Car sales in Europe continue to slide in September, thanks to fears of recession and consumer nervousness generated by worries about the future of the euro single currency zone, and are likely to get worse before they get better, according to industry forecaster IHS Automotive. Ford Europe and GM Europe’s Opel-Vauxhall took a beating with … Continue Reading →
Even mighty Volkswagen is succumbing to Europe’s economic weakness and the slowdown in the growth of car sales in China. Last week at the Paris Car Show, VW chiefs expressed concern about sales prospects, but maintained their belief that profits in 2012 would be about the same as last year’s, while acknowledging the gathering storm. … Continue Reading →
PARIS – British sports car maker Jaguar is deadly serious about moving from being a niche manufacturer to a company that can one day challenge German hegemony in the luxury sector.
Americans are buying more gasoline electric hybrids, but Europeans still reckon diesel power is the best way to get value-for-money motoring, according to a report. The Automotive Industry Data (AID) news letter calculates that Western Europeans bought only 57,400 hybrids in the first half of 2012 for a market share of 0.9 per cent. That’s … Continue Reading →
General Motors’ Opel subsidiary could lose at least another $16 billion by 2024 and the only way to avoid this threat to its own future is to dump the European subsidiary as soon as possible, investment bank Morgan Stanley said.
Volkswagen of Germany has unveiled the latest version of its signature vehicle, the Golf small family car, which will make is world debut at the Paris Car Show later this month. It is always the mark of a successful car that designers are loathe to change anything that made it popular, so the seventh version … Continue Reading →
Here’s another theory seeking to explain Volkswagen of Germany’s domination of European car sales: cheap financing and strong second-hand values.
After spending 14 hours on Woodward Avenue today, I’m almost on empty. A quick grab of my iPhone revealed, however, a lot of material that really didn’t fit into our earlier coverage. So I thought: Why not put it all together? Turns out, this sums up my pure Dream Cruise experience. And with that … … Continue Reading →
When Bob Norton told his father that he intended to get married, his dad gave him an ultimatum: You can have the girl or you can have the car, but you can’t have both. “The car” was a new 1957 Chevrolet that for which Norton’s father had co-signed a year earlier. Norton decided to get … Continue Reading →
The weather held up its end of the bargain for the Woodward Dream Cruise, and at least one cruise fan thinks people turned out in record fashion. “Last year we had a dump of weather, and the problem is everybody scattered because the cars are expensive,” said Van Conway of Conway MacKenzie financial services in … Continue Reading →