FORD Motor Plans to Reopen Plants Closed by COVID-19
Waiting To Drive the Mustang Mach-E
Ford Has 19,000 USA Charging Stations
MOTORS in the MARKET Car Show in Detroit's Eastern Market
Tour the Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant...
Bob and Louise Giles NEWCARNEWS>TV
2019 Ford Ranger Mid-Size Pickup Debut FIRST LOOK FIRST RIDE
@EyesOn Design 2018
@ MAMA SPRING RALLY at ROAD AMERICA in Elkhart Lake, WI
The Drive Home III 2018 Nashville to Detroit
What's New at TechCrawl 2017:
The Opiod Crisis Hits Home: (@ TechCrawl 2017)
Fun Day at 2017 EyesOn Design Car Show
Toyota Shows Expanion of its R&D facility in York Township, MI
The Drive Home 2016 -- A Documentary by Bob Giles
This video documents the journey of three 60's-era classic vehicles from the Lemay America's Car Museum in Tacoma, Washington to Detroit, Michigan to "get them home where they were made" just prior to the 2016 North American International Auto Show. The journey took the classics over some difficult roads in bitter January weather. These vehicles are tough! Bob Giles was invited to document the trip and spent several days with the vehicles as they endured the most difficult segments of the trip in the Western United States. Equipped only with his Canon G7 and a GoPro Silver he shot this full-length documentary for you to now enjoy.
Self-Driving Bolt EV Soon to be Tested!
As you can see, I got a close-up and personal look at GM's Bolt EV equipped with the required rigging to make it a self-driving vehicle. No mistaking this sexy machine with the two-point antlers on top. Perfect for Michigan roads! Actually, his marks a milestone in the progress the automaker is making towards finally testing these concept cars, first, at the GM Tech Center in Warren and, in the next few months they will move out into metro Detroit area roads. What better place to test for winter driving! The test fleet will be built at its Orion Assembly plant in Michigan starting early next year.
Nissan Shows New 2017 Pathfinder
EyesOn Design Preview of June 19, 2016 Event...
Shell Eco-marathon Hits the Streets of Detroit
NAIAS 2017: GLOBAL MOBILITY CENTER LAUNCHES IN DETROIT
CLICK PHOTO FOR MORE INFORATION
The Mobility Expo Takes Over the Cobo Center Atrium in 2017
From the 2016 SAE World Congress in Detroit
Longtime Supporter of the Auto & Defense Industries, Senator Carl Levin, Honored by the U.S. Navy...
Bob Giles takes "The Ride Home" from Tacoma, WA
Domino's Unveils It's 2016 DXP Pizza Delivery Car
2015 MAMA Fall Rally Test Drives...
First Drive: We Test Drive New Scion iA and iM
Dykema M&A Survery: Auto Sector "Hot"
Mopar at SEMA 2015: Todd Beddick's Hot Twenty
Jaguar CEO Outlines Diesel Engine Stratedy
Lincoln: Plans for China and Corporate Philosophy...
Inside the Brain of a Top Auto Designer: Camilo Pardo
Toyota Mirai Ready for California Showrooms
Bob Giles Photo
Car Hacking Concerns All Automakers Including Hyundai
Do Concept Cars Improve Car Show Attendance?
Concept cars have exciting designs and become fan favorites at car shows, but how important are they to the dealer organizations that help sponsor these shows? NewCarNews.TV asks three car show pros during a ASNA news conference to discuss the finding of a recent survey. This, at the Detroit Athletic Club in Detroit.
Two from Chelsea: Ram News & Fiat 500e Test Drive
EyesOn Design Preview --Four Exceptional Cars...
For Information: http://www.eyesondesign.org/carshow
Latest From Auto Suppliers at TechCrawl 2015
Contact Info: lweis@usautocom.com
Korean Cars Move Up -- J D Power Quality Survey
Global Auto Supplier ARaymond Expands Michigan Operations
Teases and Clues About the 2015 NAIAS Detroit Show...
We're close enough to the 2015 North American International Auto Show to start playing the guessing game of what we can expect to see mid-January. Here are the 2015 Show Dates: Press Preview - January 12-13, 2015, Industry Preview - January 14-15, 2015, Charity Preview - January 16, 2015, Public Show - January 17-25, 2015 with more than 500 vehicles on display. Rod Alberts is the Executive Director of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association.
GM CEO Mary Barra told members of the Detroit Economic Club she feels an urgency to make significant changes within her company, Barra says this comes at a time when she predicts more change in the next ten years than all the last fifty. Barra later answered auto reporter's questions about dealing with car safety issues.. "Are we there yet?"
