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It's been 41 years since General Motors used the words "Standard of the World" to describe and promote the Cadillac brand.

Now they're back with the ultra-luxury Celestiq high-performance electric luxury sedan. The production-intent Celestiq, rumored to carry a price tag of between $300,000 and $350,000, gets its world debut on Friday. Production is slated to begin in late 2023.

Since Cadillac's sales peaked in the 1980s, the brand has had numerous reboots, none really gaining much traction. Some Cadillacs have been great, the V Series performance cars and the current Escalade, to name two, But many more have stiffed — the Catera, Allante, XLR, ELR, CT6, XTS and on and on.

Because of Cadillac's many false starts over the decades, the resurrection of "Standard of the World" is bound to bring with it a lot of scrutiny, skepticism, doubt and outright denial from weary automotive analysts and journalists, and from consumers who have heard some version of it…

China’s electric-vehicle makers have discovered a new fan base: camping enthusiasts who’ve embraced the great outdoors in their own backyard as the nation’s strict COVID Zero measures make international travel off-limits.

Geely, the automaker whose parent controls Volvo Cars and Polestar, last week unveiled a new-energy pickup truck brand, called Radar. Its first model, a fully electric beast that can run more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) on a charge, should be available in the fourth quarter.

“Chinese car owners have added outdoors settings into their routine scenarios, apart from home and work,” said Ling Shiquan, Radar’s newly appointed CEO, adding that the pandemic has pushed people in China to focus on a more healthy lifestyle.

Draconian measures to stop the virus from spreading have kept huge swaths of the population, including millions of people in Shanghai, sealed inside their homes or workplaces for weeks or even months on end. People subjec…

Electric vehicle-only automakers are trailing other premium brands in shopping experience satisfaction, a report out Monday from retail service tracker Pied Piper found.

The Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, or PSI, uses about 70 best-practice behaviors to measure retail service performance of automakers. These include in-person and Web-response categories, making up 60 percent and 40 percent of a brand's score, respectively, and included scores for sales person attentiveness, availability of finance options and how quickly the dealership responded to an online inquiry. Lack of inventory did not play a factor.

In cases where a brand did not have physical dealerships, such as Rivian, its in-person score was determined by telephonic communication. The survey also used a different set of factors to evaluate electric-only automakers because of different sales practices compared with those of with traditional automakers.

In Pied Pi…

WASHINGTON -- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a special investigation into the crash of a 2021 Tesla Model Y that killed a motorcyclist in California, it said on Monday.

Since 2016, NHTSA has opened 37 special investigations of crashes involving Tesla Inc. vehicles and where advanced driver assistance systems such as Autopilot were suspected of being used. A total of 18 crash deaths were reported in those Tesla-related investigations, including the most recent fatal California crash.

The agency declined to identify the specific crash but media reports said a 48-year-old motorcyclist was killed on July 7 after a collision with a 2021 Tesla Model Y on the Riverside Freeway in California.

NHTSA has opened three special probes in recent weeks, including one into a Florida crash that killed a 66-year-old Tesla driver and a 67-year-old passenger, and one into a fatal pedestrian crash in California involving a 2018 Tesla Model 3. Read more

In 1978, Lyn St. James read an article about the Ford Mustang in Car and Driver. The story had a sidebar about Ford’s interest in marketing the Mustang to women by providing competitive and racing opportunities. 

St. James had been racing for fun for years and earned her competition driver’s license at age 27. She was ready to get more serious and was looking for a sponsor. “I wrote letters to everyone at Ford who was quoted in that article, asking them to sponsor me,” she says. She got a letter back from Ford, congratulating her on her racing success and telling her to keep them informed about her career. So she did. She raced whenever she could and sent her results to the Ford team. After a dogged pursuit, in 1981, she became one of the first female race car drivers to receive a full-season sponsorship.

