by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 21, 2011
GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. – better known as GM Daewoo – announced today that it is replacing the current nameplate with a familiar one, Chevrolet. All of the company’s new product introductions and refreshes this year will be under the Chevy...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 19, 2011
Ford will invest $400 million in its Kansas City factory to produce an unspecified vehicle, while retaining 3,750 jobs. The plant currently builds F-150s and Escapes, but Escape production is moving to Louisville. Speculation about the vehicle that will be built at...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
When Audi’s new A6 hits the market later this year, expect to see a lot of features that debuted on the flagship A8. As is typical of most new luxury sedans, The A6 is crammed with several new technology features impacting safety, entertainment and efficiency....
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
Criticisms of MyFordTouch and MyLincolnTouch, Ford’s revolutionary new graphical interface for Sync, could be solved by providing additional training, a Lincoln marketing executive said Sunday. C.J. O’Donnell, group marketing manager for Lincoln, said that...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
Don’t think for a moment that Honda is ready to give up any ground in a compact market that it has dominated with the Civic, one of its two bread-and-butter products. On Monday at the Detroit auto show, John Mendel, Honda’s executive vice president for...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
Volkswagen is making a $4 billion bet that building its new Passat in the U.S. will help the automaker drive its sales up to 800,000 per year in the U.S. market. But it will also be a boost to the U.S. economy. VW’s Ulrich Hackenberg said as the drapes were...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
For the 2010 Detroit auto show, Chrysler’s stand was little more than an Dodge Ram mounted upside-down to the ceiling and journalists following CEO Sergio Marchionne around the sparse display. The automaker’s display at the 2011 North American...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 10, 2011
An expert in “mesh” companies says the auto industry can help the fledgling share car industry by making share-ready cars. Lisa Gansky spoke at TED@MotorCity Sunday at the Max Fisher Music Center in Detroit. The talk was sponsored by Lincoln. TED is a series of talks...
by Bryan Laviolette | Jan 7, 2011
Isn’t this what Buick always should have been, or at least could have been? Instead General Motors was content to build a series of velour-encrusted boulevardiers, content with the 60-and-over set, never offering anything that a young professional would even consider....
by Bryan Laviolette | Dec 31, 2010
Let the hysteria begin. As if on cue, just as gasoline prices crested $3, the whiners started complaining that “something has to be done.” Fueling the fire this week was a former Shell Oil executive who predicted $5 gasoline as soon as 2012. John Hofmeister, now head...
by Bryan Laviolette | Dec 21, 2010
From the time Mazda introduced it, the CX-7 seemed like a cool, sporty crossover, just with the wrong engine. The 2.3-liter turbocharged direct-injected four cylinder, such a wild and lusty engine in the MazdaSpeed 3 and the short-lived MazdaSpeed 6, was an odd choice...
by Bryan Laviolette | Dec 16, 2010
The day after this week’s blizzard, a co-worker asked if I had driven my all-wheel-drive Subaru or the 2011 Buick Regal I happened to be testing. AWD traction would seem to be a big advantage, and considering that I have a 55-mile commute, I’ll take all the advantages...
