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A lot of dealers spend big bucks on things such as targeted ads and mailers to persuade people who are already their customers to come back through the door once they purchased a car.

But Paul Garavel knows there's an easier, cheaper and better way: It just takes a little effort, a lot of kindness and a few tchotchkes.

At his two stores in Norwalk, Conn. — Garavel Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram and Garavel Subaru, which are about 2 miles apart — customers go on what amounts to guided scavenger hunts through the dealerships as they wait to take delivery of their new vehicles.

Customers, with a small paper bag emblazoned with a dealership logo in hand, meet the leaders of each department during their hunt and receive a series of useful branded items with each interaction, including a key chain, an ice scraper and a coffee mug. Each gift is accompanied by a business card dropped in the bag.

The end result is a lot more than a bag of small gifts, says Gara…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Like Dickens in reverse

North Carolina dealer Don Flow invoked Dickens with a twist last week. He was reflecting on the dramatic swings of fortune that auto retailers have seen since the pandemic hit in March.

"It was like the reverse of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities," he said on our "Daily Drive" podcast. "Instead of saying, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'; it was the worst of times. And now, remarkably, you might actually say, it could be the best of times."

The theme carries into the pages of Monday's issue. Consider:

■ Ford and Fiat Chrysler posted robust third-quarter earnings. No one would have predicted that six months ago, when Ford was forecasting a $5 billion operating loss for the second quarter alone. As we note in a Page 1 story, Ford's profit margins came in at the strongest level in five years. FCA's North America profits were its highest ever.

■ Gentex, a maker of h…

Jennifer Haroon, chief operating officer at artificial-intelligence startup Nauto, discusses how driver-monitoring technology can help improve human driver habits, lower costs for fleets and anticipate and prevent collisions.

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DETROIT — Even as it spends $11.5 billion electrifying its vehicle lineup, Ford Motor Co. isn't aiming to be the next Tesla.

It wants to be the next Peloton.

The battery-electric E-Transit van, set to be unveiled this month, will be the latest example of Ford's ambitions under new CEO Jim Farley: selling electric vehicles to fleet buyers who may be more willing to consider a new propulsion system than the average retail customer, while expanding into telematics software and other analytics services that complement the vehicle.

Ted Cannis, general manager of Ford's North American commercial business, likened the approach to that of the fitness company that not only sells the popular stationary bike, but subscriptions for online exercise classes as well.

"We can go from being just the vehicle to the Peloton, if you will — the bike and the workout series," he told Automotive News. "We can have the whole system."

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OTTAWA LAKE, Mich. — Among automakers that prioritize safe testing on the promising road toward fully automated driving, Toyota is out standing in its field.

Or rather, driving out there, while simultaneously simulating one of the most densely packed areas of Tokyo in the middle of a field in southeastern Michigan and under the shadow of a set of 115-foot-tall grain silos.

Does that seem corny? Well, not anymore; this year's surrounding acres of corn have been harvested. Yet the work goes on at the Toyota Research Institute's Automated Vehicle Test Facility on the Michigan-Ohio border, where the automaker is trying to achieve a still-long-off industry goal of safe fully automated vehicle operation.

And had 2020 gone differently — say, without a devastating pandemic to muck things up — the Summer Olympics in Tokyo would have been a venue for demonstrating the progress the institute has made at its Ottawa Lake facility. Before th…

The latest online used-vehicle company preparing to go public has spotted the same trends its predecessors have: a highly fragmented market, relatively low e-commerce penetration and a consumer appetite for online shopping.

But CarLotz Inc., a consignment platform that expects to go public via a reverse merger this quarter, raising $321 million in cash, should be seen less as a merchant that buys low and sells high and more as a service that streamlines the used-vehicle selling process, its CEO told Automotive News. "We are consolidating all the middlemen into one middleman," said Michael Bor, who co-founded the company.

While competitors deal with auctions, wholesalers, buyers and other parties, "We're just collapsing all that" as a unified platform, he said.

