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Hyundai names former GM exec Shannon as U.S. marketing boss

Hyundai has tapped a General Motors veteran as its new U.S. marketing chief, filling a spot that has sat empty for more than seven months. Steve Shannon was named vice president of marketing for Hyundai Motor America on Wednesday and will officially take his position on April 18, Hyundai spokesman Chris Hosford said.

Volvo’s new VEA family of four-cylinder engines starts production

As a result, Volvo has been planning a new range of four-cylinder engines to power their range in the future – the new Volvo Engine Architecture (VEA) – and has spent the last couple of years readying their design – and their facility in Skövde – to start production. And now it’s underway. Together with Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) the new VEA engines will be a core part of every new Volvo before too long, and will replace the five and six cylinder engines Volvo currently uses and will provide more power than current six-cylinder engines with economy and emissions better than current four-cylinder engines.

Tesla pays off its government loans

Tesla paid off the last of its $465 million government loans May 22, nine years ahead of schedule, thus outperforming most U.S. college graduates and the vast majority of American homeowners. Tesla used funds from a stock offering to finish the loan with a whopping bank transfer of $451.8 million Wednesday, pointing out that it was “…the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.” Apparently no one at Tesla was even born when Lee Iacocca paid off Chrysler's $1.2-billion government bailout ahead of schedule back in 1983.