Alfa Aims For German Rivals

Alfa Romeo SpA is about to unleash the most ambitious new-model program of its 94-year history. Between 2004-2008, the Italian sports-car maker plans to renew its entire range, enter new niches (including a small cross/utility vehicle to take on BMW AG's new X3 and a 400-hp supercar to rival Porsche's 911 Turbo) and introduce a range of all-new 4-cyl. and V-6 engines. The strategy culminates in the

Jan. 1, 2004

General Motors Picks Dealer for Harlem Mall

Otis Thornton, currently a Buick dealer in East Brunswick, NJ, will be the owner and operator of Chevrolet and Saturn franchises at the Harlem Auto Mall that General Motors Corp. is building in New York City. Otis Thornton has been a valued GM dealer since 1993 and has shown strong entrepreneurial skills, says John Smith, GM group vice president of sales, service and marketing. We are very pleased

Jan. 1, 2004

Explore the Trendline➔

Artificial Intelligence

Automakers and dealers alike are increasingly seeing the use case for AI within their operations. Explore some use cases in this trendline.

By WardsAuto staff

General Motors 4.2L DOHC I-6

The first time Vortec 4200 chief engineer Ron Kociba showed his creation to the press almost three years ago, his face had an expression, if you can conjure the image, combining cat-that-ate-the-canary satisfaction with the cautious optimism of a poker player betting a good, but not totally airtight, hand. Kociba knew his team had developed a pivotal engine. Of that he was certain. Problem was, the

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Toyota 1.5L DOHC I-4

When Ward's named Toyota Motor Corp.’s original hybrid-electric vehicle (HEV) powertrain as a 10 Best winner in 2001, nobody was sure if the thing even qualified as a competitor to standard internal-combustion engines. After all, HEV powertrains rely on an electric motor to in some way “aid” the IC engine; both engine and motor team to deliver torque to the drive wheels. For 2004, we’re still not

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Nissan 3.5L DOHC V-6

Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.’s sublime 3.5L “VQ” V-6 needs no introduction, being that it’s won a 10 Best Engines award each and every year since the competition’s inception in 1995. That the VQ has cemented itself as the dominant V-6 benchmark is without question a decade after its introduction, the VQ, amazingly, remains the admitted development target of rivals who will discuss such details. “No doubt

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Putting on the Right Spin

Retired auto technician Pete Wright had been working on rotary engines for a few years when, in 1978, Mazda Motor Corp. put one in its new RX-7 sports car. Soon Wright was fixing a lot of clutches. “People were burning them out right and left, pushing their RX-7s,” he recalls. “One owner blew out three clutches in a year. It was a hot car.” The RX-7 ended its North American run in 1995, and its unconventional

By Steve Finlay • Dec. 30, 2003

DaimlerChrysler 5.7L Hemi Magnum OHV V-8

No other business rewards the latest design quite like the auto business. So one of the surest tests of a 10 Best Engines winner’s “staying power” is how well it can fight off brand-new engines particularly when they also happen to be direct competitors in terms of size, cylinder count and market segment. When an incumbent winner outshines newer rivals it battles directly in the market, it’s a testimony

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Honda 3L SOHC V-6

There’s probably no better measure of engine-development progress than a contemporary automotive V-6. When Ward's launched the 10 Best Engines competition a decade ago, V-6s were only beginning to account for a meaningful portion of sales in middle-market vehicles particularly for imported nameplates and power levels were unassuming. Here are the power/torque ratings for the four V-6s that won Best

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Cubic-inch Madness

The warning signs started the minute the Audi S4 appeared on our doorstep. Judges would show up after a long lunch with illegal smiles, giggling like kindergartners. You know what I’m talking about: cubic-inch madness: Hundreds of lbs.-ft. of torque available at about 5 rpm. It’s addictive, and I watched helplessly as a majority of our judging panel was seduced. I kicked the habit in the early 1980s,

By Drew Winter • Dec. 30, 2003

Subaru Fuji 2.5L DOHC turbocharged H-4

Three hundred horsepower. Three hundred pound-feet of torque. Thirty thousand dollars. That’s probably enough to summate 90% of the winning formula for Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.’s Subaru 2.5L turbocharged DOHC H-4. The only engine with a performance-per-dollar quotient like this is DaimlerChrysler’s 2.4L turbocharged DOHC 4-cyl., and it barely missed making the cut. This is Subaru’s first-ever 10

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Audi 4.2L DOHC V-8

We already know what you’re going to say: The 10 Best Engines judges were suckered by the same formula that worked 40 years ago for Detroit muscle cars. Stick a big V-8 in a small-bodied car and watch the concoction go like hell. It’s a good strategy, really. One that can make just about any big-displacement V-8 perform like a hero. Audi AG’s 4.2L V-8 actually isn’t all that big (only Volkswagen AG

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 30, 2003

Honda contemplates Survival despite record earnings

Takeo Fukui minces no words when asked about the main challenge facing Honda Motor Co. Ltd. today. snaps the auto maker's new president, identifying global competition as five to 10 gigantic rivals. Yet Honda, with worldwide annual sales of about 3 million automobiles, annual revenues of more than $70 billion and a market cap of $39.7 billion seventh largest among all Japanese companies and almost

By Mack Chrysler • Dec. 1, 2003

Magnum Classified As Truck

With its fold-flat seating, Chrysler Group expects its new '05 Dodge Magnum wagon to meet federal light-truck classification, a boon for the auto maker's truck fleet fuel economy ratings. This is not a new pattern if you look at the classification for fuel economy. Obviously this isn't a pickup, but neither is a PT Cruiser or minivan (which are classified trucks by NHTSA), says Craig Love, Chrysler

