Motor News

Luxury materials, new displays, and passenger-watching cameras show up in the new Grand Cherokee. More

The 2021 model year includes the new three-row L and the old two-row carryover model, while other variants are still to come. More

The new 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L will be revealed tonight at midnight, eastern time, and tomorrow at noon on Jeep’s YouTube page.
We expect it to be a three-row version of the popular SUV, thanks to spy photos in recent weeks and the confirmation of the L name.
The 2021 Grand Cherokee should arrive on dealer lots later this year.
More than a year since we first spied the updated 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the fifth-generation of the popular SUV will be revealed tonight, January 6, at midnight Eastern time and then tomorrow, January 7 at noon on Jeep’s YouTube page. The Grand Cherokee hasn’t seen a redesign since 2010 and we expect it to undergo a number of changes, some of which might be inspired by the Grand Wagoneer concept revealed earlier this fall.

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Jeep has confirmed that this model will be called the Grand Cherokee L. We’ve seen spy photos of this three-row model that show a stretched version of the SUV. The new Grand Cherokee should get a larger infotainment screen, and it could have a rotary shift knob and digital gauge cluster as well.
We expect the new SUV to be powered by the standard 3.6-liter V-6 seen currently in the Grand Cherokee, plus an optional V-8. Later on, it should also see a plug-in-hybrid version, as well as higher-performance options such as an SRT version and possibly featuring a 700-plus-hp supercharged V-8 that recently found its way into the Durango.
The 2021 Grand Cherokee should arrive at dealers by the end of the year, and we’ll be bringing you full details at the launch tonight at midnight.
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The redesigned 2021 Escalade starts at $77,490 for the base Luxury trim, but GM reports that 43 percent of buyers paid more than $100,000 for theirs. More

Ready to dive into the most exciting racing series on the planet?
For the next episode of their Inside Track virtual Q&A series, our friends at Road & Track are excited to announce the guest will be IndyCar racer Alexander Rossi. It’s all happening on Thursday, January 14, at 5:00 p.m. ET, and they’d love for you to join them.
Register Here
California-born Rossi started his career at the age of 10, when he fell in love with go-karts. By 14, he was crowned champion of many national and international karting races, and he quickly transitioned into a professional F1 career at just 17 years old.
Since 2016, Rossi has been competing in IndyCar—piloting the No. 27 Honda for Andretti Autosport—and has scored seven wins, including a first-place finish (as a rookie) during the 100th running of the Indy 500 in 2016.
In this episode of Inside Track, Road & Track editor-in-chief Mike Guy will be speaking with Rossi about his impressive career and what he’s looking forward to most in the 2021 season. If you want to see it all go down, head over to the dedicated sign-up page.
Inside Track is one of the many offerings of the newly revamped magazine. Road & Track is hosting live events, virtual experiences, and adventures around the globe. They’ll also be hosting driving rallies at racetracks and on the most epic roads, holding discussions and debates on cool topics with some of the most influential people in the car world, and giving participants the white-glove treatment at concours and auto show events.
Register Here
If you want to get in on the fun, become a member of The Track Club. You’ll get every issue of their magazine, plus a whole lot more. Find more details on the membership tiers and exclusive discounts at roadandtrack.com/join, and check out the full experiences lineup at experiences.roadandtrack.com.
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Actor, recording artist, and America’s Got Talent judge David Hasselhoff has put his personal K.I.T.T., the car from the 1980s TV show Knight Rider, up for auction.
In the series, the car could drive itself, talked, and was outfitted with weapons and a special turbo-boost feature that made it jump.
The auction ends on January 23, and if the final price is at least 25 percent above the reserve, Hasselhoff will personally deliver the vehicle.
Weird high-concept shows peppered the big three networks of the 1980s. The weirdness of Manimal and Automan couldn’t find a steady audience, but shows such as Airwolf and Alf stuck around long enough to solidify a place in the zeitgeist. But none of them could top Knight Rider and its automotive star K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand), a talking car that drove itself, had an arsenal of weapons, and for some unknown reason could jump when the turbo boost was enabled. David Hasselhoff played Michael Knight, the crime-fighting human protagonist of the series.

