Auto Industry Archive

DETROIT—When Roger Penske takes over the Saturn brand, probably in October, one of the company’s more heralded cars will not be making the trip. It’s the plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue, which had been scheduled for 2009, but is now delayed until at least 2011. But neither General Motors‘ bankruptcy nor the sale of Saturn have derailed it. Saturn already has a hybrid...

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A group of public-sector pension funds based in Indiana has managed to hit the “pause” button on the fast-forward bankruptcy and reorganization of Chrysler. That’s something that a couple of seemingly more formidable groups have failed to accomplish so far – a dissident group of Chrysler bondholders with up to $1 billion in Chrysler bonds; plus many of the Chrysler,...

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GREENWICH—It wasn’t rain that, as usual, inhibited attendance at the annual Greenwich Concours d’Elegance. This year, austerity seemed to have taken a modest but discernible toll. There were fewer big-ticket cars and fewer luxury exhibitors. All of this is relative, however: Greenwich has been shaken by the tanking of many of its new money hedge fund managers, but it is still, in...

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My post earlier this week on Toyota’s problems with plug-in hybrid cars apparently hit a nerve with a lot of readers. Yes, some influential voices in the American branch of the company question whether plug-ins make sense—largely because they add weight, cost and complexity. But Toyota spokesman John Hanson, after reading the earlier post, says the company’s position is actually more...

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Penske Automotive Group, an auto dealer chain based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., today announced a deal to buy the Saturn brand from General Motors. That’s yet another way in which the spectacle of once-mighty GM being bankrupt represents “The World Turned Upside Down,” to borrow a figure of speech from the American Revolution. (Supposedly, the song was played as the British...

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The Kia Soul, which we’ve been seeing prominently in ads during the Kia-sponsored NBA playoffs, is another in the small boxy car sweepstakes,  joining the Nissan Cube and Toyota’s Scion xB, the latter of which launched the so-called “hip to be square” movement in 2004. This triumvirate is aimed directly and efficiently at the Gen Y demographic, a group that the Detroit...

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The news that General Motors has a deal to sell its troubled Hummer brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industry Machinery Company for an undisclosed price (probably somewhat less than $500 million) momentarily lifted the gloom in Detroit. It showed that there could be new, international life to brands the Big Three have virtually written off. Hummer is hardly a profit center. GM sold...

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Ally Bank, the newly launched retail banking operation for GMAC Financial Services, has already managed to make enemies in the banking world. GMAC is the former captive finance company for General Motors. GMAC converted itself to a bank holding company late last year, as part of a restructuring to win a bailout from the U.S. Treasury Department. GMAC already had a small retail banking...

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U.S. auto sales were truly horrible again in May, yet many media outlets today are crowing about an “uptick,” and the “best sales so far this year.” Month in and month out, the car companies “accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative” when they report sales. You can’t really blame them, but month in and month out, the so-called watchdog media...

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NEW YORK CITY—The “Meeting of the Minds,” an international city planning conference held in the most urban of settings (the 60th floor of a JP Morgan Chase office tower) was perhaps an unlikely setting for a tutorial on the inherent problems of plug-in hybrid (PHEV) cars, but Toyota was the main sponsor and it had a point to get across. The PHEV question was addressed both by Irv Miller,...

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