Dec. 1, 2003

Don’t Build Sissy Jeeps

At a recent press event, Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Bernhard publicly aired a question that's been asked internally at the Chrysler Group for many years: Does every Jeep have to be able to traverse the Rubicon Trail? This famously rugged path in California separates real SUVs from pretenders, and it long has been a test bed for measuring the mettle of off-road vehicles. Because Bernhard is Chrysler's

By Jerry Flint • Dec. 1, 2003

Flush with New Product, Nissan Infiniti Brace for Growth

For Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., China promises to become tasty frosting, but North America remains the irreplaceable 3-layer cake U.S., Mexico and Canada where most sales are made and most profits are generated. Norio Matsumura, executive vice president of Japan's No.2 auto maker as well as president of Nissan North America Inc., underscores this reality in an interview in Gardena, CA, with Ward's. China

By Mack Chrysler • Dec. 1, 2003

Ford Drops Ingeni Design

First Standard & Poor's cut Ford Motor Co.'s debt rating to the lowest level above junk bonds, and now the auto maker's chief designer J Mays says the Ingeni European studio will close. The two events are inexorably linked. Ford no longer can afford the luxury of a studio, largely funded by its Premier Automotive Group Land Rover, Volvo, Jaguar and Aston Martin that's effectively outside the traditional

Dec. 1, 2003

Price of Perfection

Exhibit A on the unintended consequences of perfection: BMW AG's '04 5-Series sedan. Not that the all-new 5 isn't incredibly good. The problem is, it's got to take over from the previous-generation car and that one was nigh on perfect. Beautifully balanced. Meticulously assembled. The outgoing 5, internal designation E39, was fabulously almost organically complete. Now, the 7-year run of one of the

By Bill Visnic • Dec. 1, 2003

New F&I Initiatives Sprout Up

New initiatives and alliances are sprouting up across the industry to help stimulate prime and subprime sales of dealership finance & insurance products. Entry into the market of the industry-wide Route One credit network will likely accelerate contract acceptances and marketing programs. Co-owned by Chrysler Group, Ford Credit, GMAC and Toyota Financial Services, Route One could reduce dealer F&I

By Mac Gordon • Dec. 1, 2003

2 Kids, On Welfare, Broken Car. What To Do?

Susan Christophersen was a welfare mother of two in 1979 when the brakes went bad on her old Ford Maverick in a local college parking lot. She was taking general classes at Oakland Community College in Auburn Hills, MI, preparing for some sort of a career that would get her off welfare. She considered something in the medical field until her brakes failed, and she lacked the money for repairs. An

By Steve Finlay Reference to New F&I story here. • Dec. 1, 2003

Staying the Course

Scorched by Standard & Poor's and singed by sagging car sales, Ford Motor Co. is feeling some heat. Nevertheless, Jim Padilla feels right at home. Padilla means in Spanish, says Ford's executive vice president and president-North America. And as the auto maker's revitalization plan enters its third year, Padilla prepares to dish up some crow for the auto maker's critics. In '03, we made a lot of progress

By Eric Mayne • Dec. 1, 2003

CAMI to Get More Than Equinox?

As CAMI Automotive Inc. gets set to launch production of the new Chevrolet Equinox cross/utility vehicle, officials may be eying other models to take advantage of the plant's 190,000-unit annual capacity. Underutilized for years building the Chevrolet Tracker/Suzuki Vitara, CAMI is expected to make at least 100,000 Equinoxes annually. Tracker and Vitara production will be phased out, but CAMI officials

Dec. 1, 2003

SVT Goes Upmarket; Pipeline Runs Dry

Ford Motor Co.'s in-house purveyor of high performance, the Special Vehicle Team (SVT) is recasting itself in light of a product-development black hole that means SVT won't have anything to sell until 2006. By second-quarter 2004, SVT officials confirm all of its three currently available products the SVT Mustang Cobra, SVT F-150 Lightning and SVT Focus will be out of production. The Cobra and Lightning

Dec. 1, 2003

Old Olds Store Now Bob-Boyd Lincoln Mercury

An old Oldsmobile store is the newly renovated home of Bob-Boyd Lincoln Mercury, a 33-year-old Columbus, OH dealership that takes its name from its co-owners first names. Bob Dawes and Boyd Fackler spent about $500,000 renovating the east-side facility. It's five miles from a smaller building the dealership previously occupied. Since moving, the 65-employee store has doubled floor traffic and boosted

By Maynard M. Gordon • Dec. 1, 2003

Accounting as Weapon

When Toyota announced it would make a profit on the new version of its Prius hybrid car, it got me thinking. Are Toyota's engineers really better than everyone else's, or is something else going on? I think there's something else. For one, what does Toyota mean when it says As anyone who has studied the most rudimentary basics of accounting knows, there are different ways of reporting profits. There

By John McElroy • Dec. 1, 2003

Is It a Fake or Real Auto Part?

DEARBORN, MI From brake-shoe linings made from shredded grass to fully assembled counterfeit engines, imitation parts are becoming a serious issue for auto makers, their suppliers and their dealers. Counterfeit parts have become so pervasive, the automotive industry has trouble determining the full impact. That's what Tom Strohm, general director-marketing for General Motors Corp.'s Service and Parts

By Cliff Banks • Nov. 1, 2003