Subaru recalls 275,000 SUVs in U.S. over seat belts

DETROIT (Reuters) -- Subaru is recalling about 275,000 Forester SUVs in the United States to replace a rear seat belt part that may not allow proper installation of a child restraint, U.S. safety regulators said.
Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.'s Subaru is recalling the 2009 through 2012 model year Foresters because the automatic locking retractor in the rear-center seat belt assemblies doesn't meet federal requirements, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
For that reason, the assemblies may not allow proper installation and secure attachment of a child restraint, increasing the risk of injury, NHTSA said.
Subaru will install a newly modified automatic locking retractor and the recall is expected to begin on or before April 13, NHTSA said.
A Subaru spokesman said there have been no accidents or injuries related to the issue.

Chrysler to build smaller version of Pentastar engine, 2 sources say

Chrysler Group plans to produce a smaller version of its 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 engine, likely at a plant in suburban Detroit, according to a union official and a source familiar with the project.

The new 3.2-liter Pentastar engine variant is to debut in the upcoming replacement for the Jeep Liberty, the union official said. Chrysler-Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has said the Liberty successor will be introduced in January at the Detroit auto show.

Bruce Baumhower, president of UAW Local 12 in Toledo, Ohio, where the Liberty replacement will be assembled, said the vehicle is expected to have a 3.2-liter V-6 Pentastar and a nine-speed transmission. The transmission was developed by ZF Friedrichshafen AG, which provides the eight-speed transmission for the Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans.

Baumhower made the remarks to Automotive News today and to Toledo TV station WTVG this week.

Another source familiar with the project verified Baumhower's information.

A Chrysler spokesman said the automaker would not discuss future product or production plans.

Work has begun on a $500 million renovation to the Toledo North Assembly plant to make the successor to the Liberty. The plant will close in early August for at least five months to retool for the new SUV, Baumhower said.

The automaker aims to improve its corporate average fuel economy, in part with new transmissions.

Marchionne hints

"You should not underestimate the weight of transmissions" to improve fuel efficiency, Marchionne said on the sidelines of the Geneva auto show this month. "If we had known the eight-speed [automatic transmission] was coming, we would have made the [3.6-liter] Pentastar a 3.2-liter" engine.

Chrysler has spent much of the last year removing tooling and equipment from the Trenton North Engine plant in suburban Detroit, a Trenton city official said. About 80 percent of the 2.1-million-square-foot plant is vacant, with the rest used to make engine parts for the 3.6-liter Pentastar.

The adjacent Trenton South Engine plant has been building the 3.6-liter Pentastar since its launch in March 2010, and along with a twin plant in Saltillo, Mexico, has been struggling to keep up with demand.

Trenton South and Saltillo are each designed to produce about 440,000 engines per year, but Marchionne said the automaker needs as many as 1.2 million Pentastar engines per year to meet demand.

The 3.6-liter Pentastar is available in 11 vehicles across the Chrysler Group lineup, producing between 283 and 305 hp, depending on the vehicle. It comes standard on several of the automaker's highest-selling vehicles, including the Jeep Wrangler, Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans, and its flagship sedans, the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger. The Pentastar also will make its debut this year in the Ram 1500 pickup.

Projects under way

Trenton South assembled the 1 millionth copy of the Pentastar on Jan. 27, about 18 months after its introduction.

In June 2011, Chrysler invested $114 million into the Trenton North plant to begin making parts for the 3.6-liter Pentastar in about one-fifth of the plant.

Chrysler plans to replace seven V-6 engines with displacements of between 2.7 and 4.0 liters with Pentastar engines. Two of the outgoing engines, with displacements of 3.8 and 4.0 liters, were assembled in the Trenton North plant before it closed in May.

The first hint that smaller-displacement Pentastars may be on the way occurred in November 2009 when the automaker laid out its five-year product plan. At the time, Chrysler said it was considering two versions of a 3.3-liter V-6, including one with Fiat's Multi-Air technology.

The automaker has not yet introduced Fiat's Multi-Air technology to the Pentastar, but plans to do so. Multi-Air uses small hydraulic pumps, along with a computer, to control the timing of each air intake valve of an engine to improve fuel efficiency and power and reduce emissions.

