Remember how our man in Brazil became infatuated with the “anti-retro” Citroen DS line? Remember the DS5 pictures Herr Niedermeyer found? Well, here is the production version. And a chance to polish your French.

Back in 2002, on a whim, my father bought the recently re-introduced Nissan 350Z for the simple reason that he loved the way the car looked. He then proceeded to rarely drive it because it was loud, rough, and generally lacking in refinement, and sold it after only a year and a half. I haven’t […]

Do you think that cars have lost their soul? Nina Tortosa, General Motors aerodynamicist for the Voltec/E-Flex programs, says that cars look more and more alike because “we all have to abide by the same laws of physics. It doesn’t matter if we don’t like them,” Nina Tortosa told WardsAuto.

Mere mortals have to contend with two certainties – death and taxes. Car designers are faced with a third one: Cd, or the drag coefficient.
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On Thursday, the J.D. Power and Associates’ initial quality study will be published. If you pay the hefty fees J.D. Power charges, you get an advance copy, along with much more data than just the list J.D. Power releases to the public.  Last year, Ford ranked highest among all non-luxury brands. It looks like someone is softening the blow that could come from a big drop down the rankings. (Read More…)

Jacques Séguéla, a French photographer and founder of the advertising agency RSCG supposedly once said: “Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising, she thinks I’m a pianist in a brothel”. It must have been an exclusive brothel. Photographers, especially for cars, are paid higher and are sought after more than exquisite courtesans. Fees of $1,000 per hour are not unheard of. What do they do for that much money? They make the cars look good. (Read More…)

Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota, Daihatsu, and Hino) is expected to land with a thud on place 3 in the global ranking of automakers in 2011. I came to this conclusion after several telephone calls and a flurry of emails. In the end, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco gave it to me (as requested) in writing:

“When it comes to the current CALENDAR YEAR, on a consolidated basis (TMC, Daihatsu and Hino combined), TMC is now (as of June 10) forecasting production of 6.8 million units.”

The avalanche of telephone calls and emails was triggered by an article in The Nikkei [sub] today, that had left the opposite impression.  We’ll get to that article in a minute. First, the table: (Read More…)

Alfa’s four-year product plan has leaked to autoblog.it, and though it takes a little deciphering it confirms what we’d been hearing: that key Alfa products will be “Imported from Detroit” (to borrow a phrase). Here’s what we’ve been able to piece together: the 2012 models are the 4C “supercar” (note Alfa’s use of scare quotes around the term) and the Compact-Wide “C-SUV,” which will be built alongside the next-gen Jeep Compass and Patriot in Italy. Then, in 2013 the midsized Giulia sedan and sportwagon will debut, underpinned by the developed-in-Detroit next-gen 200/Avenger platform. That same year, the MiTo will gain five-door and convertible versions as well, with a more-mysterious D-SUV that will likely be closely related to the next-gen Jeep Liberty. Finally, in 2014 Alfa will update its C-segment Guilietta, at which point it should be ready for global (i.e. US-market) duty.

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American Traffic Solutions (ATS) on Friday advanced toward its goal of reactivating the red light cameras to Houston, Texas. A majority of voters demanded in a November ballot vote that the cameras be taken down, but US District Court for the Southern District of Texas Judge Lynn N. Hughes believes the people had no right to vote.

The ruling was a major victory for the legal strategy of ATS General Counsel George Hittner, who worked with the Houston city attorney to create a lawsuit in which city officials, who want the cameras back, sued ATS, which also wants the cameras back. The case was not filed in state court, which would be the proper venue. Instead, Hittner had the case filed in the federal courthouse where his father happens to serve.

