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DETROIT -- A little executive bloodletting can sometimes ease the pressure on an embattled chief executive officer. But Jim Hackett is unlikely to see any letup from Ford Motor Co.’s board following the surprise early retirement of one his two top lieutenants.

Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s 53-year-old automotive president, will leave on March 1 after almost two decades with the company. As a rising star under celebrated former CEO Alan Mulally, he was put on the fast track to be a potential heir to the top job.

With Hinrichs out of the picture, Ford is elevating Jim Farley, the company’s only other president, to become the first COO since the automaker planned for Mulally’s succession seven years ago. The announcement that the board will revive the role of COO came days after Hackett reported dismal earnings results, dogged by the disastrous rollout of the redesigned Explorer large crossover, and forecast more disappointing numbers for the upcoming year.

“Th…

Chevrolet released its base prices for the 2021 Tahoe full-size SUV, showing slight increases and a price decrease in one model.

The Tahoe LS will start at $50,295, up $1,000 from the 2020 model. The Tahoe LT starts at $55,095, up $800. The Tahoe Premier starts at $63,895, down $100.

The prices include transportation and destination fees.

All three models will have a standard 10-speed automatic transmission and new independent rear suspension. They also offer 10 more inches of third-row legroom, 66 percent more cargo behind the third row and 30 percent more maximum cargo.

U.S. sales of the Tahoe fell 2.8 percent to 101,189 vehicles in 2019, but the nameplate still led the large SUV segment, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

Chevy faces growing competition in that segment from the Ford Expedition, which finished second with sales of 86,422 vehicles — a surge of 58 percent over 2018, according to the Data Center.

The Tahoe holds…

HAAH Automotive Holdings, which is planning to bring Zotye vehicles from China to the U.S. next year, says it has reached a North American distribution deal with another Chinese automaker, Chery Automobile Co.

A U.S.-assembled premium SUV from Chery will be sold and serviced under the brand name Vantas as soon as late 2021, HAAH said in a statement Monday.

U.S. production will begin with semi-knockdown kits. The plan is to eventually transition to full manufacturing, Chris Hosford, a spokesman for HAAH, said in an email. The company is scouting a number of states, including Michigan, for a plant, which would employ about 1,000 to 1,500 workers once fully operational, said CEO Duke Hale during an interview with Detroit radio station WWJ.

HAAH plans to begin recruiting dealers at the NADA Show in Las Vegas this week.

The effort, if carried through, could mark back-to-back debuts of Chinese brands in the United States. HAAH is already working to…

FRANKFURT --Daimler is intensifying existing cost-cutting measures and plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs, Handelsblatt newspaper reported, citing company sources.

The maker of Mercedes-Benz cars had said in November that it would cut at least 10,000 jobs and reduce staff costs by around 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) by the end of 2022, a number Handelsblatt said would be significantly exceeded.

Daimler plans to announce the expanded savings at its annual news conference on Tuesday, the paper said, adding that CEO Ola Kallenius would also reduce investments in money-losing projects that are not part of the core business.

Daimler will also slim down its product lineup, the paper said. The convertible and coupe versions of Mercedes' range-topping sedan, the S class, will be axed and the future of the B class is uncertain, Handelsblatt said.

Mercedes has already said it will end production of the X-class pickup at the end of May.

A Daimler spok…

General Motors' collapse in the Great Recession left its mammoth Spring Hill, Tenn., vehicle and engine manufacturing complex without a car to build and with an uncertain future.

A decade later, the site is again pumping, garnering more investment and spurring supply chain growth in the region. Since 2010, GM has reinvested more than $2.3 billion at Spring Hill. And significantly for the site, the investments have targeted flexibility and future auto technologies to keep the plant well positioned.

"Customers' demands have shifted and we've evolved here," Ken Knight, GM Spring Hill executive plant manager for the past eight years, told Automotive News.

Knight said new launches, changing technological trends in the industry and talent are all pushing Spring Hill's mission.

