When the Range Rover Sport was first introduced I didn’t much care for it. The shape wasn’t quite right, the interior was too cheap for the price tag, and for a model with “Sport” in its name, it just didn’t seem to have the thrust required even in Supercharged trim. Apparently the Landie headquarters was […]

TTAC Commentator spitfire writes:

Really enjoy the Piston Slap series. How can you tell the difference between a bad head gasket and warped block or head? I guess I’m not fully respecting the tight tolerances involved here because it would seem to me that once fluids start intermingling its way beyond a gasket to fix the problem. Thanks, keep up the good work. (Read More…)

According to popular wisdom, you can invest all you want into China, but you can’t take your money out. Not so, says Gasgoo. As a matter of fact, would it not be for China, the bottom line of many a car company would look ugly.

Volkswagen for instance gained nearly half of its pretax profit from the Chinese market in the first quarter of this year. (Read More…)

I may have mentioned before (or you may have read about it) that the UK is undergoing a huge austerity program. In order to balance the UK’s books, massive spending cuts are being implemented. But in order to secure votes, the Conservative government (along with the Liberal Democrats) pledged that the NHS would not suffer these cuts in budgets. Wow! A right wing government actually PROTECTING nationalized healthcare? Those crazy Europeans! So this means that other facets of government spending are going to be hit hard. Very hard. In particular, the police. Greater Manchester Police won’t be hiring any new recruits for 2 years in order to save money. That’s how hard we’re talking. So any opportunity to save money will be welcome. Enter a bunch of South Koreans… (Read More…)

Remember the 4 “dead brands” walking? Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab? Seems like a long time ago. Who’d have thought Saab would be the last brand standing? Arguably, the one of the weakest brands of them all. At least Hummer and Saturn had genuine interest. But Saab found a Dutch white knight (a white knight with a 3 legged horse and a rusty sword), in Spyker and survived. It really started heads scratching as to how a damaged brand and a never profitable car maker could survive in an industry where size is king. But it seems the Dutch-Swedish venture may be getting some help from an unlikely source. (Read More…)

There are times I really wish I had half the brains, knowledge, and skill of the average print-rag journo. Today is one of those times. You see, in my not-so-spare time, my race team and I have designed a lower control-arm brace for the first-generation Neon. It’s a neat thing, looks very industrial. I’m making it right here in Ohio, using 5000-series aluminum for corrosion resistance. The parts are laser-cut, and we have some semi-sophisticated CAD modeling tools involved to ensure it’s as strong as possible for the given weight. I’ll have the first batch of fifty in my hands this upcoming Friday.

Now here’s the big question. Will this brace fit the second-generation Neon? For the last decade, I’ve been reading various assertions by “automotive journalists” that the “PL2000” Neon is really the same “platform” as the first-gen car. If that’s really true — if all Neons are the same under the skin — this brace should bolt right up and we won’t have to go back to the CATIA screen to design a different one. We could sell a lot of them to owners of the newer Neons and SRT-4s. What do you think? Would you double your planned production run based on what you’ve read in Car and Driver? Of course not. Instead, we’re heading to the junkyard with a prototype to measure and check.

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Ford has certainly made it easy to find appreciation for the original 1992 reskin of the Econoline, ’cause it’s only gone downhill ever since. What exactly does this (un)progression say?

Time to purge my files of Econoline shots, and we haven’t seen any of the early gen3 versions. There’s little question in my mind that Ford trucks, including Econolines, from the seventies and eighties are the first choice for those looking for a relatively unproblematic beast of burden. But are they in the same league as the legendary Hondas of yore?

You’re driving along, and from a distance it looks like just another one of a million white Econoline vans with ladders on top parked in front of the job site. But wait a minute… (Read More…)

Yes, I can muster some appreciation of Econolines of yore. But the painful reality is that the current E-Series is an ugly, primitive and inefficient pig virtually unchanged since 1974.  The fact that the American light truck sector hasn’t had the same revolution that European design influences have had on passenger cars is a mystery. Case in point: Ford’s Transit (not Connect) vans are a (several, actually) giant development leap ahead of the Econoline, offering FWD, RWD and AWD variants in three wheelbase lengths, numerous configurations, and driven by the most advanced diesels that can get well over 20 mpg. The Transit outsells Mercedes Sprinter in Europe. What the hell is Ford waiting for? (Read More…)

The titans of the foreign auto blogger scene in China just happened to bump into each other today – at a nerdy tradeshow for auto parts, no less. No booth babes, just a lot of sexy displays of tie rod ends, control arms, ball bearings and pop rivets. The Chinese government sponsors this event every year in order to promote export of Chinese parts. For qualified buyers (anyone with a business card), the government even picks up the hotel tab for three days. Imagine: Everywhere else you have to pay three times the going rate when a big trade show is in town – in China, you stay for free! Now isn’t communism just wonderful? (Read More…)

Driving abroad was always too scary for me. It was a task I said I would never do, along with “walk behind an elephant with diarrhoea” and “own a Chevrolet Aveo”. Every time I went abroad, be it, France, Italy, Hong Kong, China etc. their highway systems just frightened the life out of me. On holiday, I’d always use taxis and public transportation. Until I went to California. 2 years ago, I was invited to spend a week with friends (well, it was actually “friends of friends” but a holiday in California is still a holiday in California). So, I went through the usual pre-holiday routines. (Read More…)

Volvo, now in the hands of China’s Geely, may revolutionize the way electric and hybrid cars are built. Currently, you have to shove a big honking battery into an electric car, and a simple honking battery into a hybrid. This adds weight, and obesity is a killer when in come to mileage.  Volvo, working with the Imperial College in London has a wild idea: Why not dispense with the big honking battery and use the whole auto body to store electricity. Say what? (Read More…)

Where would the German car industry be without China? You guessed it: In deep Scheisse. China’s insatiable demand for German cars helped the German auto industry survive the crisis stronger than ever. Germany’s new car exports to China in the first six months of this year reached €4.4b ($6b). That’s 6.1 percent of its total car exports, says the China Business Times via Gasgoo. (Read More…)

Rachel Drummond is the Swagger Wagon mom, and I think she’s as cute as the proverbial button. Sorry. I really do. Her Sienna SE, on the other hand, doesn’t do much for me. It’s expensive, it’s not all that roomy, it doesn’t tow worth a darn, and it’s a Toyota minivan..

I only have one child, but that child might one day decide to try karting and/or some other van-friendly activity. This being Econoline Appreciation Weekend, I wonder if perhaps we can’t cook up a right-wheel-drive alternative to the ol’ Swagger Wagon. Say it with me: “I got the pride in my ride…”

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