Trade News

Volkswagen is not known as a pickup brand. But LaFontaine Volkswagen of Dearborn is using pickups to attract customers who wouldn't otherwise come into the store.

The Michigan store acquires used pickups and outfits them with a lift kit, beefy rims and tires, side steps and sometimes even fender flares. The trucks are then parked out front on the dealership lawn.

It's prime advertising, considering that the store is located on Telegraph Road, a busy byway in Dearborn with a constant stream of passersby.

The dealership began selling lifted trucks three years ago when General Sales Manager Matt Szabla and Ryan Vandenbussche, corporate buyer for LaFontaine Automotive Group, decided to try something new.

"It just started with one Silverado Z71," Szabla said. "It was the ugliest color ever — it was a teal green. But it sold right away."

The quick sale signaled that the Volkswagen store was on to something. Read more

Huntington Beach Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram wanted to make waves when the U.S. Open of Surfing came to town last summer.

The Southern California dealership's ad team, TurnKey Marketing, decided to get in on the action via Snapchat, the growing messaging app that has a foothold among the industry's youngest customers.

TurnKey used Snapchat's filter tool, which allows advertisers to create overlays that people can put on photos that they then share with friends and followers, to engage with attendees of the surfing spectacle on behalf of the dealership.

The Huntington Beach dealership's filter caught on. It was used around 7,400 times and drew 200,000 views, TurnKey co-founder Drake Baerresen said. The cost to the dealership was just $700.

Baerresen said TurnKey also uses quick-hit advertisements on the Snapchat app to target certain shopper segments and gauge their responses. Baerresen said his agency can track phone cal…

VAIL, Colo. — GMC used to just be General Motors' truck brand. But the automaker has groomed it into a purveyor of high-profit, loyalty-driving subbrands, with the hugely successful Denali line and an expanded collection of AT4 off-roaders poised to soon make up about half of GMC's sales.

The brand also might resurrect the Hummer name for what could be a family of electric pickups and SUVs starting next year.

"It's almost the next generation of what accessories was to cars, now these subbrands," said Steve Hill, GM's vice president of U.S. sales, service and marketing. "If you go up to someone who drives a Yukon, they don't say, 'I drive a Yukon.' They say, 'I drive a Denali.' That's how important it is. It's part of who they are."

The massively profitable Denali line made up 30 percent of GMC sales last year, and GMC is rolling out AT4 across its full lineup this year. The brand unveiled AT4 versions of the Yukon SUV and Canyon …

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed a bill that represents the state’s most ambitious strategy to promote electric vehicles.

New Jersey, where transportation accounts for about half of greenhouse gas emissions, joins about a dozen other states that have targets for electric-vehicle adoption. The bill calls for 2 million plug-in electric vehicles by 2035, and offer consumers rebates of as much as $5,000.

“We are expecting about 60 percent of total U.S. new car sales to be electric by 2040,” said Nick Albanese, BloombergNEF’s head of Intelligent Mobility analysis. “New Jersey’s target would be above average.”

CLEVELAND — The Serpentini Auto Group, already one of the highest-volume Chevrolet sellers in Ohio, just got a lot bigger.

Bob Serpentini, president and founder of the group bearing his name, and partner Ken Ganley on Thursday announced the acquisition of three Pat O'Brien Chevrolet dealerships in the suburbs of Cleveland. Terms of the deal, which is effective immediately, were not disclosed.

The addition of the three Pat O'Brien Chevrolet stores in Medina, Westlake and Willoughby, Ohio, gives Serpentini a total of six Chevy dealerships in northeast Ohio. Serpentini's existing Chevy stores are in Strongsville, Orrville and Tallmadge, Ohio.

Temporary signage with Serpentini branding is up at the acquired dealerships. Permanent signage should be in place in about a month.

