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TOKYO — Jeep, the American off-road icon that is booming in Japan, expects to notch another Japanese sales record on its way to boosting volume here by nearly half over the next three years.

The rapid expansion plan, rolled out Thursday, Jan. 14, by FCA Japan CEO Pontus Häggström, leans heavily on building out Jeep's dealer network to at least 100 outlets in Japan through 2023, from 82 today.

Over the next three years, Jeep wants to sell more than 20,000 vehicles annually in this notoriously finicky market, up from a record 13,588 in 2020. That total marked the seventh straight year of record sales in Japan for FCA's stalwart four-wheeling brand.

Despite the pandemic, Jeep's Japan sales notched a 1.7 percent increase in 2020. And Häggström forecast that sales will surge to 15,000 in 2021 as demand bounces back.

Jeep's success in the country underscores how a U.S. automaker can thrive in Japan with the right product and sales network. As Jeep surge…

DETROIT — BrightDrop, General Motors' first new U.S. vehicle brand in more than two decades, aims to reclaim ground in the commercial-van segment long dominated by Ford Motor Co. and accelerate electric vehicle adoption beyond individual consumers.

FedEx will be BrightDrop's first customer for its EV600 van late this year.

"The commercial sector, like the retail segment, is shifting to electric, and it's an opportunity for GM to perhaps be a big player," said David Whiston, senior equity analyst for Morningstar.

GM has committed to spend $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicle development and launch 30 EVs globally through 2025. Executives have hinted at commercial EVs over the past several months, but the EV600 is the first one the automaker has confirmed. GM said late Friday that it plans to build the van at its Ingersoll, Ontario, assembly plant starting in November. The automaker said it would spend $787 million (C$1 billion) to retool the pl…

After work on Dec. 17, a used-car salesperson at Bird-Kultgen Ford in Waco, Texas, tested positive for the coronavirus. The next day, the dealership closed the used-car building, which housed one manager and three other salespeople.

Then about a week later, a salesman came into F&I Manager Amanda Lesikar's office with a question. Three days later, the salesman tested positive for the virus.

"When my owner came into my office and told me she was sending me home, I said, 'I really don't want to do that,' " Lesikar told Automotive News. "She said, 'We don't have a choice.' "

Amid the mounting COVID-19 death count, the automotive retail industry has been forced to send some employees home to work. But finance and insurance is particularly difficult to translate to a home environment, retail experts say, because many facets of the work — from customer identity verification to legal disclosures — are best conducted face-to-face. An…

Aspirations to place self-driving technology in the hands of ordinary vehicle owners had largely been relegated to the back burner.

As automakers and technology companies better understood the enormity of that challenge in recent years, they've chosen to focus on simpler tasks in the shorter term, concentrating on building virtual drivers for niches such as geography-constrained taxis, last-mile delivery and high-way travel.

With the exception of a certain billionaire who pitches "full self-driving capability" different from the rest of the industry, most companies have considered the real deal something far off in the fuzzy future.

That's changing. Global supplier Mobileye unwrapped plans last week to make self-driving technology available in personally owned vehicles in 2025. The Intel subsidiary made the announcement during CES.

"Robotaxi will be somewhat of a game- changer when it's ubiquitous, because you are elim…

Inventory levels in the U.S. climbed back to 3 million vehicles to begin the month but still remain far below where they were a year ago, according to data compiled by the Automotive News Data Center.

The total supply hasn't been at or above 3 million vehicles since May, when production in the United States was just beginning to reopen after COVID-related shutdowns, according to Cox Automotive. The aggregate figure represents a 70-day supply at the most recent selling rate. Cox derives its analysis from vAuto Available Inventory data.

Increasing production levels have allowed inventory to rise about 130,000 vehicles from where it was at the beginning of December, when dealers had a 75-day supply, but stocks still remain about 590,000 vehicles below where they were at the same point a year ago, Cox says, when dealers had an 85-day supply.

While many automakers no longer report inventory data, among those that do, Subaru had the tightest supply at 29 day…

Chuck Cook knew exactly what he wanted for his 90th birthday. When he picked it up at Cecil Clark Chevrolet last week, the Florida dealership threw him a party.

Cook bought the store's first 2021 Corvette, a Torch Red midengine C8. It's the Air Force veteran's fourth Corvette over 40 years.

"This is my birthday present to myself," Cook told the Daily Commercial in Leesburg, Fla. "I've owned Corvettes since 1981, when I bought my first one. This makes my fourth one in my lifetime. I can't wait until the pandemic is over so I can get this to all the car shows."

Cook's first Corvette was one of the last ones made in St. Louis. He eventually traded it in for a 2001 Corvette, then traded that for a 2014, which he traded in last week.

Cook and his wife, Barbara, were joined at the dealership celebration by friends from the Touch of Glass Corvette Club, of which he is a founding member.

Stellantis is here, and that means some of the seven brands that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is bringing to the table might not be around for much longer.

The high points of the post-merger blueprint in North America are no secret: Churn out as many Ram pickups as possible and push Jeep into higher price points and new segments.

But Stellantis executives will have to figure out how the rest of FCA's expansive brand roster fits into the long-term puzzle and whether cuts need to be made.

Chrysler is down to two minivan nameplates and the aging 300 sedan. Alfa Romeo is seeing signs of life — its U.S. sales grew 1.6 percent in a down market last year — but volumes are low for the Giulia sedan and Stelvio crossover.

Fiat has been hanging on with its line of small cars, but its slowing sales have dropped even further amid the pandemic, falling by more than half last year to just 4,303 vehicles. Meanwhile, Dodge has carved ou…