The story on Saab pulling the plug on the diagnostic computer, and hence on repairs that need that access, ruffled a lot of feathers.  The Church of St. Victor is so angry at the apostate article that it broke its self-imposed code of silence and mentions TTAC by name. Delusional as they are, they believe that their links send us traffic. Selfless as we are, we probably have done more to Saabsunited’s fame than any other site. Ingrates as they are, they call our story

“the most stupid article I have ever seen! This website has no clue how things work and this is why we never refer to them… I’m making a one time side-step from that policy!”

In their rage, they overlooked a small detail …

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Today, TTAC was treated to what might be the first look at Acura’s newest flagship. While we saw renderings of the new car, we weren’t allowed to take photographs – but none of the information released was embargoed.

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Saab owners receive two pieces of bad news today: Their allegedly “iconic” and “quirky” brand that supposedly embodies everything that is good in Sweden, turns out to be a dud. It landed with a thud at the very bottom of the Consumer Reports 2012 Car-Brand Perception Survey.

Probably more disconcerting to a Saab owner: Repairs that are more complex than the exchange of wear parts have become next to impossible, because someone at Saab literally pulled the plug. (Read More…)

Poor Editor Derek. I would hound him all the way to the grave for calling the Ford Fusion a game changer, but let’s face it: he is likely to outlive me by some thirty or forty years. Perhaps I will leave a note in my will instructing my son to keep bothering Derek, and also to talk up my estate auction a little bit.

So here’s the Ford Fusion for NASCAR’s 2013 season. It shares absolutely nothing several important aesthetic ideals with the new street car. Click the jump for another photo and a few quotes from Ford regarding the new design, which to be fair does look like the biggest departure from common-template stock cars in some time.

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Tesla is one of the ten highest rated car brands in America, says the Consumer Reports 2012 Car-Brand Perception Survey. Is that a good thing? Marketers are troubled by this development. The trouble is not that a newcomer like Tesla is rated so highly.

Overall, the halos of the top brands are fading fast. (Read More…)

Once a month, TrueCar publishes what they think are the best deals of the month. They also give you the best day to get those deals: TrueCar “is forecasting that Saturday, January 28 will be the best day of the month to purchase a vehicle with an average discount of 8.19 percent.”

Wouldn’t it be just awful if the best day would be, say, Friday the 20th, and now they tell us? Anyway, here is the list of the best cash, finance and lease deals. (Read More…)

Distracted driving is very much in the news, and so far, cellphones were fingered as the culprits. Now, there is a study that finally identifies the biggest distraction: Passengers. A study by State Farm, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health goes to the bottom of what experts have known for long: Peer passengers increase driver crash risk, especially amongst adolescent drivers.  (Read More…)

Ever since I began writing about cars for various online publications, one argument keeps showing up in readers’ comments: Many European cars that are regarded by Americans as totally flaky (e.g., Fiats, anything French) are considered quite reliable in their home continent. The subtext of this argument is generally “You can’t let Americans have anything nice, because they’ll destroy it like a bunch of chimpanzees given unlimited meth and armed with claw hammers.” Meanwhile, the American readers of these comments usually fulminate about Yurpeans being a bunch of public-transit communists who don’t understand cars. This age-old debate— which I suspect appeared for the first time in an automotive BBS, circa 1979— surfaced again in the comments of yesterday’s Cadillac Catera Junkyard Find. What’s going on here? (Read More…)

Congratulations on your new job! As regional manager for Franklin Industries you will be responsible for visiting Franklin dealers far and wide. We’re talking a good 30k to 40k miles of pure American asphalt a year.

Your salary is top notch and with a wide assortment of other benefits (free membership to the Y!) comes the ultimate shangri-la for any road warrior.

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Some car dealers are missing the bad old times when Detroit was preoccupied with problems at home. Carmakers again have the bandwidth to look at “the channel,” and some don’t like what they see. Suddenly, dealers find themselves at the receiving end of harsh criticism. Both Chrysler and GM dealers are receiving  a derriere chewing. (Read More…)

Now that we’ve looked at the corpse of a GM product that flopped in the American marketplace, let’s exhume an example of a GM product that sold like crazy: the Middle Malaise Era Olds Cutlass. (Read More…)

Renault and Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn continues to prepare the battlefield of world opinion for a drop in Europe. According to Ghosn, Automobile sales in Europe could decline two to three percent. For Renault’s home market, he expects a drop of five to six percent, Ghosn said in an interview with France Inter radio: (Read More…)

Launching the “world’s cheapest car,” the Nano, into one of the world’s fastest growing auto markets, India, looked like a surefire concept back in 2009.  Today, it looks stupid. Like many surefire concepts, the Nano turned out to be a dud. Says India’ Economic Times:

“After several years of disappointing sales, it has now become clear that the snubnosed hatchback’s unique selling point — its price — was actually a commercial sticking point.  (Read More…)

Google’s nutty pseudo-utopian autonomous car project faced a reality check at a legal symposium sponsored by the Law Review and High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. Among the challenges raised were the prospect of insuring such a car, and whether the car would be able to stop for law enforcement or construction workers.

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I’m currently testing the Mazda3 Skyactiv, and even though the automatic transmission is better matched to the car (more on that later) I’d still opt for the excellent 6-speed manual, even though 94.5 percent of consumers feel the opposite way.

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