Mary Barra Faces Automotive Press at the Detroit Economic Club -- Bob Giles Photo
National Automobile Dealers Association Chairman Forrest McConnell spoke to members of the Automotive Press Association in Detroit, Michigan concerned that a government agency plans to eliminate special discounts auto dealers can offer on auto loans. "Why remove this competitive aspect that some dealers now have over other loan services?" and added, "Dealer-assisted financing increases competition for car buyers at a rate that is often more competitive than a bank or credit union."
The 2015 Edge is a global vehicle. Jim Farley is executive vice president of Ford Motor Company Global Marketing. Farley says the new Edge will be a winner based on current trends. "We sell every Edge we make for China."
Auburn Hills' Briggs Amphibians Happy with Successes
As Briggs Amphibians gears up to increase production of its Quadski sport amphibian in Auburn Hills, where 150 are now employed, a sister company, Gibbs Amphitrucks, has just signed a 12-year licensing agreement with Singapore Technologies Kinetics (price not revealed) to produce and sell amphibious trucks in Southeast Asia, with an eye to government contracts. The vehicle is their Humdinga, show here, and is designed to be a police vehicle. In times of national disaster it could carry a half-ton of emergency flood-related supplies and aid. Singapore Technologies Kinetics targets 200 vehicles within first twenty months of production. (Bob Giles)
Click on the photo above to go to the Chicago Auto Show page...
Consumer Reports -- Annual Car Survey Results
LEAR CEO Simoncini Hosts Car Seat Fashion Show
LEAR Designer chats about new fabrics and fashion
Auto Door Lock Giant Kiekert's Update from its CEO
VW's Marc Trahan on New SUV and the UAW
Members of the Automotive Press Association today learned from VW’s Executive Vice President Marc Trahan that Volkswagen is pushing ahead to build a sub-compact SUV in North America by 2016 and it may be built at its Chattanooga, Tennessee plant. The decision where to build could be made by the end of this year. In this NewCarNews.Tv video you’ll hear Trahan responding to questions from reporters about the vehicle, and declining to discuss the status of negotiations with the United Auto Workers…
AutoTrader.com -- "Cars Are Important to Millenials!"
MBS:The Internet of Everything -- Cisco Systems Explains
MBS: HONDA Expansion includes Ohio Heritage Center
MBS: Car Sales Optomisn Continues
Hunter Group: Great Need For More Auto Engineers!
Business Forecasting Helpful: Ken Bassey, Saphran
RAM 5500 DUMP TRUCK Test Drive with Steve Purdy
What's New at Ram Trucks: The 2014 Model Year
At the APA: 2013 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study Results...
From EyesOn Design : Tour a 1948 Chrysler T&C Highlander Woody
Preview: EyesOn Design -- A Great Car Show
Volvo in 2013: A Dealer's Perspective
Lexus to Build ES 350 in Georgetown, KY starting in 2015
Click on Image to go to my New York Auto Show page
Click logo -- above -- to go to our 2013 New York Auto Show page
Click Logo to go to our Detroit NAIAS Page
CLICK LOGO ABOVE TO GO TO L.A. AUTO SHOW COVERAGE
Auto Dealers: Stop Unfair Business Practices
Bill Underriner, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, outlined two contentious factory issues facing new-car dealers and urged automakers to support a level playing field for dealerships of all sizes.
“Two-tier pricing and mandatory facility upgrades are symptoms of a bigger overall problem—manufacturer intrusion into dealers’ businesses,” Underriner said today in remarks to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit. “NADA wants the automakers to stop unfair practices.”
This summer, NADA created a special dealer task force to focus on the fairness of stair-step programs, also referred to as two-tier pricing, which is a manufacturer-to-dealer incentive tied to sales goals.
“The history of our industry is littered with automaker attempts to impose one-size-fits-all programs on dealers. These efforts at top-down control almost always fail,” added Underriner, a Buick, Honda, Hyundai and Volvo dealer in Billings, Mont. “We favor lawful, equal and fair treatment by a manufacturer for all its dealers. Unfortunately, history shows that, at times, manufacturers create incentive programs that favor some dealers over others.”
NADA has also commissioned its second study on factory-mandated dealership renovation programs to analyze the return on investment. These programs often require a dealer to invest millions of dollars.
The second phase of the project will also focus on what the dealership of the future will look like.
“We want to know whether we are investing in the kind of dealership that will be most competitive in 2020 and beyond,” he said.
It's an ATV. It's a Boat. It's a Quadski!
And it's a job creator!
