NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In a world where reliability and quality reign supreme, Nissan has once again proven its mettle. The results of the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Vehicle Dependability StudySM (VDS) are in, and the Nissan Kicks and Nissan Murano have both taken the spotlight, earning top honors in their respective segments. The Kicks was named the Most Dependable Small SUV, while the Murano clinched the title of Most Dependable Midsize SUV for the 2022 model year.

A Commitment to Quality

The accolades are a testament to Nissan’s unwavering commitment to delivering vehicles that prioritize quality, durability, reliability, and safety. “The Nissan Kicks and Murano winning most dependable small and midsize SUVs highlights our commitment to putting quality at the heart of everything we do,” said Vinay Shahani, senior vice president of U.S. marketing and sales, Nissan Americas. “We produce vehicles that our customers can depend on and enjoy for years to come.”

This dedication to dependability is no small feat. Now in its 36th year, the J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study surveys owners of three-year-old vehicles across 184 potential problem areas, diving deep into nine categories: infotainment, features and controls, exterior, driving assistance, interior, powertrain, seats, driving experience, and climate. Both the 2022 Kicks and Murano scored impressively above their segment averages, showcasing their reliability.

Innovative Features of the 2025 Nissan Kicks

The all-new 2025 Nissan Kicks, which hit the market last year, features a modern, street-smart design. This small SUV boasts unexpected levels of technology, a versatile interior, and best-in-class standard ground clearance. With the Kicks-first available Intelligent All-Wheel Drive and the option of ProPILOT Assist for highway driving, this SUV offers enhanced confidence for drivers tackling various terrains and road conditions.

If you’re interested in learning more about the 2025 Nissan Kicks, including detailed specifications, pricing, and multimedia assets, be sure to visit the full press kit for all the juicy details!

The Striking 2025 Nissan Murano

On the other hand, the all-new 2025 Nissan Murano, launched in late 2024, merges stunning design with premium features and seamless connectivity. It showcases a bold new look paired with a powerful 241-horsepower, 2.0-liter VC-Turbo powertrain that doesn’t just promise performance—it delivers. Murano also seamlessly integrates technology with its available Google built-in capabilities, ensuring drivers stay connected on the go.

Additionally, with standard Nissan Safety Shield® 360, along with new driver-assistance technologies like the innovative Invisible Hood View, the Murano takes driver confidence to the next level, making it an exceptional choice for families or anyone seeking a reliable midsize SUV.

Conclusion

In a landscape filled with choices, the Nissan Kicks and Murano stand out not only for their dependability but also for their commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. Whether you’re searching for a small SUV that’s stylish and tech-savvy or a midsize SUV that embodies performance and connectivity, these two winners have got you covered.

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Kudos to Nissan for continually pushing the envelope and prioritizing the needs of customers who value dependability in their vehicles. With the J.D. Power recognition as a driving force, there’s no doubt that both the Kicks and Murano will continue to impress drivers across the nation for years to come!

Nissan Kicks & Murano Named Most Dependable in 2025 J.D. Power Study – Kelly Atumotive Group

https://www.kellyauto.com/nissan-kicks-murano-named-most-dependable-in-2025-j-d-power-study

JD Powers – Kicks

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/2025/nissan/kicks/trim

JD Powers – Murano

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/2025/nissan/murano/trim

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Groundbreaking for a Sustainable Future: LA Metro’s Southeast Gateway Line Light Rail Project

Christopher Ferguson, Auburn University

When we think of Valentine’s Day, chubby Cupids, hearts and roses generally come to mind, not industrial processes like mass production and the division of labor. Yet the latter were essential to the holiday’s history.

As a historian researching material culture and emotions, I’m aware of the important role the exchange of manufactured greeting cards played in the 19th-century version of Valentine’s Day.

At the beginning of that century, Britons produced most of their valentines by hand. By the 1850s, however, manufactured cards had replaced those previously made by individuals at home. By the 1860s, more than 1 million cards were in circulation in London alone.

The British journalist and playwright Andrew Halliday was fascinated by these cards, especially one popular card that featured a lady and gentleman walking arm-in-arm up a pathway toward a church.

Halliday recalled watching in fascination as “the windows of small booksellers and stationers” filled with “highly-coloured” valentines, and contemplating “how and where” they “originated.” “Who draws the pictures?” he wondered. “Who writes the poetry?”

In 1864 he decided to find out.

Manufactured intimacy

Today Halliday is most often remembered for his writing on London beggars in a groundbreaking 1864 social survey, “London Labour and the London Poor.” However, throughout the 1860s he was a regular contributor to Charles Dickens’ popular journal “All the Year Round,” in which he entertained readers with essays addressing various facets of ordinary British daily existence, including family relations, travel, public services and popular entertainments.

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In one essay for that journal – “Cupid’s Manufactory,” which was later reprinted in 1866 in the collection “Everyday Papers” – Halliday led his readers on a guided tour of one of London’s foremost card manufacturers.