Chevy's Volt draws GOP scorn as campaign heats up

Republican Lutz angered over 'lies' about the car, damage to GM

Ever since it became known that the plug-in hybrid car's batteries had caught fire weeks after government crash tests, the Volt has become the whipping boy of Republican politicians. Conservatives have equated General Motors Co.'s Volt with everything from government bailouts to radical left-wing environmentalism.
"Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, we did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," GM CEO Dan Akerson said during a Congressional hearing on the Volt in January. "And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become."
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich faulted the Volt for its lack of space for a gun rack. Front-runner Mitt Romney called it "an idea whose time has not come." American Tradition Partnership Inc., a conservative group, referred to Volts as "exploding Obamamobiles."
Akerson said all the trash talk about the Volt has been pinching sales. Obama's challengers, though, see it as an effective way to resonate with their voters.
Republicans buy Silverado pickups and other Chevrolets in greater numbers than Democrats do, said Art Spinella, who studies new-vehicle buyers as president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore.
While Chevy customers tend to lean conservative, less than 14 percent of Volt buyers so far this year identify themselves as Republicans while about 53 percent call themselves Democrats, according to CNW survey of 1,416 people. Buyers of the Chevrolet brand as a whole were 37 percent Republican, 22 percent Democrat and 41 percent independent.
Disappointing sales
Politics aside, Volt sales have been a source of disappointment for GM. The Environmental Protection Agency gave it a 95 mpg rating for city driving, less than half the 230 mpg rating GM had anticipated in 2009.
After the battery fires became public in November, 2011 sales fell short of Akerson's goal and following slow sales in January and February, GM decided to stop making the cars for five weeks. While the government's investigation found the Volt to be as safe as other vehicles, they are complicated and expensive for a small car at nearly $40,000 before a federal tax credit.
Nissan Motor Co.'s Leaf electric car missed its sales targets last year, too, raising questions about the size of the market for technology-laden fuel-efficient vehicle.
BOB LUTZ BLOG ON FORBES.COM: The Chevy Volt, Bill O'Reilly And The Postman's Butt
Republican bashing
It's impossible to know to what degree political rhetoric is hurting Volt sales, but Akerson isn't alone in believing the numbers would look better without the Republican bashing. Chevrolet dealers in the U.S. sold 7,671 Volts last year, missing GM's target of 10,000.
About 1,600 Volts were sold in the first two months of the year, a pace that doesn't match Akerson's plans to deliver 45,000 in the U.S. this year. At least part of that gap is a result of attacks on the campaign trail, Spinella said. Buyers from the political center to the right, "will not buy a car that has anything at all that they perceive being associated with the administration," Spinella said.
While the Volt accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the world's largest automaker's sales last year, it is getting heightened attention because "it's a hallmark car," Akerson told reporters in San Francisco this week. After the announcement last week that work would stop for five weeks at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where the Volt is made, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, posted on Twitter about it with the hashtag "#ObamaonEmpty."
The Volt, introduced a month before Obama said he would run for president, can go more than 30 miles on electricity before its gasoline engine kicks in and powers a generator to recharge the battery. The car has a range of 379 miles with both electric and gasoline power combined.
Lutz outraged

Bob Lutz, the former vice chairman at General Motors who helped develop the Volt, said he's angered that the car has become politicized.
"I don't mind criticizing Obama, I don't mind criticizing the Democrats and, you know me, I think global warming is a huge hoax perpetrated by the global political left," Lutz said. "But when it comes to starting to tell outright lies to advance your political purposes and damage an American company that is greatly on its way back, hurt American employment in Hamtramck, Michigan, I just think it's totally outrageous."
Lutz, a Republican, said he voted for former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum in the Michigan Republican primary in part because former Massachusetts Gov. Romney wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in 2008 headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" about his opposition to a GM bailout.

