Trade News

A lawsuit filed in Delaware by a group of Carvana shareholders accuses the company's leadership of insider trading in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The online used-vehicle retailer issued two stock offerings — first a private one in late March and early April at $45 per share, followed by a public one last month at $92 per share, according to the lawsuit.

Filed on behalf of a group of pension funds based in St. Paul, Minn., the suit, first reported by Bloomberg Law, alleges that the controlling Garcia family and company directors issued millions of shares at "bargain-basement" prices in the first offering, enriching themselves in the process, despite knowing that the company was on solid footing and that Carvana's stock would rebound.

On March 30, Carvana announced a private offering of 13.3 million shares at $45 per share. Ernest Garcia II and Ernest Garcia III each purchased $25 million worth of stock.

The $…

Dealerships across the country continue to be targets of vandalism and theft amid sometimes violent protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week.

Stores from the Los Angeles area to St. Louis to Philadelphia were impacted by incidents Monday, bringing the total number of dealerships damaged or that have experienced looting to more than 20, according to Automotive News estimates and news reports.

More protests were planned in cities across the country Tuesday.

Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said Tuesday that six Toyota and Lexus dealerships have suffered damage and/or are closed because of the protests, including stores in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. That was up from four stores impacted as of Monday.

The stores are Toyota Santa Monica and Lexus Santa Monica in California, Central City Toyota in Philadelphia, Toyota on Western in Chicago, McGrath Lexus of Chicago and Dolan Lexus in Reno, Nev. A Herb Chambers processing cen…

A shipping yard employee was hit by a vehicle stolen from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Jeep assembly complex in Toledo, Ohio, on Tuesday. The vehicle was one of six Ram trucks stolen from a shipping yard near the complex.

The employee, Becky Huston, 60, was taken to a medical center with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police told The Toledo Blade that there were no suspects yet. Investigators were attempting to obtain surveillance footage.

In an email statement to Automotive News, FCA said that five of the trucks were recovered. The company also said it was "actively working" with Toledo police in the investigation.

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Chris Rogers, research director for global trade intelligence firm Panjiva.

Richard Hollingshead, owner of a chemical company, opens the world's first drive-in movie theater in Camden, N.J., on June 6, 1933.

Hollingshead, who died in 1975, came up with the idea for Park-in Theaters when he set up a screen on his driveway and a home projector on top of a car so his family could enjoy a movie outdoors. He received a patent in May 1933.

The first movie played at the drive-in — Wife Beware — had been released three years earlier. The admission price: 25 cents a person or $1 a carload.

The drive-in move theater, following the Great Depression so closely, took time to perfect. Over time theaters grew in size, accommodating as many as 1,000 or more cars at once. One of the largest was the All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, N.Y., with room for 2,500 cars, a playground and a full-service restaurant, all nestled within a 28-acre lot on Long Island's south shore.

The postwar 1950s were the golden age of …

While General Motors has decided to cancel some or all of the usual summer break for many of its U.S. assembly plants to make up for production lost during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, GM Canada says its plans remain in flux.

Most GM plants in the United States will stay open the weeks of June 29 and July 6, a period when they normally would be closed, spokesman Jim Cain said.

"Thanks to excellent teamwork, the restart of vehicle production at GM's manufacturing facilities continues to go safely and smoothly," Cain said.

Plans in Canada, where the automaker assembles the Chevrolet Equinox in Ingersoll, stamps some of the vehicle’s parts in Oshawa, and operates a powertrain plant in St. Catharines, are still being determined.

“GM Canada is not planning a standard time frame for a manufacturing summer shut down period,” spokeswoman Jennifer Wright said. “We anticipate continuing to run portions of the St. Catharines plant to meet stren…

A Russian tech company with an extensive self-driving car test program will continue to make the Motor City its North American hub.

Yandex said Tuesday it will maintain a presence in Detroit and expand its fleet in the city once testing resumes after its coronavirus-related pause.

The company had been among those contracted to provide autonomous taxi services during the now-canceled North American International Auto Show this month. Michigan's business-friendly laws made it an attractive location for a longer-term commitment, the company said.

"There are definitely more opportunities to test our technology in more of an autonomous mode there," said Yandex spokesperson Yulia Shveyko. "I cannot tell you the concrete timing of when we will do what, but we plan to relaunch active testing, continue testing, and move to more and more autonomous driving."

Starting in February, 10 of the company's Toyota Prius V test mules ro…

The 4 Series coupe, a pillar of BMW's U.S. car lineup and a key entry point for the brand, is undergoing a major makeover that delivers fresh styling and more power, performance and safety gear for 2021.

The second-generation 4 Series will launch globally in October and retail in the U.S. starting at $46,595, including shipping.

The coupe, renamed when it was carved out from the 3 Series family in 2015, is BMW's third bestselling car in the U.S., drawing mostly younger, affluent buyers, though demand fell 41 percent in 2019 to 18,621.

The new 4 Series coupe, 5.2 inches longer and an inch wider than its predecessor, sports a new BMW kidney grille design to cool the vehicle's beefier engines. The grille is angled forward and extends to the bottom of the front bumper cover. It is framed by surfaces with a three-dimensional mesh structure.

The standard LED headlights are slimmer in design and taper toward the kidney gril…

Online used-car retailer Vroom Inc. announced Tuesday it has begun an initial public offering of 18.75 million shares of common stock.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the retailer pointed to opportunity in the highly fragmented used-car space and sought to paint itself as a company in growth mode as it reports losses.

Vroom expects the offering price to be $15 to $17 per share. That range would yield $281 million to $319 million.

The company has applied to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the VRM ticker symbol.

Much like Carvana, Vroom has sought to exploit the fragmented used-vehicle space by offering an easy online alternative for shopping for and buying cars and trucks. In its SEC filing, the company called the used-vehicle space a "massive market ripe for disruption." It highlighted $814 billion in used-vehicle sales last year in the U.S., with 40 million vehicles sold. Within that, there w…

Just one model year after the Supra was revived, Toyota is adding a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine to the sports car's lineup. The new entry-level Supra's engine is rated at 255 hp, the model's first turbo four. Toyota says the new engine reduces the car's weight by nearly 200 pounds. The only gearbox available will be an eight-speed automatic. Here's a roundup of select Supra four-cylinder reviews from the automotive media.

"Not only is there less weight, there is also less complexity. A sizeable chunk of the missing mass is chalked up to the removal of active hardware present on the 3.0 that is now mechanical on the 2.0. Compared to the six-cylinder, for example, the Supra 2.0 does away with the active suspension and active rear differential, though the electric power steering remains. According to Toyota, every aspect of the suspension and chassis is reworked compared to the more aggressive six-cylinder big brother.

"The result of this devoluti…

I've heard from numerous dealers over the last several weeks who quickly spun up digital services and don't expect to drop them once business returns to pre-pandemic levels. The commitment to digital sales is holding even as dealerships across the country begin to reopen to in-person transactions.

"We're going to see this continue, even as we come out to having more of a traditional [sales] opportunity," John Bergstrom, chairman of Bergstrom Automotive in Wisconsin, told Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein on the "Daily Drive" podcast last week. "More and more, people are going to shop from home."

To a large degree, that's because many consumers want to shop from home. Even before the virus moved a lot of shopping online, customer surveys have shown greater interest in remote transactions for convenience and efficiency. The pandemic added contactless purchasing for safety's sake to that list.

Yet not everyone is ready to buy a car over the Internet. A …