News
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This ‘Trading Floor’ For New Cars Just Went Bankrupt. Federal Records Show It Wasn’t Even Legally Cleared To Move Its Own Inventory
Somewhere between the factory and your local dealership’s lot, thousands of brand-new cars change hands a second time, dealer to dealer, sight unseen, before a single customer ever sees them. Almost no car buyer knows this market exists. For more than two decades, a Louisville company called Dealer Trade Network built its entire business inside…
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Chrysler Just Won a Warranty Lawsuit Without Anyone Ever Checking Its Math
A Dodge Ram 1500 in New York spent 105 days in the shop under warranty. Nobody at Chrysler wrote down that those 105 days should have pushed the truck’s coverage back by 105 days, too. Seven states have laws that say they should have. A federal judge in Detroit just made sure the country won’t…
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This South Carolina ‘Widowmaker’ Tree Already Had a Body Count and a Nickname. Then It Killed Four More People In One Night.
Long before the early morning of November 18, 2023, people on James Island, South Carolina had already given a stretch of Riverland Drive two separate nicknames. The tight bend leading up to a massive grand oak was known locally as “dead man’s curve.” The tree itself had been called “the Widowmaker” for years, tied to…
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Sunroofs Are Shattering All Over America. Turns Out No One Ever Required Them Not To.
Nearly 500 sunroofs have shattered on American roads so far this year, putting 2026 on pace to set a record. Look back further and the number gets stranger: NHTSA has logged nearly 2,800 reports of spontaneous sunroof failures since 2021, touching 17 different automakers and more than 200 models. None of that volume has produced…
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Court Approves Hertz Deal Widening Rental Options for Drivers Using Hand Controls
On August 21, Judge Maxine M. Chesney granted final approval to a class settlement that reshapes how the largest rental brand in America handles drivers who operate a car with their hands instead of their feet. The case is Ho, et al. v. The Hertz Corporation, No. 3:24-cv-01066-MMC, filed in the Northern District of California…
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Nissan Called July a “Growth” Story. Its Own Numbers Show China Production Collapsing by Two-Thirds
Nissan put out a press release this week headlined “Nissan continues to see growth in key markets, in Japan and the U.S.” That’s not spin, exactly. It’s true, as far as it goes. Four paragraphs down, in a table most readers will never scroll to, sits the number that actually matters: production in China fell…
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Mitsubishi Recalled 67,146 Outlanders Over a Vanishing Backup Camera. At This Point, It’s Basically a Seasonal Event.
Mitsubishi is recalling 67,146 Outlanders and Outlander PHEVs to fix a rearview camera that, according to the automaker’s own paperwork, probably isn’t broken in 66,475 of them. That gap between “recalled” and “actually defective” is the first clue that this story isn’t really about a camera. It’s about what happens when a crossover starts running…
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It Took Polestar Three Recalls and 21 Months to Fix a Backup Camera. The Camera Was Never Broken
Three recalls. Twenty-one months. One rearview camera that kept failing anyway. If that sounds like a story about a car that couldn’t reliably show you what’s behind it, you’re reading the headline, not the story. The real subject here is what happens when a federally required safety system gets built as software instead of hardware,…
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What Grok Can Really Do in Your Tesla After the Summer Update
Tesla’s Summer Update did something the company has been circling for a year: it let Grok touch the car. Tesla’s release notes for 2026.26 put it plainly, saying the assistant can now make phone calls, play music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Tesla’s support page goes a bit further, listing navigation, calls, music…
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A Texas Restoration Shop Promised Better Engines. It Delivered a 60-Year Prison Sentence Instead
A Galveston County judge has handed down one of the harshest sentences ever seen in an automotive fraud case. Richard Thomas Finley, former owner of Classic American Street Rods in the San Leon-Bacliff area, will spend 60 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of felony theft exceeding $300,000. Prosecutors say Finley ran…
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Toyota’s $283.7M Vietnam Expansion Is a Hybrid Plan, Not an EV Plant
Toyota just put another $283.7 million into Vietnam, and the paperwork that made it official is more interesting than the number. On August 28, the People’s Committee of Phú Thọ province handed Toyota Motor Vietnam an amended investment policy decision, and the provincial Department of Finance issued the 12th revision of the company’s investment registration…
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BYD’s Profit Jumped 30% While Sales Fell — Turns Out That Was the Plan
BYD wants the world to read this week’s earnings as an export success story. Look past the headline number, though, at the two figures that actually moved, and a different story shows up: a company that got tired of fighting the price war it started, and decided that making less money on fewer cars was…
