2006 Chrysler Pt Cruiser Base Wagon 4-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Automakers, dealers are rushing cars to Houston after Harvey

DETROIT — Houston-area car retailers and automakers are rushing to reopen dealerships and beef up inventory to replace many hundreds of thousands of vehicles damaged in flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Pete DeLongchamps, vice president for manufacturer relations at Group 1 Automotive, the third-largest U.S. auto dealer group, said the company prepared for the storm with a plan designed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This included moving moved inventory to higher ground and cleaning roof drains to avoid cave-ins. Group 1 thus lost a "relatively small percentage" of inventory and reopened its roughly 25 dealerships in the Houston and Beaumont area by Thursday. "Things have been moving fast and furious with a large number of tow-ins already," DeLongchamps said. "Our customers have lost a lot of vehicles, we need to help them replace." Harvey brought record flooding to Houston and killed at least 35 people. The storm is expected to briefly depress already slowing U.S. auto sales but could eventually help boost demand as damaged cars are replaced. Automakers report U.S. August sales on Friday. Estimates for the number of Harvey-damaged vehicles needing replacement range up to 500,000. By Thursday, AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto retail chain, had reopened its 17 Houston stores and is moving cars and trucks from other regions, company spokesman Marc Cannon said. The company plans to move 500 to 1,000 used cars to an AutoNation USA used car store and stage a sale Sept. 21-23, when many would-be buyers should have insurance checks to replace destroyed vehicles, Cannon said. AutoNation is still assessing how many vehicles it lost, but it too moved vehicles to higher ground ahead of the storm. General Motors spokesman Jim Cain said the number of damaged vehicles at dealerships "is relatively modest." "But there are still several dealerships that are inaccessible, so the number will increase," he said. GM will move new and used vehicles to Houston, "but it won't be done until the infrastructure and our dealers are ready." Ford is still assessing damage and inventory needs, a spokeswoman said. CarMax, the biggest U.S. used car dealer, will reopen its six Houston area stores on Labor Day, spokeswoman Claire Hunter said. "We are mobilizing additional inventory to the region as we speak," Hunter said. Paul Lips, chief operating officer at ADESA, a unit of KAR Auction Services Inc., which with Manheim dominates the U.S.

Watch the mechanical symphony of the Chrysler 200 build process

For those of you who can't get enough of the 2015 Chrysler 200, The Pentastar put together a short video following its new sedan down the line at its Sterling Heights Assembly Plant. As with the best new-baby albums, you'll see it take its first bath, be doted on by family members, put on its first pair of shoes and get all dressed up for an introduction to the world.
The only thing missing are its first words. You can follow it down the line in the video below.

Stellantis, GM pay $363 million in U.S. fuel economy penalties

WASHINGTON — Stellantis and General Motors paid a total of $363 million in civil penalties for failing to meet U.S. fuel economy requirements for prior model years, documents seen on Friday by Reuters show. The record-setting penalties include $235.5 million for Stellantis for the 2018 and 2019 model years and $128.2 million for GM covering 2016 and 2017, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which administers the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program. Stellantis — which also owns Fiat, Peugeot and other marques — said the penalty "reflects past performance recorded before the formation of Stellantis, and is not indicative of the companyÂ’s direction." Stellantis previously paid a total of $156.6 million in penalties for the 2016 and 2017 model years. GM said Friday as "we work towards the goal of a zero-emissions future, we may use a combination of credits from prior model years, expected credits from future model years, credits obtained from other manufacturers, and payment of civil penalties to comply with increasingly stringent CAFE regulations." GM, which sells Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles in the U.S., had not previously paid a fine in the 40-year history of the CAFE program. It had initially planned to use credits to meet its compliance shortfall but opted to pay penalties, NHTSA said. The GM and Stellantis penalties were paid between December and May, according to the records. This is the first time in three years the agency has collected fuel economy penalties. NHTSA in April 2022 said it calculated there would be 11 instances between 2018 and 2021 "where substantial civil penalty payments will have to be made," but did not disclose the automakers involved. The disclosure comes ahead of NHTSA's plan to soon propose more stringent fuel economy standards for 2027 and beyond, after the Environmental Protection Agency in April proposed a 56% reduction in projected fleet average emissions over 2026 requirements by 2032. Sharp increase The EPA said in December Stellantis had the lowest real-world fuel economy among all major automakers, at 21.3 miles per gallon on average in 2021, while GM was second-lowest at 21.6 mpg. In March 2022, NHTSA reinstated a sharp increase in penalties for automakers whose vehicles do not meet fuel efficiency requirements for 2019 and beyond.