Every year brings new uncertainties to the car business, and 2012 will be no different. The devil will be in the details. With the U.S. economy expanding, pent-up demand growing, and the Detroit Three earning, the survival of the industry is not in question so much as is its composition. Will buyers be looking for big trucks or small cars, import brands or domestics, gasoline-power or electricity?
Calling it "the most important step we've ever taken in reducing our nation's dependence on foreign oil," President Obama announced a proposed new round of fuel economy standards for cars and trucks sold in the United States that would double the average mileage by 2025.
The 2012 New Beetle, the car that Oprah Winfrey gave away to her audience back in November, is finally ready to show itself in public.
Volkswagen of America is recalling about 71,000 of the German automaker's new 2011 Jetta sedans for a wiring problem that could cause the car to turn off when the horn is used.
Volkswagen, Coca-Cola and Simon Cowell make the cut
Volkswagen is recalling about 20 new Beetles -- and replacing them with identical cars.
If Ernest Hemingway was living, he would undoubtedly be part of the Dakar Rally. The famed novelist and journalist chased adventure around the world, running with the bulls at Pamplona and going on safari in Africa. He'd find the Dakar irresistible, too, the basis of his next great work. It is an ultimate challenge for man and machine.
This coming Wednesday, the discount fashion Web site Gilt.com will begin offering three 2011 Volkswagen Jettas at a particularly steep discount. The cars will be sold for $5,995.
Luxury models don't cost too much more to build than their mass market counterparts, though they do sell at much higher prices. Volkswagen AG is showing its grasp of this concept with the new Audi A8, VW's latest salvo in its quest to pass Toyota Motor Corp. as the world's top seller of automobiles.
A 1965 Volkswagen van stolen 35 years ago in Spokane, Washington, was found by customs agents in a shipping container in the Los Angeles port last month, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said.
Making a set of subway stairs into a piano and a bottle bank into an arcade game; just two ingenious ways to get people to take time to do the right thing and have fun.
The Fun Theory is a Swedish initiative that wants people to share ways fun can make things better.
Porsche shake-up
updated: Thu Jul 23 2009 14:12:00
Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking steps down. CNN's Frederik Pleitgen explains.
As the lights fade across the hedge fund universe, SAC Capital Advisors had been one of the few funds unbowed by the rout that has forced countless rivals to close or suspend redemptions.
Still looking for a last-minute Halloween costume to scare those trick-or-treaters knocking on your door? Just put on a suit and tie and start bashing bank stocks. Eek! A short seller!
Not too long ago, uttering the phrase "diesel engine" was enough to elicit a wince from car buyers whose memories of previous-generation diesels often consisted of knocking engine noise, that distinctly-diesel fragrance, and plumes of blue smoke curling from the tailpipe.
Volkswagen AG said Friday it was recalling 340,000 passenger cars in the United States because the head lights failed to comply with federal safety standards.
The world's automakers will try to win customers over with more environmentally friendly cars at the Frankfurt Auto Show this week as they tout new vehicles with hybrid propulsion and more advanced, cleaner engines.
Volkswagen is moving its North American headquarters from Michigan to Virginia next year to be closer to its customer base, the German automaker said Thursday.
U.S. computer company Apple Inc. and German automaker Volkswagen AG are discussing the possibility of building an "iCar" that would feature products by the producer of the ubiquitous iPod personal music player.
Volkswagen, the world's fourth-largest carmaker, is considering building a new North American factory if the dollar stays weak, Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn said in an interview with German magazine Focus.
Call me an optimist, but when global warming arrives, I intend to be prepared. Thus, my climate-instability survival kit will include a 2007 Volkswagen Eos. Not that the jelly-bean-size Eos can cross rising waters or surmount sudden snowdrifts, because, alas, it cannot.
Around 800,000 Volkswagen vehicles have been recalled Monday because of faulty brake lights, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said .
2006 was a year of surprises in the auto industry - most of them bad.By Alex Taylor III, Fortune senior editor
Volkswagen has the best "certified pre-owned" car program of any non-luxury brand, according to a survey by IntelliChoice.com.
The AARP's latest list of the top places to work for people over 50 includes some household names, like Volkswagen of America (#6), drug maker Hoffmann-LaRoche (#10), L.L. Bean (#43), and John Deere (#50).
HAMBURG (Reuters) - The situation at German carmaker Volkswagen is serious, a senior executive said, although he denied a report that the company could cut an extra 10,000 jobs at its core VW brand.
Angry motorists, frightened politicians and three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline are stirring new interest in alternative kinds of vehicular transportation that don't weigh two-and-a-half tons and get 13 miles to the gallon.
Maximillion Cooper, founder and CEO of the Gumball 3000 car rally, road tests new vehicles the Volkswagen Business Caravelle and the BMW 760Li Saloon to see if their business capabilities measure up.
After years spent working with General Motors and Volkswagen, the Chinese automaker Shanghai Automotive Industry Group is now planning to go at it alone, according to a report published Wednesday.
DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group and Volkswagen said on Thursday that they have reached an agreement under which the U.S.-based carmaker will manufacture minivans for the German rival.
Money Magazine: Ask the Insiderupdated: Mon Dec 12 2005 16:39:00
Michael Smith of Travelers Insurance has been working out of a mobile claims van since just before hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast.
Fortune: ICEBERG HUNTERSupdated: Mon Nov 14 2005 00:01:00
WE STARTED TO HARVEST ICE FOR PRODUCTS like bottled water and vodka about seven years ago. We thought it was a bit of a joke at first, but it grew into a big business. We can hunt from March throug...