The world’s first high-speed sports amphibian – the GIBBS Quadski -- will go on sale in the United States next month. The GIBBS high-speed will be produced at a 54,000-square-foot assembly plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Gibbs Sports Amphibians expects to add a total of more than 200 jobs. The Quadski is capable of reaching speeds of 45 mph on both land and water and transitions between both in five seconds or less, is 10.5 feet in overall length; 5.2 feet in width, and 4.3 feet in height with a wheelbase of 5.8 feet, and weighs 1,300 pounds. Introduced at a Gibbs Sports Amphibian press conference in Detroit by Alan Gibbs, the company’s founder, and Neil Jenkins, its chairman, the Quadski is equipped with a 175-horsepower BMW Motorrad engine and transmission. With the press of a button, its wheels retract when entering the water and deploy when approaching land. Quadski retails for about $45,000. The company expects to have more than 20 dealership locations in place within the next 12 months, primarily in the Midwest, New York, Texas and the southeastern United States. The GIBBS amphibian will be available in five colors – red, yellow, blue, silver and black.
At The 2012 Traverse City, MI CAR Seminars...
Toyota USA Pres. Jim Lentz on Car Sales Projections
Bob Giles Photo
Continental's Jeff Klei: Improved Supplier-OEM Relations:
Bob Giles Photo
GM VP Alicia Boler Davis: New Customer Experience Improvements
Bob Giles Photo
Acura NSX Supercar Update from Honda
It was 21 years ago that Honda made its first hot supercar, the NSX. At the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, HONDA CEO Ito revealed a concept version of the new Acura NSX supercar for the 2014 model year (see my photos). Six months later, at an Automotive Press Association event in Detroit Richard Schostek, Senior V.P. of Honda America Manufacturing gave this response to my request for an update on this eagerly-awaited product.
How KEMET Solved a Difficult Cost Problem...
KEMET Bought the Entire Supply Chain!
J.D. Power: Electronics/Navigation Problems A Major Customer Satisfaction Issue...
Younger Car Buyers More Annoyed Than Older Drivers...
Car Designer Legend, Carroll Shelby, Dies at 89
See the first Shelby he exhibited at the 1962 NYC Auto Show.
Michelin Automotive Design Panel at APA
Bob Boniface (GM), Mike Arbaugh (Ford), Mark Trosle (Chrysler)
Michelin-DELTAWING race car video at the Automotive Press Association...
NewCarNews.TV at the New York Auto Show...
PLEASE CLICK ON PHOTO TO GO THE NEW YORK AUTO SHOW PAGE
New York City Gets A New Taxi...
Taxi Deal is HUGE for Nissan
HOTTEST DESIGN OF THE 2012 Auto SHOW: Lexus LF-LC
2013 Buick Encore: a smaller, practical SUV
The Encore is the right size, right design, a winner!
The return of Ford's Lincoln brand...
With a bold new design, the MKZ is worth the wait!
Hyundai's lifetime-battery-replacement guarantee
Hyundai has a different take on Millenial marketing:
Cadillac Debuts New ATS at NAIAS
Audi's take on Luxury & Electric Vehicles
While showing new A4 and Q3 Vail Crossover (2014?)
Will SAAB ever return?
Photo by Bob Giles
Sad, but obvious news that Swedish carmaker SAAB has filed for bankruptcy. This comes after the attempts by Chinese investors to take over Saab were blocked by its previous owner General Motors, which still owns some technology licenses for Saab. But now sources say that a Chinese investor may be looking again at creating a way to buy the company. Saab CEO Victor Muller is not commenting on this latest twist. You'll recall that Muller used his luxury sports car maker Spyker Cars to buy Saab from GM in 2010, promising to restore its Swedish identity, but the company ran out of money within a year.Readers of NewCarNews were the first to learn of Muller’s intent to buy Saab, even before GM acknowledged they had received his proposal. Muller continued to impress everyone around him with his personal passion to keep Saab alive. It is the stuff that makes a great book, a keynote address to an automotive banquet, and an important case study at the HarvardBusinessSchool. Muller will always have the admiration of auto geeks for staking all he had to keep an important brand alive. It is a road few travel, but a risk worth taking. --Bob Giles
Bob Giles Photo (2011)
2014 NORTH AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL AUTO SHOW CHARITY PREVIEW TICKETS TO BE $350 -- BENEFITS TEN LOCAL CHILDREN'S CHARITIES
The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) has raised over $3,000,000 for local charities. Beneficiaries of the Charity Preview include: Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan, Boys Hope Girls Hope of Detroit, The Children's Center, Judson Center, The Detroit Institute for Children, Think Detroit PAL, March of Dimes, Children's Hospital of Michigan Foundation, and the DADA Charitable Foundation Fund, a fund of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.
SAVING VINSETTA GARAGE
Historic Gem Now a Restaurant!
Woodward Dream Cruise participants will get a look at the remake of the classic Vinsetta Garage on Woodward in Berkley. Closed for over a year, the gas station turned classic car body shop will soon become a restaurant!
Local producer Gary May is using this iconic location for video work he's producing for a soon-to-be- aired series called, "AutoWeek's Vinsetta Garage". This is Gary's brainchild, and the location will serve as his production anchor and occasional interview location.
