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McLaren Automotive is looking toward transformation as the purveyor of two-door sports cars considers a bigger, more profitable market — four-door, utility-type vehicles.

In April, without revealing details, McLaren told retailers it would bring "another class of automobile" in the decade's second half. According to retailers, McLaren's director of product strategy, Jamie Corstorphine, said, "Stay tuned. It may have four doors and four seats."

McLaren is fashionably late to the mid-six-figure luxury utility vehicle club. Competitors Bentley, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce have successfully launched SUVs, while Ferrari's first utility vehicle deliveries begin this year.

McLaren plans to transition to a 100 percent electrified portfolio by 2026. But the automaker isn't ready to commit to battery-only power.

"McLaren doesn't feel EV technology is there," a retailer said. "It's an answer, but it's not the answer."

The British marque is also exp…

Aaron Zimmerman vividly recalls the aha moment when he realized service advisers at the dealership group where he worked several years ago knew nothing about the very metrics used to rate their performance — and determine their pay.

"I was in a meeting with a general manager who was getting on his advisers pretty hard about a decline in their key performance indicators, like hours per repair order and effective labor rate," said Zimmerman, a corporate fixed ops director at the time. "And I saw a lot of blank faces."

Nobody knew what an effective labor rate was, said Zimmerman, a 2023 Automotive News 40 Under 40 honoree and now corporate fixed ops director at Len Stoler Automotive Group. The group owns 10 stores in Maryland and New York.

"We wanted to hold advisers accountable to certain KPIs, but it's hard for them to do that if they haven't been taught what they are," he said. "You can't change or improve on what you don't know."…

LONG BEACH, Calif. — From the outside, the intricately woven amalgam of metal pipes and tanks built and owned by FuelCell Energy Inc. alongside the entrance to Toyota's main California port here could pass for a miniature old-school oil refinery.

But looks can be deceiving, because the products — hydrogen, electricity and water — coming out of this first-of-a-kind processing facility are as clean as oil is dirty. They are distilled from a naturally occurring byproduct of rotting waste that otherwise would end up fouling the atmosphere, and in a unique pilot program, will be used by Toyota for the next 20 years to aid its port operations here, just a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.

Called Tri-gen, the small plant transforms biogas — methane polluted with other contaminants captured and carried by pipeline from a nearby anaerobic digester — into an adjustable combination of up to 2.3 megawatts of electricity, 1,200 kg of hydrogen and 1,400…

As the historic UAW strike enters its third week, dealers hope preparation will be enough to cushion the blow and keep service departments humming as the labor unrest hits closer to home with more than three dozen parts facilities being taken offline by the union's latest tactic.

UAW President Shawn Fain announced on Friday that 38 General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers in 20 states that package and ship parts used to repair customers' vehicles will join the strike. This could negatively impact dealership service departments to repair and maintain vehicles, which can account for at least half of a store's annual profits.

"All dealerships across the country have got a shop full of customers' cars that need to be repaired," said Ben Keating, owner of Keating Auto Group, which includes two GM dealerships and four Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram stores throughout Texas.

Despite the impact, Keating said the decision to strike at the parts distribut…

Automakers and their retailers are getting creative in the race for service technicians.

In February, Mercedes-Benz USA partnered with Job Corps to grow its technician ranks. In March, Ford Motor Co. announced a $1 million scholarship fund for future technicians in four U.S. cities.

And Volvo Cars, in an effort to recruit more female technicians, has redesigned its shop uniforms to better suit women.

Female technicians typically have to wear ill-fitting uniforms designed and sized for men. So Volvo aimed to create a uniform that would fit women without making them stand out among their peers.

"While the existing uniforms are meant to be gender neutral, the feedback we received from our female technicians was that the cut and fabric was made with a man's traditional build in mind," said Volvo Car USA and Canada marketing head Leigh Moynihan. Several "female technicians flagged the need for a specific uniform to better …

The Maybach lineup at Mercedes is about to expand beyond current high-end versions of the S-Class sedan and two SUVs — the EQS and the GLS.

