2003 Cadillac Deville on 2040-cars

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GM CEO to meet with U.S. lawmakers over job cuts

WASHINGTON — General Motors Co Chief Executive Mary Barra plans to visit Capitol Hill next week to discuss the company's plans to halt production at five plants in North America next year and cut up to 15,000 jobs, two congressional aides said on Friday. GM has come under harsh criticism from lawmakers from both major political parties, and from President Donald Trump, since Monday when it announced the biggest restructuring for the U.S. No. 1 carmaker since its bankruptcy a decade ago. Barra is expected to meet with lawmakers from Michigan and Ohio, where GM plans to shutter three plants, as well as senior leaders in Congress. GM did not immediately comment. Barra has been calling lawmakers this week to explain the decision to end production. Trump has threatened to revoke subsidies for GM. The Detroit automaker plans to halt production next year at three assembly plants: the Lordstown small-car factory near Youngstown, Ohio; the Detroit-Hamtramck complex in Detroit; and the Oshawa, Ontario, assembly complex near Toronto. It will also stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Chevrolet Volt hybrid, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse. Additionally, GM plans to shutter the Warren transmission plant outside Detroit and a plant that makes electric motors and drivetrains outside Baltimore, Maryland. The Cruze compact car will be discontinued in the U.S. market in 2019, although GM may continue building it in Mexico for other markets, Barra said. Reporting by David Shepardson. Related Video:

Economy-car buyers increasingly get the best deal on technology

One of the great things about technology is – with the exception of Apple products – consumers get more for their money every year. For example, the first 1GB USB drive I bought in 2005 cost me $30. Today you can get 10 for that price, delivered to your door thanks to Amazon. The same goes for car tech. Features such as navigation and Bluetooth started out on high-end vehicles before trickling down to entry-level cars. Same with driver assist features ranging from rearview cameras to forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking — so now it's not only rich people who are protected in car crashes. I've found that this democratization of tech has reached a point where amenities on low-cost cars can be as good — and sometimes even better — than those on vehicles costing tens of thousands of dollars more. While attending a media event for the launch of the all-new 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback, I was impressed by the car's cool styling and go-kart performance. Equally noteworthy is the amount of standard tech on the low-cost hot hatch. (Pricing will be announced later this month, but expect it to come in a bit higher that the current Corolla iM's roughly $19,000 base.) Even the base SE CVT trim of the 2019 Corolla Hatchback comes with an 8-inch touchscreen and Toyota's Entune 3.0 infotainment system. Among other features, Entune 3.0 provides Wi-Fi capability, Amazon Alexa connectivity, the Entune App Suite for integration of smartphone apps such as Pandora and Yelp and, for the first time in a Toyota, Apple CarPlay (but no Android Auto). The 2019 Corolla Hatchback is also the first North American vehicle to get the second-generation Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) suite of driver assists that's also standard on the base model. TSS 2.0 includes Toyota's Pre-Collision System (forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking) with new daytime and low-light pedestrian detection and daytime cyclist detection features, lane keeping and lane departure alert with steering assist, auto high beams, adaptive cruise control, and road sign detection. While the 2019 Corolla Hatchback sets a new benchmark in standard tech on a budget-mobile, competing cars aren't far behind. The 2018 Honda Fit LX, for example, includes forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning and assist and adaptive cruise, while the automaker's Lane Departure Mitigation and Lane Watch camera system is added the two top trims.

Why does this Cadillac fob seem to be for a mid-engine roadster?

Is GM bringing back its Caddied-up Corvette sibling, the Cadillac XLR — only this time based on the mid-engine Corvette? That's the question posed by photos of a wedge-shaped Cadillac key fob someone provided to The Drive. The buttons show a trunk — and also a frunk. So, mid-engine, unless the fob goes with an EV that has its motors and other electrical bits scattered to the wheels and elsewhere. Also, there's a button to operate a droptop. And the car profile on the fob is Corvette-like. All of which makes for some pretty great speculation. Except that Cadillac's way back from the failures of its sedan-centric lineup was thought to be through SUVs such as the new XT4 compact crossover, the XT5 and the somewhere-in-testing three-row XT6. Plus, the XLR, which was produced between 2003 and 2009, hit its sales peak in 2005 of just 3,730 cars, or about one-tenth the sales volume of the Corvette. So it's hard to imagine there's a vast untapped market out there for the luxury roadster — plus the XLR's demographic of well-to-do grandpas is dying off, or at least thinks it is. So a resurrected XLR would seem to be an unlikely savior. A lot's happening with GM's luxury brand — the debut of the XT4 at long last, a new boss, a thinning of the sedan herd but expansion of the V's, a backtrack to Detroit after its New York sojourn, the cash-cow Escalade under direct assault from the fine new Lincoln Navigator, and the impressive performance of its Super Cruise technology. But an XLR? So what is this fob's story? The Drive speculates it's a universal test fob and the buttons don't necessarily mean a thing, or that somebody stuck a Caddy emblem on it just to yank our chains. Who's to say. What would you like it to mean? Related Video: