Based in the New York metro region, Jim Henry is a veteran reporter with more than 20 years experience covering the auto industry for publications such as Automotive News. He was also department manager, corporate strategy and market research, for Mercedes-Benz USA, the German automaker's U.S. sales and marketing subsidiary....
The all-new 2009 Kia Borrego SUV was a better idea when it was conceived, probably at least four or five years ago. That was before gas prices started cutting deeply into SUV sales. Today, the Borrego is a nice SUV, but its timing is poor for the market. by Jim...
General Motors might not quite fit my earlier definition of "desperate," but they're doing a good imitation. One editor pointed out that GM is sharing plenty of detail about the Chevy Volt, which is still a few years off. Spilling the beans on future product was one of my criteria...
Fisker Automotive named Valmet in Uusikaupunki, Finland, to build its $80,000 Fisker Karma sports car, a plug-in hybrid. With just over a year to go before the Karma is supposed to go on sale, there's not much time. In other words, with apologies to John Lennon, it better be an...
Domestic automakers have been compelled to state in recent days that they're not planning to file for bankruptcy -- which unfortunately for them only serves to keep the word "bankruptcy" appearing in the same headlines as Ford, GM and Chrysler. Spokesmen like Chrysler's Jim Press and GM's Rick Wagoner used terms like,...
Is Chrysler truly desperate? Or GM, or Ford? Getting there, but not quite yet. Strike One: Fire-Sale Incentives All three of the Detroit Three recently resorted to incentive programs to try and sell down stockpiles of unsold cars and trucks. GM had...
Higher demand for fuel efficiency is driving up small-car prices in a couple of ways. First is simple supply and demand. Toyota said on July 1 it had only a one-day supply of the Toyota Prius hybrid – meaning in effect that it is sold out, and...
Wow, that must be some "plan" at Chrysler. With June sales down 35.9 percent in June -- it hurts just to type that number -- Jim Press, Chrysler president and vice chairman, serenely insisted in a July 1 conference call that wholesale shipments to dealers are going...
With gas prices up and U.S. auto sales down, investors are hammering auto stocks, especially the Detroit Three brands. Ford, General Motors and Daimler, which still owns 20 percent of Chrysler, all hit 52-week lows on June 27. The bad news is expected to...
Published reports have buyers in China expressing an interest in taking Sweden's Volvo Car Corp. off Ford's hands. Ford CEO Alan Mulally has said a couple of times now since last November that unlike Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover, which Ford has already unloaded, Ford isn't...
Mercedes-Benz is somewhat confusingly giving "blue" names to a number of dissimilar "green" engines. The names are similar to the company's BlueTec diesels, but some of those engines aren't diesels at all, in spite of the similar name. "Blue is the new green," said Thomas Ruhl, director of...
Washington Post opinion columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote an op-ed piece the other day that said in effect that $4 per gallon is the tipping point at which Americans stop buying gas guzzlers and become "rational." The column appeared on the washingtonpost.com web site on June 6, but...
A tidal wave of used SUVs coming off leases will cost auto lenders as much as an estimated $4.9 billion this year, and similar amounts again in 2009 and 2010. That's according to CNW Marketing Research, a longtime specialist in auto lease data. "Three...
In case anyone was wondering how well Ford's "You Pay What We Pay" promotion was doing to clear out stocks of the 2008 Ford F-150 pickup, to make room for the all-new 2009 model, the answer is, "not very." Ford made that obvious by announcing on Friday,...
The results are in, for the annual J.D. Power and Associates Initial Quality Study. Porsche was the No. 1 brand for the third year in a row, with only 87 reported problems per 100 vehicles, followed by No. 2 Infiniti, No. 3 Lexus, and tied at No....
Ford Motor and General Motors suddenly seem to agree that high gas prices are here to stay, and therefore so is the shift out of big pickups and SUVs, and into small cars and crossovers. Chrysler has been more cautious in its rhetoric than Ford and GM....
The BMW brand is a pioneer in emphasizing sales of "certified pre-owned" cars through its dealerships. Until the late 1980s, many luxury-car dealers didn't sell used cars at their new-car dealerships. Instead, they sent trade-ins to wholesale auctions and made all their money from new car sales, parts and service....
Fisker Automotive won a round in its legal fight with Tesla Motors, as a judge in San Mateo (Calif.) Superior Court on June 11 granted Fisker's motion to stay Tesla's suit against Fisker, and send the case to arbitration. Tesla Motors sued Fisker on April 14. Tesla...
Cerberus Capital Management denied news stories today that it sold any of its equity stake in either Chrysler or GMAC Financial Services. But other than denying it, the privately held Cerberus was masterfully vague about what exactly may have led to a Financial Times story that said Cerberus...
Ulrich Eichhorn, who oversees engineering for Bentley, says that for the first time in his career there and with parent Volkswagen, he's encouraged that auto industry engineers will finally get the remaining bugs out of lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries similar to those used in laptop computers. That's good...
Stockholders representing more than one billion shares of Ford stock aren't waiting around to see what Kirk Kerkorian intends to do with Ford. They want to sell now, and small wonder: Kerkorian offered $8.50 per share, versus Ford's closing market price of $6.36 on June 9, when the tender offer...
Based in the New York metro region, Jim Henry is a veteran reporter with more than 20 years experience covering the auto industry for publications such as Automotive News. He was also department manager, corporate strategy and market research, for Mercedes-Benz USA, the German automaker's U.S. sales and marketing subsidiary....