Inside the premises of “Cupid and Co.,” they followed a “valentine step by step” from a “plain sheet of paper” to “that neat white box in which it is packed, with others of its kind, to be sent out to the trade.”

Touring ‘Cupid’s Manufactory’

“Cupid and Co.” was most likely the firm of Joseph Mansell, a lace-paper and stationary company that manufactured large numbers of valentines between the 1840s and 1860s – and also just happened to occupy the same address as “Mr. Cupid’s” in London’s Red Lion Square.

The processes Halliday described, however, were common to many British card manufacturers in the 1860s, and exemplified many industrial practices first introduced during the late 18th century, including the subdivision of tasks and the employment of women and child laborers.

Halliday moved through the rooms of “Cupid’s Manufactory,” describing the variety of processes by which various styles of cards were made for a range of different people and price points.

He noted how the card with the lady and gentleman on the path to the church began as a simple stamped card, in black and white – identical to one preserved today in the collections of the London Museum – priced at one penny.

A portion of these cards, however, then went on to a room where a group of young women were arranged along a bench, each with a different color of “liquid water-colour at her elbow.” Using stencils, one painted the “pale brown” pathway, then handed it to the woman next to her, who painted the “gentleman’s blue coat,” who then handed it to the next, who painted the “salmon-coloured church,” and so forth. It was much like a similar group of female workers depicted making valentines in the “Illustrated London News” in the 1870s.

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These colored cards, Halliday noted, would be sold for “sixpence to half-a-crown.” A portion of these, however, were then sent on to another room, where another group of young women glued on feathers, lace-paper, bits of silk or velvet, or even gold leaf, creating even more ornate cards sometimes sold for 5 shillings and above.

All told, Halliday witnessed “about sixty hands” – mostly young women, but also “men and boys,” who worked 10 hours a day in every season of the year, making cards for Valentine’s Day.

Yet, it was on the top floor of the business that Halliday encountered the people who arguably fascinated him the most: the six artists who designed all the cards, and the poets who provided their text – most of whom actually worked offsite.

Here were the men responsible for manufacturing the actual sentiments the cards conveyed – and in the mid-19th century these encompassed a far wider range of emotions than the cards produced by Hallmark and others in the 21st century.

A spectrum of ‘manufactured emotions’

Many Victorians mailed cards not only to those with whom they were in love, but also to those they disliked or wished to mock or abuse. A whole subgenre of cards existed to belittle the members of certain trades, like tailors or draper’s assistants, or people who dressed out of fashion.

Cards were specifically designed for discouraging suitors and for poking fun of the old or the unattractive. While some of these cards likely were exchanged as jokes between friends, the consensus among scholars is that many were absolutely intended to be sent as cruel insults.

Furthermore, unlike in the present day, in the 19th century those who received a Valentine were expected to send one in return, which meant there were also cards to discourage future attentions, recommend patience, express thanks, proclaim mutual admiration, or affirm love’s effusions.

Halliday noted the poet employed by “Cupid’s” had recently finished the text for a mean-spirited comic valentine featuring a gentleman admiring himself in a mirror:

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Looking at thyself within the glass,
You appear lost in admiration;
You deceive yourself, and think, alas!
You are a wonder of creation.

This same author, however, had earlier completed the opposite kind of text for the card Halliday had previously highlighted, featuring the “lady and gentleman churchward-bound”:

“The path before me gladly would I trace,
With one who’s dearest to my constant heart,
To yonder church, the holy sacred place,
Where I my vows of Love would fain impart;
And in sweet wedlock’s bonds unite with thee,
Oh, then, how blest my life would ever be!”

These were very different texts by the very same man. And Halliday assured his readers “Cupid’s laureate” had authored many others in every imaginable style and sentiment, all year long, for “twopence a line.”

Halliday showed how a stranger was manufacturing expressions of emotions for the use of other strangers who paid money for them. In fact, he assured his readers that in the lead up to Valentine’s Day “Cupid’s” was “turning out two hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of valentines a week,” and that his business was “yearly on the increase.”

Halliday found this dynamic – the process of mass producing cards for profit to help people express their authentic emotions – both fascinating and bizarre. It was a practice he thought seemed like it ought to be “beneath the dignity of the age.”

And yet it thrived among the earnest Victorians, and it thrives still. Indeed, it remains a core feature of the modern holiday of Valentine’s Day.

This year, like in so many others, I will stand at a display of greeting cards, with many other strangers, as we all try to find that one card designed by someone else, mass-produced for profit, that will convey our sincere personal feelings for our friends and loved ones.

Christopher Ferguson, Associate Professor of History, Auburn University

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Timeka N. Tounsel, University of Washington

Some Black consumers may be breaking up with Target this February.

