Dodge Durango owners lost their class-action lawsuit over their not-so-limited edition 2021 Hellcats. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ The iSeeCars 2026 list of 10 most reliable cars is topped by the Honda Civic, followed by the Toyota Corolla, Mazda3 Hatchback, Volkswagen Jetta, and the Honda Accord. More at Autoblog.
+ BYD’s vehicle sales fell by 30.1 percent in January from a year earlier, the fifth straight month of decline, as the Chinese EV maker faces stiff competition at home. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ Industry Minister Melanie Joly says the Canadian government will seek to recover money from General Motors after it eliminated 500 jobs at the Oshawa, Ontario plant. More at The Detroit News.
+ Joined by IndyCar series owner Roger Penske, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prepare for an IndyCar race in the streets of Washington, D.C. this summer. More at Fox News.
+ Ford disclosed it will report a pretax loss of $600 million in its fourth-quarter results related to its pension costs and other post-retirement employee benefit (OPEB) plans. More at the Detroit Free Press.
+ The 2026 Lexus LC coupe and convertible will be the last of their kind, as a dealer letter confirmed that production of the luxury touring cars will be wound up in August. More at Car and Driver.
+ The U.S. Department of Transportation announced it plans to propose rolling back fuel economy standards for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans established in the Biden era. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Dodge Durango owners lost their class-action lawsuit against Stellantis over their not-so-limited edition 2021 Hellcats when a judge ruled the company showed no intent to mislead. More at The Drive.
+ Ford has named its longtime executive Lisa Drake to serve as president of Ford Energy, marking a formal launch of the automaker’s battery energy storage systems business. More at CBT News.
+ Historic snowfall in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area has forced NASCAR to again postpone the Cook Out Clash at Bowman-Gray Stadium until Wednesday, Feb. 4. More at Motorsport.com.
Photo courtesy of Stellantis.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from January 30 here.
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The long overdue house cleaning at Ford comes about a decade too late. Priorityzing diverserty over safety and engineering resulted in more recalls than product sold.
BTW, the NTSB & NHTSA working together on anything, such as looking into the outbreak of self drivers ignoring school buses in Texas, was almost unheared of in the past. Now when Tesla Autopilot or Waymo self drivers are involved in “serious crashes”, the NTSB investigates to determine the systemic cause, while NHTSA simultaneously investigates for potential defects in the technology. What a black hole for resources…
For those in the back, self drivers are trained on human data, created by humans, searched by human code, annotated by human beings. It’s not magic..
A decent house cleaning at Ford has not happened since Evangeline Cote
According to Find A Grave:
“In 1927 Evangeline was the first woman licensed pilot in Michigan. She was a good marksman with both a rifle and a handgun, an expert horsewoman, and the tri-state women’s harness racing champion. She was feminine but wore pants suits in the 1940s when they were not yet in fashion. In one newspaper obituary she was referred to as the first woman executive at Ford Motor Company”…