Fortune: The 500 and Beyondupdated: Mon Sep 19 2005 00:01:00
Who needs Mickey? Walt Disney (far left) lets the artists do the acting at a story meeting. November 1934
When car shoppers look for really high gas mileage, they usually think about hybrids, which run on a computer-controlled combination of a regular internal combustion engine and one or more electric motors.
In order to get more consumers to test drive certified used Volkswagens, according to a report in an industry newspaper, VW is offering a novel incentive: $50 worth of free gasoline.
SIPPING A COLD BEER IN THE MAIN square of Wolfsburg, the German town that's home to Volkswagen, former auto worker Christian Hälse is sure of who's to blame for the scandal that has rocked VW and f...
The Jetta is the American Volkswagen, designed for buyers who'd rather have a trunk in the back than a Euro-style hatch. Last year U.S. customers bought almost 92,000 Jettas, fewer than in previous...
Volkswagen has filed criminal charges against the makers of a short film involving the Polo, a small car the company sells in Europe, according to Reuters.
Previously known for giving away fun items like iPods and mountain bikes with the purchase of its vehicles, Volkswagen will now offer something a bit more practical: free car insurance.
DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler division said Friday it was recalling about 600,000 Dodge Durango sport utility vehicles and Dodge Dakota pickup trucks due to concerns about their safety.
European sedans may have many wonderful attributes. Reliability, however, is not among them, according to the latest Consumer Reports reliability survey.
ARCHITECTURAL BRIO SURE WORKS FOR INSTITUTIONS like New York City's Guggenheim Museum, which reaped heaps of attention for its wavy, titanium-clad outpost in Bilbao, Spain, designed by architect Fr...
Recall that in the 1970s, as the oil crisis drove gasoline prices to unheard-of levels and lines at the pumps snaked around the block, many of us actually embraced diesel-powered cars. But as the s...
When you think of diesel engines what comes to mind? Probably loud noises, slow starts and plumes of black smoke.
Automakers are not by nature sympathetic entities. Like all good manufacturing multinationals, they tend toward faceless, rapacious caricature: Their factories are windowless belching boxes, their ...
You'd think it was 1999 all over again from the splashy exhibits at the biennial auto show in Frankfurt. The halls were filled with Imax-scale videoscreens, elaborate computerized lighting displays...
Fortune: Driver's Seatupdated: Mon Dec 09 2002 00:01:00
There will be fewer keys to exotic autos under the tree this year, but that shouldn't stop anyone from dreaming. Here are four very fast, very sophisticated, and very expensive cars worthy of your ...
FSB: Novemberupdated: Fri Nov 01 2002 00:01:00
--Nov. 1-3: Sitka Whalefest An international lineup of biologists and researchers descends on Sitka, Alaska, a coastal town in the state's panhandle and a great place to see humpbacks up close. In ...
There's a hot show in Hamburg, but it isn't the World's Fair. While Expo 2000 is drawing one-tenth of the visitors expected, organizers of Autostadt--in nearby Wolfsburg--expect two million people ...
There can be only one explanation for all the luxury vehicles on display at this fall's Frankfurt Auto Show: Carmakers took a look at this year's amazing sales figures and lost their minds. True, t...
You have your heart set on that one car. You love its svelte styling, pulse-pounding acceleration, great handling and...extra-long warranty? Well, maybe not the warranty. Still, some manufacturers ...
Minivans are invading Europe. Ford Motor and Volkswagen will show off their new joint-venture vehicles at the Geneva Auto Show in March, Mercedes-Benz is plunging in with a van made in Spain, and b...
LIKE AMERICANS, Europeans are passionate about their cars -- they just express themselves a little differently. They prefer the intimacy provided by a manual gearbox over the remoteness of an autom...
SOMETIMES a simple question can direct a whole era's business agenda. Management guru Peter Drucker blew executives' minds in the 1970s by asking, ''If you weren't already in this business, would y...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THIS updated: Mon Nov 29 1993 00:01:00
-- MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN, 56, real estate developer and publisher of the Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, and the New York Daily News:
THIS SEEMS like crunch time in the world's biggest auto market. Some $4 billion of new Japanese factories are starting up in Europe just as European carmakers are watching their own sales slide -- ...
The German automaker's $5.3 billion investment in Czechoslovakia's carmaker Skoda opens up the new and potentially huge Eastern European market, but it also may cost the company its planned comebac...
This could be the best time to buy into Germany Inc. The stock euphoria sparked by the breaching of the Berlin Wall is long gone. The true costs of reunification and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait ha...
IN THE 1990s, the battleground for leadership in the global auto industry will be not North America, not Asia -- but Western Europe. By overtaking the U.S. as the world's biggest market, Europe is ...
Watch Roger Charter, a double amputee, jog down a straightaway atop mechanical legs, and your mind reacts in stages. First, shock: This man, loping along, has metal and plastic where his legs and f...
ITS MOST CELEBRATED executive is an American (Chrysler's Lee A. Iacocca), its most prestigious brand is European (Mercedes-Benz), and its most feared competitors are the Japanese (many of them). On...
What can pull U.S. auto sales out of the slump? Prices for one thing. The weak dollar is starting to make American cars look like relative bargains. Safety may be another selling point. Maryann Kel...
FROM THE LUSH olive groves of Seville to the sprawling high-tech parks of Barcelona, Spain is blossoming into the industrial sunbelt of Europe. As a newcomer to the European Economic Community, the...
VOLKSWAGEN is starting to show its old zip again. Just two years ago the once indomitable West German builder of the Beetle was spinning its wheels. But in 1985, thanks largely to the success of it...
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|