Joey Logano drafted past Jimmie Johnson with nine laps remaining to win the 2015 Daytona 500 in his Penske Racing Ford. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ The auto industry’s airbag crisis has claimed another casualty: Honda CEO Takanobu Ito, who will step aside for Takahiro Hachigo in April. More at The Detroit Bureau.
+ The U.S. government is now fining Japanese airbag maker Takata Corp. $14,000 per day for failing to cooperate in its safety investigations. More at The Detroit News.
+ Porsche’s all-electric Tesla fighter, tentatively known as the 717, could sport 600 horsepower and 300-mile range when it appears in 2019. More at Autoblog.com.
+ Joey Logano controlled the last nine laps and a green-white-checker finish to win the 2015 Daytona 500 for car owner Roger Penske. More at Fox Sports.
+ Yutaka Katayama, the Nissan executive who created the automaker’s American dealer network and is credited as the father of the Datsun 240Z, has passed away at 105. More at Car and Driver.
+ Hyundai will introduce the new 2016 Tucson sport utility vehicle at the Geneva Auto Show in Switzerland on March 3. More at the Detroit Free Press.
+ Series promoter WC Vision has announced a new three-year television deal for the Pirelli World Challenge with CBS Sports and Torque TV. More at Racer.
+ Cadillac offered a glimpse of its upcoming 2016 CT6 sedan in a oommercial aired during Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast. More at Road & Track.
+ The 2003 Buick Blackhawk concept is again headed for the auction block at the RM Sotheby’s Andrews collection sale May 2 in Fort Worth. More at Hemmings Daily.
+ Mercedes-Benz is recalling more than 147,000 sedans and station wagons from 2013-2015 to repair an engine compartment defect that could cause fires. More at Reuters.
+ NASCAR has denied the appeal of driver Kurt Busch, who was suspended indefinitely when a Delaware court implicated him in domestic violence against his former girlfriend. More at ESPN.
+ NASCAR star Kyle Busch, brother of Kurt Busch, could be sidelined for several months due to leg fractures sustained in an Xfinity series crash in Daytona. More at ABC Sports.
For the previous Executive Briefing from February 20, click here.
Sorry to hear about Yutaka Katayama’s death. he was a car guy. When Toyota ran back to Japan after their failure in the US market in the early Sixties, Datsun pressed on and established a stronghold for Japanese manufacturers. Mazda seems to built their entire US presence around Mr. K’s philosophy. I owned both a 510 and a 240Z and they were better than the BMWs and Jaguars of the era.
When Datsun became Nissan and fought to regain the sales lead from Toyota, they became just another car company but for it marked the owner as an iconoclast similar to the Saab owner.