Author: Automotive News n Feed

NADA has undergone major change in the four years since Peter Welch took the helm. It has slimmed down by shedding non-core operations and focusing on what its members deemed core to its mission.

In February 2008, I began my term as NADA chairman. Mention that year to people in the auto industry, and their facial expressions will reveal the challenges it presented.

The 2009 bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler Group represented perhaps the darkest moment in the history of the U.S. auto industry.

Many organizations suffer from ‘mission creep,’ steadily adding staff and spending for services unrelated to the original mission. NADA is not one of them.

A look at key themes of each post-World War II NADA Convention shows many reappear frequently. A few, though, have largely disappeared.

The 1960s spawned new movements to protect consumers and employees, leading to a raft of new laws in the following decade. Sam H. White spent much of his term as NADA president beating back such legislation.

Penske Automotive Group has backed off a no-haggle pricing experiment and returned to a traditional sales model and a commission-based pay plan at Toyota of Surprise (Ariz.).

Denso’s new strategy for filling engineering vacancies: recruit engineers in Detroit and dispatch them all over the country.

After Nissan’s Star Wars tie-in kicked Rogue sales into hyperdrive last month, its marketing team is tackling a new mission: spreading the compact crossover’s success to other nameplates.

California’s utilities are asking for more than $1 billion to spend on electric car-charging stations that will help the state meet its goal of getting 1.5 million zero-emissions vehicles on the road by 2025.