This is The Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that's actually important — all in one place every weekday morning. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parse it out to you one story at a time. Isn't your time more important?
1st Gear: Cadillac Is In The New York Groove
Cadillac has been reinventing itself for nearly 20 years now, but the biggest move will come to fruition next year: The Detroit News has revealed that new brand CEO Johan de Nysschen has been given the authority and permission to move the headquarters of the storied luxury brand away from the GM mothership in Detroit and to New York City.
Here's part of de Nysschen's reasoning behind leaving the D behind:
We want to put a little bit of distance between Cadillac and the rest of the General Motors entity so that we can begin to put together a team that is able to give 100 percent mindshare to meeting the challenges of the premium market.
Moving Cadillac to Manhattan will keep them autonomous from the GM mothership, help keep them in touch with the premium buyer, and help them reorganize to compete with other premium brands. It's a smart move, but also a gamble. Just 120 employees will move to New York for the reorganization. Will the distance between the 120 in NYC and the rest in Detroit cause a disconnect? Or will it work in Cadillac's favor? That's what we'll have to find out when Caddy moves to SoHo in mid 2015.
2nd Gear: Lotus's New CEO Thinks The Company Can Be Profitable
Lotus, our favorite automaker that is always on the brink of near disaster, has a new CEO in Jean-Marc Gales. Lotus has also been having a bit of a rough time these last couple weeks, as they've announced they may lay off a quarter of their workforce and the Evora may no longer be sold in the USA.
That's not a good thing.
Lotus has lost nearly 275 million pounds in the last two years, but Gales's plan to bring the brand to profitability include expanding dealers, making the current cars faster and lighter (that's a good thing!), and expand the lineup with more cars based on the same architecture.
Gales wants to make sure cars and goals are met within the time frame that was set, and so far, that seems to be working. Lotus sales are up 46 percent this year. That's fantastic.
Here's to hoping it's enough to survive.
3rd Gear: Jags Are Getting Smart
In the never ending quest to make your car into some sort of strange driving computer thing, Jaguars of the future will be able to "predict how warm you'd like your bottom on a rainy day" and can "remind you to stop at a flower shop for your anniversary."
Jag believes that features like this will pull in more urban dwellers. Guess it makes sense, if phones keep getting bigger, they'll be the size of cars in no time anyway.
4th Gear: Hyundai Workers Strike Due To $10 billion Gangnam HQ
Gangnam Style has bit Hyundai in the ass. Hyundai's workers were a bit appalled at the $10 billion purchase of land for a new HQ, feeling that management overpaid for what amounts to an ultimately unimportant asset, unless you count bragging rights as an important asset.
The workers have been in a pay dispute for months, so to see the $10 billion thrown at the headquarters has to be a slap in the face. They will strike and suspend production for a total of 24 hours between now and Friday. Makes sense.
5th Gear: Hyundai Has To Pay For Steering Defect
A steering defect that killed two Montana teens might cost Hyundai $73 million. A judge decreed that the automaker must pay out the money to the families of two teens who were killed in 2011.
The judge says that Hyundai knew about the problems for years and did nothing to fix them... sound familiar? Hyundai says they will appeal and have said that the accident was caused by fireworks exploding in the Tiburon, not a defective steering knuckle.
Reverse
On September 23, 1933, a party of American geologists lands at the Persian Gulf port of Jubail in Saudi Arabia and begins its journey into the desert. That July, with the discovery of a massive oil field at Ghawar, Saudi King Abdel Aziz had granted the Standard Oil Company of California a concession to "explore and search for and drill and extract and manufacture and transport" petroleum and "kindred bituminous matter" in the country's vast Eastern Province; in turn, Standard Oil immediately dispatched the team of scientists to locate the most profitable spot for the company to begin its drilling.
[HISTORY]
Neutral
What do you think about Cadillac's big move? Smart? Stupid? And why?