Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Thursday, Jan. 16.
Every now and then, in the face of adversity, an automotive CEO needs to sound like a football coach and send an obvious but memorable motivational message to his or her team. Some might call it coachspeak.
Ford CEO Jim Farley sent out such a message at the Detroit auto show last week.
"We do not make shampoo," Farley said during a Jan. 9 presentation at the Detroit Auto Show. "Rule No. 1 at Ford: No boring products."
Farley's product boss, charged with improving Ford's longtime quality challenges, gets the message.
"We're not trying to make toasters on wheels," Jim Baumbick said in our story today by Michael Martinez. "We're not trying to make just commodity products. It's all about emotion."
General Motors CEO Mary Barra had a similar message years ago for the GM troops — even before she became CEO. "No more crappy cars," she said when she was global product development chief in October 2013.
A few months later, Barra was named CEO.
We've seen similar coachspeak from the top of most auto companies. Then we see if those messages take root in their organizations. That's one reason why Automotive News pays close attention to what the C-level executives say in our annual Talk From The Top series of interviews.
Meanwhile, we've had a plethora of breaking news stories today.
Faced with the potential of new tariffs imposed by the incoming Trump administration, the European Union should seek a "grand bargain" with the U.S. to avoid a trade war, Ola Källenius, president of the European automakers lobby group ACEA, said in our story by Peter Sigal.
"European auto companies support the creation of prosperity, employment and growth in the U.S." and are "an integral part of the U.S. economy," Källenius, who is also the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group, said at an event at the Brussels auto show Jan. 16.
There also was an interesting development in the proposed Honda-Nissan merger discussions. Honda has asked Nissan whether it would be able to acquire Renault's shareholding, according to Japanese media reports. Renault holds a 35.7 percent interest in Nissan, which is worth around $3.6 billion.
Speaking of Honda, Carly Schaffner today gave us an in-depth look at the automaker's sales strategy in the U.S. American Honda expects 5 percent sales growth in 2025 on a balanced lineup that includes hybrid offerings, new electric crossovers and redesigned gasoline models.
Finally, from the cutthroat world of used-car sales, franchised dealers told C.J. Moore in this story that used-vehicle sales efficiency in 2025 hinges on the dealership service drive and searching for optimal inventory in not one but across an array of channels.
That's it for today. Have a great rest of your day!
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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