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There's certainly never a good time for a massive ship carrying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of vehicles to catch fire and sink.

But for bespoke luxury brand Bentley, what tragically happened to the Felicity Ace in February in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic weirdly may have been a case of the wrong ship ... at the right time.

Why? Because unlike other massive car carriers that regularly ferry Volkswagen Group vehicles from Europe to customers and dealerships in North America, the Felicity Ace didn't have 40 to 70 Bentleys aboard, as is typical, among the roughly 4,000 vehicles on that particular sailing.

It had a whole lot more than that: 189, each carrying an average price tag of about $300,000, according to a Bentley spokeswoman.

Yet, with quick action and thanks to a bizarre set of global circumstances, Bentley — which manufactures each of its vehicles by hand in its single factory in Crewe, Engla…

NADA guidelines provide clarity in changing times

The auto industry is going through an array of profound changes, many of which could be detrimental for America's franchised auto dealers: digital retail, the shift to electric vehicles, over-the-air updates. The emergence of new entrants — including Tesla, the dominant seller of luxury vehicles — that sell directly to consumers presents another significant competitive challenge.

As automakers have attempted to adapt to the new retail reality, dealers could be forgiven for assuming a defensive crouch — wary that each change could cut them out of future revenue or add unreimbursed costs. Where the next initiative would come from was as unpredictable as when it would stop.

The National Automobile Dealers Association was making the case that dealers are essential to bringing all of these technological advances to the American public and a competitive advantage for manufacturers. But both sides remained une…

Renault is open to reducing its stake in Nissan as the partners bargain over the French carmaker's plan to split its electric-car and combustion-engine assets, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Executives have discussed Renault's carve-out plan and reshaping the pair's two decade-old alliance since February during meetings in France and Japan.

Negotiations are intensifying as the French company plans to announce details in early November.

Renault CEO Luca de Meo was due to attend the Formula 1 race in Suzuka, Japan, on Sunday, giving him an opportunity to speak with Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida.

The parties' lopsided capital ties have long been a contentious issue for Nissan. The Japanese company is pressing Renault to reduce its stake to 15 percent from 43 percent to draw level with Nissan's share in Renault, the people said, declining to be named as details are private.

While this weekend's talks are unlikely to yield concre…

New estimates show that 94,000 more vehicles were removed from automakers’ production schedules at assembly plants worldwide because of the microchip shortage, according to AutoForecast Solutions.

The majority of those cuts were at North American factories, where more than 61,000 vehicles were axed. The remainder were trimmed from plants in South America and in Asia outside of China.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said last week he expects the shortage to ease near the end of 2023, while Honda said it will have to cut output at two of its plants in Japan this month.

Still, production is “clawing its way back, and more manufacturers are reporting that their supplies of chips are becoming more stable,” said Sam Fiorani, AFS vice president of global vehicle forecasting, in an email. But automakers continue to steer chips into higher-profit models at the cost of lower-priced vehicle production, he added, leading to higher transaction prices.

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When a Texas dealership group and a Stellantis store resolved a class action suit alleging underpayment of wages and overtime to detailers, porters, valets, shuttle drivers and car washers employed by a now-defunct company, the settlement reflected a legal and financial dilemma confronting dealerships that rely on outside contractors for fixed ops services.

And when a Texas vendor that supplies detailer, valet and car wash services agreed to pay $166,435 to close a U.S. Labor Department employee misclassification complaint, that settlement averted potential claims against the vendor's dealership clients.In the first case, a settlement reached earlier this year by Sonic Automotive Inc., several of its Texas dealerships and Gulfgate Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Houston meant a judge didn't need to decide a thorny question: Was Rascoa LLC, an independent contractor that had hired the workers, solely responsible for personnel management and compensation, as the …

A majority of service customers know their adviser and/or technician by name, according to a DealerRater survey conducted for Fixed Ops Journal in September.

