Chung Mong Koo, Chairman of South Korea's Hyundai Motor, carefully scrutinizes a newly designed gearshift lever for the automaker's Sonata sedan while his entire senior-management team hovers around, anxiously awaiting his approval. The execs are justifiably edgy. Engineers added a plastic plate beneath the shifter to prevent spilled coffee and other flotsam from falling into the mechanism and gumming it up. It's a minor change, but no one treats it that way, least of all Chung, a hard-nosed, detail-oriented boss ...

While other automakers are closing plants in the U.S., Kia, which is controlled by South Korea's Hyundai Automotive Group, is preparing to open a brand-new assembly plant in West Point, Ga., southwest of Atlanta. The $1.2 billion, 2.2 million–sq.-ft. plant will begin producing Kia vehicles for the retail market next month. Up until now, Kia had imported 100% of its vehicles. The South Korean automakers are coming on strong. Kia is about to up its market share for ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's race to save automaker Opel — and the jobs of its 25,000 employees in Germany — is beginning to look like a high-speed pileup that could cost her at the polls. To get talks with Opel owners General Motors back on track, Merkel is reportedly ready to abandon her previous plan to force GM to sell a controlling stake in its European business to a consortium of Canadian-Austrian car-parts maker Magna International and Russia's Sberbank. ...

At time when the U.S. and Canada are pouring tens of billions of dollars into General Motors Corp. to give the bankrupt automaker a new lease on life, why is Mexico flying under the radar? Last month when Washington and Ottawa pledged to invest $60 billion in Detroit's biggest car company, Mexico — a partner in NAFTA and an integrated North-American auto industry — was conspicuous by its absence at the negotiating table. See the best ...

The reorganized Chrysler Group LLC postponed the annual press preview of new cars at its proving ground near Chelsea, Mich. — all part of the production stoppage while the company waited out bankruptcy proceedings. But even during that downtime, Chrysler's American engineers and designers were busily exchanging notes with their counterparts at Fiat, just as they have been doing for the past six months. What will come of all this cross-fertilization With the Supreme Court blessing of the deal that released Chrysler from bankruptcy, ...

The world's premier air show takes place in Paris next week, with the recent loss of Air France flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean likely to cast a shadow over the event. The annual Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary, gives the air transport industry the chance to promote the latest innovations in aerospace technology and attract buyers for both commercial and military aircraft. Manufacturing giants Boeing and Airbus are two of the ...

McLaren chairman Ron Dennis ended his long-standing involvement in Formula One on Thursday when he announced a major restructuring of the British-based company. The 61-year-old Dennis, who handed over the role of Team Principal to Martin Whitmarsh in January, has now severed all links with grand prix racing ahead of Sunday's Chinese GP in Shanghai. "I admit I'm not always easy to get on with. I admit I've always fought hard for McLaren in Formula 1," said Dennis who will ...

Jack Welch "would bet on" a U.S. comeback in the automotive business if unions and other parties make appropriate concessions, the former General Electric chairman and CEO said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. Welch also said he wasn't surprised by the government's role in the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, who said last week he stepped aside at the request of Obama administration officials. Welch said that because the government was "keeping the company alive" ...

Few General Motors Corp. cars have ever had the mystique of the Chevrolet Camaro. A macho machine if ever there was one, the Camaro was launched in the 1967 model year in response to Ford's fabulous Mustang. The Camaro made waves quickly, because buyers had the option of muscling it up with GM's big-block V8 engines, turning a sporty 4-seat roadster into a street monster and track regular. Mustang had the name; but Camaro had the horses. Like many of Detroit's muscle ...

Amid the gruesome headlines generated by the world's auto industry these days, it almost read like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year-on-year in February, the country's Association of the Automotive Industry announced March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed Matthias Wissmann, VDA's president, amounted to "the highest level of sales in the month of February for ten years." Why the splurge German drivers have latched ...