Auto Industry Archive

It has been standard wisdom that the American auto market was good for 16 million car and truck sales annually—until it wasn’t. Last year, three million sales just vanished—total sales were just over 13 million. Taken as a whole, 2009 is likely to be considerably worse than 2008. CSM Worldwide forecasts 2009 auto sales at 9.7 million, down (because of pessimistic employment numbers) from...

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Instead of a flat yes or no, the president’s auto task force shook the Magic Eight Ball of Washington politics and came up with a carefully crafted, “Ask Again Later.” To be sure, there’s a flat “no” in the task force’s report submitted yesterday, March 30, in answer to the question whether Chrysler and GM submitted viable plans last month for returning to...

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Although corporate stocks sometimes jump when an unsuccessful CEO bails out, the news that Rick Wagoner of General Motors resigned under pressure sent its shares (at just $3.62 at the close Friday) down more than 30 percent in initial trading Monday. The stock had gone as low as $1.45 a share in early March. There was still some lingering sympathy for Wagoner in Detroit Monday. “It’s...

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It was almost inevitable that GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner would get the boot, as the Detroit Big Three’s longest-serving chief executive, and with Congress and the Obama Administration demanding accountability. “On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials.  In the course of that meeting, they requested that I ‘step aside’ as CEO of GM, and so I...

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In what sounds like a cruel paradox, forecasters at Cambridge Energy Research Associates are predicting that today’s record low oil prices are short-circuiting investment in new supply, which could mean a dramatic escalation at the pumps when the economy recovers. The rising chorus gives new urgency to efforts that will wean the U.S. off its dangerous dependence on imported oil. And it made...

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Rolls-Royce will introduce a smaller, somewhat less-expensive car next year – smaller and less-expensive by Rolls-Royce standards, that is. Code-named 200EX, the concept car on which the production car will be based was put on display in New York this week for journalists, and for Rolls-Royce customers and prospects. It will be priced around $250,000 to $280,000, versus the Rolls-Royce...

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ORLANDO, FLORIDA—More than 2,000 engineers under the direction of Akihiko Otsuka worked for four years on the new Toyota Prius. The hybrid drivetrain, featuring a 1.8-liter engine working on an Atkinson Cycle, is 90 percent new.   “We wanted Prius to make a difference and change the way people think about transportation, the roles cars play in the environment and what people could...

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The national spotlight has been off the U.S. auto industry for a while, but that’s not going to last. Chrysler and GM are fast approaching a March 31 deadline for the U.S. Treasury Department to rule whether so-called “viability plans” submitted by the companies are plausible, and whether the companies should receive additional money. That deadline could get postponed, but...

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One of the most interesting developments in the current recession is that the vehicle miles traveled by Americans is still down considerably (a 1.6 percent drop in December from the year before), despite the fact that pump prices have been stuck at half last year’s $4 a gallon peak (though they’re edging up). According to Doug Hecox, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration,...

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The auto industry is so vast, sometimes you get the best high-level view of it based on related industries that are on the margins of the new-car business, like rental cars, auto suppliers and used cars. It’s like the way scientists sometimes get their best view of what’s going on inside an atom or on the surface of the sun — by inference, rather than looking directly at a...

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