– General Motors says it will stop using Greek designations to denote vehicle platforms, such as Epsilon for its midsize, front-wheel-drive family. Instead, it will simply refer to its vehicles as members of its compact, midsize or full-size lineups.
– Pininfarina is building a prototype of the French Solex moped for a company that wants to sell them in mid-2006 for around $1,150. The first Solex mopeds were developed during World War II by Marcel Menneson and Maurice Goudard. Between 1946 and 1988, Solex sold more than 8 million of the “bicycle that runs all alone,” as ads put it in the 1960s. The new moped will use an electric motor to drive the rear wheels.
– Honda may expand its Alabama plant for a second time if demand for minivans and sport-utility vehicles keeps growing. Honda could build 100,000 more vehicles annually at the plant in Lincoln, Ala., “with a minimum investment” in as little as a year, says Koichi Kondo, who manages the Tokyo-based company’s North American unit. Lincoln’s two lines now can produce as many as 300,000 Odyssey minivans and Pilot SUVs a year.
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Transportation in brief is compiled from the notebooks of Jim Mateja and Rick Popely, and from Tribune news services.