It all started late last month, when the retailer announced that it was ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The move drew widespread rebuke from social justice organizers, including New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Dr. Jamal Bryant. Although Target said one set of its racial-equity initiatives had already been scheduled to conclude, the timing was notable: The move came just days after the White House called for a federal DEI ban, and as several other companies took similar actions.

Beyond renaming its “supplier diversity” team – now called “supplier engagement” – and ending “diversity-focused surveys,” Target hasn’t said what the change will mean for the many Black entrepreneurs who sell everything from coffee to sunscreen on its shelves. The webpage for the retailer’s Black Beyond Measure initiative, which highlights dozens of Black-founded brands and connects business owners to a program designed to “democratize access to retail education,” remains active.

But Target’s critics, including Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, view the move as a surrender to the new presidential administration’s attack on equity programs. In a news conference outside Target’s Minnesota headquarters on Jan. 30, 2025, Armstrong called for a nationwide boycott of the store to begin on the first day of Black History Month.

While many social media users posted in support of the boycott, some Black founders whose brands are stocked by Target – and there are dozens of them – have been more conflicted. Tabitha Brown, whose products can be found in various aisles, from books to cooking appliances, asked customers to reconsider boycotting Target. Withholding their dollars, Brown insisted, will hurt Black businesses far more than the corporations that sell their products.

This request for restraint garnered a mixed response on social media. Some Black consumers accused Black business owners of selling out the very racial community that contributed to their success.

So, why would a Black business owner ask consumers to patronize a retailer that signaled it doesn’t care about Black customers? And how did something as mundane as where people buy toilet paper and shampoo become a litmus test for racial consciousness in the first place?

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Black consumers and the fight for dignity

The marketplace has long been a battleground where Black Americans have sought to assert their citizenship. Most of the nation’s biggest household brands didn’t begin to take African American consumers seriously until after World War II. Before that shift, advertisements and product packaging were more likely to feature degrading Black caricatures to appeal to white shoppers, than to address Black consumers directly.

This segregated commercial landscape reinforced the belief among some community members that Black people would not be taken seriously as citizens until they were taken seriously as consumers. They would need to vote with their dollars, patronizing only those brands and retailers that respected them.

In my research on marketing campaigns aimed at Black women, I’ve examined how the struggle for consumer citizenship complicated the dynamic between Black entrepreneurs and consumers. On the one hand, businesses have long leveraged Black ownership as a unique selling proposition in and of itself, urging shoppers to view Black brand loyalty as a path to collective racial progress.

Unlike their larger competitors, Black entrepreneurs relied on their racial community to stay afloat. Patronizing African American businesses could therefore be framed as a racial duty. Conversely, as African American advertising pioneers made clear, recognition from big brands was a political victory of sorts because it signaled that Black dollars were just as valuable as anyone else’s. https://www.youtube.com/embed/SAFubUnsl3Y?wmode=transparent&start=0 A short documentary from The Advertising Club of New York featuring iconic ads from African American marketer Tom Burrell.

Competing for Black dollars

Corporate attention to Black consumers ebbs and flows in a cycle that is especially noticeable in the beauty and personal care industry. In seasons of limited competition for African American customers, entrepreneurs typically thrive, even while they struggle to meet the capital demands of a growing brand. Their success, however, beckons larger corporations, which then seek to capitalize on consumer niches they previously ignored.

Two common approaches that mass market brands pursue to compete for Black dollars include acquiring smaller, established Black brands and developing their own niche products. Large corporations deployed both strategies during a period of intense expansion into the beauty market of the 1980s.

Black owners tried to stave off their competition by creating a special emblem that alerted shoppers to their authenticity. Then, as now, social justice organizations, such as Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, also initiated boycotts and urged Black consumers not to choose “lipstick over liberation.”

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Nevertheless, many Black entrepreneurs sold their brands, and by 1986 nearly half of the Black hair care market was no longer Black-owned.

A linked fate

Parsing winners and losers within the world of Black enterprise is as difficult now as it was in earlier periods. African American business owners often possess a cultural consciousness that distinguishes their brands, even when they can’t match the resources of larger competitors. And as they figure out how to survive an uneven playing field, Black entrepreneurs sometimes face accusations of betraying their racial community.

In a market governed by the law of supply and demand, Black consumers benefit from increased competition. Yet, racial loyalty sometimes asks that they eschew these benefits for the sake of keeping Black dollars in Black hands.

Four years ago, when Target launched its Black Beyond Measure funding initiative, it seemed that the retailer had struck a rare balance in supporting Black brands and their customers. In addition to curating a collection of products to lure shoppers, Target used the campaign as an opportunity to position entrepreneurs to flourish well beyond Black History Month.

Now, as Black consumers and business owners weigh varying responses to the retailer’s decision to reverse their commitment to DEI values, one question endures: Do Black dollars matter?

Timeka N. Tounsel, Associate Professor of Black Studies in Communication, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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