The first time VW showed a retro-inspired Van concept, they said they would build it but never did. Now, having shown a new, far smaller retro-inspired microvan [gallery here], VW says they will not only build the thing, but thanks to their modular MQB platform, they’ll be able to build variations of it for markets around the world. Though VW’s development honcho Ulrich Hackenberg insists the microvan won’t be built at VW’s new plant in Chattanooga, TN, he does tell Autocar that it will be sold in the US and

aimed at the XB produced by Toyota’s youth brand, Scion.

Which means it will be built in Mexico, alongside the New Beetle. And come to think of it, the New Bulli and New Beetle seem to have quite a bit in common: both trade heavily on heritage-inspired looks while having little (if anything) to do with their actual inspirations. Which means the Baby Boomers will love it.

Officials in Port Lavaca, Texas decided yesterday that they would ignore an initiative petition calling for the 12,000 residents to decide the fate of the red light cameras in a May election (view petition). Signatures on the petition were certified as valid shortly after being submitted in January and a special city council meeting was scheduled to place the measure on the ballot, but the city decided against holding the vote. The group Port Lavaca Citizens Against Red Light Cameras believes the city is violating the law.

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Life as a Porsche owner/supporter is remarkably like being an Eric Clapton fan. You are continually assaulted with a veritable fusillade of utter and complete garbage created for no possible reason other than to squeeze every last red cent out of a thoroughly impressionable audience— Money and Cigarettes, the Cayenne, Clapton, the Panamera, Crossroads Festival 2010, the upcoming Cajun, the list goes on. Just at the moment when you’re ready to pack it in and find another object for your affection, however, you happen to put on the ’66 Bluesbreakers record or take a drive in the current GT3 or GT3 RS, which are likely to go down in history as the last great Porsches.

Last but one, anyway.

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General Motors has announced that Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell will be leaving the company on April 1, “having completed the largest public offering in history and stabilizing the company’s financial operations.” CEO Dan Akerson has denied that Liddell’s departure has anything to do with GM’s first-quarter financial performance or his relationship with the departing CFO, saying “we could finish each others sentences.” The former Microsoft man was brought into GM in January of last year, and helped guide the automaker through its IPO and eliminated its material weaknesses in internal financial controls, apparently the two tasks he needed to complete before riding off into the sunset.

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We often forget that Ford made the Falcon until 1970. That’s in North America; you could buy a new Falcon— based on the original 1960 version— in Argentina until 1991, and Australians can still buy Falcons today. The shortened-Fairlane-based 1966-70 Falcon tends to get overlooked, unless you live in East Oakland, so it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at when I spotted this one in my local self-serve wrecking yard. (Read More…)

Now here is an interesting tidbit from Volkswagen’s press conference of today.  Remember when three weeks ago J.D. Power announced that 72 million light-vehicles were sold worldwide in 2010, a number never seen before? Volkswagen has a different picture. (Read More…)

Volkswagen looks back at its best year in history. At a press conference today, Volkswagen CEO  Martin Winterkorn announced a consolidated group profit before tax of €9 billion ($12.45 billion). €1.9 billion ($2.6 billion) of that is Volkswagen’s share out of their China businesses.

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Luxury cars, pronounced an endangered species two years ago, are back with a vengeance and enrich their makers. After reporting record sales, BMW follows with record profits. The Bavarian Motor Works are looking at a 2010 pre-tax profit of €4.8 billion ($6.7 billion) on sales of €60 billion ($83 billion). Not bad for a company that delivered only 1,461,166 BMWs, MINIs and a few Rolls-Royces last year. (Read More…)

The Freep reports

General Motors plans to add a second shift worth as many as 1,000 jobs to its Detroit-Hamtramck plant late this year, as the automaker prepares to ramp up production of its Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car.

Current plans have second-shift workers arriving for training late this year and starting production in earnest in early 2012,

Now, it makes sense that any “more assembly jobs are coming” story would play big in Detroit, but does this mean GM has its suppliers lined up for a second shift of Volt production? Can the market support the increased volumes GM has been talking about (25k instead of 10k this year, 60k+ instead of the planned 45k next year)? As it turns out, those questions haven’t actually been answered yet…

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So, where were we?

I’d planned a road trip through West Virginia with my best friend, both of our fathers, and two Mazda RX-8s. A little over an hour in, on the way to meet the others, my father had sideswiped a tree, totaling his car. After exploring various options, I’d decided that we could and should continue on in the wrecked car. Around 2 PM Trey and his father, the judge, arrived at the revised rendezvous point in their car. The “real trip” could finally begin.

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Volkswagen might feel pretty confident now, but things seemed much scarier for the boys from Wolfsburg back in 1973; the company had milked just about every last drop from the air-cooled/rear-drive platform that had looked so futuristic when they ripped it off from Hans Ledwinka nearly four decades earlier and the verdict was still out on the new generation of water-cooled VWs. American car buyers could still buy the Type 4 in 1973, and so Car & Track felt compelled to review it. (Read More…)

When we first heard that the updated Jeep Compass would be “Trail Rated,” a number of commenters pointed out that the term “Trail Rated” is little more than a Jeep marketing phrase, and argued that the Compass had no business pretending to be a true off-roader. Well, according to this picture, which Michael Karesh found on Jeep’s website, the upgraded Compass will even go so far as to offer that talisman of off-road capability, a solid front axle. Unless, of course, this is actually a misplaced picture of a Wrangler, which it almost certainly is. Oh well…

There it was: a honk, a pair of grins and waves from two middle aged women in a MINI Cooper. It was time to find out whether these MINI fans approve of my epic (patent pending) Mehta parking lot swagger, or if the allure of the John Cooper Works MINI had reduced them to smiles. […]

While Julian Assange fights extradition proceedings to Sweden on charges of a ripped condom (note to Jack Baruth: Never get close to a Svenska flicka), the Wikileak cablegate haul is being used to do a hatchet job on a down and out car company that should qualify for a handicapped parking sticker. (Read More…)

Cheiracanthium inclusum is fast becoming the bête noir of the automotive world, first causing a recall of Mazda6s, and now raising concerns about Honda Accords. The LA Times reports:

Honda Motor Co. hasn’t announced a recall but has notified its dealers to be on the lookout for the spider. The company has issued what is known as a technical service bulletin telling Honda mechanics how to fix the problem.

“It was the same scenario and the same breed of spider. It would get in there and create a blockage that would create problems,” said Chris Martin, a Honda spokesman.

Honda doesn’t have a record of how many times it has spotted the problem but said it was big enough to put out the alert. Otherwise, mechanics could be spending many hours searching for the source of the problem, and that would run up the bill for Honda if the cars were still under warranty, or for the owners after the warranty expired.

The weirdest part: Honda spokesfolks say occurrences of spider web fuel line blockages are “pretty random” and not limited to any particular region. The spiders are climbing through non-airtight fuel tank doors and into the gas cap vent hole, where their webs can then clog up the fuel system. Also, the spiders are only attacking late model vehicles, namely 2008-09 Accords and 2009-10 Mazda6s. What nobody knows: why the spiders are suddenly moving into fuel lines, and which cars will be affected next. Are the Hondas and Mazdas the canaries in a horror-movie-scenario coal mine, heralding the crippling of America’s entire auto fleet at the mandibles of an implacable arachnid foe? Probably not, but a blogger can dream…