Auto Events

Chrysler Canada says it has racked up its best October sales since 2002, with total vehicles sold up 12.4 per cent year-over-year to 17,049.

Chrysler says its passenger car sales more than doubled during the month to 2,348 units from 890 a year earlier.

The company’s best-selling car was the Chrysler 300, with 543 sold compared with 239 last October.

Truck sales edged ahead three per cent to 14,701.

The company noted its Ram pickup truck sales showed a 53 per cent improvement to 5,282 units, which the company said was a record.

DEARBORN, MI – Parents have enough to worry about when they hand over the keys to a teenager, so Ford is adding a feature to its MyKey® technology to block incoming phone calls and deter text messages while teens are behind the wheel.

The Do Not Disturb feature, which is available on all 2011 vehicles featuring SYNC® with MyFord Touch®, will now be available as a feature parents can control through MyKey beginning with the new Explorer in early 2012.

When hooked up to SYNC, this new feature blocks incoming phone calls or text messages from a Bluetooth®-paired mobile phone, diverting calls into voicemail and saving text messages on the device for viewing later. But unlike turning the phone off, drivers can still make voice-activated outgoing phone calls and the SYNC 911 Assist™ feature can make a call in case of emergency.

Distracted driving is of particular concern as it relates to young, inexperienced drivers, and the Do Not Disturb feature helps parents control another accident risk factor when their child gets behind the wheel.

“Adding Do Not Disturb to MyKey is yet another way Ford is helping parents to encourage their kids to drive safer,” said Andy Sarkisian, Ford Safety Planning and Strategy manager. “We are continually listening to our customers and responding to parents’ desire to make sure their kids are paying attention to the road, not their cell phone.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), teens are more likely to take risks such as speeding – a contributing factor in 30 per cent of all fatal crashes. Teens also are less likely to wear safety belts than older drivers.

The research says…

The U.S. Department of Transportation has sponsored large-scale, long-duration, naturalistic driving research that helps to better understand driver distraction in the real world. Multiple studies repeatedly find that it is primarily looking away from the road that is highly associated with distraction-related crash and near-crash involvement.  

Ford was the first automaker to support a proposed federal ban and state-level legislation banning hand-held texting while driving precisely because reading and typing text messages take eyes off the road and hands off the wheel. The SYNC voice system reduces distraction risk by allowing drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road when they judge driving demands are low and decide they can safely do other things.

Novice teen drivers are on a steep learning curve and do not yet have the adult levels of skill needed to control the vehicle, detect hazards and assess driving situations. The MyKey Do Not Disturb feature is an option that parents will have to set limits on their teen while driving in order to promote a focus on learning safe driving skills and habits.

STOCKHOLM, SWE (AP) — A Swedish court ruled Monday that Saab can continue its reconstruction after reviewing two Chinese companies' plans to invest €660 million ($933 million USD) in the struggling brand and cut 500 jobs.

Vanersborg District Court made its ruling after reviewing the plans by Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. and Pang Da Automobile Trade Co. and hearing comments by creditors, said court spokesman Peter Rosen.

The two Chinese companies said they can provide €50 million ($71 million USD) in immediate bridge-financing to the car maker while it is being reorganized. They also plan to inject €610 million ($863 million USD) to restart production, settle the company's debts and fund operations between 2012 and 2013.

The companies reached a tentative deal on Friday to buy Saab from Swedish Automobile, the Dutch company previously known as Spyker Cars, for €100 million ($141 million USD) — the latest rescue attempt for the company, which has been fighting for survival since it was sold by General Motors Co. in 2010.

If the deal is completed and approved by regulators it would mean that both of Sweden's car makers end up in Chinese hands. Last year, China's Geely Holding Group bought Volvo Cars from Ford Motor Co. for $1.5 billion.

IHS Automotive analyst Ian Fletcher doubted the viability of Youngman and Pang Da's business plan and whether the investments would be sufficient.

"They are taking the Geely-Volvo blueprint and looking to develop Saab in the same way, but Saab's situation at the moment is very different to what Volvo's situation was like," Fletcher said. "It could take a long time to bring Saab into the same position as Volvo."

Fletcher also pointed out that it was unclear if the deal would receive the necessary Chinese regulatory approvals.

"There's a lot of nice, blue sky thinking," he said. "But the question is if they have the ability, the general capability to achieve this?"

Production at Saab's manufacturing plant has been suspended for most of the year while the company has struggled to pay suppliers and staff. In September it entered a reorganization process similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States.

