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CES 2020 and Carlos Ghosn | Autoblog Podcast #609

Welcome to a new decade of the Autoblog Podcast. In this week's episode, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor Alex Kierstein and Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder. First they talk about their early impressions of CES 2020 in Las Vegas, in particular how interesting Sony's Vision-S Concept is. Then they talk about the intriguing saga and daring escape of former Nissan boss and global fugitive Carlos Ghosn. After that, they turn their attention to what they've been driving, including the Genesis G70, Chevy Blazer and Hyundai Santa Fe. Finally, they help a listener pick a new fun toy to replace an unloved Porsche Cayman in the "Spend My Money" segment. Autoblog Podcast #609 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown CES 2020 And that excellent Sony Vision-S Concept What's going on with Carlos Ghosn? Cars we're driving:2020 Genesis G70 2.0T Sport RWD 2020 Chevrolet Blazer Premier AWD 2020 Hyundai Santa Fe 2.0T AWD Spend My Money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video:

GM invests $24 million to build more crew cab trucks in Fort Wayne

The full-size pickup truck arms race continues unabated here in the United States as Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler battle back and forth for sales supremacy. The Ford F-Series of trucks continues to lead the field in sales (214,611 units sold through the first quarter of 2019), but the race for second place has been a lot more interesting to watch. That's because Ram, long a distant third in truck sales, eked its way past Chevrolet late in 2018 and has managed to hold the position so far in 2019. Don't take this to mean that sales of GM's trucks have been poor across the board. In fact, the automaker reports that sales of its four-door crew cab pickups are up 20 percent in 2019 over the same period a year ago. And that's what makes GM's announcement today so interesting. The automaker is investing $24 million into its assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana to build more Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, and the focus will continue to be on crew cab models. "We are building Chevrolet and GMC crew cab pickups at record volume and mix levels to meet customer demand and the $24 million investment will allow us to build even more," said GM chief Mary Barra in a statement. "Crew cab sales have been very strong, and we are expanding customer choice with new models, more cab choices and innovative new powertrains." It's worth noting that, if crew cab sales are up 20% this year, but overall sales are down (over 15% for Silverado and around 2% for GMC), that means it's the cheaper regular cab and double cab models that are lagging. At the same time, sales of the midsize Chevy Colorado have surged 16%. And finally, if you combine sales of the Silverado and Sierra into one bucket, GM still has a comfortable lead over Ram overall. If there's a takeaway here, it's that trucks of all shapes and sizes have been, currently are and will surely remain hot in America, and automakers will continue to invest money into making sure they are able to satiate consumer demand.

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.