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We’ve seen some Volvo 240s do very well in the 24 Hours of LeMons, but never before has a 240 this terrible managed to crack the top 10 in a 100-plus-entry 24 Hours of LeMons race. This hacked-up ’92 244 has a creaky, squeaky much-worse-than-stock suspension and an octillion-mile non-turbo B23 engine, but it still beat up on most of the E30s, 190Es, and Integras in the Capitol Offense race over the weekend. (Read More…)

Yes, it is possible to buy an ugly, theft-victim 1998 Mercedes-Benz S500 and sell enough parts off it to get the purchase price under 500 bucks. No, it is not possible to win a weekend-long endurance race at a twisty, technical track with a monstrous, bloated, ungodly complex luxury sedan… yet the Team Opulence—We Has It S500 has done just that. For the second time. (Read More…)

This weekend is HYPERFEST, the all-purpose race/drift/time trial/bikini contest/public vomiting/two-hour wait for parking enjoyed by everyone insane enough to visit Summit Point in the middle of the summer. I didn’t make it out, although my occasional teammate Angelo Dinkov set a lap record two days running in the course of winning the hell out of his races. Chances are you didn’t make it, either. So let’s kick back, relax and watch as “Mr. Shufflef**kitupagus”, above, and a whole (Formula SCCA Regional) grid’s worth of Hyperfest and Summit crashers liven up your Father’s Day!
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Google’s autonomous cars have already shown how close vehicles are to driving themselves in day-to-day traffic, but there’s still one uncontrollable, unpredictable, and often-irrational variable that autonomous cars still struggle to cope with: you, me and all the other haphazardly-programmed human beings on the road. And though predicting human behavior might be one of the most difficult tasks for a human-programmed computer, researchers at MIT are already digging into the challenge. Using model cars (one autonomous, one human-controlled) on overlapping tracks, 97 out of 100 laps avoided collision. But not all of those laps fell into the near-collision “capture set”… which, as it turns out, is what makes the human threat to autonomous cars so challenging.

According to [MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor Domitilla] Del Vecchio, a common challenge for ITS developers is designing a system that is safe without being overly conservative. It’s tempting to treat every vehicle on the road as an “agent that’s playing against you,” she says, and construct hypersensitive systems that consistently react to worst-case scenarios. But with this approach, Del Vecchio says, “you get a system that gives you warnings even when you don’t feel them as necessary. Then you would say, ‘Oh, this warning system doesn’t work,’ and you would neglect it all the time.”

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The sad story of Maybach’s mini boom-and-bust, reborn in the go-go 90s only to die in the “Great Recession,” may not have the tidy ending we’ve been expecting for years now. Yes, Automotive News Europe [sub] reports that death is one of the three official options for the Maybach brand… and it’s certainly the option I’d pick. But if Daimler didn’t want to hold onto the plutocratic appeal of its zombie brand, Maybach would have died with a little dignity some time ago. And remember, the decline of Maybach is not the result of a decline in the über-luxury market… Rolls-Royce is selling cars hand-over-fist.

Accordingly, Daimler is exploring two “death alternatives” for Maybach: One, is rebuilding the brand in partnership with Aston-Martin, the other is relegating Maybach to a range-topping trim level. Aston has reportedly built four concepts on the next-gen S-Class chassis, so a new lineup is a real possibility, but then turning Maybach into “the AMG of Luxury,” and offering high-end trim for the S, GL and CL models would be cheaper and possibly even more profitable. And of course there’s always the eternal option: death. Which strategy would you suggest to Daimler before spending your giant consultants fee on a Rolls-Royce Ghost?

It’s one thing for a sportscar brand like Lotus to shrug off the self-destructive iconoclasm of its most hard-core “fans,” but it’s quite another thing for its chief executive to take a piss on the entire supercar market while describing the downpour as “authentic, cloud-filtered Alpen raindrops.” To wit, the following bit of nonsense found at Autocar:

The new Lotus Esprit will offer a more “authentic” driving experience than the Ferrari 458 Italia and McLaren MP4-12C, according to CEO Dany Bahar… Bahar claims the Lotus Esprit will “have the character and emotion” that he says the McLaren lacks. He also revealed that the rolling chassis was now complete and fully running prototypes would be ready by November… Formula 1 KERS-style technology is also expected to feature on the Esprit, but Bahar said such electronic systems would be used only where they add to the driving experience and not as driver aids.

If you can make any sense of this blithering nonsense, or how Bahar came to it based on his impressions of a rolling chassis, you must work in marketing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Nothing drives like a Mercedes. Toyotas are reliable… but expensive. Honda makes great stickshifts. 20 years ago you could say all of these statements with complete confidence. The world had been a simpler place with brands that offered a very stringent range of offerings to a very particular audience. Now it seems that all the lines of differentiation have been smudged and greyed out.

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