Until a month ago, Acton Toyota of Littleton had a nice little side business for five years selling Toyota-sponsored extended service contracts over the Internet. The Massachusetts store sold the contracts -- which extend parts and labor protection beyond the factory warranty -- for as much as $750

DUBAI (Bloomberg) -- Aston Martin shareholder Investment Dar Co. is asking creditors to take a 50 percent write-down on the Kuwaiti company's debt as it seeks to meet repayments after defaulting on a loan three years ago, according to three people familiar with the matter. Under the optional plan,

NEW YORK -- Bill Ludwig, CEO at longtime Detroit ad agency Campbell Ewald, is stepping down after more than 30 years at the company, executives familiar with the matter told Advertising Age , an affiliate of Automotive News . The agency is expected to tap an internal successor in a matter of weeks.

MELBOURNE, Australia (Bloomberg) -- General Motors' Holden unit and its labor unions will begin talks to reduce costs enough to keep its Australian plants viable, a month after Ford Motor Co. said it will stop making cars locally. "Every single option is on the table," Mike Devereux, Holden ...

DETROIT -- American Axle and Manufacturing's historic Detroit Manufacturing Complex is set for demolition as the supplier pushes forward with a new plan to unload the shuttered property. The supplier announced last week that it would demolish 1.9 million square feet of the complex just off ...

Toyota will use Twitter to show how it builds the Auris hybrid compact car at its UK factory. The company says it expects to reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers in what it says is a world-first social media project. On Wednesday, the automaker will broadcast hundreds of tweets that

When an advertising agency loses a major automotive account, it has to regroup. This article looks at one such agency, Doner, which had to rebuild after losing the Mazda account and going through other, unrelated, crises. Part of its recovery has been tied to gaining new work from Chrysler Group. A

DETROIT -- General Motors has named a longtime labor relations and manufacturing executive to run its North American factories during one of its busiest-ever vehicle launch periods. Gerald Johnson, now executive director of global program quality and launch, will become GM's new vice president of

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Johnson Controls Inc. is speaking to private equity firms about selling its roughly $1 billion automotive electronics unit, after buyout interest from several rival auto parts suppliers faltered, according to several people familiar with the matter. andnbsp; The unit's ...

Rolls-Royce has named Frank Ludwig as its director of manufacturing. The 42-year-old executive joins the BMW Group subsidiary from the automaker's factory in Leipzig, Germany, where he was director of the plant's paint, press and body shops. Ludwig, who started his new job earlier this month, ...

Volvo will start building a stretched variant of the S60 at its first China manufacturing plant in the southwest China city of Chengdu in the second half of this year, according to Chinese media. The Chengdu plant is in final preparations and it will start production "soon," reported Beijing News ,

DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co.'s take-no-prisoners approach to gaining U.S. market share has the auto industry worried that a price war is brewing that will erode the profit progress made since the recession ravaged auto sales. After cutting prices on seven models and boosting incentives,

WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) -- Automakers are coming under increasing pressure to sell zero-emission vehicles to U.S. consumers who haven't shown much interest in them, with more states following California's lead in setting sales targets. Nine states, including New York and New Jersey, have adopted ...

BERLIN (Bloomberg) -- The Porsche-Piech family bought Qatar Holding's 10 percent stake in Porsche Automobil Holding SE to regain full control of the majority owner of Volkswagen Group. The holding company's only asset is 50.7 percent of VW's common shares. Porsche SE sold its Porsche car business