Michelin cables aim for safer jump-starts | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Winter's coming. That means stocking up on de-icer fluid for the windshield washer reservoir and digging out the old snow scraper and jumper cables. Or you might want to buy a new set of jumper cables because the technology has just taken a big leap forward. It used to be you had to be very careful to connect the positive and negative terminals of your vehicle's battery to those of the car that you're jumping or that was jumping you. But with Michelin's new Smart Jumper Cables, there's no such...

Ariz. shop revives vintage cars | detnews.com | The Detroit News
-- Tucson's classic cars are the keys to success for the Saguaro Automotive Group. The business is geared toward breathing new life into vintage automobiles through repair and restoration. Its 6,000-square-foot facility buzzed with activity on a recent weekday afternoon. A 1966 Corvette in the showroom awaited minor upgrades to raise its technical inspection score with the National Corvette Restorers Society. Another Corvette, a 1979 model, sat parked at a work station for a custom paint job and full...

Detroit area car shops ramp it up at SEMA | detnews.com | The Detroit News
By now, most Detroiters are getting their hot rods, exotics, and muscle cars bundled up for a long winter's nap. But in Las Vegas, this week's SEMA convention is supercharging enthusiasts from across the globe. This industry-only trade show lays out an unrivaled smorgasbord of custom vehicles and hardware. Organized by the Specialty Equipment Market Association, the event features about 2,000 booths -- in 2 million square feet of the Las Vegas Convention Center -- hawking everything from complete cars...

Federal auto czar in Detroit today to discuss stimulus grant | detnews.com | The Detroit News
-- The White House auto recovery czar will meet in Detroit with energy workers and political leaders to discuss a local $83 million federal stimulus grant that's part of a $3.4 billion effort to modernize the U.S. power grid. Ed Montgomery, head of the White House Council on Auto Communities and Workers, is scheduled to visit DTE Energy Co.'s headquarters Thursday. He and others will outline the grant to DTE Energy, which the utility is matching so it can install a network of 660,000 advanced electric...

Reliability pays off in long run | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Without Uncle Sam's largesse, you're not likely to get a decent price on a trade-in today. That car that grandma only drove to church on Sunday with low miles and all the extras that you got and now want to use to get something a bit more hip? Chances are you'll be offered far below the book value from a dealer. Sell it on your own instead. Especially if you've got a Toyota, Honda or Ford, the top brands for reliability, according to the 2009 Annual Car Reliability Survey from Consumer Reports magazine...

Senate committee calls Delphi's salaried pensions 'devastating' | detnews.com | The Detroit News
-- A Senate committee criticized the disparate treatment of the pensions of Delphi Automotive LLP's hourly and salaried retirees and demanded more information on how the decisions were made by the Obama administration. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, noted at a hearing Thursday that the Troy-based auto supplier had terminated its pension plans covering 70,000 workers -- the fourth-largest ever takeover in terms of people covered. In July...

White House, Edmunds in war of words over 'clunkers' | detnews.com | The Detroit News
-- The White House said the influential automotive news Web site Edmunds.com's harsh analysis of the impact of "cash for clunkers" was "faulty" and "implausible." Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl shot back that the White House was "shooting the messenger." Edmunds said cash for clunkers cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold. Nearly 690,000 vehicles were sold during the $3 billion cash for clunkers program that offered up to $4,500 rebates, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, but Edmunds.com...

Senate panel seeks Delphi answers | detnews.com | The Detroit News
-- A Senate committee, distressed by the different treatment of Delphi Automotive LLP's salaried and hourly retirees, wants to know how the decisions were made by the Obama administration. In July, Delphi saddled the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. with responsibility for the pension plans of 70,000 Delphi workers and retirees. That move was estimated to cost the PBGC, the government's pension insurer, about $6.25 billion. Recent estimates put it as high as $6.7 billion. Under agreements with Delphi's...

Reilly's world is growing larger | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Nick Reilly, executive vice president of General Motors Co., works out of a skyscraper in Shanghai, a Chinese port city halfway across the globe from the company's Detroit headquarters. Most of his senior-level GM colleagues are asleep when he's working, and they arrive at their offices as he's preparing to go home. Even though Reilly is far away, he is emerging as GM's second most important executive after CEO Fritz Henderson. As the new head of GM's international operations, the British executive runs...

Fesler-Moss revives vintage Camaro package | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Sometimes you have to turn back the clock to go fast forward. First, we turn back four decades, to the birth of the Chevrolet Camaro and that very special souped-up version known as the COPO, that string of letters representing the abbreviation for how to work the order form to get what amounted to a factory-built hot rod. Next, we turn back just a few years, to when automotive engineer Jon Moss was head of what amounted to General Motors' toy shop, the specialty vehicles group that did things such as...