Mercedes-Maybach is planning additional vehicles under the brand's Myth and Legend models — which are ultraexpensive, come in limited runs or are more exclusive one-offs commissioned by wealthy collectors, Car and Driver reported. Legend" models are more prestigious, with pricing of $1 million or more.

The magazine said a new Mercedes-Maybach SL roadster, which "will boast more bling per square inch of sheet metal than any other passenger car this side of a Kahn or Mansory conversion," is also in the works.

"We are going to turn Maybach into kind of a coachbuilt super Mercedes which lifts personalization to a whole new level," a senior company official told Car and Driver.

Future Maybach models will feature unique body panels and made-to-measure body-in-white.

BMW is pl…

A former Nissan and Gulf States Toyota executive is joining AutoNation Inc. as its new COO.

Jeff Parent, 58, will start Oct. 16, the company said. He brings an extensive background in areas including sales, supply chain management, business strategy, and operational and strategic initiatives, according to the hiring announcement. Parent will be tasked with overseeing AutoNation's daily operations, working with other members of the leadership team to enact the company's strategic plans and boost efficiency.

He will get paid an annual base salary of $800,000, receive a one-time sign-on cash payment of $1.5 million and participate in the company's annual incentive compensation program. AutoNation also is issuing him various one-time stock payments and making him eligible for annual performance-based stock compensation, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

CEO Mike Manley said in a statement that Parent is "a proven leader with an excellent track record…

By escalating the strike against the Detroit 3 to include 38 General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers across 20 states, UAW President Shawn Fain is elevating the plight of thousands of the union's lowest-paid full-time auto workers who would benefit most from the record contracts he's demanding.

He's also threatening the service business at Chevrolet, GMC, Jeep and Ram dealerships around the U.S. that need shipments from those 38 facilities to repair customers' vehicles. The largest of them fulfills 15,000 orders for GM Genuine and ACDelco parts a day.

Most parts depot employees start at around $16 an hour and top out at $24, vs. top pay of $32 at assembly and powertrain plants. If put on the same pay scale as most other workers — and given raises totaling 20 percent, as the automakers have proposed — some workers' wages would nearly double by 2027 to about $40 per hour.

"It means everything to me," said Eric Ray, a worker on the newly f…

Imports from China to the U.S. saw a surge in August, in part thanks to a rush for back-to-school shopping. With a predicted uptick in demand this peak holiday season comes renewed optimism for an industry rebound.

In fact, the National Retail Federation has reported that this year's back-to-school shopping season was going to be a big one. Spending was expected to reach around $41 billion, nearly doubling pre-pandemic spending of $26 billion in 2019. Each household is also likely to have spent more, increasing from $697 to $890 per person for this year, without considering price increases.

Further, the Global Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates predicts that the import cargo volume at significant U.S. container ports will hit 2 million TEUs during September and October.

“If you look at the U.S., the market looks relatively upbeat.” — Christian Roeloffs, CEO, Container xChange

The Container Market Forecaster’s …

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Toyota Research Institute sees room for human touch

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — A mock grocery store inside a Toyota Research Institute laboratory here presents challenges for a humanoid robot plying the aisles.

The robot must know where items on its shopping list are located and how to navigate within reach. It must understand how much each product weighs and how it's packaged.

Should the robot use pincers affixed to its right arm to grab an object — such as a milk jug — or the vacuum-based suction tube on its left hand to pluck a product from the shelf and place it in the cart?

There's a fervor around the burgeoning robotics industry, which Boston Consulting Group projects will rise to $160 billion to $260 billion in annual market sales by 2030 from about $40 billion now. But such bullish outlooks remind Max Bajracharya, senior vice president of robotics at the institute, of another much-ballyhooed technology.

"It is ro…