Wheels: Using an App to Report Handicap Parking Violations

Automakers Report Strong April Sales

DETROIT (AP) — Detroit was king in April, with demand for its big pickups helping to boost U.S. auto sales and offset a soft month for Toyota.

Ford, GM and Chrysler sold a total of 144,042 full-size pickups, up 29 percent from last April, driven by strength in the U.S. housing industry.

Overall sales grew 8.5 percent to nearly 1.3 million. While that's the industry's best April total since 2007, the pace slowed from the first three months of this year. On an annualized basis, April sales were 14.9 million, the first month below 15 million since October.

One reason for the slowdown: Toyota. The Japanese automaker's U.S. sales dropped by 1 percent, or around 2,000 vehicles, from last April. Alec Gutierrez, a senior market analyst with Kelley Blue Book, said he and other analysts underestimated the impact that increasing competition is having on Toyota.

Popular Toyota vehicles like the Corolla and Camry sedans lost sales to fresher models like the Hyundai Elantra and the Ford Fusion. Gas prices — which are 30 cents cheaper than at this time last year — hurt sales of the Prius hybrid, down 21 percent. Toyota's share of the market fell to 13.7 percent from 15 percent a year earlier, putting it behind GM and Ford.

Analysts still expect the industry to sell more than 15 million cars and trucks this year. Gutierrez is keeping his forecast at 15.3 million. That's up from sales of 14.5 million last year. The most recent high was 17 million in 2005, while the trough was 10.4 million during the recession in 2009.

"We're not reading too much" into the April number, Gutierrez said.

Ford, General Motors and Chrysler reported double-digit sales increases last month. Nissan led Japanese automakers with a gain of 23 percent, while Honda's sales rose 7 percent. Volkswagen sales dropped 10 percent, according to figures released Wednesday.

Detroit dominates the pickup segment, as U.S. buyers remain loyal to domestic brands despite efforts by foreign brands to win them over. Sales of Ford's F-Series, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S., rose 24 percent, while Chevrolet Silverado sales rose 28 percent. Chrysler's recently redesigned Ram pickup saw a 49-percent increase.

The gains bode well for second-quarter earnings, since pickups are among automakers' most profitable vehicles.

Truck sales have been strong all year because of customers like Adrien McFrederick, who recently put down a deposit on a 2013 Ram 3500.

McFrederick, 35, owns a marble and tile business, and needed to replace the 2007 Silverado he kept while work was slow. He started looking at Rams late last year after he and his wife bought a Chrysler Town and Country minivan.

Businesses like McFrederick's are getting a boost from a rise in home building, which increased 7 percent from February to March. A revived housing sector means higher sales of big pickups as companies and laborers return to the market. GM said its sales to small businesses rose 32 percent to 57,000 in April.

A different kind of business — natural gas drilling — is propelling sales at Chuck Eddy Jr.'s Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership near Youngstown, Ohio. Eddy said energy industry workers from all over the country were coming in to buy trucks last month, keeping him in tight competition with a nearby Ford store.

"I'm selling heavy-duty trucks. We had people coming in from all over the country buying. We had a guy come in from Montana," Eddy said.

Jesse Toprak, a senior analyst for the TrueCar.com auto pricing site, said full-size trucks made up around 11.5 percent of sales in April, up from around 10 percent last year. He expects them to top 12 percent of total sales — or nearly 2 million vehicles — by the fall of this year, when truck sales are usually strongest. Full-size truck sales peaked at 15 percent of the U.S. market in 2004.

The growth in truck sales shows underlying strength in the economy, Toprak said, since small businesses won't buy them unless they're confident in the future.

Wheels: Lexus Ranked No. 1 on Consumer Reports Annual Report Card

Toyota Motor Sales 2013 Lexus GS 350.

10:46 a.m. | Updated Lexus earned the top overall score of 79 in the Consumer Reports 2013 Annual Report Card, the magazine announced on Tuesday.

Subaru and Mazda tied for second with scores of 76. The magazine said both brands build solid cars that have good handling and fuel economy, are versatile and relatively affordable.

Rounding out the top five were Toyota and Acura with scores of 74.

Honda scored a 72, hurt by the Insight and CR-Z, which had low scores.

Audi and Mercedes-Benz were the only non-Japanese brands to break into the top 10. Audi’s score of 70 put it into 8th place and Mercedes was in 10th with a 69. Audi was the only European brand to have very good reliability over all along with an excellent road-test score.

Eight of the top 10 brands in the report were Japanese. Most Detroit brands were toward the bottom, with European brands generally in the middle.

The magazine used a new grading system this year. In the past, the magazine calculated one overall score for each automaker, but this year there are separate scores for each brand and for individual brands. In the case of Toyota, its three brands, Lexus, Scion and Toyota, get separate scores. Ford also gets separate scores for the Ford and Lincoln brands instead of just one overall score for Ford.

