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Toyota Camry: The Most American Car?

If you want to buy American, you should head down to your local Ford, GM or Chrysler dealer, right?  Not so fast, Uncle Sam.  Cars.com has released its annual American-Made index — and the results may surprise you. Kicking Tires (the blog for Cars.com) explains: "For the past few years we’ve been ranking cars and trucks built and bought in the U.S. for Cars.com’s American-Made Index. This index, which takes …

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Report: VW to Discontinue Routan

Brooke Shields and other Routan Boomers will be so disappointed. There are reports that Volkswagen won't be continuing their minivan. Autoblog writes, "Unsurprisingly, the re-branded Chrysler minivan is rumored to be receiving less-than-enthusiastic support from Volkswagen's current management, and the ambivalence might spell doom for the Routan." The Routan has struggled in our minivan rankings. It's currently ties for fifth place — out of seven vans. "The Routan was launched …

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Uptick in Recalls Smudges Industry’s Improved Performance

Toyota's highly publicized safety recall of 2.2 million cars in February seemed to precipitate a run of recent safety recalls by other automakers including General Motors, Chrysler, Honda and Hyundai. And 2010 overall is on pace for what could be the highest number of total recalled vehicles in this country since 2005.

But new analysis by Edmunds.com also demonstrates that the number of vehicles affected by industry safety recalls these days has declined dramatically compared with the record levels of a decade ago.

United Auto Workers Have New Boss

In Detroit today, the embattled and whittled-down United Auto Workers union elected Bob King as the union's new president. King's election was expected but didn't come without a fight.

King is 63 years old and trained both as an electrician and a lawyer. He's carried a UAW membership card for 40 years and was the union's vice president for two terms, but his election nonetheless was opposed by dissident candidate Gary Walkowicz from the UAW's Ford Dearborn, MI, local, who, along with many of his union, took issue with King's position last year that the UAW needed to make deeper concessions in a reconstituted contract with Ford, including a no-strike clause. 

King's restructuring of the Ford contract – proposed to bring the Ford-UAW labor agreement more in line with concessions extended to the bankrupt General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC – was soundly rejected.

Former Chrysler Plant Won’t Be Repurposed

The "old" pre-bankruptcy Chrysler Corp., now known as Old Carco LLC, got $45.5 million to sell one of its soon to be permanently shuttered factories in Ohio to a company that hoped to resell the plant to a new user or multiple users, but the Associated Press reports the effort was unable to attract any new operations for the plant.

Old Carco sold the metal-stamping plant in Twinsburg, OH, to Maynards Industries Ltd. of Vancouver, BC, Canada, but the AP said the liquidation company has been unable to attract new businesses to the site and that it will auction the plant's equipment and other assets after it closes, as scheduled, at the end of the month.

The Twinsburg stamping plant has gone from employment of about 1,000 to less than 300, and all will be laid off except for 77 workers who will stay until the end of July. Like the "old" General Motors Co., which also stayed behind after GM went through a quick bankruptcy last summer, the former Chrysler has sold or is attempting to sell many former assembly plants or other smaller manufacturing operations the new, pared-down Chrysler no longer needs. The proceeds are to be allocated to creditors of the former Chrysler.

Chrysler to build new eight-speed transmission

Chrysler announced plans to invest $300 million to modernize two plants that will build its new fuel-efficient eight-speed transmission.

Place Your Bets Now On the Next Recall

General Motors is recalling 1.5 million vehicles that may pose a fire risk. That “oops” moment came one day after Chrysler announced a recall of more than half a million vehicles. And then there’s the revolving door Toyota has installed at its dealerships.
The never-ending series of recalls has to have you wondering who’s next. The [...]

Several Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep Models Recalled

It's been a month of recalls for Chrysler. Kicking Tires reports, "Chrysler is recalling nearly 35,000 2007 Dodge Calibers and 2007 Jeep Compasses for problems with sticky gas pedals, the Associated Press reports. The cars affected were built from March to May 2006; the recall includes cars sold outside the U.S. as well." The Los Angeles Times adds, "The pedal system is built by CTS Corp. of Elkhart, Ind., which …

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