Kickstart: A pop powerhouse in vinyl

Taylor Swift is good for vinyl.

Billboard reported late last month that Swift sold nearly 3.5 million vinyl records in 2023, easily besting every other artist releasing music on the format. (Lana Del Rey came in second with 646,000 copies sold.) Swift was responsible for one out of every 15 vinyl records sold in 2023, besting a one-in-25 status in 2022.

That doesn't show signs of slowing.

During the Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, Swift confirmed she will have a new album out in April, The Tortured Poets Department. While official numbers are hard to find, early reports are out that Swift's pre-order sales for vinyl copies of the record in the first 25 minutes topped a previous one-hour record set by her album Midnights.

Auto industry engineers questioning how best to handle the rough seas of a changing industry may be finding safety by floating on the waves rather than fighting them.

Brunswick Corp., the maker of fiberglass boats such as those sold under the Bayliner and Boston Whaler brand names, is becoming a new home for auto industry veterans.

"I've had several automotive guys come up and introduce themselves to me since I've been standing here," Brunswick CEO Dave Foulkes told Lindsay Chappell from our sister paper Automotive News during CES 2024 in January.

These executives are, Foulkes said, "senior people" who sense new opportunities. Brunswick, based in Illinois, has been adding capacity in the U.S. and Mexico.

It also has been adding technology for autonomous operations, connectivity and electrification, all areas that intersect with the auto industry.

"So there's a lot of common ground between where we're headed and where auto has been going," Foulkes said.

He should know. Foulkes spent 18 years at Ford Motor Co. He's been joined by other Ford veterans and recent recruits from auto suppliers such as ZF.

Consider this a lesson on the value of having someone other than "car guys" test drive new cars.

The petrochemical giant Ineos has delivered the first 1,000 of its Grenadier SUVs to U.S. customers, marking a turning point for the startup that has been a dream for the company's CEO, Jim Ratcliffe. (Ratcliffe also recently fulfilled another dream with his purchase of part of soccer team Manchester United.)

Ineos hopes to sell up to 10,000 Grenadiers in the U.S. per year, and executives say they're getting feedback from buyers who notice something is missing.

"We don't have a vanity mirror in the passenger side, or the driver's side either, and one of the things that strangely comes up an awful lot is that that is missing," Greg Clark, Ineos Automotive's executive vice president for the Americas, told Automotive News at the National Automotive Dealers Association meeting in Las Vegas.

Ineos plans to add vanity mirrors in future cars.