Automakers: Page 404

Accord Topples Camry as Best-Selling U.S. Car

In the battle for sedan supremacy, Honda Motor Co. Ltd.'s Accord knocks Toyota Motor Corp.'s Camry out of the top spot as the best-selling car in America for the '01 model year. Accord posted sales of 412,074 vs. Camry's 388,512. Ford Motor Co.'s Taurus placed third with 349,742 units sold. The '01 Honda Civic is the best-selling small car in the U.S. for the fourth straight year with sales of 323,074,

Nov. 1, 2001

DC and Mitsubishi Learn to Share; Crossfire Gets New Platform

DaimlerChrysler Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. appear to be a giant step closer to firming plans to co-develop small C- (Dodge Neon/Mitsubishi Mirage and Lancer) and D-segment (Chrysler Sebring/Dodge Stratus/Mitsubishi Galant and Eclipse) car platforms, but a DCC official promises two unique-looking vehicles from the outside. The two automakers already have formed a joint procurement and supply

Nov. 1, 2001

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

Ford sales fly in October

Finally, some good news for Ford Motor Company. U.S. customers purchased or leased 418,243 cars and trucks from Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Jaguar, Volvo, and Land Rover dealers in October, soaring 34.4 percent higher than a year ago, and setting a new October sales record. The previous record (375,797) was set in 1977. Ford F-Series, America's best-selling truck since 1977, achieved an all-time truck

By Wire Reports • Nov. 1, 2001

20 Years of Zero PPM

THIONVILLE, France It's been 20 years since Renault SA opened a piston manufacturing plant here in the northeast, just across the border from Germany and Luxembourg. And in that time the plant has never shipped a bad piston. OK, it's surely produced a few bad pistons since 1981, but Daniel Preslier is proud to say that none of them has ever made it out of the plant door. Besides a bearing, can you

By Tom Murphy • Nov. 1, 2001

Toyota and Universal Technical Institute form new educational partnership

Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), U.S.A., Inc., has formed a new educational partnership with Universal Technical Institute (UTI), a national private career college. Toyota Professional Collision Training (TPCT), a program between the two organizations, is designed to recruit, train, and develop entry-level collision repair technicians exclusively for selected Toyota and Lexus dealerships. Meeting the growing

By Wire Reports • Oct. 31, 2001

“A new day,” says Ford Dealer Council Chairman Jerry Reynolds

Ford dealers are reacting positively to today's news that Ford Chief Executive Officer Jac Nasser has been replaced by William Clay Ford Jr. according to Jerry Reynolds, a Texas Ford dealer and chairman of the Ford Dealer Council. Dealers have viewed their relationship with the automaker with quiet frustration. While dealers have been rather circumspect in their recent comments regarding the automaker,

By Cliff Banks • Oct. 30, 2001

Honda speeds up new factory launch because of Odyssey minivan demand

TOKYO – Honda Motor Co. Ltd. plans for Job One at its new Alabama facility on November 15, six months ahead of schedule, says Honda President Hiroyuki Yoshino. The plant, which was constructed in a compact yearlong time frame, currently is doing pre-builds of the Odyssey minivan. The decision to move up the start of production, says Yoshino, was based on customer demand for the popular Odyssey, currently

Oct. 25, 2001

New rumor says Jacques Nasser’s days are numbered at Ford

A person close to the company says Ford Motor Co. CEO Jacques A. Nasser will probably be out of a job by the end of the year, The New York Times reports today. It’s not the first time such rumors have swirled around Mr. Nasser, whose last 12 months at the Ford helm have been rocky. A Ford spokesman waved off the latest report of Mr. Nasser’s imminent departure. "We wouldn't speculate on bogus speculation,"

Oct. 17, 2001

Texas dealer hosts new radio show

Texas dealer Jerry Reynolds is on the air as the host of a new Dallas AM radio show offering car-buying advice to consumers. It’s the “Jerry Reynolds Auto Advice Show” from 1-3 p.m. on KTRA 1190. The co-host is longtime Dallas radio personality Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Reynolds, a 25-year veteran of automotive retailing, is the owner of Prestige Ford in metro Dallas. He is the outgoing chairman of the

Oct. 12, 2001

Four-Door Sedan as Benchmark

I would be delighted to tell you that the all-new 2002 Toyota Motor Corp. Camry is a rollicking, rollercoaster of a car to drive. That would fill in the final blank on Camry's job application for Best Car In The World. The Camry, after all, is every competing automaker's benchmark for engineering, build quality, refinement. All-around goodness. But Camry's never been emotional either to look at or

By Bill Visnic • Oct. 1, 2001

Survey says body shop technicians’ pay and benefits increasing

Some findings of a survey on collision repair technicians didn't surprise D.J. Shepherd, manager of the Dub Miller Ford body shop in Rosenberg, TX, near Houston. The survey of 400 independent and dealership collision repair shops around the country found that the average age of body shop technicians is rising. Mr. Shepherd says most of his shop's 13 employees are in their mid-40s or older. The survey

By John Yoswick • Oct. 1, 2001

UPBEAT DEALER MEETING TURNS SOMBER

THE 2001 NISSAN NATIONAL DEALER MEETING IN Las Vegas was intended as an upbeat event, a pep rally of sorts by a car company that''s coming off some bad years. More than 2,000 dealers, family members and others flew in, ready to get down to business and to hear of Nissan''s comeback plans, leveraged by the redesigned 2002 Altima. Then came the horrible news of the day: terrorists had drilled airliners

By Steve Finlay • Oct. 1, 2001

Too Hot to Handle

General Motors Corp. says it will debut, by 2005, a motion sensor embedded in headliners that will detect if a child, pet or vulnerable adult is left inside a dangerously hot vehicle. The low-energy sensor, being developed using the automaker's minivans, uses technology similar to Doppler weather radar. It measures the temperature in the vehicle and how fast the mercury is rising. The sensor is delicate

Oct. 1, 2001

Can Premier Automotive Group Answer the Call to Save Ford?

