GM kicked off the recent North American International Auto Show in Detroit by, among other things, introducing a new Cadillac. Once the fanfare had died down, observers could hear a distinct creaking as the turntable display supporting the Caddy labored to move its load. This little anecdote seemed to set the tone for Detroit’s ...

If you’ve read op-ed pages in newspapers lately or spent much time online, you’ve probably seen these complaints: Why can’t U.S. car buyers get the same high-miles-per-gallon vehicles that are sold in Europe? And why do U.S. automakers seem to make high-mpg cars elsewhere but not here? As late-night TV host Johnny Carson might have ...

For our anniversary my wife wanted to go someplace expensive, so we went to a gas station. When that joke made the rounds recently it dawned on me that I’d heard it before — in the 1970s. It was then that the inflation-adjusted price of crude oil was well on its way toward the same altitude it occupies today. In the intervening years, ...

  By coincidence, the recent strike of the United Auto Workers against General Motors happened just as National Manufacturing Week, a major engineering trade show, was getting underway in Chicago. A lot of exhibitors at NMW have connections with the auto industry, and many are Tier 2 and 3 suppliers. So it was interesting to hear ...