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Welburn is 65 and carries the title of Vice President of General Motors Global Design. He will retire July 1 after 44 years with the company. Welburn will be succeeded by Michael Simcoe, a 33-year veteran of GM Design, who now serves as vice president of GM International Design, based in Australia and Korea. Welburn is held in high regard in the industry and is the first African American design leader at any automaker. The Philadelphia native has led GM Design since 2003, and globally since 2005. GM now has a network of 10 design centers in seven countries, with more than 2,500 employees in the United States, Germany, South Korea, China, Australia, Brazil and India, all engaged in design.

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Are these the best of times for upstart Silicon Valley automaker Tesla, or the worst of times? It’s a simple enough question, certainly, but the answer is complicated, so much so that it might simply be, ‘Yes.’ The best of times for Tesla is that its long-awaited, and more affordable Model 3 has generated tremendous buzz and at least 400,000 pre-orders in its first two weeks of availability. Tesla has said it will begin producing the sedan sometime in late 2017 with a base price of $35,000 before any tax rebates/incentives.

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Cheap gasoline was once hailed as a huge break for the working class, but as crude oil prices remain depressed, the dark side of sub-$2 per gallon gasoline is starting to rear its ugly head.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is eliminating 1,300 jobs at its plant in Sterling Heights, Mich.,, marking the first permanent layoffs by the company in seven years. That plant manufactures the Chrysler 200, a mid-sized sedan that has received a decent reception critically, but is a sales flop.

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Watch out Detroit, New York just might steal some of your thunder. Every January, the North American International Automobile Show in Detroit, Mich., is considered the most significant event of its kind on the content, but this year, automakers have pulled out the big guns in New York, with some absolutely jaw-dropping debuts hitting the stage in the Big Apple in late March. With gas prices as low as they are, as you would expect, big sport-utility vehicles dominated, but there was something for just about every enthusiast.

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It was bound to happen. For the first time, an autonomous/self-driving car was at fault in a collision in Northern California. It wasn’t a big impact but it ultimately might have big repercussions. The incident occurred in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, Calif., on Feb. 14, and as accidents go, it was about as minor as it gets. According to a report filed with the state of California, the mishap involved a Google self-driving Lexus 450h hybrid and a public-transit bus. The Lexus had a driver, but the tall wagon was in autonomous mode when the incident occurred.

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The first wave of muscle cars in the late 1960s and 1970s was the casualty of high insurance rates and expensive gas, which at first neutered horsepower and then pretty much killed it all together. The muscle cars never came back, but the pony cars, the Mustang, Camaro and Challenger, squeaked by to became the new muscle cars of today. Dodge dealers are merrily selling every 707-horsepower Hellcat Challenger and Charger they can get their hands on and Ford dealers are doing likewise with the new Shelby GT350.

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Have you noticed what’s happening in the world of supercars? Talk about one-upmanship. There’s the 887-horsepower Porsche 918 Spyder, the 949-horsepower LaFerrari and, for 2016, the McLaren 675 LT. Bigger, stronger, faster and more expensive, despite the fact that they all have performance limits well beyond the capabilities of about 99.9 percent of the drivers in the world. Fun, but mostly pointless. But there’s a new entry into the field and, frankly, it blows everything else away, at least on paper.

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In the last decade or so, automotive safety has made significant advances. Stability control – electronic programming that prevents skids and spins – is now mandated by federal law, the number of airbags has increased (including side-impact protection) and the typical family hauler has brakes and suspension systems that are light years ahead of what even high-performance cars had a generation ago.

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If you needed any convincing that there still is a lot of sorting out to do when it comes to autonomous cars, all you need do is look at some of the conflicting and even confusing headlines about the subject. On the same day that Yahoo.com proclaimed “Self-Driving Cars Are Coming Soon to a Highway Near You,” The Motley Fools Web site, Fool.com went 180 degrees the other way, saying, “Why the Hype Around Autonomous Cars is (Slightly) Premature.”

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In calendar 2015, the three top-selling vehicles in the United States were full-sized pickup trucks: The Ford F-Series led the way, followed by the Chevrolet Silverado and the Ram pickup.
To put that into context, Ford Motor Co. sold more F-Series pickups than it did Fusions, Explorers and Focus models combined. For every Mustang Ford sold, 6.38 F-Series trucks were bought.
That’s remarkable, as is the fact that the Ram pickup outsold market stalwarts like the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord and Nissan Altima.