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Ford, Toyota clean up in Best Car For The Money Awards

The U.S. News Best Cars for the Money Awards picks winners by looking at the average transaction price, five-year total cost of ownership, the regard a car has from the automotive press, reliability figures from J.D. Power and Associates and safety data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The result, according to the magazine, is "the best combination of critical acclaim and long-term value."
Ford nabbed six of the 21 categories that received awards this year, the Focus, Fusion, Fusion Hybrid, Taurus, Escape and Edge getting trophies. Toyota and its Lexus and Scion sub-brands took another five, the Tacoma and Tundra owning the two categories given to pickup trucks. The other ten awards were split between Honda with three, Buick with two, and one each for Subaru, BMW, Hyundai, Chevrolet and Mazda.
Follow the link to see all the winners and read about why they were chosen.

Buick Velite is a not-so-Volt-like plug-in hybrid concept for China

Is the Buick Velite a Volt by any other name? That's a question worth asking after General Motors said that the Buick Velite concept vehicle will make its global debut at the Guangzhou Auto Show later this month. GM says the car "will provide a template for upcoming models being launched under the Buick Blue new energy vehicle strategy." Whether that means the Velite is a variant of the second-generation of the Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in is open to interpretation. Some automotive publications, including Autoweek, are saying that's the case, but GM China doesn't mention the Volt in its press release, only saying that the car is a "high-performance" plug-in hybrid vehicle. As we know, GM doesn't use the "PHEV" descriptor for the Volt, which makes us thing the Velite's powertrain is more like the Cadillac CT6 PHEV. Either way, the concept was developed by the Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC), which is a joint venture between GM and Shanghai-based SAIC. As far as the name, GM has been shopping the Velite moniker around for a while now. The automaker first used Buick Velite for the convertible concept vehicle it showed off at the 2004 New York Auto Show. More recently, GM in 2014 filed to use the name for the US variant of its Opel Cascada four-seat convertible model, which debuted in 2013. As for the second-generation version of the Volt, that model appears to be gaining favor in the US. Domestic sales of the Volt through October have surged 64 percent from a year earlier to more than 18,500 units. The new version boosted its all-electric range by 40 percent to 53 miles while increasing its power output by 20 percent. Related Video: News Source: General Motors via Autoweek, Automotive News-sub.req. Green Buick Chevrolet Electric Hybrid PHEV buick velite

GM recalls 2022 Cadillac XT5, XT6 and GMC Acadia for suspension issue

General Motors is recalling a relatively small number of 2022 Cadillac and GMC crossovers to address the potential for missing or loose rear suspension hardware that is being blamed on a lapse in quality control at the company's Spring Hill facility. The campaign covers 223 examples of the Cadillac XT5, 159 examples of the Cadillac XT6 and 354 examples of the GMC Acadia. "General Motors has decided that a defect, which relates to motor vehicle safety, exists in certain 2022 model year Cadillac XT5, XT6, and GMC Acadia vehicles," GM said in its defect report. "A fastener in the left-rear suspension toe link in some of these vehicles may not have been fully tightened during suspension assembly. After an assembly process was moved to a new area, error proofing equipment was not initially set up properly, which allowed a window where the operator might miss tightening certain fasteners without the failure being flagged." The issue was discovered by a quality engineer at the Spring Hill facility in March of this year, at which point GM conducted an audit to determine which and how many vehicles may have left the factory with improperly torqued or missing fasteners, narrowing down the recall population to the above 736 vehicles. No incidents associated with the defect have been reported in customer vehicles.  Related video: Recalls Buick Cadillac GM Ownership Safety