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Mr. October plans to be actively involved in the dealership's operation — so much so that he intends to buy a home nearby and live there part time.

"I'll have a place here probably within 12 months," Jackson, 75, told The News & Observer at the grand opening of Reggie Jackson Airport Honda in Raleigh at the end of April. "I'll purchase a condo or get an apartment or something. Rick had a conversation with me and said, 'Reggie, you can do what you want ... but you should consider sticking to it. Stay in the deal.' I said, 'I'm going to take your advice. You can count on me to stick to it and to be a person that'll be part of the community.' "

Jackson, a five-time World Series champion with the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees, has owned a stake in a Hendrick Chevrolet dealership in Naples, Fla., since 2015. He now plans to make a full leap into auto retailing with the 75,000-square-foot Honda store that bears his name.

"I think Rick and I talk…

The past two years of pandemic and supply chain disruptions as competition from startup rivals grew have forced traditional dealership groups to take a closer look at the convenience and customer experience they offer.

That has led to a shift from a linear, store-driven sales process to more of a hybrid one — in which a consumer can start or finish a car deal online and jump in and out of the digital or in-store environments as often as necessary. That approach is often referred to as omnichannel retailing.

I wrote this week about the digital retailing initiatives by the nation's public dealership groups. Several are investing in — and targeting greater revenue from — their own branded online tools. They generally aim to leverage their brick-and-mortar stores and digital platforms to create a flexible, omnichannel experience that gives them the scale to reach a wide swath of consumers.

That hybrid approach may be an advantage for the public groups over …

Police recovered five just-built Chevrolet Camaros that were stolen from outside a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., last week after a high-speed chase that ended more than 50 miles away with the help of a helicopter and tire-puncturing "stop sticks."

Authorities from three counties chased the Camaros — mostly high-powered ZL1 models — at speeds reportedly topping 100 mph along Interstate 96 toward Detroit.

After the cars separated into two groups, several of them crashed and the occupants were arrested as they tried to get away on foot, Michigan State Police said.

Police said the cars were valued at about $375,000 and that no one was injured during the pursuit.

GM said it was working with police and would be increasing security at the plant, which has been targeted by thieves multiple times in recent years.

Vehicles were reported stolen from the plant in March and last August.

The nine peo…

DETROIT — Two of the largest automotive seating suppliers are building out new plants here and looking for new opportunities to capture more business from automakers increasingly conscious of their spending with minority-owned companies.

Magna International Inc. formed a joint venture with LAN Manufacturing Group called LM Manufacturing, which plans to open a plant in southwest Detroit next year to make seats for Ford Motor Co. light trucks.

On the city's east side, Lear Corp. is expected to open its plant at the former Cadillac Stamping site this year to make seats for General Motors and is exploring a joint venture.

"It's competition, in one word," said Michelle Sourie Robinson, CEO of the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council, which certifies minority companies and joint ventures. "They're all trying to prove that they have the greatest competitive advantage and can do that work and provide the most value to the customer…

Dealers learned fairly early in the pandemic how to sell cars they didn't have.

What's proving tougher, though — judging from April's U.S. auto sales, at least — is trying to sell vehicles they might never get.

Lack of inventory remained the driving issue behind April's double-digit sales declines for five of the seven reporting automakers, including a drop of more than 40 percent for American Honda. Mazda North America had the smallest decline, at 3.3 percent.

Collectively, reporting automakers' U.S. sales fell more than 21 percent from a year earlier, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center. Analysts from LMC Automotive estimated that industry volume plunged 17 percent overall.

The losses might look worse because they are measured against April 2021 — a month when the seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of sales crested at 18.5 million as widespread vaccine distributions and relatively stable inventories attracted shoppers …

The partner in McKinsey & Co.’s Center for Future Mobility explores the opportunity and risks for automakers in an EV-dominant future and the urgency needed in accelerating that transition.

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Just as Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar prepares to go public, the financial market is looking uncertain.

When Polestar revealed plans last fall to go public, interest in EV stocks was hot as investors hoped to get in early on the next Tesla.

The exuberance sent some company valuations into overdrive, creating what some see as a stock market bubble. Luxury EV maker Lucid Group commanded a $42 billion valuation after it went public in July, and in November, electric utility-vehicle maker Rivian Automotive's initial public offering had a $66.5 billion valuation.

"Everyone's trying to invest in the next Tesla," Morningstar equities analyst David Whiston said. "But there's only one Elon Musk and he's already spoken for."

But now that Polestar prepares to begin trading on the Nasdaq next month, the EV stock bubble is at risk of popping under the twin threats of rising interest rates and looming economic recession.<…

The first place many consumers encounter self-driving vehicles will not necessarily be in their driveways.

They might instead see autonomy at work in vehicles that haul away their trash or deliver their mail.

That's the premise of a new collaboration between Oshkosh Corp. and Robotic Research Inc., two companies that intend to focus on automating garbage trucks, fire engines and other specialty vehicles.

Competitors are pursuing deployment of robotaxis and long-haul autonomous trucks, but Oshkosh and Robotic Research believe vehicles operating at low speeds on repeatable routes in limited areas make for ideal first applications of autonomy.

Human safety operators may be considered constraints in those other operations, but in these work trucks, they're a key asset: They can monitor automated systems while performing other jobs.

"We're going to have the safety driver for quite a while, so let's just face t…

Stellantis challenged groups of college students to devise apps that use real-time vehicle data to "gamify" driving.

The April "hackathon" in Detroit yielded numerous creations meant to encourage safer behavior behind the wheel and make commutes more engaging.

The winning team was awarded $15,000 for an app that dishes out points for safe driving techniques, while deducting points for riskier behaviors. The idea is that users could compare their performance with other drivers and leverage high scores to get discounts for vehicle service, merchandise and insurance.

Watching the projects come together gave Stellantis a view of perspectives and ideas that the company can layer into its plans, said Charlie Cross, Stellantis' head of connected services.

"We gave them this challenge and said we have all of this data we can get from vehicles — we have all these different capabilities," Cross told Automotive News. "Basically…

Tesla Inc. sued a former engineer claiming he illegally transferred confidential information on its supercomputer technology to his own computer and turned over a “dummy” laptop for inspection to cover up the theft.

Tesla is developing an in-house supercomputer, dubbed Project Dojo, to deal with massive amounts of data, including video from Tesla cars, and using it to create autonomous driving software. Alexander Yatskov was hired in January as a thermal engineer to help design cooling systems for the computer, which generates a lot of heat, Tesla said in the complaint.

“These thermal designs and data are confidential and tightly guarded within Tesla,” the electric-car maker said.

But Tesla said Yatskov admitted to downloading confidential information from his Tesla devices to his personal devices, after he was confronted. He turned over a “dummy” computer for inspection by Tesla to try and cover his tracks, the company said.

Yatskov quit on May 2…

A dealership's employee diversification strategy can't be just empty words. It requires an intentional mindset from leadership to set the tone for the rest of an organization, said Frank Williams, who owns four RML Automotive Group dealerships in Alabama and Tennessee.

Williams said such an approach was on display when Black Entertainment Television co-founder Robert Johnson partnered with the McLarty-Landers Automotive Group in 2007. At the time, Johnson said one mission of the RLJ-McLarty-Landers Automotive Group, now known as RML Automotive, was to recruit and train minority entrepreneurs to manage dealerships while putting them in a better position to raise capital to buy their own stores.

The company carried out this vision and made Williams its first minority dealer partner in 2008, when he assumed control of Landers McLarty Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Huntsville, Ala. Williams, after getting his opportunity, brought the same commitment to diversity over …