ROUSH Performance unveiled the 510-horsepower and 510 lb.-ft. of torque P-51A Mustang automobile Tuesday at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. “I’ve often said that there was never a Mustang built that I didn’t like and that includes both the car and the airplane,” said Jack Roush, an aviation enthusiast who currently owns two P-51 Mustang warbirds. “This is the type of product that ROUSH has wanted to produce for at least 10 years but the right platform, the right technology, and the right timing never intersected until now.”

The ROUSH P-51A is easily the highest horsepower Mustang the company has ever produced and represents the first time internal engine components have been upgraded by ROUSH technicians in its Livonia, Michigan, facility. It was determined that the only way to give the P-51A moniker its due was to completely break into the 4.6L, 3V and rebuild several of the functional internal components, which include a forged steel eight-bolt crankshaft, forged aluminum pistons with increased dish to lower the compression from 9:8 to 8:6, and forged steel H-Beam connecting rods. These upgraded parts were necessary for the stock Ford engine (which comes with 300 horsepower from the factory) to be able to withstand the additional power generated from the newest iteration of the legendary ROUSHcharger supercharger system.

Additional alterations include a custom aluminum upper and lower intake manifold for the high-capacity air-to-water intercooler and ROUSHcharger. ROUSH installs a custom fuel rail and high-flow fuel injectors, a high-flow capacity fuel system, and dual electronic throttle body.

The changes to the ROUSH P-51A don’t end under the hood. A ROUSH aerobody kit will be installed, which includes a front fascia, chin spoiler, hood scoop and rear spoiler. The ROUSH black high-flow grill is added along with cooling side shields to give the car the aggressive look it needs while stalking the streets.

Internally, the car will come with ROUSH sport leather seating and custom floor mats, both with an embroidered P-51A emblem. The white face gauges and billet aluminum pedals will get a lot of use as the driver bangs through the gears with the ROUSH short throw shift lever and retro black ball.

For those who look behind the 18-inch ROUSH forged five-spoke wheels will see the vaunted Stage 3 suspension underneath this vehicle. Designed to handle even the tightest twists and turns, this suspension includes specially-engineered and tuned front struts, rear shocks, front and rear springs, front and rear sway bars, and jounce bumpers. The front brakes are also upgraded with 14-inch front two-piece rotors and four-piston calipers. Each component was specifically engineered so that ride comfort was not compromised at the expense of the tremendous gains in performance.

Pricing for the ROUSH P-51A Mustang has not been set, but will be announced shortly. The vehicle is slated to begin production in the first quarter of 2008 and will be limited to 100 vehicles. As with all ROUSH vehicles, the P-51A will carry a 3-year/36,000-mile warranty.

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General Motors announces big plans to open a second research center in Shanghai. It’s part of a $250 million corporate campus there. While GM is struggling to get a competitive edge in the U.S., sales in China are soaring. That country is now GM’s second largest market. GM expects to sell a million vehicles in China this year; and next year, it plans to introduce a hybrid gasoline-electric vehicle in China.

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Ford Motor Co., battling a 12-year slide in U.S. market share, negotiates a new contract this week with a United Auto Workers union seeking to extend job guarantees won at General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Ford posted record losses last year and says it plans to close 16 of 41 North American plants by 2012. Officials at the No. 2 U.S. automaker said in July they may shut fewer should they reach a favorable labor deal.

Ford’s losses have been steeper than those at GM and Chrysler, which may make it tougher for bargainers to reconcile the union’s desire for job guarantees for its 58,500 Ford members with the company’s need to cut costs.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a strike,” said Gary Chaison, a labor professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “Ford is really going to be a messy one.”

UAW members at GM and Chrysler ratified four-year contracts containing job commitments this month following a six-hour walkout at Chrysler and a two-day strike at GM. The Chrysler deal was approved two days ago, shifting the union’s focus to Ford.

Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans and UAW spokesman Roger Kerson declined to comment.

The company’s market share in the U.S. has fallen every year since 1995, when the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker sold more than one in every four cars and trucks in the country.

Ford’s share stood at 16 percent this year through September. That includes figures from Jaguar and Land Rover, British brands Ford is selling to raise cash and allow it to focus on restoring profit in North America.

