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Mercedes leads in US luxury car thefts

Mercedes-Benz makes some fine automobiles. The Silver Arrow'd cars are so good, apparently, that thieves can't help but try to steal them. The German brand is at the top of the charts for luxury car thefts in the US, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, with New York City leading the way. (And those New Yorkers complain about Detroit being bad!)
The C-Class was the most stolen model, with 485 ganked between 2009 and 2012 in NYC alone, while the E-Class and S-Class (which also boasted the worst recovery rate, at 59 percent) both finished in the top ten. Following the C-Class was the BMW 3 Series and Infiniti G. Not surprisingly, each of these were the most common models in their respective lineups. Los Angeles and Miami are also prime hotspots for luxury car thefts, according to the Detroit News report.
While getting your car stolen is pretty awful, there was one inspiring statistic compiled by the NICB - the average recovery rate across the board was 84 percent, with the Cadillac CTS getting recovered 91 percent of the time.

2014 Cadillac ELR leases for $699 a month

Most Autoblog readers thought the $75,000 price tag on the 2014 Cadillac ELR was too high. If you can't swing the MSRP all in one go, how does a lease price of $699 a month sound? That's the amount that Cadillac is offering on the official ELR website, with some caveats, of course. First off, it appears that this lease price is for just for "current owners and lessees of all 1999 or newer GM vehicles." They will also have to pony up $4,999 at signing (all others will need $5,999). Second, the $699-a-month price is for a 39-month lease. Then, of course, "tax, title, license, dealer fees and optional equipment [are] extra" and "each dealer sets own price." Also, it appears that this lease deal is only good until the end of January. Cadillac started shipping the ELR plug-in hybrid coupe to dealers last month. There are two things to note in the fine print. The most surprising is that the payments are based on "a 2014 Cadillac ELR with an MSRP of $76,000." That's $1,000 more than the official MSRP announced in October. Then we get to the real kicker: The lease limits you to a mere 32,500 miles, which is just 833.3 miles a month. Well, 'limit' isn't the exact word, since you can certainly drive more. All you have to do is pay 25 cents per mile for each mile over 32,500. Drive the national average of 13,476 miles in a year? That comes to 43,797 miles over 39 months, which is 11,297 extra miles and an extra $2,824.25.

GM may kill 6 car models as it works with UAW to tackle sales slump

The president of the United Auto Workers union said on Thursday the union is talking with General Motors about the potential threat to plants and jobs from slumping U.S. car sales. GM's response will be more trucks and SUVs, and sources say at least six slow-selling car models may be killed off. "We are talking to (GM) right now about the products that they currently have" at underused car plants such as Hamtramck in Michigan and Lordstown in Ohio, and whether they might be replaced with newer, more popular vehicles such as crossovers, Dennis Williams told reporters. "We are tracking it (and) we are addressing it," Williams added. GM has cut shifts at several U.S. plants this year as inventories of unsold cars have ballooned. Industry analysts said more jobs could be at risk as the automaker wrestles with permanently shrinking production of small and midsized sedans. GM is reviewing whether to cancel at least six passenger cars in the U.S. market after 2020, including the Chevrolet Volt hybrid, which could be replaced in 2022 with a new gasoline-electric crossover model, Reuters has learned from people familiar with the plans. Other GM cars at risk include the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Impala and Chevrolet Sonic, sources said. Some analysts have singled out GM's Hamtramck plant in Detroit as one of the most vulnerable because of plummeting car sales. The plant, which opened in 1985, builds four slow-selling models: Buick LaCrosse, Chevrolet Impala, Cadillac CT6 and Chevrolet Volt. In the first half, it built fewer than 35,000 cars, down 32 percent from the same period in 2016, according to suppliers familiar with GM's U.S. production schedule. The typical GM assembly plant builds 200,000-300,000 vehicles a year.COMING ATTRACTIONS: TRUCKS AND SUVS GM must "create some innovative new products" to replace slow-selling sedans "or start closing plants," said Sam Fiorani, vice president of AutoForecast Solutions. The auto maker already has begun to shift future production plans from cars to trucks, according to Morgan Stanley auto analyst John Murphy. He estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the new vehicle models that GM will introduce over the next four years will be passenger cars, with the rest divided among trucks, SUVs and crossovers. GM plans to add production of the new Cadillac XT4 crossover next year to its Malibu sedan plant in Fairfax, Kansas.