Trade News

British exotic automaker McLaren Americas has signed on with Chase Auto as its exclusive banking partner, both companies said Monday.

Chase will finance loans and leases for the automaker and is the banking partner through which the manufacturer disseminates customer incentives, according to the agreement.

The relationship will focus on McLaren's leasing business, which is a key component of the automaker's long-term strategy to open the brand to consumers at different price points.

McLaren had a corporate financial arrangement with J.P. Morgan Chase before inking this private-label agreement. Creating a customer-centric experience that would appeal to high-end clients was an important factor in selecting the lender for its financial services business, said Nic Brown, McLaren's vice president of sales.

"We are always looking at unique experiences that we can offer [our customers] above and beyond the vehicle experience," he said. "With Chase, it w…

Continental's supervisory board said last week that it has approved the spin off of its powertrain business to create Vitesco Technologies in the second half of 2021, after it was delayed by a year because of the pandemic.

The delay gave the company more time to prepare to become a standalone specialist in electrified drivetrains, says Vitesco CEO Andreas Wolf. By 2030, Vitesco expects 60 percent of all powertrains to be electrified. But Wolf says he wouldn't be surprised to see that number rise because of growing interest in electrification in North America, led by General Motors' announcement that it aims to have an all-electric lineup there by 2035.

Wolf, 60, spoke about the future of electrification and a range of other topics with Automotive News Europe Managing Editor Douglas A. Bolduc and News Editor Peter Sigal.

Q: Did last year's postponement of the spinoff have any effects on where Vitesco is in the process today?

Read more about Electrification growth buoys Conti’s spinoff

A digital service program introduced on the eve of the pandemic helped propel Mini to the top of a key industry dealership service satisfaction metric this year.

Invisible Service, launched in late 2019, enables the brand's service advisers to communicate with customers via instant message and accept digital payments.

The technology platform, also used by parent BMW, allows technicians to share videos to show customers the need for recommended vehicle work, such as replacing worn brakes, dirty air filters or damaged suspension parts.

The videos helped the brand build customer trust, Mini USA sales and operations chief Claude Bruni told Automotive News last week.

"Service keeps customers," Bruni said. "The first car is sold by sales, and the second or third car is sold by service."

So far, 53 percent of Mini's 116 U.S. dealers have adopted the Invisible Service program.

Mini credited the program…

History only goes so far in repeating itself.

Two fifth-generation members of the Ford family were nominated to the Ford Motor Co. board this month. Alexandra Ford English, daughter of Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr., and Henry Ford III, son of retiring board member Edsel Ford II, stand in line to become directors after May's annual meeting.

Yes, they are about the same age their fathers were when they were named directors in 1988. But there's a world of difference between their situations.

Significantly, Ford English, 33, will be the fourth woman and one of three family members on a 14-director board. There were no women among 20 — three of them Fords — in 1988.

Ford English has been with the company for only four years. She took her Harvard MBA (Stanford undergrad) outside the auto industry before joining Ford's Autonomous Vehicles unit. She's now a corporate strategy director.

She is also Ford's representative on the board of Rivian, t…

It's still possible to get a live person on the phone at Tesla. But it's not easy. There will be menus and waiting and recordings to endure. And you might be transferred down a blind alley only to be left frustrated. It didn't used to be that way. Tesla once won rave reviews for its personalized customer service. Engineers chatted with customers. CEO Elon Musk often personally answered customers' questions on Twitter.

But then Tesla's sales took off — it became the world's most valuable automaker — and the personal touch was replaced by bots, blogs, FAQs and emails. Now, the posts in blogs have an angry tone from some owners.

Rivian, about three months from its first deliveries, aims to maintain close communication with its customers.

The company last week said each customer will be paired with a "Guide" for the entire length of ownership of a Rivian R1T pickup or R1S SUV. The Guide, stationed on the factory floor, will have acces…

A Manheim site in North Carolina became a drive-through vaccination clinic that got nearly 1,200 people through the auction lanes in one day last week.

Manheim Statesville provided 20 employees to help with the clinic put on by the Iredell County Health Department. Health officials said one of the county's biggest challenges isn't getting enough doses of the vaccine — it's finding enough space to administer the shots.

"When the Iredell County Health Department approached us about hosting this drive-thru clinic, we immediately wanted to help," Manheim Statesville General Manager Mandy Savage said in a statement.

Manheim said 1,197 people received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine during the event.

In the months after Sonic Automotive Inc. CEO David Smith was arrested on assault charges, at least nine law firms said they had launched investigations into the publicly traded dealership group and shareholder claims that company executives or board directors may have breached their fiduciary duties or engaged in securities fraud.

But that scrutiny — often a precursor to shareholder lawsuits — could fizzle out now that the charges against Smith, 46, have been dropped.

Prosecutors in Mecklenburg County, N.C., on March 12 dismissed all charges against Smith, less than two weeks after a county grand jury indicted him on counts of felony assault by strangulation and misdemeanors of false imprisonment, assault on a female and interfering with emergency communication.

One corporate governance expert told Automotive News that even if a shareholder lawsuit were to be filed against Sonic — the nation's sixth-largest new-vehicle retailer — it could be difficult t…

DETROIT — After nearly two decades of dutifully commuting to Ford Motor Co.'s campus in Dearborn, Mich., whether or not she needed to be there, Kelly Keller, a chemistry lab and material compliance manager, discovered over the past year that she and her team can be productive from home.

"For me, it's two hours I have to do work instead of sitting in a car in traffic," Keller told Automotive News. "It's one of the good sides of the pandemic. The work is still getting done, and I think Ford sees that."

Just over 12 months after COVID-19 prompted a mandatory office exile, Ford last week told tens of thousands of salaried employees that they can continue at least some at-home work on a permanent basis. The hybrid schedule is a drastic paradigm shift for a traditional manufacturer and could prompt a larger modernization for an industry accustomed to 20th century cubicle farms and conference rooms.

"No one would have imagined this bein…