AutoWeek owners give us a preview of what the restaurant may soon look like. This is the Spartan set-up for this weekend during the Woodward Dream Cruise, but you can't get in unless you have a special wristband. This is an exclusive"invite only" spot for AutoWeek's best sponsors and contributors. Don't even try! But here's a preview for you.
New OnStar Software Links Love Ones
Hey, It’s 2046!
by Bob Giles, NewCarNews.TV
Michelin Design panel members before the Automotive Press Association in Detroit, MI 5-5-11 The theme of the panel discussion was Inspired by the 2012 Michelin Challenge Design theme, “City 2046: Art, Life and Ingenuity.” We’ll see some of the design winners at the 2012 North American International Automobile Show in Detroit next January. (Bob Giles Photo)
(Detroit Athletic Club, APA Meeting, Detroit, MI 5-5-2011) For a about two hours today it was 2046 as four automotive design experts talked to the media about future car design in a world that experts not surprisingly predict will be far different than today. For instance, there will be another ten billion of us on the planet. If you think of oil as being dominated by supply and demand, well, try to guess what pump price might be for 2011 cars thirty-five years from now. Don’t even guess.
2046 will see today’s population centers become megacities. That change is already happening in cities like Shanghai. Streets in Paris and ring roads around London and Los Angles are becoming parking lots. Huge concentrations of people will find it even more difficult than today to get from one point to another.
The prediction is that cars will become personal transportation devices mostly devoid of spectacular design that creates emotion attachment and a personal bond. Some will be independently driven, other linked together in trains. Some will be windowless cocoons, coffins on wheels, flying carpets, small programmable mattresses with wheels that know where to take you. Personalization will be there, but it’s unclear to what extent.
2046 is a different world. And the world is already changing.
Today’s youth is becoming less interested in the car as an emotional experience. They want wheels to get to their destination. That could be a bike. Ownership of a car is not critical. The destination is more important than the experience of the journey. That is time better spent in networking and communication with friends, not developing a relationship with a piece of machinery. Many today think of the car as appliance, a transport device. If that is the trend, then it appears that car design will have an even more difficult time in the future to excite new car buyers with great design rather than function. Knowing what we know today about distracted drivers, car windows would become less important in the future.
It’s a different world.
The automotive panel (assembled for the Automotive Press Association by sponsor Michelin Tire Company) agreed that one obvious solution is to create centers of population that did not require traveling great distances between work and home. A good friend of mine is in Saudi Arabia right now creating such a city for its government. A square-mile city to be built from the sand up that is self sufficient and fully sustainable. Is that where Detroit should be?
So what can Detroit take away from this? Right now, we have abundant open land, a dwindling population and an alarming trend of educated talented youth migrating away from the state. Should Detroit right now define itself as the city of the future? Detroit: First city of 2049!
Oakland County has the Woodward Dream Cruise. Detroit could start its own Future World Cruise with the streets filed with future vehicles along Woodward from the Cultural Center and the designs at Center for Creative Studies to Hart Plaza where we could all test drive a 2046 flying carpet windowless pod. I think I’ll try to get a meeting together of forward thinking civic leaders to plan this. Hey, it’s 2046! The future is now!
Christopher Borroni-Bird from GM, Joel Piaskowski from Ford, Joseph Dehner from Chrysler, and Larry Erickson from the College for Creative Studies before the APA
2011 NewCarNews.TV Photo Album...
Image:
VW's Transparent Plant in Downtown Dresden
The Rick Wagoner Version
Is Rick Wogoner Writing a Book ?
Turn on your Kindles! Sources confirm to NewCarNews.TV that Rick Wagoner has been busy writing a book that will tell his version, from the inside, of the events that led to his firing as chief executive of General Motors by the White House. Except for a very few close friends, Wagoner has be off the radar since his departure from GM, so his book will and automatic best seller and hopefully we'll see "Gentleman Rick" on some of the more high profile talk shows. Wagoner was elected to The Washington Post Co.'s board of directors last year. The Post Co.'s release says that Wagoner "retired from General Motors Corporation in August 2009," As part of the bankruptcy, the federal government took a 61 percent stake in GM, which it still holds. Wagoner was a 32-year GM veteran and had been chairman and chief executive of the company from 2003 to 2009. Despite the problems the company experienced in the U.S., Wagoner is credited with expanding GM's presence in China.
Auburn, Indiana: Worth a Museum Stop!
Image:
The Cord-Auburn-Dusenberg museum was built on the site of the original headquarters of Auburn Automotive Company. The first level of the museum offers restored Cords and Duesenbergs. The second level features other automobiles dating from the 1900's-1950's. The museum boasts a collection of over 120 cars. There are a total of three floors, and they are the proud owners of the largest collection of Duesenbergs on display in the world.