Obama's role
After President George W. Bush extended emergency loans to GM's predecessor, Obama's administration managed its $50 billion bailout. The U.S. still holds 32 percent of the GM shares, which have gained 26 percent this year after falling 45 percent in 2011.
Obama has embraced the Volt's fuel-saving technology and said it's his choice for a new car once he's no longer president.
"It was nice," he told a UAW audience on Feb. 28 about sitting in one. "I'll bet it drives real good. And five years from now when I'm not president anymore, I'll buy one and drive it myself."
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who owns a Chevrolet dealership in Butler, said he doesn't sell the Volt at his store because it's too expensive for his customers, who would be better served with a cheaper Cruze. While it may be an engineering marvel, it's too far out for his customers, he said.
"It's still just not a viable alternative to the market that I serve in western Pennsylvania," he said. "I just don't have people coming in to buy that car."
Social issues

The Volt not only personifies the bailout for Republican candidates, it also plays to other controversial issues such as class and environment. On the campaign trail, for example, Gingrich, the former U.S. House speaker, has peppered his stump speech with comments about the Volt, including during a stop Feb. 17 caught by C-Span.
"The average family that buys it earns $170,000 a year and this is Obama's idea of populism and in his new budget he wants to increase the amount given to every Volt buyer to $10,000, which is an amount which would allow a lot of people to buy a decent secondhand car but it wouldn't be an Obama car," Gingrich said to cheers in Peachtree City, Ga.
"But here's my point to folks: You can't put a gun rack in a Volt. So let's be clear what this election is all about," Gingrich continued. "We believe in the right to bear arms and we like to bear the arms in our trucks."
The Volt "can do a lot of things," including tote a gun rack, responded Selim Bingol, vice president of GM's global communications, on a company blog. "But if you are looking for a vehicle for your next hunting trip, it may not be your first choice."

Don’t Buy Parts and Service You Don’t Need - Car Maintenance Scams

College students sometimes fall prey to high-pressure sales people, especially those that work in car dealer or independent retailer repair shops. The tactic, which may or may not be a scam can go something like this — you went in for an oil change and before you know it you consented to have your car’s radiator flushed, its wiper blades replaced and the transmission fluid changed. That means you’ll soon be making a frantic call home to your parents to explain the unexpected $246.87 repair bill they’ll see the next time their Visa or MasterCard statement is sent out.

Did you get ripped off? That’s hard to say — the oil change may have been needed, but the other items could have waited. Certainly, you could have changed the wiper blades yourself and paid 1/4 the price by visiting your local auto parts store. Besides, the guys behind the counter will change the blades for you in the event you find it too difficult to handle the swap out yourself.

It is true: a lot of dealers and maintenance shops get away with doing extra maintenance consumers don’t need or at least could have waited to have done miles down the road or months later. You can avoid being scammed by keeping the following in mind regarding your car:

1. Make “friends” with your owner’s manual — You know that your car came with an owner’s manual. Trouble is, you can’t seem to find it. Likely, it is buried inside of your glove compartment, tucked underneath a pile of papers, behind a flashlight or obscured by your registration stuff. Find it and begin to read it — you’ll be amazed to learn that the maintenance intervals the car’s manufacturer recommends are different and usually much longer than what a mechanic says. The manufacturer knows best — they built your car! Still can’t find your manual? No worries — copies of complete manuals are often uploaded to the Internet and accessible for free.

2. Get your oil and filter changed, nothing else — There isn’t anything wrong with having an oil change place handle your car. Just remember that the only thing you should pay for is to have your old oil drained, the filter replaced, and new oil and a new filter included. Topping off your fluids is fine too, but any other service should be handled by a family member or your trusted mechanic. Oh, by the way, those 3,000-mile oil change intervals are a thing of the past. Most cars can go at least 5,000 miles between oil changes, saving you money and dumping less oil into the environment.:: BUT at what cost? If you only want your car to last as long as the warranty... then you could actually not change the oil at all. If you would like to see 300,000 miles or more out of your engine.. then you had better be changing the oil at 3,000 miles.

