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Dealers are increasingly worried about the economy and the possibility of recession even as improving inventory levels have them more optimistic about the new-vehicle business in 2023. 

Dealership executives who answered Automotive News’ 2023 Dealer Outlook Survey say economic conditions that took root in the last year have caused their concerns about maintaining profits to grow. Several now believe rising interest rates and a potential recession, on top of intensifying vehicle affordability challenges, could ultimately disrupt their business this year.

“We’re in an affordability crisis,” said Patrick DiCesare, dealer principal of Eastside Volkswagen in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. 

Eastside Volkswagen’s customers are largely driven by budget and payments and have historically gravitated to the leasing market, DiCesare told Automotive News. But with some lease payments up 50 percent for the same product compared with years pa…

Ana Gasteyer, the "Saturday Night Live" alum whose current TV role is the CEO of fictional Detroit automaker Payne Motors, says she'd love to arrange a guest appearance for her real-life counterpart at General Motors, Mary Barra.

"I keep pitching that we find a storyline to actually have her on the show," Gasteyer told the Detroit Free Press.

Like Barra, Gasteyer's character in NBC's "American Auto" is a female CEO with a tendancy to wear leather jackets. The show's second season premiered last week with Gasteyer's Katherine Hastings embroiled in a crisis surrounding defective vehicles, much like the ignition switch recalls that consumed Barra's first months atop GM in 2014.

But that's where the similarities end, Gasteyer said. Hastings is an industry outsider who didn't even have a driver's license when hired, in contrast to Barra's lifelong devotion to the auto business.

"Mary is obviously enormously competent, enormously knowledgeable, worked h…

Detroit's most infamous abandoned auto plant is finally coming down after more than 60 years of being ravaged by scrappers and the elements.

The city last week said it has started demolishing a second portion of the 40-acre Packard Plant, at a cost of $1.2 million.

"Every day the Packard Plant sits here in this state is a day this neighborhood cannot move forward," Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said in a statement. "We are just going to keep going until this eyesore is gone once and for all."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year approved $12 million in funding to tear down the 3.5-million-square-foot plant, where Packard production ended in 1956. Although portions of the sprawling complex remained in use over the years since, the site came to symbolize Detroit's decline.

A Spanish developer bought a large portion of the plant in 2013, with grandiose plans to renovate it into office, retail and industrial space. But that …

Autolivreported fourth-quarter core earnings above analyst forecasts after the supplier restored profitability by passing higher costs on to its customers, sending its shares up almost 8 percent.

Rising raw material prices have squeezed car suppliers for some time now. Autoliv CEO Mikael Bratt said the cost inflation seen by Autoliv in 2022 was the worst in three decades.

Despite this, the Swedish company has been able to meet or exceed analysts estimates in the past quarters as it has continued to negotiate price hikes with automakers, which Bratt told Automotive News Europe was "new territory" for both.

"But I think we found good resolutions," he said.

The Swedish company delivers its equipment -- which includes seatbelts, airbags and other safety solutions -- across broad swathes of the auto industry.

That includes a growing number of EV startups based in Asia and the U.S. that Bratt told Automotive News Europe have turned to Autoliv be…

Last year’s Super Bowl drew a significant number of auto advertisers despite a supply shortage that caused brands to think twice about spending big on marketing to spur demand.

The game emerged as a tool to broadcast big electric vehicle investments by those shelling out millions of dollars to appear in commercial breaks, including Kia, BMW, General Motors and EV startup Polestar.

But this year — even as EV sales continue to rise — larger economic concerns are keeping automakers and automotive websites on the sidelines, including softening demand that is forcing more execs to scrutinize budgets.

“Clients are being very cautious about how much they spend,” said one ad agency executive who works on automotive and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Does it make sense to frontload the year with a big Super Bowl ad? Probably not.”

So far only one auto brand — Kia — has confirmed an ad buy in the Feb. 12 game on Fox. And while more automakers a…

An underappreciated piece of news recently came out of France. It was the declaration by the CEO of Alpine — the high-end sports car brand of Renault — that the brand intends to move into the U.S. market.

Laurent Rossi told reporters that his fledgling brand, which sold barely 3,500 cars last year and has just one factory with a production capacity of only 6,000 vehicles a year, expects to grow to about 150,000 a year by 2030. And getting there, Rossi made clear, will rely critically on entering the American market in 2026 or 2027.

Here's why this is a remarkable ambition: It reveals the sort of change that's now coming to what had been Carlos Ghosn's Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.

As head of two automakers for most of a generation, Ghosn wrote and enforced the ground rules for Nissan and Renault until his leadership ended after his arrest for alleged financial improprieties in Japan in 2018. The basic understanding was that Ni…

Jennifer Swope was convinced the F&I departments at the six stores owned by the Swope Family of Dealerships had untapped revenue potential.

The main obstacle? Silos.

From her perspective, each finance department worked independently with little collaboration, even though five of the stores are close to each other along what's known at Swope as the Miracle Mile on Dixie Avenue in Elizabethtown, Ky.

So Swope, who is general manager of Swope Hyundai and Genesis of Elizabethtown and also the granddaughter of the company's co-founder, Bill Swope, demolished those silos.

Her wrecking ball? Monthly meetings with the company's eight finance managers and six general managers.

Held on the first or second Friday of each month at Swope Toyota in Elizabethtown, the 90-minute meetings, which began in September 2020, have boosted revenue.

The companywide average F&I profit per vehicle retailed profit per vehcile retailed in 2021 increased…