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Bosch fined $57.8 million by DOJ for price fixing and bid rigging

The US Department of Justice has been investigating bid rigging and price fixing among automotive parts suppliers for years, and so far the agency has leveled nearly $2.5 billion in fines against 34 companies. The latest business to be caught in this ongoing crackdown is Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch), the world's largest independent auto component maker, and it agrees to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine to the Feds. According to the DOJ, Bosch has agreed to plead guilty to pricing fixing and bid rigging for spark plugs and oxygen sensors supplied to the former DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors. The rigging is said to have occurred between January 2000 and July 2011. Bosch also allegedly played foul with starter motors sold to Volkswagen from January 2009 until at least June 2010. Bosch and other companies allegedly conspired on the pricing for bids to submit to automakers, and sold the parts at noncompetitive prices. The DOJ filed a one-count felony charge in US District Court for these actions. The company's plea is still subject to court approval, though. Bosch is only the third European company to be charged in this investigation, according to the DOJ. So far, many of the fined businesses have been from Japan, including Takata, NGK and others. Some execs have claimed price-fixing has been the standard operating procedure in the auto parts industry for a long time. Robert Bosch GmbH Agrees to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing and Bid Rigging on Automobile Parts Installed in U.S. Cars Robert Bosch GmbH, the world's largest independent parts supplier to the automotive industry, based in Gerlingen, Germany, has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for spark plugs, oxygen sensors and starter motors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced today. According to the one-count felony charge filed today in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, Bosch conspired to allocate the supply of, rig bids for, and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of, spark plugs and oxygen sensors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers such as DaimlerChrysler AG, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Company and Andreas Stihl AG & Co., among others, in the United States and elsewhere.

More 2015 Chrysler 200 photos surface

Just 24 hours after the first official 2015 Chrysler 200 shot made its way onto the web, a whole smattering of images have surfaced, courtesy of the folks at Motorward. Here, we can see the new Chrysler family sedan from every angle, including the interior, and might we say, she's pretty.
As we told you yesterday, the new 200 will be offered with either a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine with 184 horsepower and 173 pound-feet of torque or a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 with 295 hp and 262 lb-ft. A nine-speed automatic transmission accessed through Chrysler's rotary shifter (mounted on a Volvo-style floating center console) will direct power to the wheels. We've heard that both front- and all-wheel drive will be available, and what's more, it's been said that the new 200 will be able to achieve at least 35 miles per gallon on the highway.
An on-sale date has yet to be announced, but the new 200 will reportedly be priced at $21,700, not including $995 for destination. Have a look at the new round of photos in the gallery above - the striking blue model above looks to be the sportier 200S - and stay tuned for the officially official stuff early next week... if not sooner.

Chrysler 300C gets Sport Appearance Package option

In 2017, Chrysler added the option of a Sport Appearance Package to the sporty trim level of the 300 sedan, the 300S. The package added trim pieces from the hot-blooded 300 SRT sedan that we don't get in the U.S., namely the front fascia with LED foglights and SRT-style side skirts. Mopar Insiders reports that as of this month, the same upgrade is available on the top-level 300C trim as the Performance Appearance Package. Whereas the Sport Appearance Package on the V6-powered S model costs $1,795; the 300C's Performance Appearance Package is said to cost $695. We're sure Chrysler knows this isn't the performance upgrade that U.S. 300 buyers want. For reasons best known inside Chrysler, only Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East get the 300 SRT and its 6.4-liter V8 with 469 horsepower and 469 pound-feet of torque, limited-slip differential, Bilstein dampers, and Brembo brakes. It's possible the absence of the 300 SRT here is because Chrysler wants North American audiences to see Dodge as the performance brand. At this point, however, anyone intending to buy a 300 should be happy the four-door is still on sale. The model is eight years old and hasn't been the subject of anything close to hard news since last September. That's when Automotive News Canada said the car would die in 2020 to make room for the six-passenger Portal concept. The last hard nugget before that was in 2016, when the late Sergio Marchionne told Reuters the 300 could go front-wheel drive on the Pacifica platform — a fate arguably worse than killing the car. Now all we have is rumor and speculation, such as when Road & Track writes a "major refresh [is] ... supposedly being planned already," and sees a possibility that the 300/Charger/Challenger trio live into the next decade. The moral of the story is: The 300's irons could be as hot as they're ever going to get right now. FCA hasn't announced the upgrade package, but Mopar Insider says dealers can get it right now, order code AJU.