Investments over the past four years have brought key changes.

In 2016, GM committed $788.7 million for a new high-efficiency engine program, a…

DETROIT — After nearly three years into Jim Hackett's tenure, the Ford Motor Co. CEO's sweeping fitness plan has yet to produce the positive financial results he has promised, and the automaker served notice last week that its turnaround remains at least another year away from bearing fruit.

Amid a growing sense of urgency within the company, Hackett last week again shuffled his senior leadership team, promoting Jim Farley to be his COO — and heir apparent — while parting ways with a seasoned manufacturing guru and dealer ally in Joe Hinrichs.

The executive shake-up, coming as Ford enters a crucial stretch of high-profile product launches, followed another round of dismal financial results that prompted Ford's stock to drop the most in nine years.

Hackett has indicated that his restructuring efforts would take time, but even he has been critical of the financial results produced during his tenure. Net income dropped from $7.7 bi…

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Aaron Wallace's name.

Aaron Wallace is a fourth-generation car dealer, not a software developer. He's the guy, he says, "with the marker and the white board."

But Wallace also was the guy with an idea. Today, that idea — A2Z Sync, a software platform that enables a one- person, one-price dealership sales model — is a standalone software business that last year exited beta testing and is now being shopped to dealerships across the country.

Creating a technology company wasn't what Wallace set out to do. Originally, he was trying to solve his own business problem — scaling a new customer-friendly finance-and- insurance model beyond a single BMW store in his family's Schomp Automotive Group in the suburbs of Denver.

Wallace isn't the only dealer dabbling in software to find solutions. Dealers and retail consultants say it's necessary for dealerships to embrace technology to evolve with a tra…

DETROIT -- Joe Hinrichs, whose is abruptly retiring after 19 years with Ford Motor Co., wrote a 1,000-word farewell letter thanking his team and encouraging them to continue working to improve the company's outlook and performance.

The letter, obtained by Automotive News, summarized many of the highlights since Hinrichs, 53, was named Ford's president of worldwide automotive operations in May 2019 and suggests he had no plans to retire as recently as last month, detailing a January meeting in which they "committed to each other that we would all work together to make this a great year."

A Ford spokesperson declined to comment.

His retirement was announced as part of a management shakeup that will elevate Jim Farley to COO and expand the role of Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's product development and purchasing boss. Hinrichs has not responded to a request for comment. His retirement is effective March 1. 

The letter touched on Ford's troubled launch o…

The first email Jeff Dyke, president of Sonic Automotive Inc., opens every morning isn't from a fellow corporate executive or a manager at one of the retailer's 96 franchised or used-only EchoPark stores. Instead, it's a message containing the latest online reviews from Sonic's customers.

Dyke said he and Sonic CEO David Smith wake each day eager to assess the public dealership group's results as compiled by Reputation.com, a software vendor that monitors online customer reviews.

"Tomorrow morning at 4:30, sure as heck, I'll get three Reputation.com emails, and we'll open them up," Dyke told Automotive News. "There'll be 100 in there or whatever, and [we] review them all. Anybody who puts something out there, we're reading about it."

Dealership operators weren't always so obsessive about online reviews.

Before search engines and rating sites, customers who took dealership complaints to cyberspace were more or less sh…

Amazon offered a sneak preview of its electric delivery vans from suburban Detroit startup Rivian, touting the vehicle's adaptable features and environmental friendliness.

The van had been seen only in artist renderings, but last week, Amazon released photos showing a scale model and a full-size clay mock-up of the EV and a behind-the-scenes video shot in the Rivian design studio. The tech giant said in a company blog that its goal is to reduce its carbon emissions, "raise the bar for driver safety" and optimize design. Amazon placed the order for 100,000 delivery vans from Rivian, of Plymouth, Mich., in September.

Much of the preview focused on the vehicle's design, which includes a massive windshield.

There is also a digital instrument cluster and central display screen that are integrated with Amazon's logistics management and routing and package delivery technology.

The company said the logistics management, and …