In a phone interview with Crain's Cleveland Business, an affiliate of Automotive News, Serpentini, 62, said he and Pat O'Brien Chevrolet owner Pat O…

Electric vehicle startup Fisker will sell its Ocean crossover in Germany, Norway and Denmark in 2022 as its first European markets ahead of a wider rollout in the region, CEO Henrik Fisker said.

Fisker started taking $250 deposits in November for the Ocean and will initially target those European markets with the most deposits.

The bulk of deposits, about 80 percent, have come from the U.S. So far Germany, Norway and Denmark are leading Europe, said Fisker.

The Ocean compact EV was the only car destined for production unveiled at the CES show in Las Vegas this month, where Fisker revealed its starting price of $37,499.

Fisker, a former Aston Martin and BMW designer, said he aims to keep the price low by partnering with automotive groups to achieve the economies of scale that would not normally be available to a small company of its size.

"It's not really rocket science. It's clear that to make an affordable vehicle, you need volu…

Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll is emerging as the front-runner to buy a stake in luxury carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings as interest from a rival Chinese investor wanes, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Chinese tycoon Li Shufu’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is cooling on the idea of a deal with Aston Martin, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Aston Martin could decide on its plan of action as early as this month, according to the people.

Stroll has been discussing a potential investment of about 200 million pounds ($261 million) in the British automobile manufacturer, Bloomberg News reported earlier. Aston Martin spoke to several investors about a potential capital increase as it makes a final effort to bring in fresh funding, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time.

No final agreements have been reached, and the carmaker could fail to reach an agreement or d…

PRINCETON, Ind. -- Toyota will reallocate vehicles to different North American factories next year in a bid to make production lines and supply chains more efficient, the automaker said here Friday.

The initiative reflects Toyota's step-by-step move away from plans that were enacted in the dire days of the Great Recession when it needed to keep plants operating and avoid layoffs.

With the new plan, Toyota is taking the gloves off to produce vehicles in pockets of manufacturing efficiency.

The company will move the Sequoia large SUV from a Princeton, Ind., factory to a San Antonio plant, where production will start in 2022. That decision will put both of Toyota's full-size body-on-frame products -- the Sequoia and the Tundra pickup -- in the same plant with a shared supply base.

Toyota will simultaneously move Tacoma midsize pickup output from San Antonio and combine it with Tacoma production at a plant in Guanajuato, Mexico.

That shift wil…

BERLIN -- German rangers stand guard to visitors away from a nondescript stretch of forest near Berlin, where a sign nearby warns of "Lebensgefahr" (danger to life).

The precautions are part of the frantic activity underway to set up Tesla's latest assembly plant, Elon Musk's most daring attack yet on the German auto establishment.

Workers wielding metal detectors have started combing through an area covering some 200 soccer pitches to search for old wartime ammunition beneath the sandy surface of tiny Gruenheide.

It's the first stage to prepare a site that could build as many as 500,000 cars a year, employ 12,000 people and pose a serious challenge to Volkswagen Group, Daimler and BMW as they all push toward an electric future.

Once deemed free of World War II explosives, trucks will roll in to clear thousands of trees in the first stage of development. All this work needs to be done by the end of February to meet Tesla's aggressive timetable. Read more

HONG KONG -- Volkswagen Group will take a 20 percent stake in Chinese electric-vehicle battery maker Guoxuan High-tech, two sources told Reuters, as the automaker accelerates its electric push into the world's largest auto market.

The deal would mark Volkswagen's first direct ownership in a Chinese battery maker and comes as the automaker strives to meet a goal of selling 1.5 million new energy vehicles a year in China by 2025, including plug-in hybrid cars.

VW, the top-selling foreign automaker in China, plans to acquire the stake in Shenzhen-listed Guoxuan via a discounted private share placement in the coming weeks, the two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Based on Guoxuan's market capitalization of $2.8 billion, a 20 percent stake in the company at present is worth about $560 million.

The deal's details have been mostly finalized and the two companies are waiting for new Chinese regulatory rules on private share placements that …