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Turns out Hasselhoff has had his own personal K.I.T.T. vehicle stashed away for the past few decades, and now the actor is auctioning off this piece of television history. According to the auction description, the 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am conversion is a fully functioning K.I.T.T. car, although don’t expect any weaponry or the vehicle actually helping you solve crimes while it doles out droll observations. Instead, from the posted photos we see that the dash lights up like a crime-fighting Christmas tree, and we’re betting the Cylon-esque series of red lights on the hood are functioning.

LiveAuctioneers

The influence of the show and especially of K.I.T.T. is still being felt today. Self-driving cars that talk to you are still works in progress. Maybe they won’t solve crimes or leap into the air, but we do have swanky smartwatches like Michael Knight’s that can control some features of current vehicles on the road.

LiveAuctioneers

A bonus of this auction is that if the final vehicle price exceeds the reserve by 25 percent, David Hasselhoff will personally deliver the car to the new owner. The chances of that occurring are extremely good; the current bid is $975,000, and the original estimate for the vehicle was between $175,000 and $300,000. The auction is set to end on January 23. There is one rub, though: the car is currently in the U.K. But if you’re willing to bid a million dollars on a TV car, you’re likely the type of person with the means to transport it to your home, along with the star of Baywatch and America’s Got Talent.

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Mazda confirmed that the MX-30 is coming to the U.S. market, as first reported by The Detroit Bureau.
It will be available either as a battery-powered EV or as a plug-in hybrid with a rotary gasoline engine.
Mazda has not yet announced timing for its arrival in the U.S. market.
Mazda’s quirky foray into the electric-vehicle market, the MX-30, will eventually come to the U.S. A Mazda spokesperson confirmed to C/D that the company will offer the MX-30 in America with two drivetrains: either solely with an electric motor and a battery pack or with a plug-in-hybrid setup using a rotary gasoline engine.

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The MX-30, revealed in 2019, is a small crossover with five seats and rear half-doors that are reminiscent of the company’s most recent rotary-powered sports car, the RX-8. In global markets, the EV version has a 144-horsepower electric motor powering the front wheels and is offered with a small 35.5-kWh battery pack that provides a short 124-mile driving range on the WLTP cycle. While Mazda has an emissions justification for such a small battery pack and short range, we wouldn’t be surprised if the company decides to fit a larger battery pack for the U.S. version of the car.
We don’t know the specs for the plug-in hybrid, but we expect it to be powered primarily by the electric motor. Similar to models such as the BMW i3 and Chevy Volt, the gasoline engine will serve mostly as a range-extender that kicks in to charge the battery pack—only in the MX-30’s case, that engine will use an unconventional rotary design.
Mazda has yet to say anything about timing for the MX-30’s arrival on our shores, but we’d expect to hear more by the end of the year, with it possibly reaching dealerships for the 2022 or 2023 model year.

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New-vehicle sales were down in 2020 to levels not seen since 2012, but they’re in a recovery mode now that leaves the industry hopeful for next year.
Truck and SUV sales saved the numbers from being much more dire, especially in the last quarter and the month of December.
Dealer inventories are still constrained, and as a result, deals on new vehicles will be hard to come by.
Automakers have emerged from 2020, a challenging and unprecedented year, and some did so on a high note. Eight months weren’t enough for the industry to fully recover from the low point in the spring, but a strong, if somewhat unexpected, recovery began in the summer and continued through December, even as the COVID-19 pandemic has surged across the country.