Vanishing Sales

Ford’s annual U.S. sales are now 1.3 million below what they were at the start of the decade — equivalent to the output of five plants. Ford’s U.S. share has fallen behind Toyota Motor Corp.’s this year.

The “real issue” at Ford will be the company’s commitment to produce vehicles at specific remaining plants, said Richard Block, a labor professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

In June, UAW Vice President Bob King told union officials that the union’s “No. 1 priority” at Ford “is product for our facilities,” according to a person familiar with his remarks.

In Wayne, Michigan, for example, workers are assured of building the Ford Focus small car through 2009, said Bill Johnson, bargaining chairman of UAW Local 900 at the plant.

As part of the talks, the UAW hopes to secure commitments that its members will build four new vehicles in the U.S. starting in 2010, said Johnson. One, he hopes, will go to Wayne.

Stronger Support at GM

At GM, 66 percent of production workers voted to ratify the contract. About 56 percent of those workers approved the Chrysler settlement, the union said Oct. 27.

Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally told the Associated Press this month his company could accept “the basic framework” of the GM and Chrysler agreements.

The union’s four-year contract with GM calls for the Detroit-based automaker to put $29.9 billion into a retiree- health trust fund that takes effect in January 2010. The deal with Chrysler would have the company spend $8.8 billion to finance a similar fund.

Those funds will take billions of retiree health-care obligations off the books of the two automakers.

GM pledged to include some models scheduled to begin production as late as 2013, according to a union summary. Chrysler’s guarantees didn’t run as long, which spurred greater UAW opposition to its accord than GM’s.

Limited Options

Ford’s options may be limited, said Clark University’s Chaison.

“I think Ford is the automaker closest to bankruptcy,” Chaison said. “I don’t think they’re in a position to make product guarantees. Even if there are commitments, they may make them weak and short term.”

Joe Hinrichs, vice president of North American manufacturing, said July 23 the final number of plant shutdowns is “subject to whatever we come up with in negotiations.” Ford has identified 10 of the 16 plants it says it will close.

The union recognizes Ford’s vulnerability, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“The Ford negotiation is going to be significantly easier because I think the membership is aware of the gravity of the competitive issues that they face,” he said.

Ford last year borrowed $23.4 billion so it could complete its plant closings while still developing new cars and trucks. The company accounted for $12.6 billion of the three U.S. automakers’ combined $15.3 billion in losses last year.

Ford Shares

Ford has risen 15 percent this year as investors bet that the company, along with GM and Chrysler, would win concessions from the union. GM rose 23 percent in the same period. Chrysler is now owned by a private-equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management LP.

Ford fell 1 cent to $8.66 at 10:03 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Ford’s 7.45 percent bond due July 2031 fell five-eighths of a cent to 79.375 cents on the dollar on Oct. 26, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the NASD. The yield rose to 9.68 percent.

Credit-default swaps tied to Ford bonds, used to speculate on the company’s ability to repay its debt, have risen 112 basis points this year through Oct. 26 to 627 basis points. A basis point on a credit-default swap contract protecting $10 million of debt for five years is equivalent to $1,000 a year.

A rise in price indicates deterioration in investor perception of credit quality.

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KTM North America Inc. is recalling All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) sold nationwide from August 2007 to September 2007. The rear brake caliper support can crack; this could result in the potential for a loss of the use of the rear brake and subsequently lead to an accident.

This recall involves KTM model year 2008 450XC and 525XC ATVs. The ATV’s are orange and black in color and have 450XC and 525 XC branded on the side as well as the KTM™ logo.

Consumers should contact their local KTM dealer to schedule an appointment for a free repair.

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Toyota Motor Co. said Tuesday it would cover the costs of repairing doors on up to 600,000 Sienna minivans, after learning from consumers that a part can fail, causing doors to shut unexpectedly.

It’s not a factory recall for the vehicles, made from 2004 through 2006, but the owners will receive a letter from Toyota explaining the problem and offering to take care of it at the company’s expense.

The letters will be mailed Nov. 2, Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong told the Journal Sentinel.

In Wauwatosa, Tom Osman spent about six months trying to get Toyota, or his local dealership, to pay for the failed door mechanism on his 2005 Sienna.

