News
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Trump’s 50% Canada Car Tariff Got a Three-Day Pause. The Fine Print Shows It Was Built to Tax Detroit’s Own Factories
For three days this week, Washington and Ottawa get to act like a trade crisis got solved. It didn’t. On August 18, the White House suspended a fresh round of tariffs on Canadian alcohol, dairy, and motor vehicles that were set to run as high as 50 percent. The suspension expires at 12:01 a.m. on…
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259 Plate Searches, Zero Warrants: A Cop Turned Traffic Cameras Into Her Personal Stalking Tool
There’s a dropdown menu inside the New Bedford Police Department’s Flock cameras terminal that asks why an officer is running a license plate. “Traffic infraction” is one of the options. Nothing downstream checks whether that’s true. That gap, not the officer now accused of exploiting it, is the real story out of Massachusetts this month.…
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Ford 1.0L EcoBoost Timing Belt Failures Trigger NHTSA Engineering Analysis
Ford’s little 1.0-liter three-cylinder has two rubber belts spinning around inside the crankcase, bathed in engine oil. One of them was recalled two years ago. Federal investigators have now decided the second one deserves the same scrutiny. On July 31, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation escalated its look at Ford’s 1.0L timing belt from a…
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A Mavis Manager Allegedly Helped Steal 438 Tires From His Own Store — and Somebody Else’s Security Cameras Ratted Him Out
Nobody broke into the Mavis Tires and Brakes on Chastain Meadows Parkway. Nobody had to. According to Cobb County court records, the man loading tires into a truck after hours simply had a manager waiting to let him in. That’s the detail that turns this from a small-time theft blotter item into something worth a…
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Hyundai’s First Full Strike in 10 Years Isn’t About Pay. It’s About a Law That Made Walking Out Basically Free.
Hyundai Motor’s assembly lines in Ulsan will sit completely still for eight hours this Friday. Plants pause for holidays, floods, and chip shortages all the time, so on its own that wouldn’t be news. What makes it news is that Hyundai’s union hasn’t called a full, all-day walkout since 2016. A decade of partial, symbolic…
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Used Cars Just Hit a Record $32,461 — and Your ‘Buy a Toyota, It Holds Value’ Advice Just Backfired
Buy a Toyota, the old advice goes. It holds its value. Three generations of car shoppers have heard some version of that line, usually from a parent, a mechanic, or a coworker who swears by their Corolla. It’s good advice if you’re the one selling. New data from Edmunds suggests it just became a trap…
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Tricolor Raised $1.9 Billion on Subprime Car Loans. The SEC Says Its Execs Pledged the Same Ones Twice
The SEC says Tricolor’s top executives pledged the same subprime car loans to more than one Wall Street bond deal. The fraud allegations matter less than what they reveal about how thin the verification is behind the entire subprime auto securitization market.
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America Didn’t Ban Polestar’s Factory. It Banned Its Owner.
Prestige Imports wants $25 million from Polestar, and its lawsuit reads like a straightforward betrayal story: a manufacturer that spent two years quietly planning its exit, then hid behind a federal ban to avoid paying for it. A New Jersey court will eventually decide whether that’s true. But underneath the lawsuit sits a stranger, more…
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31 Felony Charges Later, Georgia’s Tag Office Has One Very Awkward Question: Who Else Has Her Login?
Every title-fraud story The Auto Wire has covered shares one plot point: someone had to fool the person guarding the paperwork. A forged signature. A washed title mailed in from out of state. A dealer betting nobody would check the VIN twice. This case, out of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, skips that step entirely. According to…
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Blame Yourself: America Lets the Fastest Drivers Write the Speed Limits
AAA says speeding is the new normal. The deeper story is that America sets speed limits from how fast drivers already drive, and every new car already knows the number.
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Florida’s Flashy New ‘Super Speeder’ Law Grabbed the Headlines — a Forgotten 1971 Statute Grabbed the License
Quashay Frazier Jr. lost a drag race on the Buckman Bridge in Jacksonville on a Friday night. He did not lose his driver’s license because he was doing 120 mph. He lost it because he raced. That distinction sounds like a technicality. It isn’t. It’s the actual story here, and it’s the part almost nobody…
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McLaren Wants More US Dealerships. State Franchise Law Says Not So Fast
McLaren Wants More U.S. Stores. Franchise Law Is About to Get a Vote. Speaking at Monterey Car Week, McLaren CEO Nick Collins floated growing the brand’s American retail network by as much as 40 percent — somewhere between five and 10 additional stores over roughly two years — on the strength of the U.S. now…
