Here are the car news stories you might have missed this week.
Happy Black Friday! With it being the week of Thanksgiving in the United States, not as much has been going on in the automotive industry. Still, we have a few interesting stories from this relatively quiet period.
Learn why a muscle car theft ring went postal here.
1. Ford recalls F-150s.
Over 550,000 Ford F-150s sold in the United States and Canada are getting recalled, all of them from the 2021 and 2022 model years. The problem is a windshield wiper motor that can suddenly stop working. That’s not good if you’re in inclement weather and can’t see. Recall notices are going out, but you can check for any recalls on your vehicle by going to the NHTSA site.
Read about the recall here.
2. The electric Fiat 500e is back.
You’re forgiven if you didn’t know it existed or didn’t know it had left this market, but the Fiat 500e is coming back to North America. That announcement was made during the Los Angeles Auto Show by Olivier Francois, CEO of Fiat and CMO global of Stellantis. Unless you’re a hip urbanite with no kids, this announcement will probably make zero impact on your life. However, Fiat has its sights set on those affluent DINKs (double income, no kids).
Read the official press release here.
3. Vietnamese cars sneak into the US.
Plenty of people have been nervously speculating when Chinese automakers will try actually selling cars in the United States, but in the meantime Vietnamese automaker Vinfast has found a backdoor. The EV brand will supply 2,500 vehicles to Autonomy, a US car subscription service. Likely the hope is people who don’t want to own a car, hence why they use a car subscription, will tell those who do how great Vinfast is and interest will spread. Seems like a dubious plan but we’ll see how it fleshes out. Oh, and Vinfast is planning to open a factory in North Carolina, so it absolutely wants to be selling cars to Americans one way or another.
In the meantime, learn more here.
Image via Ford
