Auto News From Around The Web October 27, 2008

French labor board inspectors have recommended that Renault be investigated for “moral and institutional harassment of workers” following the suicides of 5 Renault product development engineers over the course of 18 months. Once of the engineers left a suicide note stating “Tell Mr. Ghosn [former head of Renault, now head of Nissan] I can’t handle the pressure anymore.” Evidently Carlos Ghosn has a reputation as a harsh taskmaster – hopefully this news will lead to changes.

Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra has announced that their new product line (originally scheduled to debut in early 2009) will be delayed approximately 6 months. While Mahindra and Mahindra has promised to offer inexpensive trucks and SUVs with compact diesels that get 30mpg+, a recent product review by JD Power identified nearly 200 ‘issues’ with the vehicles…everything from a lack of cupholders to inferior quality interior components. Of course a few growing pains are to be expected for any foreign automaker entering the U.S. market, but it’s going to be interesting to see if the new Mahindra vehicles will be ready for prime-time when they debut late next year.

Following a 944,000 vehicle recall, GM’s innovative heated windshield sprayer has evidently been discontinued, as they’ve announced that they’re no longer going to be offering the product in it’s current form. Reports of vehicle fires prompted the recall, and difficulties with the supplier have likely stopped production of this feature for the short term.

Toyota will begin offering a Visa “Toyota Rewards” card that will give consumers points on every purchase they make with the card towards parts, maintenance, accessories, and buying or leasing a new Toyota vehicle. No word yet on specifics like interest rate or annual fee info, but you can expect it to be a reasonable offering if it’s backed by Toyota Financial Services.

Finally, in an extremely odd (and distrubing) piece of news, a man claims that a prostitute drove his Toyota Tundra into a brick building. You’ll just have to read this story for yourselves…