Automobile Industry

Asian vehicles once again dominated Consumer Reports' annual ranking of new cars and light trucks, and Honda Motor Co. was named top automaker for the third year in a row. The company rankings are based on the performance and reliability of the vehicles, as determined by the magazine's staff in testing and customer surveys. Among individual vehicle categories, Toyota Motor Corp.'s namesake brand led the pack with top picks in four categories -- mid-size SUV, small SUV, minivan and green car.

Gloom permeates the U.S. auto industry, but happier days are here again for workers at the Skoda factory in the western Czech Republic. Orders are up, their assembly lines are humming once more, and they owe it all to the government. Just not their own. Their gratitude goes instead to their next-door neighbor.

The drastic reinvention plan that General Motors Corp. unveiled Monday would leave the onetime world goliath a smaller, leaner company -- with its legendary Pontiac brand discontinued -- but puts the automaker on a collision course with bondholders that could still land it in Bankruptcy Court. GM proposed a painful downsizing that would eliminate 21,000 workers, 2,600 dealers, $44 billion in debt and four brands -- while making the U.S.

Honda's Prius-killer is looking a lot like road kill. When it debuted in March, Honda Motor Corp.'s retooled Insight hybrid looked to be the first serious challenger to the Prius, Toyota Motor Corp.'s ecological wunder-car. Graced with a low price, 40-mpg-plus fuel economy and the Japanese automaker's reputation for quality, the Insight even looked like the Prius.

California's auto dealers are worried that the state's new budget will put an even bigger dent in already miserable sales. Increases in the sales tax and vehicle license fees were key components of the measure signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday. Both raise the cost of buying a car.

President Obama's threat to cut off government loans and bring on bankruptcy has given him unprecedented leverage to realize his vision of Detroit as the world leader in greener cars. Yet even if the president succeeds in getting domestic carmakers onto firmer financial ground, even if Detroit overcomes decades of consumer skepticism about the quality of its products and begins cranking out fuel-efficient cars that don't damage the environment -- even then the U.S. auto industry could die.

The car world is stepping on the accelerator as it shifts away from the piston and toward the electron. This week at Detroit's auto show, nearly every major automaker, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., announced plans to develop more electric vehicles. But amid all the chatter about charging times, range and 0-to-60 acceleration, an essential business question is emerging.

The next American car factory could be in the Southland. Amid the auto industry's worst decline in decades, Tesla Motors Inc. said Thursday that it would build its all-electric sedan in Southern California, a possible boon to the sagging local economy. Elon Musk, chairman and chief executive of the San Carlos, Calif., start-up, made the announcement as he unveiled the prototype of its new vehicle. The $57,400 Model S gets up to 160 miles on a single charge.

With struggling automakers expected to announce the shutdown of thousands of dealerships starting today, cities are bracing for a wave of blight. The closings will dump thousands of large, oddly configured parcels into an already reeling commercial real estate market. Many are likely to remain empty for a long time, monuments to the decline of the U.S. auto industry and the intensity of this recession.

reporting from washington President Obama moved on two fronts Monday to force automakers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, including a major step in permitting California and other states to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers and environmentalists said the president's actions paved the way to development of a national carbon standard for automobiles. Such a standard already is in force in Europe and Japan.