At best, it was going to cover only 75% of the $2,000 repair bill, Osman said, leaving him to pay the $500 difference.

That was just for one door, on the driver’s side, which must be replaced because the “door check mounting panel” failed.

“It’s probably a matter of time before the passenger door fails too,” Osman said.

The problem is with the front doors on the driver’s and passenger’s sides, rather than the van’s sliding doors. When the door is open, it’s supposed to be held in place by the door check mounting panel. When the part fails, the door swings freely.

With two children, ages 4 and 7, Osman said he worries that one of the doors will close on their hands while they’re getting out of the vehicle.

Osman was angry that until Tuesday Toyota said it would not cover the full repair costs, because his van had 40,000 miles on the odometer and was out of warranty, even though it was less than three years old.

“This was a factory defect. It should have nothing to do with the warranty,” Osman said.

Toyota had been handling the out-of-warranty complaints on a “case by case” basis, said Mary Doherty, customer relations manager at Wilde Toyota, in West Allis. Osman bought the vehicle used from Wilde.

If the vehicles were under Toyota’s three-year, 36,000-mile warranty, the repairs were fully covered, she said.

It’s difficult to say whether the Sienna door problem is widespread, partly because it might not surface for years on some vehicles.

But Toyota now says it will pay for the repairs on Siennas up to five years old with 100,000 or fewer miles on them.

“We are calling it a warranty enhancement,” rather than a factory recall, Kwong said.

The defect was caused by bad spot welds. Siennas are built at the company’s factory in Princeton, Ind. Toyota doesn’t consider the defect a safety issue, although a door that closes unexpectedly could be hazardous to small children.

“Most of the time, people are just annoyed by a ‘popping noise’ they hear” when the welds are weak, Kwong said.

The faulty part is the latest in a string of problems that have raised doubts about whether Toyota can maintain quality standards amid booming sales.

Last week, Consumer Reports said Toyota had fallen so far in its annual vehicle reliability survey that it could no longer automatically recommend the company’s new cars and trucks to readers.

Toyota slid from first place last year to fifth place in Consumer Reports’ 2007 rankings. Honda replaced Toyota in the No. 1 spot.

In 2005, Toyota had 12 recalls totaling more than 2 million vehicles. One of those involved nearly a million vehicles built as far back as 1989. A recall of more than 768,000 involved trucks and sport utility vehicles no older than three years.

Toyota hasn’t issued a factory recall for the Sienna door problem, perhaps because such notices generate a lot of negative publicity, said Joe Wiesenfelder with Cars.com, a Web site for car enthusiasts.

“It’s probably on the cusp of being a recall, but maybe not,” he said.

Still, Toyota is probably more sensitive to Sienna owners’ complaints now, given the Consumer Reports rankings, according to Wiesenfelder.

“Anyone who pays the kind of money we’re talking about here, especially with a company of Toyota’s reputation, is justified in feeling outraged,” he said.

Toyota is offering to reimburse consumers who have already paid up to several thousand dollars to have their Sienna doors fixed.

If the bad welds are broken or cracked, the entire door assembly has to be replaced at a cost of several thousand dollars.

“You don’t have to be the vehicle’s original owner. Anyone can bring the car in and it will be fixed,” Kwong said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received a few complaints about the problem. Earlier this year, Toyota issued a service bulletin to its dealerships advising them of the necessary repairs.

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A diverse array of customized and high-performance cars, trucks and SUVs again dominates the General Motors display at the 2007 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show, but this time there is an underlying message: Green goes with mean.

Many of the 28 vehicles GM will bring to the annual convention of the automotive aftermarket performance and appearance industry either run on alternative fuels, such as E85 ethanol, or feature fuel-efficient performance without compromise. The lineup is headlined by an E85-powered Corvette Z06 owned by Jay Leno. The “Tonight Show” host’s new supercar boasts a custom, 500-cubic-inch engine that generates approximately 600 horsepower and is fueled solely by E85.

Another mean, green Chevy at SEMA is FlexFuel Chevy Hot Rod, built by GM Performance Division – a re-creation of the hot rods that competed at early drag strips and land-speed venues of the late 1940s and 1950s. With bodywork inspired by a 1934 Chevy and period styling touches, FlexFuel Chevy Hot Rod mixes vintage style with contemporary technology; it’s powered by a 500-horse FlexFuel version of the turbocharged Ecotec engine. It runs on E85, gasoline or any combination of the two.

