These days the big kids on the block are giant pickup trucks and luxury model sport utility vehicles. A bygone era in Detroit featured giant cars with giant engines and painfully small mpg ratings.

The movement toward big and beautiful really caught fire in the late 50s when the Big Three fought a size-really-matters battle with their high end luxury models.

Purists would argue that high end pre-war cars were pioneers in the giant automobile craze, and they would be right. But the big car era became pretty main-stream until the 1973 oil embargo swung the size-matters pendulum the other way. (Read More…)

Back home in Germany, Volkswagen is dragging its heels when it comes to EVs, in China, VW is all for the electrification. Both of Volkswagen’s joint ventures in China plan to start making electric cars in 2014, its China chief told Reuters today. (Read More…)

It only had 65,000 miles.  A 2002 Mazda Millenia—my personal favorite of the Japanese near-luxury cars of that era.   I am an automotive enthusiast, but much like others here at TTAC, it’s not in the standard sense.  I’m the kind of guy who gets a rise out of seeing a purple Suzuki X90 on the road.  I would take an Alfa 159 over nearly any other car on the planet today (If I could get one in America), just because I want to park it in my driveway and lick it all over.   I value cars with character, unique vehicles with stories behind them, cars that represent value, have faults, and ultimately are fun or interesting.

So now you may understand why the Millenia was my preferred pseudo luxury ride of the turn of the, uh, Millenium.  Mazda built a car that had some of the trademarks of Japanese luxo-sedan comfort and quality, and true to form, made sure they paid homage to their own tradition of senseless eccentricity (Miller cycle V6), of course at the expense of reliability.  But fear not…this car had character, low miles, a nice interior and was stupid cheap. (Read More…)

Long-time TTACers know that it’s usually possible to request your humble author as an instructor at any TrackDAZE event. If you secretly want to beat me up, and you’re too lazy to drive to central Ohio, this can be a good way to save yourself a trip. I will be attending several of their 2012 events with my anything but trusty Boxster Anniversary Edition and/or my Plymouth Neon racer.

This year, however, the nice people at TrackDAZE have a new option for instruction, and it’s an even better idea than letting me boss you and your triple-supercharged Corvette Z07 around VIR.

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North America won’t get a “tuner special” Scion FR-S like the Japanese Toyota 86 will. Such a policy apparently contradicts Scion’s policy of offering one trim level, and the American FR-S will apparently come pretty well equipped. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see it later.

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The official reasoning behind GM failing to bring the Opel Insignia OPC, according to Buick PR staff, is that the all-wheel drive, twin-turbo V6 powered sedan with 321 horsepower “didn’t fit with the brand image”. Right. The real reason is likely that a Buick Regal GS outfitted like this would cost far more than the already expensive $35,310 that GM wants for a car. And if the market for a $35,000 manual transmission Buick is limited, well – imagine who would buy a $45,000-$50,000 AWD Regal.

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Where is global warming when we need it? Europe has been hit by a gigantic blizzard, and the Grüne Hölle of the Nürburgring has been converted into the Weisse Hölle. What happens when hell freezes over shows this clip by Spiegel TV.

Looks like it’s time for some more Scott Burgess news! Mr. Burgess, whose very existence had long been unknown outside a select circle of hotel room-service supervisors and parakeets who had acquired literacy due to a ruthlessly effective program of eugenics at Petland stores, briefly made Internet headlines last year when he went crazy on a Chrysler 200, quit his paper, was rehired, and fell back into line — not to mention obscurity.

Turns out you can’t keep a good man down. Having briefly tasted the Internet fruit, Scott’s decided to take a job at the salad bar.

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With their campaign to organize foreign auto plants seemingly in the toilet, UAW President Bob King is embarking on a new task – creating “a movement for social justice”.

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GM’s turn-around hinges on a market share above 19 percent, board member Stephen Girsky said at an industry meeting in October 2009. “The public plan is 19 percent and change. That is what everything is being based on,” Girsky said during a panel discussion at a conference at Columbia Business School. Reuters was taking notes.

In the 3^rd quarter of 2009, GM had a market share of 19.5 percent. The share climbed to 21.8 percent in January 2011, and eroded ever since. (Read More…)

Back up in yo’ass with the resurrection! The elder Niedermeyer’s Curbside Classic on the Boaterhome got a bit of an unexpected boost from links on Reddit and elsewhere over the weekend. The Boaterhome is an odd device, for sure, but it doesn’t really speak to the imagination the way the newest Blastolene special does…

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Despite being falsely accused by members of the B&B of hating wagons, I will formally declare that I adore them – I’m just a realist about their sales prospects in the United States. The 2013 Audi RS4 Avant forces me to confront the dissonance over lusting after such a car, while knowing that it would be a non-starter in North America for all but the most eccentric rich dudes, ala the Mercedes E63 Wagon.

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India, often touted as the “next China,” has too much capacity and not enough sales, says a report by Reuters. It is getting worse: India’s carmakers “speed towards a head-on collision with a capacity glut,” the report says. (Read More…)

Which country is Toyota’s second largest export hub? If all goes according to the wishes of Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motor North America, then that will be North America. Toyota has an annual production capacity of 1.8 million vehicles in the U.S. alone and wants to export increasing numbers to the world, Inaba told The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

John writes:

Hey Sajeev,

Since you requested goofy questions for Piston Slap, I’ve got one:

A friend of mine told me that her dad had a Subaru (I don’t know what particular model). He had one of the tires blow out, and even though he knew he should either replace all four tires, or have the new one shaved down to match the other three, he decided to risk it and just use the one new tire as is. Consequently, the all wheel drive system got messed up due to the ever so slight mismatch in tire diameters. Is this for real? I’ve never heard anything like that before. (Read More…)