Initially, CarLotz was meant to be an online platform that would help consumers sell their cars and trucks in a hassle-free way.

Bor, a former investment banker, got the idea for the compa…

As automakers seek to make their vehicles increasingly connected — especially given the myriad benefits that can be provided — there are still some wrinkles to iron out.

Chief among them? Cybersecurity threats, consumer data privacy concerns and the possibility of connectivity — or a lack thereof — affecting safety-critical functions of a vehicle.

In September, Tesla drivers experienced a brief network outage that left some unable to connect to the company's app and website. Drivers said the disconnection from the mobile app impacted their ability to open their car doors and access other services.

Though rare, the Tesla example — first reported by website Electrek — is a lesson to automakers and raises questions about the reliability of connectivity in today's vehicles. Though the outage affected mobile access and no operational or safety features were impacted, it's especially pertinent given that more than 500 million vehicles …

DETROIT — See if this sounds familiar: A start-up EV company is basically gifted a modern plant chock-full of world-class production equipment. To reduce product-development costs and time, its first vehicle uses thousands of proven off-the-shelf parts from major suppliers and established automakers.

Lordstown Motors is closely following Tesla's early playbook as it gears up to launch late next year the battery-powered Endurance, a full-size pickup with four electric motors, a 250-mile range and a starting price of about $52,000, before a federal tax credit of up to $7,500.

Flush with $675 million in cash from a reverse merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, Lordstown's path will veer in a different direction than Tesla's did once the Endurance starts rolling down the production line.

CEO Steve Burns told Automotive News during a brief test drive of the company's lone operational prototype in suburban Detroit that Lord…

Scott Painter, who founded used-vehicle subscription service Fair, said he is working to launch a new software-as-a-service platform to help subscription providers achieve scale and become profitable.

Painter, who stepped aside as Fair's CEO last year, said he has been quietly working since March on a new entity, NextCar Inc. NextCar will not be a consumer-facing subscription provider like Fair, he said, but rather help vehicle subscription companies grow and make money by providing services they'll need to operate, such as debt capital, insurance, access to inventory, maintenance capabilities, fleet management and digital servicing.

"It is all of the component parts of a subscription business, but we are not focused on building our own brand and going direct to the consumer," Painter told Automotive News.

"These are all things that when we started Fair just didn't exist, and we had to basically attempt to create all of those things,…

DETROIT — For the first time in a decade, General Motors will hire a CFO from outside the company.

The automaker on Friday said Paul Jacobson, CFO at Delta Air Lines Inc. since 2012, will take over the top finance position Dec. 1. GM's acting CFO John Stapleton, who has held the position since Dhivya Suryadevara's sudden departure in August, will return to his role as CFO of North America.

Jacobson, 48, will be the first CFO from outside GM since 2010, when the company hired Chris Liddell from Microsoft. The three CFOs since then — Dan Ammann, Chuck Stevens and Suryadevara — all held other roles with the company before taking the top finance job.

Jacobson has worked at Delta in a number of finance positions since 1997. He most recently helped the company navigate the coronavirus pandemic that has hit the airline industry particularly hard. He will report to GM CEO Mary Barra.

"Paul is a great addition to the GM senior leadership team and is dedica…

WASHINGTON -- A group of business leaders and public policy experts on Friday launched a new body to grapple with thorny questions surrounding the future of transportation including self-driving and electric vehicles.

The group, the Future of Mobility Commission, plans to propose a new regulatory framework to address a global transportation sector "on the cusp of a worldwide transition driven by shared, connected, autonomous, and electric technologies."

Alisyn Malek, the commission's executive director, told Reuters the goal is to tackle tough problems and improve safety.

"Let's bring everybody together to talk about how do we want the movement of people and goods to actually work," Malek said in an interview. Malek was named a 2019 Automotive News All-Star for her previous role as COO and co-founder at startup May Mobility. She parted ways with the company in January. 

Autonomous cars and delivery trucks, package-carrying drones, air taxis, …