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PARIS -- The Jeep Avenger 4x4 Concept previewed an all-wheel-drive version of the brand's new full-electric Avenger small crossover.

The concept points to how a future awd version will look, Jeep CEO Christian Meunier said at the unveiling of the car at the Paris auto show on Monday.

The Avenger 4x4 Concept differs from the standard Avenger by toughening up its appearance to indicate off-road capability.

Changes include a revised front bumper, a metallic surround to the lower grille, tow hooks, a wider track with beefier tires and thicker body cladding.

The car also features a light-weight rooftop luggage attachment system using straps rather than roofbars.

The production version of the Avenger 4x4 will mark the first time engineers have applied an electric motor to the rear axle as well the front to create all-wheel-drive capability. Jeep has not given an official launch date.

Jeep says the concept improves the Avenger's off-road a…

The current economic environment has made affordability one of the hottest topics in the automotive sector. Most headlines have focused on the pain felt by consumers, who between January 2021 and January 2022 saw new-vehicle prices increase 12.8% and used-vehicle prices jump 40.5%. Remarkably, manufacturers have borne an even greater burden. From March 2020 to May 2022, raw-material costs for ICE vehicles rose 106%, while EV costs skyrocketed 144% during the same period. While the supply chain issues are now slowly coming to an end and showrooms are filling with new models, interest rates have raced to more than 7 percent for new-car financing and more than 11 percent for used cars, bringing the average US car payment in Q3 to $700+, an unprecedented level.

Whether viewing this data through a consumer or manufacturer lens, these increases have far exceeded the pace of income growth. Creating vehicles in affordable segments has always been critical. Many global OEMs ha…

An expanding Swickard Auto Group entered Southern California via a majority stake purchase of John Elway's Crown Toyota in Ontario, one of the Japanese automaker's highest-volume U.S. dealerships.

And the dealership's price tag also fetched near-record blue sky value, according to the broker who facilitated the sale. Blue sky is the intangible value of a dealership, including goodwill.

Swickard Auto on Aug. 22 bought a 90 percent stake in the dealership just east of Los Angeles from Elway, Mitch Pierce, Dan Grubb and Paxton Gagnet, said Swickard's Greg Gates, vice president of business transformation. The four Elway partners collectively kept a 10 percent stake in the dealership, Gates said.

Gagnet will stay on as the store's general manager and the dealership's name will not change, Gates said.

"Crown Toyota was an opportunity to really get a foothold in Southern California," Gates told Automotive News. "What we've learned over time is it makes…

Swickard Auto Group's first 2022 acquisition was in a familiar, yet far-flung market: Alaska.

Swickard Auto of Las Vegas bought Porsche Anchorage-Audi Anchorage-Kendall Volkswagen of Anchorage from Kendall Automotive Group on July 11, according to Greg Gates, Swickard Auto's vice president of business transformation.

The dealership was renamed Porsche Anchorage-Audi Anchorage-Swickard Volkswagen of Anchorage. Anchorage is the state's most populous city.

The dealership was Swickard Auto's first acquisition since it bought two General Motors dealerships, in Anchorage and Palmer, Alaska, in December 2021, Gates confirmed.

"It was an opportunity to expand the footprint in Alaska, which we liked," Gates told Automotive News.

It marks the second Porsche and Volkswagen locations for Swickard Auto and the fourth for Audi, Gates noted.

"We obviously like all those brands and think that they've all got bright futures and it made sense geogra…

EV battery boom: Is Congress' gambit working?

Causality can be a very difficult concept to prove: We see a thing happen, and then we witness another action later that looks to be a direct result of the first thing. Yet we can never really be sure that there were no other outside forces that acted independently of the first action to influence what happened later.

Fans of "The West Wing" know that in legal terms this is known as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy — Latin for "after this, therefore because of this."

So what, then, to make of the panoply of recent automaker announcements involving new battery and EV manufacturing plants across much of the United States and North American partners Canada and Mexico? Is this flurry the direct result of Congress — driven in no small part by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. — passing the Inflation Reduction Act in August? Have automakers so quickly committed tens of billions of dollars to build new battery plants…

Mercedes-Benz is gunning for the heart of the U.S. auto market with a battery-powered version of its workhorse GLE crossover.