Customers were asked whether they knew the names of the service department staff the last time they brought their vehicle in for repair or maintenance. More than half of respondents spread across both luxury and mass- market brands responded they did know the name of either their adviser or technician before showing up for their service appointment. A little more than 40 percent replied they didn't know their adviser or technician beforehand.

Fixed ops trainers and consultants say the goal for advisers is to provide such good service that customers ask for them by name each visit. Likewise, technicians should look to make a connection with their video multi-point inspections so customers will request them by name.

Q: The last time you brought your vehicle into the dealership for s…

There's little doubt the Inflation Reduction Act will have a seismic effect on the U.S. electric vehicle industry, but the dust hasn't yet settled on the details that will determine the affordability of different makes and models now on the market.

Major players are already requesting tweaks and adjustments to the act. If enacted as written, the new law could have the unintended consequence of actually suppressing sales of North American EV manufacturers, because few, if any, can meet all aspects of the supply chain criteria in the language.

If this and other issues are addressed, however, a couple of basic trajectories will have been set that carry long-term implications on supply and demand.

First and perhaps most obvious is the clear effort by the act to support domestic EV manufacturing. Vehicles made outside North America do not qualify for new federal tax incentives.The second is the effort to democratize demand. To attract Main Stre…

The National Automobile Dealers Association's guidelines on the changing auto retail industry can help state associations, leaders say, but the national guidelines will need to keep changing, too.

Some state dealer association leaders were consulted as NADA drafted a set of guiding principles that advocate for the franchise model. It lays out NADA's position on such things as vehicle reservation programs and selling vehicles directly without franchised dealers.

The guidelines are useful, but they, too, will need the flexibility to continue to change along with the industry, said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association.

"One thing that NADA has made clear is that these are designed to evolve, so if things change, then we can change the principle to reflect that change," said Maas, who offered input to NADA during the drafting process. "The idea is these are living documents."

NADA's framework outlines the association's…

Ayman Moussa is doing more with less.

The co-owner of Carnamic in Hayward, Calif., leverages technology and a lean organizational structure to operate his eight Bay Area stores with about half the employees of a typical dealership.

The group, which has Nissan, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Kia stores, sold 4,286 new and used vehicles last year.

Carnamic stores have six salespeople vs. the 12 found on a typical sales floor, said Moussa, who launched the company with his brother Chadi more than a decade ago.

The salespeople are product specialists tasked with walking potential customers through the vehicle, answering questions and conducting test drives. The product specialists are not involved with making the sale.

That's the responsibility of the store's two sales managers, who also handle arranging financing and selling aftermarket products.

"Our sales managers control the entire sales…

It doesn't take advanced knowledge of Newtonian physics to understand the forces at play right now in the U.S. auto market.

But it helps.

Consider Newton's Third Law of Motion. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

That played out in September — and indeed throughout the third quarter — across the U.S. auto industry as automakers and dealers struggled to find a balance between opposing forces. Continuing production and logistical bottlenecks at some automakers kept inventory from recovering more quickly; rapidly rising interest rates and prices squared off against consumers' concerns about their ability to pay.

The result: The seasonally adjusted, annualized rate came in at 13.67 million last month, Motor Intelligence said, above analysts' projections and much improved from the 12.38 million in September 2021, the lowest pace of sales since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. September 2021…

DUBLIN, Va. —Freightliner has led its U.S. diesel big rig rivals for years, commanding a market share no competitor could catch. But the nascent transformation to electric trucking provides other players an opening, and Volvo has jumped ahead.

Sales of electric trucks are still almost immeasurable compared to the roughly 150,000 heavy-duty diesel trucks manufacturers are on track to sell in the U.S. this year.

Yet Volvo holds an early lead in the U.S., according to registration data collected by S&P Global Mobility. Fleets have purchased 51 Volvo VNR Electric regional haul trucks through July. Peterbilt is at 10. Volvo's sibling company, Mack, is at seven, and Navistar's International Truck is at six. The data doesn't include 40 prototype battery electric Freightliner eCascadias and eM2s from Daimler Trucks North America in various test programs.

Volvo's lead is slight — now up to about 60 registrations, the company said — but…