Cue the cheesy theme music and hammy narrator Deep inside the bowels of Ford Motor Co.'s world headquarters, the storied automaker's sharpest minds are in a dither. For with each passing day, the news is increasingly dreary. And every dispatch arrives like a punch from an arch nemesis. Dwindling market share. Wham!Declining truck profits. Biff!Waning consumer confidence. Thwump! Desperate, the brain

By ERIC MAYNE with Herb Shuldiner and David E. Zoia • Oct. 1, 2001

Terror Attacks Stall Industry; Long-term Impact Unknown

September's devastating terrorist attacks on the U.S. continue to hold the country's auto industry hostage. In terms of human loss, the tragic event claimed the life of Linda Gronlund, 46, environmental compliance manager for BMW of North America and former assistant general council for Volvo Cars in North America. She was a passenger on United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, one

Oct. 1, 2001

DEALERSHIP PITCHS IN DURING THE WTC DISASTER

It began as a somber day for Tom Gowen, general manager of Kelle Chevrolet in Howell, NJ. And it got a lot worse. The mother of one of the dealership's principals was being buried that day and the World Trade Center was not even on his radar screen the morning of September 11. But before the day was over Mr. Gowen was to play an important role in the lives of many survivors, bystanders and others

By Herb Shuldiner • Oct. 1, 2001

Growing Interest for 4-point Seatbelts

Ford Motor Co. took a trio of seats to the Frankfurt auto show in Germany last month to see if Europeans have similar tastes to North Americans when it comes to being strapped in. The carmaker conducted similar seatbelt tests in Detroit during the North American International Auto Show in January. The 2,000 showgoers who tried them favored the 4-point seatbelts over the current 3-point system on all

By Alisa Priddle • Oct. 1, 2001

Ford’s Health-Care Costs Need a Doctor

Ford Motor Co. is wrestling with a that would see its health care costs increase 20% next year, WAW has learned. Ford confirms it is in negotiations with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the document's author and the administrator of Ford's primary employee health-care plan, but won't reveal its implications or disclose how much is spent on employee health care. An insider tells WAW that such a hike would

By Compiled by the staff of: WARD'S AUTOMOTIVE REPORTS • Oct. 1, 2001

VIRTEXX Assesses Driver Distraction

After six months of development, Ford Motor Co. is ready for serious experiments on driver distraction on a virtual highway in its VIRTEXX (VIRtual Test Track EXperiment) simulation dome. Data from the first tests soon will be available to develop in-house standards by year-end. It will be used to help the carmaker understand what products and services it should offer in its vehicles to promote safety

By Alisa Priddle • Oct. 1, 2001

He wins $1 million but not for long

GM sales and marketing VP Michael Grimaldi shot a charity golf match hole in one. The feat won him $1 million. Not so fast, though. As a sponsor of a WJR-AM radio fundraiser, GM had paid Mr. Grimaldi's $5,000 entry fee. GM policy says that, under such circumstances, he was representing the automaker and therefore isn't personally entitled to receive any prizes. Instead, the money went back to charity.

Oct. 1, 2001

Hyundai to send CKD kits to Russia

Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. signs a contract with Doninvest of Russia, involving assembly of some 70,000 units of the Accent over a 5-year period. The cars will be shipped as complete-knocked-down kits for assembly at the Doninvest plant in TagAz. They will carry the Russian label Hyundai expects to ship 3,500 units this year and 8,000 in 2002, with the remaining 58,000 shipped over a 3-year period through

By Compiled by the staff of: WARD'S AUTOMOTIVE INTERNATIONAL • Oct. 1, 2001

Mercedes new ad campaign targets affluent blacks

Mercedes-Benz has redesigned its model lineup, lowered it prices and loosened up its brand image in the last seven years. Now, the automaker is testing a marketing program that will enable it to zero in and target a more diverse audience with rifle-shot accuracy. In other words, Mercedes-Benz USA's advertising and marketing message is going local. We want to do more event marketing, rather than just

By Frank S. Washington • Oct. 1, 2001

Ban the Bland

When Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. peeled the wraps off its now-famous Nissan Revival Plan in October 1999, the ailing automaker promised that its turnaround not only would rely heavily on cost cutting, but also would draw strength from a reinvigorated product lineup. In May, Nissan touted stronger-than-expected financial results for the previous fiscal year, with a compelling return to profit. This fall,

By KATHERINE ZACHARY • Oct. 1, 2001

GM Brazil exports increase as production stalls

General Motors do Brasil is finding success in an intensive campaign to seek new markets, increasing its exports 33.7% in the year's first half, while slowing production to meet falling local demand. Brazil's economy this year has been severely impacted by an ongoing energy crisis, increased inflation, a currency devaluation and fallout from neighboring Argentina's economic crisis. Jose Carlos Pinheiro

By Compiled by the staff of: WARD'S AUTOMOTIVE INTERNATIONAL • Oct. 1, 2001

Cadillac Escalade EXT not a me-to SUT

Some General Motors Corp. staffers were unnerved when Ford Motor Co. unveiled its Lincoln Blackwood concept luxury sport utility truck (SUT) at Detroit's North American International Auto Show in January, 1999. The reason for the concern: Cadillac was in the midst of working on its own cross between a luxury full-size SUV and a premium pickup truck the Escalade EXT, a spin-off of the Escalade SUV.

By Steve Finlay • Oct. 1, 2001