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The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Kia EV9 wins 2024 World Car of the Year and World Electric Car at New York Auto Show

The Hyundai Group refuses to release its kung-fu grip on winning prestigious vehicle awards, especially those for electric vehicles. In 2020, Kia took the overall World Car of the Year (WCOTY) title with the Telluride, won World Performance Car with the EV6 GT, and won the World Urban Car category with the Kia Soul EV. In 2021, after the Hyundai Group walked away with nothing but a free lunch, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 won the 2022 World Car of the Year laurels, plus World Electric Vehicle and World Car Design of the Year, followed in 2023 by the Hyundai Ioniq 6 winning the same three awards. Kia returns to the top step today, the new EV9 announced at the New York Auto Show as the 2024 World Car of the Year and World Electric Vehicle. Because the South Koreans like to do this in threes, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N won World Performance Car.  One hundred automotive scribes from 29 countries tested 38 vehicles for the main prize. The qualifications for entry are that a car must exceed 10,000 units in production annually, be on sale in at least two major global markets, and be priced below the luxury options in their respective regions. The EV9 beat the BYD Seal and the Volvo EX30 to the WCOTY title. Thirty-two cars vied for honors in the electric category, the EV9 outdoing the BMW i5 and the Volvo EX30. The German and the Swede aren't leaving New York with nothing, however, as the BMW 5 Series and i5 won the World Luxury Car title, and the EX30 won the World Urban Car trophy.  The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N outdid 16 other performance cars. We're sure there are engineers in Germany looking hard into their beer right now, the Ioniq 5 N pipping the M2 and XM to the victory circle.  The surprise of the bunch is the inclusion of the Toyota Prius, the global hybrid icon thrashing 70 other entries to win the 2024 World Car Design of the Year award. The other two finalists? The Ford Bronco and the Ferrari Purosangue. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Prius. 

Zombie cars: 9 discontinued vehicles that aren't dead yet

Car models come and go, but as revealed by monthly sales data, once a car is discontinued, it doesn't just disappear instantly. And in the case of some models, vanishing into obscurity can be a slow, tedious process. That's the case with the 12 cars we have here. All of them have been discontinued, but car companies keep racking up "new" sales with them. There are actually more discontinued cars that are still registering new sales than what we decided to include here. We kept this list to the oldest or otherwise most interesting vehicles still being sold as new, including a supercar. We'll run the list in alphabetical order, starting with *drumroll* ... BMW 6 Series: 55 total sales BMW quietly removed the 6 Series from the U.S. market during the 2019 model year. It had been available in three configurations, a hardtop coupe, a convertible and a sleek four-door coupe-like shape.   BMW i8: 18 total sales We've always had a soft spot for the BMW i8, despite the fact that it never quite fit into a particular category. It was sporty, but nowhere near as fast as similarly-priced competitors. It looked very high-tech and boasted a unique carbon fiber chassis design and a plug-in hybrid powertrain, but wasn't really designed for maximum efficiency or maximum performance. Still, the in-betweener was very cool to look at and drive, and 18 buyers took one home over the course of 2021.   Chevy Impala: 750 total sales The Impala represented classic American tastes at a time when American tastes were shifting away from soft-riding sedans with big interior room and trunk space and into higher-riding crossovers. A total of 750 sales were inked last year.   Chrysler 200: 15 total sales The Chrysler 200 was actually a pretty nice sedan, with good looks and decent driving dynamics let down by a lack of roominess, particularly in the back seat. Of course, as we said regarding the Chevy Impala, the number of Americans in the market for sedans is rapidly winding down, and other automakers are following Chrysler's footsteps in canceling their slow-selling four-doors. Even if Chrysler never really found its footing in the ultra-competitive midsize sedan segment, apparently dealerships have a few leftover 2017 200s floating around. And for some reason, 15 buyers decided to sign the dotted line to take one of these aging sedans home last year.