The Chinese companies' financing plan was presented to creditors at the Vanersborg District Court Monday by Guy Lofalk, who is in charge of the reorganization.

Part of the plan would be to use a €63 million ($89 million USD) credit from the European Investment Bank and to cut Saab's costs by around 1 billion kronor ($157 million), including laying off 500 of its 3,700 workers.

The two companies set a sales target for Saab for 2012 of 35,000-55,000 cars and 75,000-85,000 cars for 2013.

In the long term, the new owners hope to increase sales to 185,000-205,000 cars and become profitable by 2014. They said key factors driving growth would be a broadened product portfolio in fast growing market segments, capitalization on access to the Chinese market and a strong focus on profitability.

The companies said they will continue to make cars at Saab's main plant in Trollhattan, southwest Sweden, and also begin more cost-efficient production in China for Chinese and international markets.

The program also includes plans to accelerate access to the Chinese market and enter into new distribution agreements in other emerging markets, such as Russia.

Consumer Reports: Ford quality slips, Chrysler gains as Japanese brands dominate top rankings

DETROIT, MI (AP) -- Quality should be Job 1 at Ford again.

The brand's ranking fell 10 spots in Consumer Reports' annual auto reliability survey, hurt by glitchy touch screens and transmissions. It now ranks 20th out of 28 major brands, based on a survey of the magazine's subscribers.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker had been closing the quality gap with Japanese brands in recent years, but it may need to take its own advice from a 1980s ad campaign, in which it told viewers that "Quality is Job 1."

Japanese automakers continued to dominate the survey's top rankings. Brands from Toyota, Honda and Mazda held the top nine spots in the 2011 study, while Chrysler's Jeep was the top brand from a U.S. automaker. The Chrysler brand showed the most improvement over last year.

The findings are based on surveys taken this spring of subscribers who own or lease 1.3 million vehicles of model years from 2002 to 2011. The magazine uses the findings to predict reliability of 2012 models.

Consumer Reports ranks No. 3 on the list of information sources Americans use in choosing vehicles to buy, topped only by brand loyalty and recommendations from friends and family. The magazine released its annual survey results Tuesday in Detroit.

At Ford, magazine subscribers found problems with the MyFordTouch and MyLincolnTouch dashboard control screens, saying they froze or were difficult to use, said David Champion, senior director of auto testing for Consumer Reports. The screens control cabin temperature, the radio and other functions. Also, the company's new small cars, the Focus compact and Fiesta subcompact, have new automatic transmissions that shift often and awkwardly, Champion said.

Although most of the transmission problems were rated as minor, many subscribers said the cars seemed to shift at will, especially at low speeds, Champion said.

"It's as if it's got a brain of its own," he said. "I think a lot of people think there's something wrong with it."

Bennie Fowler, Ford's group vice president for quality, said the company is taking the customer feedback seriously and is working to continuously improve vehicles.

"Our internal surveys now show that we are largely back on track after addressing these near-term quality issues," he said in a statement.

Ford's Lincoln luxury brand moved up one spot to 14th.

For the fourth year in a row, Toyota's Scion, a brand geared toward young people, had the fewest problems, followed by Toyota's Lexus brand, Honda's Acura, Mazda, and the Honda brand overall. Lexus, a perennial top finisher, recovered from a fall last year, rising seven spots on the list.

Scion was tops because the two models covered in the survey, the xB and xD, have been built for several years and the bugs have been worked out, Champion said. Champion also said Mazda improved because its current models have been out for several years.

For the most part, older models have better reliability than new or revamped models, said Champion.

At Chrysler, however, new or significantly revamped models led its resurgence. Champion said the Chrysler 200 midsize sedan, and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs helped the company improve its ranking.

"They seem to be totally transfixed on getting it right," Champion said of Chrysler. "It was in many ways `Do or Die' for Chrysler."

Chrysler has been plagued by reliability problems for years but has been improving since the U.S. government put Italy's Fiat in charge after Chrysler's 2009 bankruptcy filing. The Chrysler brand moved up in Consumer Reports' ranking from 27th last year to 15th this year. Jeep rose 7 spots to finish 13th.

Doug Betts, Chrysler's head of quality, said that for the past two years, Chrysler has been doing more rigorous tests on new models and finding and fixing problems before the cars reach showrooms.

"Maybe we didn't have all the environmental conditions or customer usages defined," he said.