John Irwin

North American factories took another 26,000 vehicles out of their production schedules last week, significantly more than companies were cutting at the beginning of the month.

The CADA said in a statement this week that it met in September with the federal finance minister’s office, where it tabled its submission on the proposal, which would apply a levy to vehicles with a sticker price of more than $100,000.

Customers are likely to benefit from a matchmaker approach as retailers embrace smarter technology.

Magna and Qualcomm competed to buy tech supplier Veoneer. Now a private investment firm will end up owning most of it.

Data flow between dealers, vendors and automakers will need to become more seamless as the vehicle shopping process becomes more digital in the coming years, dealers and automaker executives say.

Dealerships will likely evolve as Canadian customers do more of their own research at home and expect quicker and more transparent sales and service processes, recent data from Deloitte showed.

John Irwin, Automotive News Canada’s first Toronto bureau reporter, says good-bye.

The dealership group has not shared details about its new online platform, but the plan is "to meet customers where they want."

In a bid to get important products to the market faster, General Motors accelerated the timetables for its billion-dollar investments in CAMI Assembly and Oshawa Assembly, highlighting the importance of those two factories to the automaker’s product plans.

Canada had been described as Lithia Motors Inc.'s No. 1 expansion target. The publicly traded dealership group made its first acquisition there last week.

With no product mandate to follow the Dodge Charger and Challenger, the plant faces several scenarios, including potential battery production.

Lithia, the second-largest dealership group in the United States, is expected to purchase Toronto-based Pfaff Automotive Partners, Automotive News Canada reported in July. It would be the first notable example of a U.S. dealership group expanding into Canada and would make Lithia the second publicly traded dealership group to operate in the country, joining AutoCanada Inc.

James Douvas, a 20-year veteran of automotive retail in the Chicago area, is its vice-president of U.S. operations. He is the third executive to lead AutoCanada’s American unit since 2018, succeeding Darvish, who was president of U.S. operations since 2019.

The market for dealership mergers and acquisitions is in the strongest shape it has been in more than a year, indicating that buyers are looking beyond the industry’s short-term challenges, experts said.

The acquisition would make Lithia the second public dealership group in the Canadian market.