Trade News

Automotive retailers along the northern Gulf Coast in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were preparing their dealerships for severe weather Monday. While Tropical Storm Marco has weakened, all eyes remain on Laura, which was upgraded to a hurricane Tuesday.

Dealer associations in the affected states said that several members opted to close their doors Monday.

Mississippi dealer Bobby Dalgo closed his Crown Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram-Fiat store Monday afternoon to allow his employees to prepare their homes for the storms.

Marty Milstead, president of the Mississippi Automobile Dealers Association, said it was important for his members to "forget the cars and turn to the human element."

To the west, Louisiana dealers are "hoping for the best but expecting the worst," Will Green, president of the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, told Automotive News.

"It's one of the realities of southern Louisiana — you have to be good at hurri…

NEW YORK -- Honda Motor Co. has agreed to pay $85 million to settle an investigation by 46 U.S. states into its use of defective Takata airbag inflators in its vehicles, according to a consent order made public on Tuesday.

The state probes are connected with the ongoing recalls of tens of millions of vehicles equipped with potentially defective Takata inflators that were sold by Honda and other major auto manufacturers over the past 20 years.

To date, more than 40 million U.S. vehicles equipped with 60 million defective Takata airbags have been recalled because the inflators can explode when deployed, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At least 25 deaths around the world and nearly 300 injuries have been linked to faulty Takata inflators.

Worldwide, the Takata recalls cover about 100 million inflators among 19 major automakers, including Honda.

In January, Honda said it would recall an additional 2.7 million older U.S…

General Motors has temporarily enlisted salaried volunteers to build midsize pickups at its plant in Wentzville, Mo., until absenteeism improves or enough temporary workers and transfers arrive.

But the UAW strongly objects to GM's move, claiming that appointing salaried employees, rather than hourly UAW members, breaches the GM-UAW labor contract.

"We have strenuously objected to this violation of the contract," said UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg. "The local union has started the grievance process."

GM spokesman Jim Cain said the number of salaried workers on the line in Wentzville varies by week. Some weeks the total has exceeded two dozen, he said.

Coronavirus cases continue to climb in Missouri. The state has reported 35,563 new cases in the last month, according to Johns Hopkins.

Unless absenteeism improves, Cain said GM likely will need the volunteers until UAW workers can transfer to Wentzville from other plants and GM can hire more…

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.

Former megadealer Bernie Moreno says ''seismic changes'' have occurred in the dealership space within the past six months that have influenced his decision to get back into the car business.

How do I subscribe?

Can't wait to hear the next episode of "Daily Drive"? Subscribe through a podcast app to receive episodes days in advance. If you don't have a podcast app already, here are some options. 

iPhone / iPad

“Daily Drive” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"

Android

“Daily Drive” is available on the Google Play store. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"…

I've noticed two things recently while browsing for a newer Jeep to replace my 2011 Liberty.

First: Used-vehicle inventory pressure seemingly has reached my local market. Two months ago, I could filter searches to a smaller radius around my home and yield eight or 10 vehicles matching my preferred model year and trim level. Now, the results turn up one or two. I have to expand my search by 20 or 25 miles to get a broader selection — which gives me more choices, yes, but doesn't fulfill my interest in finding a local dealership with which to build a service and sales relationship.

Second: The algorithms have found me. My browser knows I'm looking at cars. I don't know that I would call myself "in market" yet, but ads are popping up in multiple places. On news stories I read. On Hulu commercial breaks during reruns of NBC's "This Is Us." Even on the Yahtzee game I play on my smartphone. (That last one really caught my attention. It wasn't a national brand but rat…

After the historic sale of most of its stores and brand name to Asbury Automotive Group, Texas retailer Park Place Dealerships is now Avondale Group. Asbury finalized the purchase of Park Place on Monday, which will add an expected $1.7 billion in annual revenue for the public group.

Avondale is comprised of the remaining dealerships that Park Place founder Ken Schnitzer kept in the deal with Asbury, executives said Monday, as well as one store, Aston Martin Dallas, that was acquired before finalizing the new deal.

