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Ford, Chrysler and Mazda expand scope of Takata airbag recalls

The scope of the Takata airbag inflator recall is ballooning once again across the United States. Where Honda has elected to take its driver-side airbag campaign nationwide, Chrysler Group and Ford have now announced expanded regional actions to cover some passenger-side airbag inflators. Mazda is adding more regions, as well. For Chrysler Group, the campaign covers the inflators on 149,150 examples of the 2003-model-year Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups. The recall is limited to vehicles sold or ever registered in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. The company will begin notifying affected customers on January 19. According to Chrysler's announcement of the action, the passenger side inflators in these trucks "are of a type that is not used in any of the other vehicles affected by Chrysler Group's regional field action." The automaker says that it's not aware of any actual failures or accidents in these pickups and even claims there are no "observed failures in laboratory testing of its airbag modules." The company is continuing to study the problem, though. Ford is taking a similar step by issuing a recall of inflators for 38,500 examples of the 2004-2005 Ranger and 2005-2006 Ford GT. The campaign only affects vehicles originally sold or ever registered in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Certain zip codes of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa are also covered. There's already precedent for passenger-side airbags to be covered under the Takata inflator recall. When many automakers announced campaigns in June, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota all included that side in some of their repairs. Subaru subsequently did, as well. In addition, Mazda is expanding the scope of its recall to add Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Saipan, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to the affected areas. The company estimates that it has a total of 86,773 vehicles in need of repair. Mazda is also teaming with Toyota to begin independent testing of the Takata inflators. Scroll down to read all of the automakers' announcements of these newly expanded recalls. Statement: Air-Bag Inflators December 3, 2014 , Auburn Hills, Mich.

Experience the Woodward Dream Cruise in a Dodge Challenger Hellcat

While Autoblog was consumed by coverage of the increasingly important Monterey Car Week last weekend, there was another big even going on. The Woodward Dream Cruise is significantly lighter in terms of news, but there's no denying that it's a far bigger, and far more egalitarian than what the wine-and-cheese crowd experience on the links at Pebble Beach. The Dream Cruise crams tens of thousands of cars and over a million spectators along a four-lane ribbon of asphalt between Ferndale and Pontiac, MI. What's remarkable aren't these numbers, though, so much as the distances they travel. Owners and admirers come from far and wide, across the United States and in some cases across the globe, to take in the spectacle. This year, local radio and television coverage featured fans that traveled from Japan, Australia, and Europe, just to take in the cruise. Of course, we realize that not everyone can make the pilgrimage to Woodward Avenue. With that fact in mind, we decided to bring a bit of the Dream Cruise to Autoblog with a time-lapse video of the cruise route. You can experience the good (a Lamborghini Gallardo, Chevrolet Chevelle, and Oldsmobile Cutlass 442), the bad (the traffic jams), and the ugly (no, your 2003 Ford Focus does not qualify as a classic, get the hell out of the cruiser lanes). So join us, as we turn off 8 Mile Road behind the wheel of our 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and run north, through Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Berkley, Bloomfield Township, and Bloomfield Hills, before ending up on Wide Track Drive in Pontiac.

Auto Mergers and Acquisitions: Suicide or salvation?

We love the Moses figure. A savior riding in from stage right with the ideas, the smarts, and the scrappiness to put things right. Alan Mullaly. Carroll Shelby. Lee Iacocca. Andrew Carnegie. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Bart Simpson. Sergio Marchionne does not likely view himself with Moses-like optics, but the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently gave a remarkable, perhaps prophetic interview with Automotive News about his interest and the inevitability of merging with a potential automotive partner like General Motors. Marchionne has been overtly public about his notion that GM must merge with FCA. For a bit of context, GM sold 9.9 million vehicles in 2014, posting $2.8 billion in net income, while FCA sold 4.75 million units and earned $2.4 billion in net income, painting a very rosy FCA earnings-to-sales picture. But that's not the entire picture. Most people in the auto industry still remember the trainwreck that was the DaimlerChrysler "merger" written in what turned out to be sand in 1998. It proved to be a master class in how not to fuse two companies, two cultures, two continents, and two management teams. Oh, it worked for the two individuals at both helms pre-merger. They got silly rich. And the industry itself was in a misty romance at the time with mergers and acquisitions. BMW bought Rolls-Royce. Volkswagen Group bought Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini, putting all three brands into their rightful place in both products and positioning. No marriages there, so no false pretense. Finally, Nissan and Renault got married in 1999. A successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust. But a successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust, the principle part being honesty. Daimler and Chrysler lied to each other. The heads of each unit, the product planners, and finance all presented their then-current and long-range forecasts to each other with less-than-forthright accuracy. Daimler was the far greater equal and no one from the Chrysler side enjoyed that. The cultures were entirely different, too, and little was done to bridge that gap. Which brings me back to the present overtures by Marchionne to GM. "There are varying degrees of hugs," Marchionne stated in the Automotive News piece. "I can hug you nicely, I can hug you tightly, I can hug you like a bear, I can really hug you." Seriously?