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LOS ANGELES — Give Hyundai credit for courage.

The new Santa Cruz adventure vehicle now rolling into showrooms faces a U.S. market that has not been kind to small, car-based trucks with quirky styling — among them, the Dodge Rampage from 1980s and the Subaru Baja from the 2000s.

And tougher still, the Santa Cruz is coming to market just as a mighty competitor, the new Ford Maverick, goes into production. The Ford is also a crossover-based vehicle, but one that looks like it's ready for tougher jobs.

For all of Hyundai's "adventure vehicle" marketing and deliberate avoidance of the truck moniker, the Santa Cruz is a compact pickup, and so is the Maverick, though they may be intended for different audiences.

The Santa Cruz can handle 6-foot surfboards or mountain bikes with the cargo bed's tailgate up, and a 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood or an adult-sized motorcycle with the tailgate down, according to a Hyundai presentation. It can also tow up to …

Loyal Final Assembly readers might remember the story this month of a Chevrolet service technician who took a customer's Corvette on a high-speed joyride that was unknowingly captured on video. The dealership, Fremont Chevrolet in California, agreed to give the car's owner an extended service contract to make up for it, and the situation seemed to have been resolved amicably.

But the store's owner, Inder Dosanjh, ended up going much further than that. He's taking back the customer's Corvette and giving him a brand-new 2022 model instead.

"After I saw the video, I felt this is the right thing to do," Dosanjh told The Drive last week. "I heard it, and then it was worse when I saw it. Until you see things, sometimes, you don't really understand them."

The customer, identified only as Michael, met with the general manager and placed a new order with General Motors. He even was able to get a few options that his 2021 model was missing.

Dosanjh said h…

LOS ANGELES — Hyundai continues its heavy emphasis on new product as it gains U.S. market share and pledges to become a leader in hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell technology.

The Korean brand's approach going forward is to accelerate an "all of the above" philosophy to its vehicle lineup and trim offerings to take market share from Asian rivals such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

Unlike some other automakers, Hyundai is generally sticking with its core passenger cars in the coming years, along with an expanded crossover lineup and the launch this fall of its EV subbrand, Ioniq.

For the 2022 model year, there's a new rugged XRT appearance trim for crossovers and an expansion of the track-ready N performance package to more models.

Accent: The subcompact sedan will return for 2022 with minimal changes. When Hyundai rolled out the entry-level Venue subcompact crossover in 2019, the automaker said it would con…

Frederick "Fritz" Hitchcock, a high-profile California dealer who took an active role in the state's politics and advocated free trade, died Aug. 14 after a fall the day prior. He was 81.

A dealer since 1971, he was CEO of Hitchcock Automotive Resources, a holding company that he founded in 1979 in City of Industry, Calif., to oversee his growing automotive empire that at points included stores representing Toyota, BMW, Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen brands.

Hitchcock started as a Ford dealer. "He would bring home order sheets and ordered cars at his desk at home," recalled his son, Ted Hitchcock, now general manager at Northridge Toyota. "He had a passion for this business, and he liked to say he was a student of the game."

After the gasoline crisis hit in the early 1970s and Ford sales tumbled at his Southern California store, the elder Hitchcock was introduced to the Toyota brand. He took a chance with the promise to be on the grou…

It’s especially tough to climb the corporate ladder while working down in your basement.

This year’s class of Automotive News Rising Stars kept advancing while having to build relationships with clients over Zoom calls. And, refreshingly, with more flexibility to focus on their personal lives, too.

They have helped keep North American automakers and suppliers running smoothly through unprecedented rockiness for the industry and in their own lives during the pandemic. 

They possess the ability to adapt quickly, constantly finding innovative ways to overcome ever-changing obstacles, to serve customers virtually and to foster collaboration among co-workers they hadn’t been in the same room with for months.

Some came to the auto industry in search of a more-fulfilling second career. Several dreamed of working with cars as they grew up in other parts of the world.

Many are tasked with forging a path into the world of electrification, a po…

Retail veteran Tammy Darvish quietly departed AutoCanada Inc. this year after leading its U.S. division since 2019, when she was tasked with turning around its previously struggling Illinois stores.

"I just kind of felt like I completed my mission," said Darvish, AutoCanada's former president of U.S. operations. She is taking some time off before deciding on her next step.

The dealership group, based in Edmonton, Alberta, said in April that it had tapped James Douvas, a 20-year veteran of automotive retail in the Chicago area, to become its vice president of U.S. operations. He has now effectively taken over for Darvish, reporting directly to top executives in Canada, as was evidenced by his role on the second-quarter earnings call this month.

Darvish, one of Automotive News' 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry in 2020 and 2010 and a former executive at DARCARS in Maryland, was tasked with restructuring and rebranding the group's Illino…

First created to usher in a fully autonomous era of driving, lidar technology is now a cornerstone of the emerging driver-assist market. And lidar companies are drawing the attention of customers — and perhaps equally importantly, investors — as they race to make their systems better and less expensive.

Old stalwarts and newcomers to the field alike are benefiting from the industry's embrace of lidar sensors for driver-assist systems. The near-term plans for lidar to reach mass production for assist systems should give lidar companies the revenue they need while waiting for the self-driving era that's still years in the future.

"We're seeing a lot of these lidars getting down into designs intended for volume production, where they can get a price point at less than $500 per unit in the next few years," said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Guidehouse Insights. "We're seeing those being adopted in sub- robotaxi applications."

In March, Honda…

NEW YORK — After a foray into the countryside to test the off-road prowess of the Jeep Wagoneer, I was on a freeway heading back to Manhattan in its swankier counterpart, the Grand Wagoneer.

The massaging seats were hard at work, the McIntosh sound system was blaring, and the tri-pane sunroof let plenty of natural light into the expansive interior as I maneuvered through a construction zone that temporarily cut traffic to one lane.

The hefty Grand Wagoneer, with a smooth ride that belied its size, felt like a rolling living room. And it happened to be driving itself.

My hands were on the wheel, but the active driving-assist technology was doing all of the work. The vehicle features Level 2 automation that combines lane-centering with adaptive cruise control. The system, which uses sensors, radar and cameras, "dictates the appropriate roads for the technology" to engage on, Jeep says.

Jeep eventually plans to offer a hands-free version.

The…

TOKYO — Not too long ago, Nissan was wrestling with what to do about its iconic Z car.

Sports cars are a shrinking niche in a market conquered by crossovers. Then there is the industry's new obsession with all things electric, and Nissan's considerable financial woes don't help either.

Splurging to invest in a rubber-peeling internal-combustion car — especially one that seats just two people — seemed a bit out of sync, if not outright overindulgent.

But instead of hitting the brakes, Nissan Motor Co. has doubled down to make the seventh-generation Z car the most powerful in the line's history, a fire-breathing, twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 speedster that delivers 400 hp and plenty of old-school street cred for petrol-head purists.

For Nissan, which has been struggling to reignite brand excitement amid waves of red ink and falling sales, keeping the Z alive was an almost spiritual imperative for rebooting the entire company.…