As many luxury and performance cars get older their prices drop as their warranties disappear and they become increasingly expensive to maintain. Many times these vehicles seem like unbelievable deals until you begin to take into account how much money you will end up paying for the parts and labor to maintain and…
The big Barrett-Jackson car auction in Scottsdale's going on right now and we're already into the fourth day of hot gavel action. Here's the eight top cars that have found new owners through day three.
Nissan will be recalling 242,720 2005-2009 Xterras, Pathfinders and Frontiers due to a faulty airbag sensor.
Back before Subaru revised the Tribeca's grille for the '08 model year, but after their marketers realized that American car shoppers were backing away in horror from the crypto-SUV's face, they had what seemed like a great idea: see if they could convince urban gay Americans that the Tribeca would make them look hip! …
A couple of months ago, we heard from Wards that the Imperial was to be the bellwether in Chrysler's dramatic march upmarket. All seemed lost when the company split from the Daimler bunch. But now, according to Autocar, the project is still a go, despite that Chrysler will soon be of the three-headed devil dog…
Just to give you an idea of how much money we're talking about here (in case you can't wrap your mind around ¥1.64 trillion — $13.7 billion — in profits off of ¥23.94 trillion — $199.5 billion — in net revenues ) when I used to work for the State of Michigan, I remember the state's general fund operating budget…
Oooh, look, the General's finally decided to tell us whether they made any money last year, dropping their restated earnings out in the wee light of this March morning. Let's find out if they...hmm...ok...looks like they made $2.2 billion in 2006 on revenues of $207 billion. Good for them. It's not what I'd call the…
Well, the gang's all here for a FoMoCo earnings conference call this morning that I expect to be lossgastic. We're expecting to hear from Alan "New Guy" Mulally, the man-with-a-plan hired in September to captain this plane with an engine fire. We'll also here from Don "What Me Worry?" LeClair, the Chief French Puff…
The big press conference call isn't until 9:00 AM, so you're just going to have to suck it up and take what we know from the press release we've got in hand straight out of the glass house in Dearborn. What we know is FoMoCo is reporting a fourth-quarter loss of $5.8 billion dollars, pegging the 2006 full-year net…
We see a lot of press releases around here saying Company X's sales are up or down 3% this past year. But rarely do we read about double digit jumps. And even when we do, they are not this high. ASMC (American Suzuki Motors Corporation) just announced that they sold 23% more rides in 2006 than they did in 2005. In…
First, the news. VAG sold 5.73 million vehicles last year, solidifying its position as the world's number four automaker. Second, a bit of analysis. A guy named Erich Merkle is claiming that VeeDub's sales were temporarily boosted this year because of new model drops like the Jetta and Passat. He says, "I don't know…
The 'merican side of the German-American hybrid continues to steam past silly numbers of things like dealer inventory sitting at 538,438 units ( a 74-day supply) and terms like Eberhardt-ian "sales banks." That's because hey, the Chrysler Group saw a second month of sales increases, this time a 1% year-to-year…
I almost feel like ToMoCo's the Juggernaut, bitch. Seriously — number one super best automaker from the land of the rising sun's got like a destiny to just roll on into the US, turning everything into vanilla. With 20%-plus increases in passenger car sales coming out of both the Toyota and Lexus brands — the…
Paul Ballew, GM's sales stud, gave us a sales call quote of "Despite the top-line loss of around 9.5%, we're pretty pleased with the result..." — despite that cherry-sounding verbiage, the tone seemed more like one's got to think the General's probably really not too pleased with that big number drop. We're thinking…
FoMoCo starts off what we've heard will be one helluva lot of red ink on the sales side for 2006's farewell month. The boys n' girls in the glass house in Dearborn saw a sales decline of 13% for the month on year-to-year numbers of 233,621. That means full year sales hit a mere 2.9 million, down 8% from 2005's…
ToMoCo's finally bowing down and taking it just like the domestics, by instituting the MoCo's first ever monthly sales call — just like the rest of the schmucks US automakers. The domestics have doled out quotes and spin by way of Ma Bell since she first invented the party line and conference call. It's high time…
That's right, kids — we snuck into the General's holiday party over at the world's biggest automaker's world's biggest Heritage Center, located deep in the heart of Reagan Democratic politics — Sterling Heights, MI. Although we made it in a bit late, we still found ourselves in range to fire a few questions at Chief…
ToMoCo continued it's dominatrix-like smacking of FoMoCo, as the automaker from the land of the rising sun reported sales of 196,695 vehicles during the month of November. That's a 15.9% increase in month-to-month sales from 2005. That broke down to an increase of 18% in the Toyota Division, and what would appear to…
The German-American hybrid saw US sales increase this month by 4.7%, selling 186,635 vehicles, which represents a 21% jump from the Mercedes unit and — Holy Joe! — a jump of 2.9% at the 'merican side of the company, the Chrysler Group. Whoa! Joe Eberhardt, the sales and marketing chief in Auburn Hills totally knows…
At first my big question for General Motors — are y'all planning on issuing a press release at some point to provide your numbers? Usually the sales numbers are posted online about 15 minutes before the start of the conference call — and well, the conference call's started and narry a number to be found. But here's…
