strides in the size of parts it can produce and the speed at which they are cranked out. It is becoming an important production tool as the industry shifts from the internal combustion engine to electrified powertrains.

The auto industry is a good fit for binder jet printing because the machines can make multiples of identical parts at one time, and they can make those parts from a growing variety of materials. A binder jet printer can use sand, plastic or several types of sintered metal to create parts.

The material is deposited in powder form one layer at a time and then a coating of glue is sprayed before the next layer of material is applied. After the part is created, there is usually some post-production work needed, such as cleaning, heating and machining.…

When Alicia Boler Davis was elevated to Jeff Bezos’s vaunted S-Team leadership council earlier this month she became the first Black executive to enter Amazon.com Inc.’s upper ranks -- and a candidate to run the company’s far-flung logistics empire.

Early next year, the current logistics chief, Dave Clark, will step aside to lead Amazon’s consumer business. Whether Boler Davis, 51, replaces him in this pivotal role will depend in part on how well she performs in her current job, running the company’s warehouses, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers and handle billions of packages a year.

It won’t be easy. The former General Motors executive must keep the facilities operating smoothly during the busy holiday season amid a global pandemic that has fueled a surge in online shopping even as it laid low scores of the Amazon workers who pick and pack orders for delivery.

Mike Ramsey, a longtime auto journalist and now a Gartner vice president who trac…

BMW will make workforce cuts in the U.S. to adjust for a business slowdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

A spokesman declined to disclose the number of jobs being axed, but noted it does not affect the automaker's large assembly plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

"The effects of COVID-19 are far-reaching," BMW of North America CEO Bernhard Kuhnt said in a letter to dealers, obtained by Automotive News. "Given the reduced size of the business, we now need to … re-scale our business across the company accordingly."'

BMW sales in the first half of the year tumbled 28 percent, with second quarter sales down nearly 40 percent from a year earlier, as many dealerships were forced into a COVID-19 lockdown in the spring.

In addition to workforce cuts, Kuhnt said, BMW said it will take "additional steps to adapt to the current situation."

"This is an incredibly tough decision — that many of you have also had to make — and this will require change …

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is ceasing production of ventilators and returning the Michigan factory where they were built to full-time parts output after completing delivery of 50,000 breathing machines to the U.S. government.

The automaker, which had been producing the devices in conjunction with General Electric Co., shipped its final unit Aug. 28 to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, according to Rachel McCleery, a company spokeswoman.

Ford’s Rawsonville Road plant already resumed auto-parts production in May as part of an industry-wide restart following a shutdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The ventilators were made in a separate part of the plant that didn’t affect output of auto components, including transmission oil pumps, electric battery packs and fuel pumps.

The company has said its factories returned to 95 percent of pre-virus production by the end of the second quarter after shutting down its U.S. plants in the spring in a bid …