Trade News

A theft of a $120,000 Maserati from a dealership in New York City was foiled by a red light in the next block.

An employee of Maserati of Manhattan who noticed a white 2019 Quattroporte GTS missing from the showroom June 26 spotted it running on the street near the exit from the service department, according to the New York Post. The thief sped away but made it only about 500 feet before getting stuck in traffic at a red light.

At that point, he jumped out, handed over the keys and ran off. But other dealership employees chased down the man and held him until police arrived.

Prosecutors charged the 30-year-old with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a vehicle. He also appears to be guilty of bad planning.

The Case of the Briefly Missing Maserati was solved a day after the same dealership reported that someone stole an $87,000 Ghibli SQ4.

That theft happened at night and was captured on surveillance…

What good is a Lamborghini that can drive only on land when 71 percent of the earth's surface is covered in water?

The Italian automaker has just the solution. It's collaborating with the Italian Sea Group to produce the first seaworthy Lamborghini, the Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63.

It's a 63-foot yacht with a starting price of about $3.4 million.

The Tecnomar, which pays homage to Lamborghini's founding in 1963, borrows design cues from the automaker and has a helm made to resemble a Lamborghini cockpit. The plan is to sell 63 of the boats, which are powered by a pair of 2,000-hp MAN V-12 diesel engines.

"If I had to imagine a Lamborghini on water, this would be my vision," Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Automobili Lamborghini, said in a statement. "I'm delighted to celebrate this successful collaboration."

The Tecnomar, which has a top cruising speed of 69 mph, goes on sale in 2021. Until then, it's best to ke…

The pickups that dealers have been clamoring for are at last arriving on their lots — at least in small numbers. But the dealers' sigh of relief is followed by a jolt of fear: How will such small shipments get them through the rest of the summer?

Bert Ogden Auto Group typically carries about three months' worth of inventory, which helped it boost sales in May and June while many stores had scarce inventory and lost sales. Last week, the 18-store dealership group in Texas was down to about one month of inventory.

"July worries me," said Jorge Gutierrez, corporate strategist for Bert Ogden. "July will be an atypical month because of the inventory pinch we're in."

Nationwide plant shutdowns from mid-March to mid-May wiped out many dealers' inventories. Rebounding de- mand, combined with that loss of production, has reduced inventory levels to the lowest the industry has seen in nearly nine years, according to Cox Automotive. Six weeks a…

China has changed the global auto industry over the past couple of decades. But China itself has changed, too.

During the previous recession — the Great one — while the U.S. was stumbling and shepherding two automakers through a bankruptcy reorganization, China was growing like mad. It became the largest market in the world — by far — for motorized vehicles.

But if it seemed that China's rise was going to be inexorable and all-encompassing, well, it hasn't turned out exactly that way. But neither has China swollen up and collapsed under its own weight.

It's complicated.

In this week's print edition of Automotive News, we begin a five-part series that explores what is working in China and what isn't — and what it means to the North American auto industry. This idea didn't appear to me fully formed. Reporters kept suggesting enterprising stories about Chinese companies adapting to the economic contraction triggered by COVID-19. It didn't take a…

TOKYO — Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida tried selling the automaker's new revival plan to skeptical shareholders last week amid an angry showdown over everything from his management style and corporate vision to board member pay and the company's plunging share price.

Some attendees at the June 29 annual shareholders meeting even harked back wistfully to the Carlos Ghosn era: One praised the indicted former chairman's strong leadership, another blamed his downfall on a conspiracy among Japanese prosecutors and government bureaucrats.

It was Uchida's second faceoff with shareholders since taking office Dec. 1. An equally contentious exchange erupted in February at an extraordinary shareholders meeting called to appoint him, as the newly minted CEO, and other executives to the board of directors.

In his latest appeal, Uchida pledged that the midterm plan unveiled in May would restore the embattled carmaker to a growth trajectory, but he warned a full rebound sti…

Britain's Ineos Group, one of the world's largest chemical companies you've likely never heard of, is preparing to enter the auto industry with a new-from-the-wheels-up utilitarian SUV.

It's a boxy, rugged-looking, midsize four-by-four whose size and shape makes it a near doppelganger for the classic Land Rover Defender 110 wagon that ended production in 2016. And it could land in the U.S. in 2022.

The Grenadier's perhaps-too-strong resemblance to the iconic Land Rover could be a risky bet.

Jim Ratcliffe, the Richard Branson-esque chairman of Ineos Group, tried to buy the classic Defender's production tooling from Jaguar Land Rover in 2016 and continue production. When JLR declined, Ratcliffe, one of Britain's richest men, decided his company would build its own utilitarian SUV aimed it at the same market — adventurers, sportsmen, builders and farmers, a segment Ratcliffe believes Land Rover left in the dust with the 2020 Defender…

Dodge is killing two nameplates that account for nearly half of its U.S. sales in the coming months to complete its transformation from a collection of pleasant people haulers into an army of asphalt-eating muscle machines.

A limited-run Hellcat version of the Durango and an 807-hp Challenger are on the way as the brand loses the last of the relics from its former life: the Journey crossover and the venerable Grand Caravan minivan.

With the demise of those vehicles, which accounted for 47 percent of the brand's U.S. sales in 2019 and helped it become the first domestic brand to top J.D. Power's annual initial-quality survey last month, Dodge will be carried by what it calls the "Brotherhood of Muscle."

"We've been saying for the last couple of years that we want to distill the Dodge brand to our core performance vehicles," said Tim Kuniskis, head of passenger cars in North America for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, during a media briefing last month. "I've …

BEIJING -- General Motors Co.'s vehicle sales in China dropped 5.3 percent between April and June, underperforming the industry average amid a recovery from the coronavirus fallout in the world's biggest auto market.

China's light-vehicle sales, which include passenger and commercial vehicles, rose 4.4 percent in April and 15 percent in May, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said, adding that it expects auto sales to grow 11 percent in June.

GM, China's second-biggest foreign automaker after Volkswagen Group, delivered 713,600 vehicles in the country in the second quarter, the company said in a statement, after reporting a drop of 43 percent in sales in the first quarter, because of the pandemic.

GM operates a Shanghai-based joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp. which makes Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles. It has another venture, SGMW, with SAIC and Guangxi Automobile Group that produces no-frills minivans and has started making high…

FRANKFURT -- Daimler on Friday said it will deepen a strategic partnership with Farasis Energy, a pact which includes taking an equity stake of about 3 percent in the Chinese battery cell manufacturer.

The alliance aims to develop highly advanced cell technologies to increase vehicle range and cut charging times.

Farasis will build a plant for battery cells in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany, and Daimler Greater China will invest a multi-million-euro amount as part of Farasis' IPO, Daimler said.

This will give Daimler the option of nominating a representative for a seat on the supervisory board of the battery cell manufacturer, the automaker said in a statement.