automakers

Win on Sunday, sell on Monday still a goal for automakers

By Betty C. Morrow 6 months ago

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FILE – General Motors Director of Marketing for Chevrolet cars and crossovers Tony Johnson addresses the media during a press conference for the 2022 Corvette Stingray IMSA GTLM Championship Edition vehicle, foreground, in Detroit, in this Wednesday, June 9, 2021, file photo. Despite the challenges, the top auto manufacturers still see motorsports as an effective marketing tool for their cars. (AP Photo/Jose Juarez, File)


Jose Juarez

AP

DETROIT

Rick Hendrick erased any doubt that marketing in motorsports is still effective when his automotive sales group bought the sponsorship rights through 2023 for NASCAR title contender Kyle Larson.

With few companies willing to back Larson upon his return from a nearly yearlong suspension for using a racial slur, Hendrick put the website for his dealerships on the hood of Larson’s car. Larson started winning races, which company officials say drove traffic to HendrickCars.com that netted $1.8 million in leads and

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What you need to know about electric vehicles as President Biden, automakers announce EV goals

By Betty C. Morrow 6 months ago

Gas will be out of gas if President Biden has his way.

The White House on Thursday announced a goal of making half of all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the U.S. zero-emission vehicles by 2030, including battery-powered electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell cars.

The goal drew support from the automotive industry’s largest players, including General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen and Stellantis, the company formerly known as Fiat Chrysler. Supporters of Biden’s electric vehicle plan manufacture and sell the world’s most popular gas-powered vehicles, from the Ford F-150 pickup to the Toyota RAV4 SUV and the Honda Accord sedan.

Biden promoted the transition from gas to electric vehicles as crucial to combating climate change, which is worsened by emissions from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

But getting from here to there will take years and involves numerous challenges.

► Charging access poses hurdle: More electric

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Stutz-Made 1931 DV-32 Boattail Speedster Was the Automaker’s Majestic Last Hurrah

By Betty C. Morrow 10 months ago

In 1931, the Stutz Motor Company was struggling to regain its footing amidst the panic of the Great Depression. Coasting on the success of America’s first sports car, the Bearcat, Stutz kept cranking out cars but it was the beginning of the end for this groundbreaking automaker. 



a truck is parked in front of a house: In 1931, the Stutz Motor Company was struggling to regain its footing amidst the panic of the Great Depression. Coasting on the success of America’s first sports car, the Bearcat, Stutz kept cranking out cars but it was the beginning of the end for this groundbreaking automaker. That year, it launched the 1931 Stutz DV-32 […]

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In 1931, the Stutz Motor Company was struggling to regain its footing amidst the panic of the Great Depression. Coasting on the success of America’s first sports car, the Bearcat, Stutz kept cranking out cars but it was the beginning of the end for this groundbreaking automaker. That year, it launched the 1931 Stutz DV-32 […]

That year, it launched the 1931 Stutz DV-32 Boattail Speedster, a curvy, long-nosed luxury car that was proudly marketed for nearly $6,500, a king’s sum then. The classic car grapevine believes that only six of the Stutz DV-32 Boattails are

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Musk Says Tesla, Ford Are Only American Automakers Never To Go Bankrupt

By Betty C. Morrow 11 months ago

Elon Musk made Twitter the new automotive CEO platform. Herbert Diess is there. Jim Farley too. That created a rich environment for some public interactions between them. The latest one was when Musk named Tesla and Ford as the only American companies never to have gone bankrupt until now.

Musk did that in reply to a Sam Korus tweet that showed how big car manufacturing business failures were until 1927. Among those early thousands of automotive startups, Musk said Ford was the only one to beat the odds.

 

The last company to do that was Tesla, something Musk also celebrated when he stressed his company was the last one to achieve mass manufacturing in 100 years. The Tesla CEO said that a while ago. More recently, he did that in his interview with Sandy Munro in which he recognized some of the flaws that Tesla vehicles present, especially when

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