Cerberus Capital Management, one of the two leading contenders to buy the Chrysler Group, has hired former Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard as a consultant. Cerberus and private equity firm Blackstone Group have emerged as front runners in the bids for Chrysler.
As a former executive at Chrysler, Bernhard was one of the primary architects of Chrysler’s […]

Toyota is the dominate player in hybrids, but it’s not Toyota’s way to rest on its laurels and let others catch up. That’s why it is working on developing a plug-in hybrid vehicle, said Toyota North America President Jim Press. Toyota hasn’t announced plans for a production plug-in hybrid, but it is in product development […]

Sales numbers are in for February 2007. As expected Ford Motor and Chrysler Group had bad months, with sales off 13.5% and 8%, respectively. Part of Ford’s drop was a 30% cut in fleet sales, but Ford retail was still down 8% and that’s not good news. In a shocker, General Motors sales were […]

Consumer Reports has released its automotive Top Picks for 2007. The list was announced yesterday and is published in the magazine’s April issue. The Top Picks for 2007 sees an overall domination by Japanese automakers, with all of the picks coming from Japanese nameplates for the second time in 10 years. The 2007 list includes […]

While sales of the new Ford Edge are off to a strong start, the launch of what Ford had called 2006’s most important product, has had a few glitches. First, Ford delayed the launch over some last-minute quality issues. Then there was the weather, heavy snow on the Plains states, and ice storms in Texas […]

General Motors and Ford today said their U.S. sales declined in February as they continued to back away from sales to daily rental fleets. While GM said its February U.S. sales would likely be off 6 to 7 percent from February 2006, the automaker expects its retail sales to be flat for the month.
Ford said […]

Toyota today announced it would invest $1.3 billion to build its eighth North American assembly plant — and fifth in the U.S. — in northeastern Mississippi. The new plant will be built in Blue Springs, Miss., just outside of Tupelo.
Toyota’s new assembly plant is scheduled to begin production in 2010, and will build the Toyota […]

Despite exploring an alliance with General Motors last year, Nissan-Renault is not interested in acquiring DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler division, said a Nissan official. While Nissan-Renault is open to new partnerships, it is not looking at a new partnership right now because it is focused on its own financial woes, said a Nissan spokeswoman.
Carlos Ghosn, CEO of […]

David Richards, founder of Prodrive, is leading a consortium to buy Aston Martin, according to the Financial Times. Citing inside sources, Richards’ Prodrive consortium is one of three bidders left in the running for Aston Martin after the bidding process for Aston closed last month.
The Prodrive consortium’s bid is said to be about £450 million, […]

Talks between General Motors and DaimlerChrysler about the future of the Chrysler Group are serious and have been going on for two months, according to the Detroit News. GM has been in discussions with DCX about acquiring all of the American arm and folding it into the greater GM.
The high-level talks started back in December, […]