Keith Naughton

Finding the cure to Detroit's health-care ills in upcoming contract talks could prove critical to American automakers' survival.

Soaring gas prices, anxiety about petro-terrorism and worries about global warming are all chipping away at support for the auto industry in Washington.

Even on a soggy spring morning, H&M is causing a commotion outside its newest store in suburban Chicago. Madonna and Beyoncé blast from giant speakers as workers hand out gift cards to dozens of shoppers lining up before the doors open to the Bolingbrook, Ill., store.

Cerberus is not out to bail out the automaker for the good of America. What the firm—and the union—really want.

Nine years ago this week, Al Gore warmed up his run for the presidency by making a visit to Motown and speaking to the Detroit Economic Club. I covered that speech and recall that Gore was entering hostile territory.

Last week in a crowded amphitheater at Chrysler's Auburn Hills, Mich., headquarters, the carmaker's CEO was having a hard time keeping the media on message.

From their Beetles to their boxy SUVs, Americans who grew up in the '60s and '70s defined themselves by what they drove.

Las Vegas billionaire Kirk Kerkorian raised the stakes this week in the race to acquire Chrysler. His surprise $4.5 billion offer now puts pressure on the other bidders to top him.

Inside New York's massive Javits Center this week, the world's automakers took the wraps off shiny new cars for hundreds of automotive reporters gathered from around the globe.

Toyota is on track to pass General Motors this year as the world's No. 1 auto company. How GM plans to fight back.

Remember those Chrysler commercials, where the mustachioed Dr. Z, with thick German accent, raved that Chrysler's cars have "the best of American and German engineering and design"?

When Chrysler designer Ralph Gilles first became a family man, he wasn't ready to drive a dowdy minivan. So he pimped out a '99 Dodge Caravan with big wheels, dual racing stripes and a monster engine. "I thought, 'If I'm going to have a minivan'," he says, " 'I'll have it my way'." Now Chrysler is letting him have his way with its entire minivan lineup, injecting some style into what is essentially this generation's station wagon.

Greetings from the Alice in Wonderland Auto Show in Detroit. On one end of this city's aging conference center, General Motors, maker of the hulking Hummer, is generating buzz with its 150-miles per gallon hybrid electric concept car, the Chevy Volt .

Falling gas prices have taken some of the steam out of hybrid car sales lately. But you wouldn't know that from all the buzz about hybrids at the opening day of the Detroit Auto Show.

Five years ago Bill Ford said selling a green agenda was an uphill fight. Now, says the Ford Motor chairman, it's catching on inside his company and worldwide.

If Lebanon flares into civil war, once again, the spark may well ignite inside the minority Christian community.This threat has been obscured by the rising tension between Shiites and Sunnis.

Struggling General Motors had some good news lately, with its sales rising 6 percent in November and the debut last week of its curvaceous new Buick Enclave.

Jamie Bartosch used to be a Wal-Mart regular. Several times a month, the Arlington Heights, Ill., mother would drop $100 or more at her local Wal-Mart to stock up on staples like diapers, milk and cleaning supplies.

Five years ago Bill Ford said selling a green agenda was an uphill fight. Now, the chairman says, it's catching on inside Ford and worldwide, as other big businesses take leadership roles.

With Kerkorian Gone, What Now for GM?General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner tried to generate some good news for his struggling company this week. On the eve of the glitzy L.A.

When Detroit's Big Three chieftains emerged from their long-awaited, oft-delayed meeting with President Bush earlier this week, there was a telling moment at the end of their press conference in the White House driveway.

Bob Wiley has always driven Detroit iron. So when the 62-year-old retired Air Force man decided this year to trade in his Ford pickup truck for a more comfortable car, he test-drove Ford and Buick sedans.

In the grocery section of a big-box store in north Beijing, shoppers struggle to catch a bargain. And a fish. "We'd still rather pick it out ourselves," says law student Guo Jiao, as she and a friend repeatedly plunge fishing nets into a tank full of slippery grass carp.

The rapper Xzibit made his name customizing cars. But when it came time for the host of MTV's "Pimp My Ride" to purchase his most expensive car ever, he didn't change a thing.

As the sun sets on Golden Vineyards in Napa Valley, I wind my way through mountain switchbacks and become lost. And I couldn't care less. I'm too enthralled by the power and the glory that is the Bentley Continental GTC.

When I interviewed General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner two days before his first meeting with Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn this summer, it was clear that this was an unwilling bride being forced into a shotgun marriage. "There's a lot of aspects of all of this that haven't been normal," Wagoner said, referring to how his hand was forced into negotiating with Ghosn by GM's big and restive shareholder, Las Vegas billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. "It's not the way I would have done it." In the end,...

Talk about your Motown meltdown. The full-throttle crisis afflicting General Motors has suddenly moved across town to Ford Motor Co. It's not that GM is fixed, it's just that Ford is more of a wreck at the moment.

In mid-July, Boeing executive Alan Mulally received an unexpected phone call from someone who had recently become a trusted adviser: former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt.

The collapse of SUV sales isn't the only problem facing Ford Motor Co.

It's the week before finals at Texas A&M University, and cramming for exams is in high gear. But just outside the student center, a half-dozen cars are parked in a row beneath the shade trees surrounding A&M's iconic Rudder Fountain.