2004 Volkswagen Phaeton W12 Sedan 4-door 6.0l on 2040-cars

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Volkswagen continues hunt for new chairman

Volkswagen is going to need a new chairman. And the question is not only who that will be, but when he or she will be selected. The German automaker held its Annual General Meeting in Hannover yesterday, the first in a baker's dozen years without Ferdinand Piech presiding as chairman. The gavel was wielded instead by Berthold Huber, a labor representative on the board who was named as interim chair. Piech was ousted along with his wife Ursula (who also sat on the board) after a failed attempt to push out Martin Winterkorn as CEO. According to Winterkorn, in speaking with Reuters in an article published by Automotive News, the industrial giant is working hard at finding a new chairman in short order. "The executive committee and the supervisory board are working hard to swiftly resolve the remaining issues with regard to the composition of the supervisory bodies in the best possible manner," Winterkorn said. The publication's German counterpart, however, paints a different picture. Speaking with Stephan Weil, the president of Lower Saxony who sits on the board as a shareholder representative, Automobilwoche says Volkswagen is in no rush to name a new chairman. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. What is clear, however, is that the new chairman will need broad support from the company's labor representatives as well as its shareholders – including the Porsche and Piech families and government representatives from Lower Saxony and Qatar. Porsche Automobil Holding SE holds 50.7 percent of the company's shares, the State of Lower Saxony another 20 percent, Qatar 17 percent and the remaining 12.3 percent by other shareholders. Some have speculated that Winterkorn could be promoted to the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board, but could end up having his term as chief executive (and chairman of the managing board) extended instead, with the chairmanship going to another candidate. Related Video:

Recharge Wrap-up: VW Caddy TGI BlueMotion, VR tour of Tesla Model X

Take a 360-degree virtual tour of the Tesla Model X. Best viewed in the YouTube app on your smartphone, the video above - courtesy of Canadian Press Video News – allows you to look around the inside of the Model X as though you were sitting inside it. While you're viewing it, keep in mind Tesla CEO Elon Musk's words about virtual reality: "It's quite transformative. You really feel like you're there." See the video above, and read more at Teslarati. LG Chem's batteries for the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan will be the Korean company's first time engineering and manufacturing a complete battery pack in Michigan for a volume production North American plug-in hybrid. The packs include lithium-ion cells, electronics and control units. The batteries were engineered at LG Chem's Troy, Michigan facility, and will be built at the company's Holland, Michigan plant. "Our experience with entire battery packs, including cell design and manufacturing capability, as well as our expertise in vehicle integration, makes us the ideal battery supplier for the Pacifica Hybrid," says LGCPI CEO Denise Gray. "We believe our technical strengths, engineering and manufacturing expertise, position us as a leading battery and control system provider for electric vehicles today and in the future." Read more at Green Car Congress. Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles will debut its Caddy TGI BlueMotion van at the Geneva Motor Show. The van, which is suited to family, taxi or city delivery use, can run on CNG or bio-natural gas in addition to gasoline. It also features a six-speed DSG dual-clutch transmission – a first in its class. The multiple high-pressure tanks for compressed gas are located under the floor, preserving all the Caddy's precious cargo space. A TGI version of the Caddy Alltrack will also be available, initially with a six-speed manual transmission, with the DSG option arriving in the middle of 2016. Read more at Green Car Congress, and in the press release below.

Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.