Category: Auto

A McLaren Senna sits on the factory floor. Every McLaren starts out as a 175-pound carbon-fiber tub, made by Mubea Carbo Tech of Salzburg, Austria. McLaren will bring tub production in-house once it opens its Sheffield, Eng-land, plant next year. “All cars start off as a spider (convertible), and then we bond the roof structure […]

The 2019 Chevrolet Silverado’s engine, below, uses Tula Technology’s Dynamic Skip Fire feature to boost fuel economy. WASHINGTON — Tula Technology Inc. is a late-stage powertrain startup that is finally producing revenue, hitting the market with innovate software designed to optimize the power output and fuel efficiency of internal combustion engines. The company’s algorithm selects […]

“It’s easy for us to just go across the aisle to work on products, to work on solutions, but why don’t we just get rid of the aisle?” Sandy Schwartz, president, Cox Automotive KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If a dealership’s parking lot has 10 visitor spots, on some days, Cox Automotive takes six of them. […]

Diess, who was VW’s brand chief at the time the scandal emerged, became CEO of parent company Volkswagen AG in April this year. FRANKFURT — Volkswagen AG CEO Herbert Diess was told about the existence of cheating software in cars two months before regulators blew the whistle on a multi-billion exhaust emissions scandal, German magazine […]

Tesla’s story has been such a soap opera that it’s hard to know which twists and turns are worth heeding. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pathos-laden interview published Friday by The New York Times might seem like just another distraction, but it’s probably as important as anything to do with Tesla’s manufacturing or sales. After all, the […]

A profit pinch point is developing for automakers and suppliers working on new vehicle platforms: the cost of the tools to build them. Toolmakers are adding tariff costs to their prices, says Laurie Harbour, a consultant who works closely with the North American supplier and tool-and-die industries. Harbour warns that a wave of higher-than-expected bills […]

Lear CEO tops list of highest paid execs Matthew Simoncini, who retired after guiding Lear to record sales and profits, was the highest-paid CEO at publicly traded U.S. automotive companies last year, according to the Automotive News/Equilar CEO Compensation study.

DALLAS — A Texas jury on Friday hit Toyota with a $242 million verdict after finding that defects in the front seats of a 2002 Lexus ES300 caused serious injuries to a Dallas family’s two young children during a rear-end collision in 2016. The jury in state court in Dallas awarded $144 million in punitive […]

Photo credit: Crain’s Chicago Business A flood of vehicles obtained fraudulently and shipped to metro Chicago has prompted the Chicago Police Department this summer to warn dealers nationwide to exercise “extraordinary diligence” in verifying the identity of online customers. The police department said it was fielding at least three requests a week to investigate and […]

Spanning 16 miles of Woodward Avenue, the Woodward Dream Cruise of classic and muscle cars is expected to attract more than 1.3 million people and 40,000 vehicles. Photo credit: Woodward Dream Cruise via Facebook DETROIT — The traffic jam/party of the year known as the Woodward Dream Cruise is back for a 24th year. Car […]

Joseph Perkins, the executive who led Key Safety Systems’ push to acquire Takata Corp. in a $1.6 billion deal that closed in April, has left the supplier to become the CEO of Albion, Ind.-based Busch Performance Group. Perkins, 50, takes on the newly-created role for founder Nick Busche, who will continue to serve as the […]

Los Angeles native Jenna Stellar vividly remembers going to sidecar races all around Southern California to watch her father race in the late ’70s. As a Hollywood costumer and rider, she’s uniquely qualified to boldly launch a motorcycle clothing company. Whereas the demands of movies and television warrant all-nighters and one-off garments, motorcycle gear for […]

BEIJING — Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. will build additional capacity at its auto plant in China’s Guangzhou, a company source told Reuters, in addition to beefing up production at a factory in Tianjin city by 120,000 vehicles a year. A person close to the company said Toyota will build capacity at the production hub in […]