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The U.S. market is now estimated to see sales finish around 14.5 million, a much stronger result than the 13 million range that some analysts forecasted earlier this year. Overall, sales are estimated to be down 14.9 to 15.5 percent, bringing sales to the lowest levels since 2012. The decrease was lessened because retail sales were strong, although fleet sales slowed considerably.
Shutdowns earlier in 2020 were part of the reason sales were down, of course. “This year presented the economy and the auto market with incredible challenges. As we close the year, it is remarkable to see how well the industry performed,” Cox Automotive’s chief economist Jonathan Smoke said in a note. “Retail vehicle sales will end the year down less than 10 percent despite losing six weeks of the most important time of the year.”
Fiat Chrysler (FCA)
FCA finished with mixed results across its brands; the automaker saw an 8 percent decline in sales in the fourth quarter and 17 percent decline through the year. Dodge suffered the biggest decline, but that is due to the Caravan going out of production. And while both Ram and Jeep were down for the year, seeing 11 and 14 percent declines, respectively, they improved in the last quarter of 2020.
GM
General Motors finished the year down 12 percent compared to last year after finishing the fourth quarter with a sales growth of 5 percent. Pickups, as has been the case for most of the year, were a bright spot for GM; Silverado pickups saw annual sales increase 3 percent and Sierra pickups by 9 percent. Retail sales for GM were down only 6 percent for the year.
Honda
Honda’s sales in December fell by 0.1 percent based on volume, but 11 percent on a daily selling rate basis. Over the year, Honda’s sales dropped by 16 percent. Across the entire brand, including Acura, truck sales outperformed those of cars, seeing a decline of 12 percent as compared to 22 percent. The Passport was the only high-volume vehicle to end with sales growing from last year, doing so at a rate of 10 percent.
Hyundai
Hyundai sales grew 2 percent in December as compared to last year thanks to its popular—and recently expanded—crossover lineup, including the Kona, Santa Fe, and Venue. Annual sales for the Korean automaker saw a decrease of 10 percent from 2019, a drop largely attributable to reduced fleet-vehicle sales, as retail sales for Hyundai increased by 1 percent this year.
Mazda
Mazda, largely thanks to the new CX-30, which went on sale late last year, saw sales grow by 0.2 percent and 18 percent in December compared to last year. Although Mazda’s most popular vehicle, the CX-5, had sales contract by 6 percent this past year, the automaker’s largest offering, the CX-9, had a sales increase of 2 percent.

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Nissan
Nissan’s troubles continued into the fourth quarter with sales falling 19.3 percent. Over the course of the year, Nissan saw a sales drop of 33 percent as its U.S. sales fell below one million for the first time since 2011. Both the car and truck divisions at Nissan saw challenging years, finishing down 39 and 29 percent, respectively.
Subaru
Subaru’s sales declined by 13 percent over the year and in December saw sales increase 2 percent. Both the Crosstrek and the Forester performed better than the rest of Subaru’s lineup, each seeing annual sales declines of 9 and 2 percent, respectively. Nonetheless, the Crosstrek was up 48 percent in December.
Tesla
Tesla, which only reports global—not U.S.—sales numbers, saw considerable growth in its total deliveries, which came in at just under 500,000—CEO Elon Musk’s goal for the year—at 499,550, an increase of 36 percent. The Model 3, Tesla’s most popular vehicle, appears to have seen further growth in sales, but Tesla combines Model 3 and Model Y sales numbers, so it’s difficult to attribute the growth to one vehicle or the other.
Toyota
Toyota saw a strong finish to the year with December sales up 20 percent by volume (that drops to 8 percent on a daily selling rate) and by 9 percent over the fourth quarter. On a volume basis, Toyota trucks ands SUVs, excluding Lexus, finished the month with 32 and 29 percent increases, respectively; those divisions have cushioned Toyota’s sales decreases elsewhere. Annually, Toyota’s total sales shrank 11.3 percent.
J.D. Power estimates that trucks and SUVs are set to make up 79 percent of new-vehicle retail sales, up from 75 percent a year ago. Strong truck and SUV sales have underscored many of the results seen throughout this year, a continuation of a trend seen in past years.
Volkswagen
Volkswagen saw sales jump by 11 percent in the fourth quarter, largely a result of the new Atlas Cross Sport, which went on sale earlier this year. Over the year, sales for VW fell by 10 percent, a decrease which was cushioned by the Tiguan’s—VW’s most popular vehicle—sales decline of 8 percent.
What to Expect Now
GM chief economist Elaine Buckberg said in a statement that the automaker expects the pandemic to continue to put pressure on the auto industry throughout the year, but for that to ease beginning in the spring. “Widening vaccination rates and warmer weather should enable consumers and businesses to return to a more normal range of activities, lifting the job market, consumer sentiment, and auto demand,” she said.
Although the better part of a year now separates the industry from the shutdowns in the spring, inventories haven’t recovered, largely due to pent-up demand. That has translated to early 2021 still not being an optimal time to buy a car, since dealers aren’t pressed to move outgoing model year vehicles off their lots.
“It’s certainly not much of a buyer’s market right now: Inventory is still in short supply in certain areas, and automakers and dealers aren’t faced with the pressure to use big discounts to clear out their lots like they normally do at this time of year,” Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds executive director of insights, said in a note.
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