Nos 1989 Ford Crown Victoria Horn Blower Cover on 2040-parts.com

The scramble for scarce tires

North American automakers are struggling with a nagging shortage of tires, caused in part by tire plant closings and rising demand for low-volume specialty tires. Automakers are paying much higher prices -- double-digit percentage increases from a year ago -- as tire makers gain pricing power. "We have been bombarded from every side for additional tires, and we can't keep up," said David O'Donnell, Continental Tire's vice president of original equipment in the Americas.

First Sight: Divine DS concept

To mark 100 days since the announcement that DS was to become a brand of its own, separate from Citroën, it has created the Divine DS concept – a self-styled manifesto for the new marque. We traveled to Citroën's DS' design center on the southern outskirts of Paris to be amongst the first to see this statement of intent and speak to the people behind its creation. "This concept car is the very essence of what DS is and what it will be," declares Yves Bonnefont, the CEO of the DS brand.

Big news on GM's big SUVs

Good news and bad news for General Motors' large cash cows, the full-sized SUVs. The bad news: The massive sport-ute market has shrunk roughly in half to around 300,000 a year. The good news for GM: This drove some competitors either out of market or into the near-niche category, leaving the new-for-2015 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, the GMC Yukon and Denali, and Cadillac Escalade with a big share of this very profitable segment.