Massive declines in pickup sales, combined with stronger sales of cars, means that the Toyota Camry will likely pass the Ford F-Series as the best-selling vehicle line in America this year, according to Kimberly Rodriguez, principal of Grant Thornton Advisory Services Automotive Platform. She also expects Honda Motor Co. to surpass Chrysler LLC as the No. 3 automaker in the United States.

F-Series sales were down 22% through July, with 319,542 units sold. The Toyota Camry, meanwhile, posted flat sales through July, with 282,012 units sold.

Coming up: Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, will speak on a panel on “Transcending Turbulence: A New Beginning?” at the Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City.
Chrysler discount to cover Cerberus

Chrysler’s revamped program to allow employees and retirees to share their employee discount on the purchase of new vehicles with anybody will apply to Cerberus Capital Management employees, according to a company.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli told employees Aug. 1 that the discount was going to be offered.

“Direct employees of Cerberus receive one Chrysler LLC employee discount number,” Beverly Thacker, a Chrysler spokeswoman, confirmed. “However, those who work at individual businesses that are part of the Cerberus portfolio are not eligible to receive the discount.”

Coming up: Tom LaSorda, a Chrysler president and vice chairman, is slated to speak Wednesday at the Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City.
CEO to visit Ohio assembly plant

General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner plans to visit the automaker’s bustling Lordstown, Ohio, small car assembly plant this month, spokesman Chris Lee confirmed this week. Wagoner has trumpeted GM’s plans to add a shift and increase line speed at the plant as evidence of the automaker balancing its production to meet market needs.

GM is in the midst of cutting truck production as it adds to car production. GM started a third shift of about 1,400 workers in Lordstown on Aug. 3.

Coming up: The GM Century Cruise, a parade of 100 classic GM vehicles, will begin at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 16 from the Renaissance Center to the Woodward Dream Cruise.

DOVER — Patrick Gorman headed home Saturday saying he wasn’t sure why someone left a “hoax” bomb in his car, but police aren’t saying whether the “potential explosive device” that locked down part of downtown for hours was real or not.

“I don’t know what to think,” Gorman, a lieutenant with the South Berwick, Maine, Fire Department, said at the end of the nearly five-hour ordeal, which played out on his 38th birthday. “I’m scared, relieved to know that there was nothing in it … it was just a hoax.”

Gorman said police “confirmed for me that it was a fake.”

Lt. David Terlemezian, a lead investigating officer, declined to confirm or deny the information.

He would only describe the object as a “possible explosive device,” declining to describe it or say what threat it actually posed.

He acknowledged the episode caused a public alarm, and he said the public eventually will know more. “But not now.”

Gorman arrived at the bank around 8:40 a.m. to discuss a loan, but before he got out of the car, he said, he opened the glove box to find the device. “I took a good long look at it to give the information to the police when I got out, because I knew they’d ask,” he said.

Gorman, who lives in Berwick, Maine, said the training he’s received during his 23 years as a firefighter helped him recognize the device as potentially deadly.

He said he told the woman sitting in a car next to him to leave the area, and then went into the bank and said “we have to get out of here.”

He said he told people in the bank to stay inside “because it’s safer in there,” and he called police

Asked who would have placed a fake — but reportedly real-looking — bomb in the glove box of his 2001 teal Toyota Camry, he said: “I have no idea. It’s no joke. My friends know if you joke around like that you’re going to go to jail. It’s serious. I mean, if you would have seen this you would have said the same thing.”

The first Dover police officer to investigate the threat determined the device could be potentially explosive, forcing a swath of downtown to be locked down as local, state and federal authorities worked to neutralize the device.

At the scene, Police Chief Anthony Colarusso said “the possibility exists that it was not an explosive device, but it certainly was designed to look like one.”

Colarusso expressed confidence the device, were it a real bomb, was “not … very powerful.”

But “it certainly was designed to look like a legitimate explosive device, which is a crime in of itself. Whether it was a joke, intent to threaten or scare the individual … it was a major problem and disruption, not only for the community but emergency services.”

By late morning, a State Police Explosives Disposal Unit robot was surveying the car, feeding video back to specialists staked out in a van. Some time around noon, the robot moved the device from the car to a pile of sand bags near the drive-through teller area of the bank, and police directed spectators further away from the scene.

Just after 1 p.m., police used a shotgun to blow up the device, sending a thunderous boom from the bank parking lot at 537 Central Ave.

A half-hour later, once police were sure there were no other explosive-type devices in the car, roads reopened, and several businesses quickly got back to work after being forced to close for half the day.

Police continued working in the bank parking lot, where Gorman’s car was the only one that remained. Explosives specialists, including an officer from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, collected forensic evidence.

It will take a couple of days to say what comprised the device, Colarusso said.

Detectives also began their investigation, focusing on who was the intended target, a motive and whether the device was meant as a threat or hoax.

In short, “who put it in there and why,” Colarusso said.

For Gorman, the “big mystery is where it got put in, when it was put in.”

He added: “That’s the biggest violation, I think. You park your car at your home and you think you’re safe, and someone does that on your property.”

Gorman said he uses the Camry — instead of a less fuel-efficient, larger vehicle he owns — to travel to his job at a maintenance shop for construction equipment, leaving him thinking “saving on gas could have cost me my life.”

He said he was certain the device could not have been placed in the car while he was at work. He wouldn’t say where he works.

Gorman’s Camry is actually registered to his mother, the wife of South Berwick Fire Chief George Gorman.

Police were not sharing what information they obtained from interviews, but they said they were not aware of threats related to the device in the car.

Gorman also said nothing out of the ordinary occurred in the days before Friday. “Looking back, we don’t know how long it could have been in there. It was at least a week.”

His father, George Gorman, described the day’s events as”scary as hell.”

“Was it a joke or was it intentional? Either way, if they find out who it is they’re in trouble,” he said.

Picture

Craig Osborne/Citizen photo Dover police and fire personnel talk after finding what police believed to be an explosive device inside a vehicle parked in the Ocean Bank lot downtown on Saturday.

Affected merchants said their businesses were negatively affected.

Traffic was not allowed to travel along Central Avenue from the intersections of Chestnut, New York, Fourth and Fifth streets, including surrounding side streets like some of Broadway.

Don and Maureen Hill, owners of Cafe Ciabatta, were making four wedding cakes when they had to close up shop. They missed at least one delivery, but there was a chance they’d be able to get the cakes to the weddings in time, they said.

“We do have some very unhappy people,” Maureen said.

Patrick Doukas of Dover House of Pizza said he had to turn away several customers. Heath Emerson, who works at White Water Car Wash, said the business typically sees around 40 cars on a Saturday in the time they were forced to close.

“We finally get a day when it’s not raining and this happens,” he said.

Colarusso expressed regret at the business impacts, but said “unfortunately we have to take all precautions.”

Dozens of people gathered along the edge of the police perimeter to see what was happening.

“We just saw police coming in and the lights going on” after breakfast, said resident Mike McKinnon, who was with his daughter, Lily, 7. “It was a Saturday morning and all of a sudden police were everywhere.” He said he wasn’t sure what was going on until he saw a police tactical van arrive, when he figured “there’s more to this.”

Police decided against shutting down the trains that pass through the impact zone, opting to time blowing up the device around their schedule.

Gorman was able to maintain an even perspective about the ordeal.

“They said 40 was the tough one,” he said, alluding to his birthday.