"We are thankful to both the Asbury and Park Place employees who have worked tirelessly over the last few weeks to complete this transaction," Asbury CEO David Hult said in a statement. "The talent in both organizations and the resilience of the dealer model have put us in a position to become a stronger and more diversified company."

Pandemic conditions and issues with the public group's financing arrangements led Asbury to terminate in Marc…

It was always going to be an uphill slog for the Nissan Titan.

Though Nissan's first full-size pickup was never going to challenge the mighty Ford F-150 or put up six-figure sales numbers like the other competitive trucks from Ram, Chevrolet and GMC, the Titan could have created a sustainable niche for itself had it been anything more than just an average vehicle.

Average won't work in the brutally competitive full-size pickup market.

A truck needs to stand out in some compelling way. But the Titan never claimed best in class in any of the metrics that truck buyers really care about — towing, hauling, stopping, fuel economy, luxury features, etc.

If you look at the F-150, Ram 1500 and Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500, each has some unique feature or capability that can't be had on other trucks.

Arguably, nobody makes a classier interior than Ram. You want to haul something massively heavy, an F-150 is just the tool for the job. The indus…

Tesla Inc. has posted four quarters of positive earnings. That’s enough to get it into the S&P 500, right? Not necessarily, says DataTrek Research.

Fans of Elon Musk’s automaker have been on high alert for news Tesla will be added to the index ever since the company reported a $104 million profit for its June quarter. But while the results would seem to satisfy rules for inclusion, aspects of its earnings may give the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices pause, the research shop said.

Specifically, Tesla would not have made money on a generally accepted accounting principles basis the last several quarters without the sale of regulatory credits to carmakers that need help complying with toughening emissions standards around the world.

In the first half of this year, the company booked $782 million of revenue from the sale of those credits, which are pretty much all profit, according to Nicholas Colas, DataTrek’s co-founder. That compares with…

ATLANTA — Porsche is making its vehicle subscription program more accessible with a new entry-level tier. The sports car maker will also expand the service to Los Angeles — the epicenter of luxury car sales.

"For the metropolitan area in L.A., this is a perfect way to engage certain target groups with the brand," Porsche Cars North America CEO Klaus Zellmer said last week. "If California were a country, it would be our fifth-largest market in the world."

The Porsche Drive subscription program, launched in 2017 in Atlanta, starts at $2,100 a month (before taxes and a $595 activation fee) and offers unlimited vehicle swaps. Since then, the program has been expanded to San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Toronto.

Starting Sept. 25, the new subscription level will offer access to a single Porsche model for one or three months. It starts at $1,500 per month for the Porsche Macan crossover and tops out at $2,600 for the Porsche 911 Carrera.

Adding a sing…

Vivek Chaand Sehgal has a track record of achieving the seemingly impossible. His company, a sprawling auto supplier to the world’s biggest carmakers, has exceeded its five-year target every time bar one in the past quarter century.

His latest goal is equally daunting -- Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd. is targeting to triple annual sales to $36 billion by 2025. That would rank Mothersun among the world's top five auto suppliers in terms of revenue,  based on the 2020 Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers.

Sehgal, 63, plans to achieve that by doing what he does best: dealing. Or more specifically, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, buying up distressed companies as they run out of money.

For Sehgal to achieve that, however, things will have to improve dramatically. Five years ago, Motherson set a target of consolidated net sales of $18 billion by 2020, and it managed less than $12 billion as the virus hit and India saw its worst-ever sl…

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is gearing up for an intricate, two-phase overhaul of factories for its most profitable vehicle, putting to the test a pledge by incoming CEO Jim Farley for flawless execution.

Ford will temporarily shut a factory in Michigan next month to install machinery for the redesigned F-150 pickup going on sale next year.

The automaker also is constructing a new facility adjacent to its Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant to build an electric version of the F-150, people familiar with the project told Bloomberg. Prototype production is expected to start next year, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing internal plans.

Ford also will idle and overhaul its Missouri pickup factory in October to prepare for the redesigned truck after closing its Dearborn plant for two weeks of retooling starting Sept. 7, according to the people. The complex and costly changeover of the two factories will trim output of Ford’s biggest cash cow …