In addition to the alternative-fueled performers in the display, GM will also use the SEMA platform to introduce some influential concepts and production models, including the Pontiac Solstice SD-290 concept, which showcases a unique passenger compartment closeout evoking the spirit of vintage racecars, and a tuner-inspired version of the upcoming 2008 Saturn Astra. Chevy will make a couple of sport compact production announcements on Monday, Oct. 29, that will surely please the tuner crowd.

Celebrity endorsements will be in full force all over the SEMA show floor as three urban-inspired Enclaves customized by a trio of the industry’s most influential designers, including Rick Bottom, former NBA star Jerome Williams’ Automotive Street Style, and Mitek will be on display, along with a new Pontiac G8 GT built by rapper 50 Cent and Unique Autosports.

Additional concept and specialty vehicles in the display include:

Cadillac –Factory customized CTS Sport and Escalade Sport concepts show how sporty these new models can look with a few, carefully crafted styling and stance enhancements.

Chevrolet –In addition to the E85 ethanol-powered machines described above, Chevy is featuring a bevy of tricked-out trucks and custom cars, including:

Silverado HD Crew Cab Z71 “Big Red” concept, influenced by last year’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. Big Red concept
Silverado HD Country Music concept with fold-out, portable stage
Silverado Major League Baseball show vehicle
Silverado/GM Performance Parts LSX-powered regular cab truck with 640 horsepower
Suburban HD Z71 diesel, with a new 4.5L diesel engine
Camaro Convertible concept
Impala SS “Car of Tomorrow” NASCAR racecar show vehicle
GMC –The Yukon All-Terrain show vehicle follows in the tracks of last year’s Sierra All-Terrain concept and is designed to complement active lifestyles; and the Sierra HD Denali is a “what if” look at applying GMC’s most premium aesthetic to the Sierra 2500HD.

HUMMER –A pair of serious off-roaders is on hand, including the racing-inspired H3R and the adventure-seeking H2 Safari.

Pontiac –Along with the Solstice SD-290, Pontiac will feature two new G8 performance sedans, including a slightly enhanced version of the G8 GT production model and a completely customized G8 GT from 50 Cent and Unique Autosports (viewed in the Pirelli Tires display).

A collaboration between Pontiac, 50 Cent and Unique Autosports – the New York-based custom shop featured on the show “Unique Whips” – 50 Cent’s red-and-black performance sedan is equipped with a GM Performance Parts LSX 427 engine, custom paint, 22-inch chrome wheels and a custom-tailored interior boasting an 800-watt audio system.

Saturn –Marking the introduction of the all-new Astra sport-compact, Saturn shows off a tuner-inspired example that uses subtle exterior and chassis mods, as well as unique wheels, to give the car a street-wise stance.

GM Accessories and GM Performance Parts

In addition to the concept vehicles at the GM display, General Motors introduces products and initiatives that will surely influence enthusiast projects of the near future, including a collaboration with DUB to develop a variety of appearance and performance components.

GM Performance Parts (GMPP) teamed up with GM Performance Division to give the most famous 1957 Chevy magazine car of all time – Popular Hot Rodding’s Project X – its ultimate “rectification.”

GMPP also introduces a bevy of high-performance engines and engine support components, led by the Anniversary 427 crate engine – a limited-edition, all-aluminum big-block based on the legendary ZL-1 engine. It is completed by the ZZ427, a regular-production crate engine that features most of the same high-performance attributes of the Anniversary 427, but with an iron cylinder block.

Also new from GMPP is an LS3 crate engine, tall-deck LSX cylinder block and a trio of “LS” engine controller kits that make engine integration easy.

General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), the world’s largest automaker, has been the annual global industry sales leader for 76 years. Founded in 1908, GM today employs about 280,000 people around the world. With global headquarters in Detroit, GM manufactures its cars and trucks in 33 countries. In 2006, nearly 9.1 million GM cars and trucks were sold globally under the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn and Vauxhall. GM’s OnStar subsidiary is the industry leader in vehicle safety, security and information services. More information on GM can be found at www.gm.com.

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