The first thing we need to make clear when talking about the Sterling 827 is that it is not a Honda. It’s a Rover. Rover! (Read More…)

In 1992, the Ritz-Carlton chain won the Baldrige Quality Award for its excellence in customer service. Their idea was to write all customer preferences down, to feed them in a database and to henceforth deliver as expected.

Twenty years ago, I pointed this out to Volkswagen. I was VW’s customer service guru at the time and thought it was a swell idea. Volkswagen enthusiastically adopted the program. It was a failure, what do you expect from a company that retains me as a guru. Also, VW did not want to spend the money on a database. Instead, the Ritz-Carlton ended up running the hotel at Volkswagen’s Autostadt, and giving the occasional seminar to car dealers who still roll their eyes over the “gottverdammte Unsinn.”

Twenty years later, “Ford draws on luxury hotel experience for Lincoln overhaul,” writes Reuters, reporting that “in the plan to overhaul its luxury Lincoln brand, Ford Motor Co is embarking on a new approach, leaving behind the routine ideas of the auto industry and instead taking cues from the likes of high-end boutique hotels.”

Before that happens, Ford is reducing its dealer network to boutique size.  (Read More…)

The year begins with our analysts in utter disarray. Reality destroyed all projections, even the finely honed real-time forecasting models of TrueCar, Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book are left as smoking wrecks. In the end, familiar names won our January Grade The Analyst, but only because others finished much worse. (Read More…)

Toyota announced its consolidated (i.e. including Daihatsu and Hino) 2012 sales plan today. It causes intensive head-scratching at other automakers, especially in Wolfsburg. Toyota plans to raise its 2012 global sales by a whopping 21 percent to 9.6 million. (Read More…)

Foreign OEMs put on a dog and pony show at the Washington D.C. auto show in anticipation of President Obama’s visit, but were ultimately snubbed when the President decided to check out some American iron instead.

(Read More…)

The Cayman R: lowered, lightened, loudened. A track-day special with carbon-fibre race buckets, featherweight alloy wheels and red seatbelts.

All right you hosers, here’s how we review a car like that in Canada. (Read More…)

A 19 year old student in Halifax, Nova Scotia put up a classified ad looking for a vintage car. The make, model, year and body style are all irrelevant. What Spencer, the ad’s creator, is looking for is “…a classic car with a past that I can keep alive, and continue to keep alive through future generations, continuously adding to the history of a special car.” And he doesn’t want to pay a cent for it.

(Read More…)

“In 1909, people shifted from the horse carriage to the automobile, and horses retired from the world of mobility. What happened to the horses? We still have horse races. People love horses. People support horses and horse racing. As long as car enthusiasts exist, motor sports will continue.”

Akio Toyoda, February 2, 2012, at the hachi-roku launch party

One month is far too premature to make any predictions about 2012’s sales race, but we still got our hands on the data, thanks to independent analyst Timothy Cain. As usual, the Ford F-Series and Toyota Camry were the top dogs.

(Read More…)

The 86 is not on sale yet, and people are already swapping engines. In a virtual way at least. In hachi-roku forums people are discussing the merits of more horsepower than the stock 200hp. They also wonder aloud how much additional power the hachi-roku can safely take. “Go for it,” says hachi-roku Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada: (Read More…)

Some of the B&B doubted the veracity of early renderings, but it turns out they were accurate. This is the Fiat 500L, the car that’s supposed to boost Fiat sales here in the USA and carry on the legacy of the very unique looking Multipla. Despite carrying the “500” moniker, the 500L, like the Multipla, is a B segment car.

(Read More…)

Hachi-roku Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada credits his sons with giving him the impetus to develop this car. His sons are 24 and 27 now, they do not have a driver’s license and show no interest in cars. “They sit in front of the computer all day,” says Tada. “On Gran Turismo, they are better than their father. But they don`t want to drive.”

Tada tells how he took his boys to the racetracks since age 5 to awaken an interest in cars. It was a disaster, Tada admits:

“Manufacturers like to blame young people for having no interest in cars. Maybe we should blame ourselves. Manufacturers provided boring cars and focused on older people, because this is where the money is. We have abandoned young people.” (Read More…)

I’ve got a truly ridiculous car-parts-based project in the works, a project that requires several dozen functioning vintage car clocks. For about three years now, I’ve been hitting junkyards with an 8xAA battery pack, so I can hit car clocks with 12 volts and see if they’re worth buying. Most (>80% of analogs, 50% of digitals) fail, but enough have passed that I’ve got a couple of boxes full of functional European, Japanese, and Detroit car clocks. It will be decades a while before I get around to building The Great Car Clock Project, so I’m going to show off some of the better vehicular timepieces while testing the TTAC’s readership’s anorakian car knowledge. Today’s Mystery Clock won’t be a huge challenge, but it’s one of my favorites. Quickly: Year, make, model of the car that donated this Jeco digital?

I already told you that today is not the official launch. Highly out of the ordinary at Toyota. Usually, when the members of the media are invited, the car goes on sale. Not in this case. In Japan, the car will be in dealers’ showrooms in April, I hear. Nonetheless, if I want one right away, I better hustle down to my neighborhood Toyota dealer and place an order now.

The car is made at Subaru’s Gunma Manufacturing Division, 1,000 per month. Currently, there are more than 3,000 pre-orders, I better take a number. “But when will the car arrive in the U.S.?“ is what you and I want to know. “Not decided yet,” is the official answer. (Read More…)

Denver really is an alternate universe when it comes to the typical inventory in a self-service junkyard (compared to California, where my formative junkyard years were spent). You won’t find many BMW E30s or Volvo 240s, both of which inhabit California yards to the extent that they clog The Crusher’s jaws, but you will find every oddball four-wheel-drive car built in the 1970s and 1980s. I found this ’89 Corolla All-Trac wagon a couple months back and thought, “Man, these things must be a one-in-a-million find, even in Colorado!” Not so, as it turns out; at another yard maybe ten miles away, here’s one more. (Read More…)