by Ken Zino | Nov 17, 2009
GMAC Financial Services (GMAC) is under scrutiny today after an announcement late yesterday that its head had departed and a new CEO, Michael A. Carpenter, was coming in from the financial services industry. The bank holding company remains in trouble over bad loans...
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Nov 17, 2009
This year marks the 20th anniversary for Japan’s two largest luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti, but it’s easy to forget that they were latecomers to the high-line market, following a half decade after the introduction of Acura. With its original Legend sedan, Honda’s...
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Nov 17, 2009
You’ve just flown across country and now you remember all the things you forgot to do back home, like turning off the coffee and locking your car. There’s not much Mercedes-Benz can do about the first problem, but its new iPhone “app,” developed in cooperation with...
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Nov 16, 2009
A white Sorrento crossover vehicle rolled off the assembly line, in West Point, Georgia, today, marking the start of production at Kia’s first U.S. assembly plant. The new, $1.2 billion facility will eventually employ 2,500 workers on the line, and another 7,500 to...
by Ken Zino | Nov 16, 2009
Mitsubishi Motors North America is recalling 29,000 model year 2008-2009 Lancer and Lancer Evolution cars originally sold in or currently registered in the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,...
by Ken Zino | Nov 16, 2009
General Motors has returned to German taxpayers another €200 million ($299.3 million) on the Opel bridge loan that was made last spring when it was planning on selling its loss making European arm. GM has since decided to reorganize Opel by itself, and the German...
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Nov 16, 2009
Nissan is kicking off a 22-city tour designed to promote the first of four battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, that it plans to bring out over the next several years. The debut event coincided with the announcement of a new joint venture with Reliant Energy, one of...
by Joseph Szczesny | Nov 16, 2009
Professor Hiroshi Shimizu has tinkered with electric vehicles for more nearly 30 years and insists they do keep getting better. Shimizu showed off his latest EV creation, the Eliica — a rough acronym for ELectric LIthium-Ion CAr — behind his office at Keio...
by Ken Zino | Nov 16, 2009
Chrysler is recalling about 85,000 Dodge Nitro models for windshield wiper failures. Continental Automotive supplies what is called the Totally Integrated Power Module (TIPM) relay, and it can fail, especially if the intermittent mode is used. On January 22, 2007,...
by Ken Zino | Nov 16, 2009
Chrysler is recalling model year 2007 through 2008 Jeep Wranglers manufactured between June 2006 through July 2008 passenger vehicles equipped with automatic transmissions. About 161,000 Wranglers are affected. These Chrysler told National Highway Traffic Safety...
by Ken Zino | Nov 16, 2009
General Motors Company (GM) released today preliminary results for its first 83 days of operation, providing an initial look at its still tenuous financial health. GM’s earnings before taxes for the July 10-Sept. 30 period resulted in a loss of $1.0 billion since it...
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Nov 16, 2009
Would you like to Super-Size that battery? The typical new car buyer has a myriad array of options to chose from, covering everything from paint color to the quality of the sound system, but one of the most substantial choices usually concerns engine size. Do you...
