TOGETHER WITH:
Howdy, Fam!
First things first: Remember this story about a generous dealer hooking up a family of nine just in time to bring home their quintuplets?
Well, the family is home now from the NICU and looking better than ever!
Our endless gratitude to the folks at West Herr for making stories like this common in our industry.
Also in today's email:
Two automakers are learning what it costs to lose control of their own story, one to a lawsuit, one to Apple.
Canada matched Trump's tariffs dollar for dollar, and Honda says it may have to raise prices
Ford handed its next EV platform's brain to Apple
Goodyear turned an oil change into a destination
Bugatti, Jeep, and a $3,557-a-year Fiat round out today's Quick Hits
Keep Pushing Back,
—Chris with Paul, Kyle & Kristi
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📌 Tariff Update: Canada Retaliates, Honda Talks Price Hikes
Quick follow-up to yesterday's tariff piece. Canada matched the U.S. dollar-for-dollar Tuesday, imposing 15%, 25%, and 50% tariffs across roughly 700 U.S. products, effective Sept. 8, alongside a C$7.5 billion support package for affected businesses and workers.
We are trying to absorb the cost by ourselves or together with our suppliers... but we may have to [raise prices].
Honda currently builds the Civic in Canada and is the country's second-largest automaker by volume. Kaihara said the company's planned eighth North American assembly plant is now in question without a new USMCA agreement. This is the first named automaker attaching real stakes to a threat that, until now, mostly lived in the hypothetical.
Polestar Says It Was Blindsided. Its Own Dealer Says That's Not the Whole Story.
Polestar is telling U.S. dealers it never saw the ban coming. One of those dealers is suing for $25 million, arguing the company saw it coming from a mile away and used the government as a convenient exit. Both accounts can't be fully true.
We are currently focusing on getting the attention of [Commerce] to obtain the requested information and to understand the underlying basis for the denial.
The hardware argument is hard to wave away: Polestar 3 and the Volvo EX90 share nearly identical hardware, software, and a South Carolina production line. Same majority owner. One got approved, one didn't.
But Polestar's letter to dealers arrived in August, weeks after a New Jersey dealer's $25 million lawsuit accused the company of using the ban as cover for an exit it had already planned, timing that doesn't prove either version, but makes both harder to take at face value.
Want the full conversation?
🎙️ Listen to today's Automotive State of the Union episode for the complete discussion.
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Goodyear Just Turned an Oil Change Into a Destination
Goodyear opened its first experiential retail store in Detroit, styled after Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Nike House of Innovation, while quietly building a mobile service network across 28 U.S. markets.
Goodyear opened its first destination-style concept store in Detroit on Aug. 15, timed to coincide with the Woodward Dream Cruise. The Motor City Garage blends service, brand history, and car culture, part of a broader push to refresh its retail strategy and reverse a stock price down nearly 32% year-to-date.
We really wanted to get out and get closer to our consumers... to have a destination location and make it a fun buying experience.
A tire is about as commoditized a product as retail sells. Goodyear's bet is that experience can be the differentiator price alone can't be, and the mobile network quietly reaching 28 markets is arguably the bigger move, since it removes the reason to compare shops at all.
Consider this today
Your own store already has the advantage Goodyear is paying to build, customers walk in the door every day. The question is whether that visit gives them a reason to come back, or just gets them out the door.
Ford Just Handed Apple the Keys to Its Next EV Platform's Brain
Ford's next-generation EV platform and future BlueCruise capability will run on Apple's map data, keeping only branding and interface control in-house. Less than a decade ago, an anonymous auto executive told the Washington Post that Silicon Valley saw automakers as one word: prey.
The brand is still belonging to the automaker, but the brain is coming from big tech.
Ford isn't alone: Google powers GM's infotainment and Gemini assistant, Amazon supplies BMW's next-gen voice architecture, Nvidia backs Hyundai and Kia's autonomous driving stack. The brand still sells the car. The software increasingly decides whether the owner regrets buying it.
🚘 Car Stuff
Bugatti's CEO says supercars are entering their "Swiss watch phase." Mate Rimac compared the market split to mechanical watches surviving alongside smartwatches: mainstream cars go electric, the ultra-wealthy keep paying for combustion. "Only like 5% of watches are made in Switzerland, but that's where 90% of profits are made," Rimac said. Bugatti's Tourbillon, priced at $4.5 million and sold out at 250 units, gets an average $600K-$700K in personalization on top.
Jeep is returning to Chinese manufacturing, four years after pulling out, through a new $1.2 billion joint venture with Dongfeng. Two electrified Jeep models will be built starting 2027, marking the brand's first-ever exports from China.
The cheapest new car to own in America is a Fiat. The Fiat 500e tops a 50-car cost-of-ownership study at $3,557 a year, beating the Honda Civic Hybrid by nearly $1,300. The Dodge Charger Daytona EV lands at #2, undercutting a Tesla Model 3 by about $200 a year.
Honda is keeping manual transmissions alive in the Civic Si and Integra A-Spec despite acknowledging demand keeps shrinking. "We always think about the enthusiasts, and we always think about their dreams," American Honda CEO Eiji Fujimura said.
💰 Not Car Stuff
Orcas have been filmed ramming sunfish so hard they explode. In two documented incidents in Mexico's Gulf of California, killer whales worked together to blast massive sunfish apart after killing them, behavior researchers think might be a strange form of play or juvenile care.
Scientists just named a newly discovered "dragon" after Syrax from House of the Dragon. Researchers found a small, yellowish mountain horned dragon species in Thailand, found only in a narrow band of high-elevation habitat, and gave it the name Acanthosaura syrax.
1895: The world's first large-scale modern hydroelectric plant powered on at Niagara Falls, an early milestone in generating electricity at scale.
1920: The 19th Amendment took effect, guaranteeing women in the United States the right to vote.
1925: John Z. DeLorean, the automotive engineer and executive who would go on to lead product development at GM and later found the DeLorean Motor Company, was born in Detroit.
