If you buy a new car or light truck today, you can reasonably expect it to last until 2032, perhaps longer. Put another way, the car you drive off a dealer lot in 2017, will roll to something north of 350,000 kilometres on the clock before a final trip to the auto recycler. We know …
Dieselgate: rival car companies claim the high ground
On a late summer day in Detroit, Mich., a disgraced Volkswagen engineer named James Robert Liang left a courtroom after being sentenced to a 40-month prison sentence for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government as part of a global scandal that some believe has permanently besmirched and undermined diesel powertrains around the world. So, is …
After a three-year slide, is Ford back on track?
Alan Mulally stepped down as Ford Motor CEO a little more than three years ago, and Ford has been sliding ever since. What has happened? Why have investors stayed away? Why has Ford quality suffered? Why so many recalls? How is it that Ford remains absurdly dependent on pickups and SUVs — a problem that …
How rivals should tackle the dominant German luxury brands
I can list at least eight luxury car brands that have long aspired to topple the Big Three from Germany, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Try as they have, and despite rich histories, Alfa Romeo, Cadillac, Lincoln and Jaguar Land Rover have not yet put even a tiny dent in the German armour. And Infiniti, Lexus, …
October 27, 2017 | Commentary, First on the Grid Like Comments (0) |
Ford hedges on autonomous vehicle timeline, but not commitment
Ford Motor is battling the image of an also-ran in autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. And this reality makes CEO Jim Hackett bristle. In a recent conference call to discuss Ford’s decent third-quarter earnings, Hackett emphasized that a commitment to autonomous vehicles “is not a question here at Ford at all. It’s something that is really …
Read more