The midsize EQE goes on sale early next year and fleshes out Mercedes' electric crossover lineup that is now bookended by the compact EQB and full-size EQS.

The EQE crossover "for us, is yet another puzzle piece to transform into an electric car company in this market," Mercedes-Benz USA sales chief Senol Bayrak told Automotive News. "It will open even more opportunities to amp up our EQ game and to grow our EQ volume here in the U.S."

Last year, the GLE was Mercedes' bestseller in the truck-obsessed U.S. — sales hit 65,074. Halfway into 2022, the GLE ranked third in the midsize premium crossover segment, behind the Lexus RX and BMW X5.

Dealership executive Marty Focht described the high-volume EQE crossover as a "pillar" of the Mercedes EQ subbrand.

"It'll be a good conquest vehicl…

If Brian Godfrey could wave a magic wand, Pat Milliken Ford would have four more service technicians on the payroll.

The suburban Detroit dealership could keep that many additional technicians busy, said Godfrey, its president. Service sales, including parts for service operations, are increasing — up 15 percent year over year through September and exceeding levels seen before the pandemic in 2019.

Yet business could be even stronger, Godfrey said, if the dealership had the capacity to grab it.

With more help on the service drive, "it would put us in a position where we could go market ourselves for new business as opposed to kind of being on the defensive and trying to handle the business that's coming in the door," he said. "We're doing the best job we can, primarily to take care of our loyal customers, but we'd like to go out there and be more aggressive to bring new business in."

Across the industry, franchised dea…

Cox Automotive's third-quarter Dealer Sentiment Index survey (July 26 to Aug. 9) asked 574 franchised dealers about the Federal Trade Commission's plan for new dealership advertising and finance and insurance rules. How familiar are you with the new rule and corresponding regulations that were proposed by the FTC at the end of June? Aware and very familiar 14% Aware and somewhat familiar 21% Aware, but not very familiar 16% Aware, but not at all familiar 9% Not aware 40% What parts of this regulation do you think should be kept and which ones should be removed? Pricing information in advertising must match what is offered in-store. Keep as is 59% Revise 27% Remove 14% Ban on all add-on products that do not provide a benefit to the consumer. Keep as is 27% Revise 28% Remove 45% Dealers must list all optional add-ons and their prices online. Keep as is 55% Revise 25% Remove 20% Dealers must present consumers with a form that lists the cos…

Hyundai Motor Group has out-galloped Ford Motor Co. for the No. 2 spot in the U.S. EV horse race.

Through August, the South Korean auto group reported 43,072 new registrations of electric vehicles across its Kia, Hyundai and Genesis brands — accounting for a combined 9.4 percent segment share, according to data from Experian Automotive. Hyundai registrations more than doubled; Kia's more than quadrupled. Ford's also more than doubled, but it still slipped to third place.

The landscape is changing however, as the Korean brands' EVs, which are all imported, stopped qualifying for $7,500 tax credits when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 16. Ford's North America-built Mustang Mach-E crossover, F-150 Lightning pickup and E-Transit 350 van all qualify for a $7,500 EV tax credit for the remainder of 2022.

Through August, Ford reported 33,354 new EV registrations, up 111 percent, for 7.3 percent of the EV market, powered by strong…

Chris Mackey, managing member of Mackey Auto Group, distinctly remembers when he decided servicing commercial vehicles at his Ford dealership wasn't going to cut it.

Mackey, who formed the group in February 2019 with his son, Christopher, after having bought a Ford and a Subaru dealership, was not long into his store ownership when he had the revelation.

"It was 90 degrees. We had an ambulance and we had a motor home in the middle of August in our parking lot," Mackey recalled. "I had two technicians with these huge vehicles up on jack stands melting in the sun. I looked at them and said, 'One of these guys is gonna get hurt.' That moment the alarm went off and I said, 'Wait a second — we're not the only one with this problem.'

"And I took a complete gamble."

For Mackey Auto, the gamble was purchasing and renovating a 26,800-square-foot former FedEx warehouse a mile away from the Ford and Subaru dealerships in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and turning…