3. Save it until you get home — Unless something breaks while you’re away at school, you don’t need to have a mechanic do “repairs” for you. Some colleges offer repair shops for students — go there if you have a need. Summer vacation, winter breaks and holiday trips home should mean that your car is being serviced by someone you know and someone who knows your car. Leave your car in the hands of a stranger and you risk having that person nail you will a big bill. For unnecessary repairs at that. Besides, your trusted mechanic friend already has your car on schedule, so why deviate from that?

If you get ripped off at the repair shop, you can complain to your local Better Business Bureau. Or, you can give dad a call and let him handle the matter. Better yet, avoid trouble in the first place by reading up on the owner’s manual and telling the repair guy “no” the next time he says your car needs a tune up. Tune up intervals have been extended too — as far out as 100,000 miles for the spark plugs.

Toyota recalls over 681,000 vehicles in United States

Toyota Motor Corp. said today it is recalling more than 681,000 cars and trucks in the United States to address potential problems.

The Japanese automaker said it will recall about 495,000 Tacoma pickup trucks from model years 2005 to 2009 to replace a part in the steering wheel. It is also recalling about 70,500 Camry mid-sized cars and 116,000 Venza crossover vehicles from model years 2009 to 2011 to replace a stop lamp switch.

Toyota said it is not aware of any accidents or injuries in either case.

For the Tacoma, Toyota will replace the steering wheel spiral cable assembly because friction may occur over time involving that part, which may result in the driver's side airbag being deactivated and not deploying in an accident.

For the Camry and Venza, silicon grease during assembly may lead to increased electrical resistance that can cause the vehicle not to start or the shift lever not to move from the "park" position, Toyota said.

Both fixes will take about 30 minutes, the company said. Owners of the affected Tacomas will be notified in early April, while the others will be alerted as soon as Toyota has the necessary replacement parts.

GM will stop making slow-selling Volt plug-in for 5 weeks

General Motors Co., missing sales goals for the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, plans to halt production of the sedan for five weeks beginning later this month rather than discount the high-technology cars. GM will stop making Volts at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant from March 19 until April 23, Chris Lee, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail March 2. The factory had ramped up to full-speed production Feb. 6 after the New Year's shutdown. While sales of the Volt in February more than tripled from a year earlier to 1,023, the rate is below what's needed to meet Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson's goal of 45,000 deliveries in the U.S. this year. GM missed its target of 10,000 Volt sales last year, finishing 2011 with 7,671 deliveries. "This move is to keep proper inventory levels," Lee said in the e-mail. GM executives have said publicity surrounding a two- month federal investigation into the safety of the Volt following a fire publicly revealed in November had hurt the car's sales. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in January that the Volt poses no more fire risk than other cars. "Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, we did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," Akerson said during a Congressional hearing on Volt in January. "And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become."

GM shares

GM shares have gained 30 percent this year through March 2, after falling 45 percent in 2011. The company surpassed Toyota Motor Corp. as the world's largest automaker last year when it earned a record $9.19 billion. The U.S. Treasury Department sold 28 percent of GM in its November 2010 initial public offering and still holds 32 percent of the automaker's shares, acquired as part of the Obama administration's $50 billion bailout. The U.S. wants to sell for at least the $33 a share IPO price, people familiar with the matter have said. GM sold 1,626 Volts through the first two months of the year in the U.S. Detroit-based GM planned to make 60,000 Volts this year for worldwide distribution, with three-quarters of them earmarked for the U.S. market. Akerson promised in January that GM would "match production with demand." The model, rated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as getting the equivalent of 94 miles (151 kilometers) per gallon of gasoline, starts at $39,195, excluding destination charges, and qualifies for a $7,500 U.S. tax credit.

Insufficient demand

"The fact that GM is now facing an oversupply of Volts suggests that consumer demand is just not that strong for these vehicles," said Lacey Plache, chief economist for auto-research website Edmunds.com. "The price premium on the Volt just doesn't make economic sense for the average consumer when there are so many fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars available, typically for thousands of dollars less," she said in an e-mail. News that GM planned to reduce Volt production resulted in further criticism about the vehicle. "Even as gas prices continue to climb, President Obama's attempt to manipulate the free market and force consumers into purchasing electric vehicles like the GM Volt has failed despite the use of taxpayer dollars to prop up production," U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement.