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Fiat Chrysler's London offices will be small, with financial focus

Fiat Chrysler's decision to locate its new corporate headquarters in jolly old London won't herald a sprawling relocation effort. Instead, it's very likely that the FCA outfit will be a small one, primarily focused on finance.
The report comes from Automotive News Europe, which claims FCA's London office will employ about 50 people with backgrounds in finance. CEO Sergio Marchionne and Fiat Group Chairman John Elkann will both have offices at the corporate headquarters, as well.
ANE cites an anonymous source that claims the people employed at the London office will focus primarily on treasury operations. It's unlikely that FCA will take on any additional employees specifically for its UK offices. That said, FCA isn't likely to downsize either its Turin or Auburn Hills offices once London comes online.

We like the Fiat 500X despite the faults | Long-term Update

"Personality goes a long way," according to Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. And while Samuel L. Jackson's character was talking about the merits of dogs over pigs, the same maxim applies to cars. Such is the case with our long-term 500X. It continues to charm us, despite the faults. Yes, this car has faults. One being the nine-speed transmission, which is a lot like a Where's Waldo book: it's sometimes fun, usually confusing, and ultimately takes too much time. And the center infotainment screen is slow to boot up. We also noticed some excessive noise from our winter tires, which isn't necessarily the fault of the 500X but, hey, this is the paragraph about gripes. But 500X related stories in the Autoblog office follows a consistent pattern: "This one thing, man it's bad, but I still like the car. Take X, for instance." And X has a lot of possible options: quick-warming heated front seats and steering wheel, the upright driving position, the general layout of the interior, and the bright saddle-leather seats in our tester. View 34 Photos And therein lies why we still like out Fiat. It's just kind of a happy car. It cover the basics well enough - spacious interior, versatile cargo interior, comfortable seats, and makes up for the rest with general good cheer. There are better cars than the 500X, but there are also better, more boring cars than the 500X. Picking between the two, we'd prefer the flawed Fiat to a boring alternative.

Automakers, dealers are rushing cars to Houston after Harvey

DETROIT — Houston-area car retailers and automakers are rushing to reopen dealerships and beef up inventory to replace many hundreds of thousands of vehicles damaged in flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Pete DeLongchamps, vice president for manufacturer relations at Group 1 Automotive, the third-largest U.S. auto dealer group, said the company prepared for the storm with a plan designed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This included moving moved inventory to higher ground and cleaning roof drains to avoid cave-ins. Group 1 thus lost a "relatively small percentage" of inventory and reopened its roughly 25 dealerships in the Houston and Beaumont area by Thursday. "Things have been moving fast and furious with a large number of tow-ins already," DeLongchamps said. "Our customers have lost a lot of vehicles, we need to help them replace." Harvey brought record flooding to Houston and killed at least 35 people. The storm is expected to briefly depress already slowing U.S. auto sales but could eventually help boost demand as damaged cars are replaced. Automakers report U.S. August sales on Friday. Estimates for the number of Harvey-damaged vehicles needing replacement range up to 500,000. By Thursday, AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto retail chain, had reopened its 17 Houston stores and is moving cars and trucks from other regions, company spokesman Marc Cannon said. The company plans to move 500 to 1,000 used cars to an AutoNation USA used car store and stage a sale Sept. 21-23, when many would-be buyers should have insurance checks to replace destroyed vehicles, Cannon said. AutoNation is still assessing how many vehicles it lost, but it too moved vehicles to higher ground ahead of the storm. General Motors spokesman Jim Cain said the number of damaged vehicles at dealerships "is relatively modest." "But there are still several dealerships that are inaccessible, so the number will increase," he said. GM will move new and used vehicles to Houston, "but it won't be done until the infrastructure and our dealers are ready." Ford is still assessing damage and inventory needs, a spokeswoman said. CarMax, the biggest U.S. used car dealer, will reopen its six Houston area stores on Labor Day, spokeswoman Claire Hunter said. "We are mobilizing additional inventory to the region as we speak," Hunter said. Paul Lips, chief operating officer at ADESA, a unit of KAR Auction Services Inc., which with Manheim dominates the U.S.