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According to Mr. Source, Dodge will show a high-performance Dodge Stratus with the 2.4 liter turbocharged engine at SEMA. No word yet on whether it will be available for sale as a production vehicle, but it seems likely. The SRT-6 should debut within the next two-three months as well, presumably with the supercharged 2.7 V6 that was originally to power the Crossfire.
For October, so far, it seems that the big winners are the vehicles that cater to the wealthy. Ford took a major hit, presumably due to its #1 competitor's "zero down, zero payments for three months, zero percent interest" incentives - Ford brand sales are down 31.4%, Mercury is down 44.6%, Lincoln is down 22.2, even Volvo is down 19.7. Ford's only good news are Jaguar, up 3.7 (probably due to the new Ford-based X series) and Land Rover (which just introduced a new low-end model), up 53.3 percent - from a fairly small base. While last October was a record sales month, Ford is still down 280,000 sales year-to-date from this time in 2001 (9.4 percent).
Meanwhile, Toyota, another mainstream brand, is down 20 percent from last October, but still ahead of last year by around 20,000 units. However, the two luxury brands reporting in so far, BMW and Mercedes, are both up. BMW is up 6.6 percent - NOT including the Mini - and Mercedes had its best sales month ever with 18,871 units sold (neither BMW nor Mercedes have high volume compared with, say, a single Toyota model, but prices and profits per vehicle are higher).
(Information in this article was provided by Bill Cawthon. Actual language may be blamed on Allpar.com. We expect to have Chrysler figures shortly).
From just-auto: Volkswagen's third quarter profit fell 51 percent , GM is planning to continue to gain market share and hurt reduce competitors' ability to invest in their future products by increasing incentives again, Ford has stopped production of Mustang Cobras due to quality problems (which must be pretty serious!), and Toyota's profit went up 90 percent to 554 billion yen in the first half. Goodyear is still getting clobbered with a $200 million sales loss over last year, and Ford plans to raise sales in Russia to 23,700 cars by 2005 - a rather small amount by American standards but a good start in a large country with potential for future wealth.
According to Federal reports, the average fuel economy of 2003 model year passenger vehicles is now 20.8 miles per gallon, 6 percent below the nation's high - set 15 years ago. These reports, it should be noted, actually OVERestimate average gas mileage, because a number of vehicles are no longer required to gain gas mileage figures - such as the GMC/Chevrolet 1500 HD trucks - because Congress made an exemption for vehicles having a certain capacity, and GM and Ford have both used the exemption to take "ordinary" vehicles out of gas mileage calculations. Some have suggested removing any exceptions for vehicles not requiring special licenses so accurate numbers can be obtained, and so vehicles will not actually be made more wasteful to avoid having them in the mix.
General Motors said it will put child-safe air bags in 2003 full-size pickup trucks and sport-utilities, which account for nearly a third of the vehicles it produces. While these airbags are mandated for the 2004 model year, GM is the first United States automaker to install them ahead of time.
The makers of the first mass-production hybrid-electric car, and the only company to specifically design a mass-production hybrid from the ground up for maximum economy and environmental benefit, plans to make its entire product line more fuel-efficient through the technology. Masatami Takimoto, Toyota's managing director for engine engineering, told Bloomberg News that Toyota would try to have hybrid technology throughout its entire lineup by 2012. The effort will be supported by the fact that hybrid and fuel-cell technologies have some overlap, so that advances in mass-producing hybrids will help Toyota to mass-produce fuel cell vehicles as well.
Chrysler was the first company to make airbags standard equipment on "regular" cars - and was punished for it with a class action lawsuit. Specifically, a woman whose 1989 Chrysler LeBaron's airbag saved her from "serious injury" sued Chrysler for a minor hand burn that healed after two weeks in 1992. She sued Chrysler and won $58.5 million for herself and 75,000 other plaintiffs after the suit was granted class action status.
The Superior Court of Pennsylvania threw out that verdict, ruling that the lawsuit should never have been granted class action status. Just-Auto.com quoted DCX general counsel Ken Gluckman as saying, “But it's outrageous that we had to spend six million dollars in defense costs and many years in court to defend a device that has saved over 6,800 lives. This suit is like holding the manufacturer of a bullet-proof vest responsible because its product saved someone's life, but left a few bruised ribs."
“This lawsuit is a prime example of trial lawyer greed and class action abuse,” Gluckman added. “Individuals should not be denied the right to sue if they believe they have cause, but in this example even the plaintiffs' expert acknowledged that 99% of the class members would never be in an accident causing hand burns. Most class members have no idea they were ever part of this lawsuit.”
Airbags have now been credited with saving thousands of lives, and became standard first across Chrysler's entire lineup (driver's side). Eventually, dual driver-passenger airbags became mandatory, and today most automakers sell optional or standard side airbags as well.
Chrysler posted an operating profit for the last quarter, prompting a flurry of "Mercedes saved Chrysler" stories in the Detroit News. Some are skeptical, pointing out that German accounting laws allow for all sorts of diversions behind the scenes, so that operating profits and losses for a division can be attributed as easily to creative accounting as anything else.
The latest rumors (thanks, 2.0 R/T and others) diverge regarding whether the upcoming Cummins High Output diesel transmission will be the new six-speed Eaton commercial automatic, or a beefed up 47RE called the 48RE, but there seems to be some agreement that heavy-duty diesel owners will have to wait for an automatic: it's not due until mid-2003. In the meantime, the standard-duty Cummins diesel is available with an automatic, and the high-output version has a beefy manual transmission. For those looking for something lighter, Hemi-powered 1500s are estimated at arriving either "any day now" or "early spring 2003."
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