Her subsequent story is legendary: St. James was the first woman Rookie of the Year at the Indianapolis 500, in 1992 — and she had six more Indy 500…

Q: As consolidation in automotive retail continues at a record pace, what’s the most important thing smaller auto groups and independents need to consider to not only survive, but thrive?

Haig: The forward-thinking retailers we know are focused on giving the customers what they want: a huge selection, a fair price, and a convenient way to buy. It all starts online now as the pandemic accelerated the shift towards online shopping. A world-class online experience is essential for consumers of all ages, but particularly the upcoming generation. We encourage dealers to compare their digital offerings, starting with their websites along with their consumer propositions with what buyers are offered at CarMax, Carvana and publicly traded retailers.

My kids are in their 20s and have grown up accustomed to buying almost everything they want online. They want to do what is known to them - tap some buttons on their phones or laptops for all their needs. The idea of going into a…

Ford Motor Co.'s 2023 F-150 Raptor R adds eye-popping V-8 punch to the automaker's off-road lineup, but it won't supplant the Ram 1500 TRX as the apex predator of the full-size performance pickup segment.

Ford said the Raptor R's 5.2-liter V-8 engine will generate 700 hp and 640 pound-feet of torque, just below the TRX's 702 hp and 650 pound-feet of torque. But Ford officials argue the Raptor R's expected curb weight of 5,950 pounds — about 400 pounds lighter than the TRX — will make it a more agile, durable beast.

"In the end, two or three horsepower doesn't really matter," Tony Greco, program manager of F-150 Raptor, told Automotive News. "It really comes down to the power-to-weight ratio. It's a nimble, nimble monster and that's what it takes to be fast in the environment we want to compete in and dominate."

The Raptor R, meant for desert-racing enthusiasts, is Ford's most powerful Raptor-badged vehicle to date. While the brand has been a hit for For…

PARIS -- Stellantis announced the "orderly termination" of its joint venture with Chinese carmaker GAC, which has been producing Jeep vehicles.

The decision comes only four months after Stellantis said it would raise its stake in the business.

"We came to the conclusion that it was better to close the joint venture," said a Stellantis spokesperson, adding that the venture had been loss-making and that the carmaker could still operate in China through its dealer network.

GAC reprimanded Stellantis in January for announcing plans to raise its stake to 75 percent from 50 percent. GAC was not immediately available for comment.

GAC agreed the partnership in 2010 with Fiat Chrysler, which later merged with PSA to form Stellantis.

With less than a 1 percent share of the Chinese auto market, Stellantis has been looking to reshuffle its strategy in the country as part of a broader simplification of its global structure under CEO Carlos Tavares. Read more

Lower-than-expected U.S. light-vehicle sales in the first half of 2022 reinforced the damage and unpredictability of the global microchip shortage that has plagued the industry for more than a year.

Automakers sold 6.8 million new vehicles in the first six months of the year, down 18 percent from a year earlier, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center. Virtually every automaker except Tesla experienced a year-over-year sales drop in the first half of 2022.

Most dealerships still lacked the more normalized inventory levels that prognosticators expected to have returned by now, and as a result many forecasters have lowered their full-year projections for U.S. new-vehicle volume. Still, some optimism remains for the back half of the year.

Demand continues to be strong despite record average transaction prices and whispers of an impending recession, and some executives have said chip supplies could improve enough in the coming months to…

A self-driving pioneer stumbles

A crash resulting in injuries. Incidents in which robotaxis cluster at intersections and block traffic. A car operating without headlights at night, which then repositions itself before a police officer can complete a traffic stop.

Now an alleged whistleblower's letter has emerged, highlighting safety concerns.

Self-driving tech company Cruise has endured a bumpy ride in recent months, and that’s being kind. A series of mishaps have raised serious questions about the company’s San Francisco operations, and those only grew in number and scope this past week when a letter purportedly written by a Cruise employee cast doubt upon the company’s readiness for commercial operations, which started just last month.

“Employees generally do not believe we are ready to launch to the public, but there is fear of admitting this because of expectations from leadership and investors,” the person wrote in a letter to regulato…