I went to see the "Annie" movie with my daughter, and it kind of made me think of Kia, which has big dreams of moving into a mansion. Kia: luxury brand. Seriously. Kia's K900 is, in fact official luxury vehicle of the NBA. Great ride, gorgeous car, Jaguar-esque even. You have to see it and drive it to appreciate it, which I got to do last week.

When Fiat announced that the Chrysler corporate name is heading into the dustbin of history, to be replaced by FCA U.S. LLC, my first thought was something along the lines of, "Now that's a rebranding guaranteed to generate real passion."

"It's simple. Whatever you do, don't blame the customer." Those were sage words of advice from Tom McDonald, Audi director of public affairs during the Audi 5000 unintended-acceleration PR maelstrom in the '90s, to PR legend/villain/crisis guy Jason Vines, who at the time was dealing with the same faux issue with Jeep. And it is a central central theme of Vine's autobiographical bumper-car ride through the auto industry, "What Did Jesus Drive: Crisis PR in Cars, Computers and Christianity."

Emissions, and connected and autonomous cars. Those are the key challenges and opportunities in the automotive business over the the next 10 years and longer. There are several reasons for this, and one big one is that the developing countries are the growth markets, and are suffering the most from pollution, sclerotic roads, and booming auto sales. Anyone who has tried to drive from one side to the other of, say, Manila, knows how that works. Autonomous cars would change a lot of that, and emissions technology might just make the air breathable there and in places like Beijing.