It is more in line with the way consumers shop, the magazine said. Grouping Scion with Lexus doesn’t make a lot of sense from a consumer’s point of view “since they are rarely cross-shopped,” Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing for Consumer Reports, said in a telephone interview.

The 2013 Annual Brand Report Card rankings, Top Picks and more were released by the magazine at a news conference before the Washington Automotive Press Association in Washington.

A brand’s score is calculated using road test and reliability scores, equally weighted, for each of the models tested. The reliability scores come from information provided by the magazine’s subscribers during its Annual Auto Survey.

The bottom five on the Report Card were Chrysler with a score of 52, Ford with 51, Lincoln with 50, Jeep with 47 and Dodge at the very bottom with 46.

Although the new Dodge Dart is an improvement over other small cars from Dodge, “it is not nearly up to the levels of the best competitors,” Mr. Fisher said.

Ford and Lincoln are still suffering from problems with the MyFord and MyLincoln Touch infotainment systems, as well as with the dual-clutch automatic gearbox. Those two issues hurt Ford (including Lincoln) in last year’s Report Card as well.

Ford has made some improvements, but not nearly enough; and problems are spreading as more vehicles have the MyFord and MyLincoln Touch system, Mr. Fisher said.

Those issues have been joined by performance issues related to Ford’s new 1.6-liter and 2-liter EcoBoost turbocharged engines.

“They both have less performance and drink more fuel than the competitors; it hurts their road test scores,” Mr. Fisher said.

To be included, the magazine must have data for at least three models, which meant Fiat, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Ram and Smart were not rated.

The April issue will be on newsstands March 5 and online for subscribers to the magazine’s Web site on Tuesday.

Wheels: Deaths of Teenage Drivers Spiked in First Half of 2012, Report Says

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times Megan Lavery, 17, driving in New Jersey in August 2012. The state has strict laws for teenage drivers.

Fatalities among teenage drivers rose sharply for the first six months of 2012, according to a new report.

The death toll for 16- and 17-year-old drivers of passenger vehicles jumped 19 percent, compared with the first half of 2011.

“It’s troubling” said Barbara L. Harsha, executive director the Governors Highway Safety Association, an organization representing state highway safety offices that released the study, “Teenage Driver Fatalities by State: 2012 Preliminary Data,” on Tuesday.

Based on initial data supplied by the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the first six months of 2012, 25 states reported increases, 17 showed a decrease, and eight states and the District of Columbia reported no change. Over all, 16- and 17-year-old driver deaths increased from 202 to 240.

“Even though the numbers are pretty small, 19 percent is pretty sizable,” Ms. Harsha said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t expect the increase to be as large as it is, so that’s a concern.”

She said the data did not include passengers, bicyclists or pedestrians. “We only looked at drivers, as that is the group most involved in fatal crashes,” Ms. Harsha said.

If the trend persisted in the second half of the year, it would be the second year of increased deaths for teenage drivers in this age group after eight consecutive years of decline. Final data is not available for 2012, but fatalities typically go up in the second half of the year, she said.

The spike in teenage driver deaths appears to have increased at an even greater rate than overall highway fatalities during this same period, Allan Williams, a road safety consultant who wrote the report, said in a telephone interview. He based the projections on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Safety Council.

Despite these increases, the deaths of teenage drivers remain historically low and are still better than they were five or even 10 years ago, he said.

“But anytime there is a favorable trend and it reverses, there is concern and alarm. We don’t want that to continue to happen,” said Dr. Williams, who is the former chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit group financed by the insurance industry. “We don’t want that to continue to happen.”

While it is too soon to know for certain, he attributes the increase in fatalities, in part, to a rebounding economy. With lower gas prices during the study period and greater discretionary income, more teenagers may be on the roads, which increases their exposure to risk.

Another contributing factor may be that progress has slowed among states to strengthen graduated driver licensing laws. All 50 states have some form of the laws that were first introduced in the mid-1990s to gradually grant privileges to teenage drivers during higher-risk situations, like driving at night or with peer passengers. Distracted driving is also thought to play a role, Dr. Williams said.

But while studies and surveys indicate that laws are not particularly effective in changing cellphone use, graduated driver licensing laws have proven to help reducing crashes.

“The more comprehensive state laws are, the greater the effect,” he said.

Compliance is also essential, he said. “A lot, quite frankly, depends on parental involvement,” he said. “But many parents don’t even know what the laws are. They need to know what the laws are. They need to know what the rationales are.”

In addition to strengthening laws and creating programs and awareness to increase parental supervision, improving driver education programs is also critical to reverse the upward trend, said Ms. Harsha, the executive director. “It’s time to redouble our efforts.”

The full report, including state-by-state data, is available online at ghsa.org.