While strolling around in Nissan’s Tech Center, looking for secret cars, I lucked into this: Nissan’s first EV. Along with its Chief Engineer. Both retired. (Read More…)
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In our last episode of Name That Car Clock, we admired the Jeco analog timepiece out of a 1978 Toyota Corona wagon. That was quite a clock, but it looks pretty drab next to today’s entry. This should be a pretty easy call for you students of the Malaise Era (there’s a hint), so let’s hear your best guess about year/make/model for this designer-edition clock. Answer after the jump! (Read More…)
This is the Kia K9, Kia’s first rear-drive flagship for North America. Kia has previously sold a rebadged Mazda 929 in Korea but those days are mercifully over.
Today, Nissan had invited distinguished guests, from the Governor of Kanagawa province all the way to the chief of the local fire department, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Nissan Technical Center. Nissan’s main R&D hub is a city of 9,500, nestled into the foothills of Mount Fuji and surrounded by hills that keep it away from prying eyes. To get there, you must drive through a tunnel. Let’s see what we find here … (Read More…)
A topic covered before, but clearly worth covering again…
The author: Georg Kacher, seasoned European bureau chief for Automobile (i.e. not a newb)
The place: page 31, April 2012 issue
The car: Bentley Continental GT V8
The statement: “Alternatively, you can work the shift paddles to keep the engine revving between 4000 and 6300 rpm, where the power and torque curves approach, intersect, and then run almost parallel to the limiter.”
Today is Wagon Day, a brand-new made up holiday when North Americans are tortured with photos of wagons that will not be available to us despite our endless pleas. First up, the Volvo V40.
Hyundai’s press materials list the 2012 Azera’s competitors as “…traditional large sedan sales leaders such as Maxima, Lacrosse, Avalon and Taurus.” But those cars were on the minds of exactly no one at the Las Vegas launch of the 2012 Azera. Only the Lexus ES350, the market’s leading 4-wheeled sensory deprivation tank, was on the lips of the assembled journos when talking about the Azera’s competition. Hyundai didn’t give us much time with the car, but one thing was clear.
SUVs are one of the strongest segments in an otherwise lackluster Chinese car market. Who slept through this trend? The kingdom of trucks, Detroit. “Instead, Japanese and Korean makers prevail in the compact segment, while German companies dominate the luxury segment,” writes Reuters in an article about China’s infatuation with SUVs.
In China, 2.1 million SUVs were sold last year, up 25.3 percent from 2010, reaching 11.6 percent of light vehicle sales, data by J.D. Power and LMC Automotive show. In the same period, the Chinese market as a whole eked out only a small 2.45 percent gain. China already buys about half of the 4.1 million SUVs sold in the United States last year. A monster market, ignored by American SUVs. (Read More…)
After visiting the lowest-mile early Mazda GLC imaginable, I’ve been looking out for more GLCs in the junkyard. Until the 1981 model year, all the GLCs (known as the Familia or 323 outside of North America) were rear-wheel-drive and had nearly identical chassis to the early RX-7s. Mazda finally got on the front-wheel-drive bandwagon with this version, which I found in a Northern California self-serve yard earlier in the month. (Read More…)
Bill writes:
After reading you post on modern interior design, I had to ask about another fad that seems to be all the rage with designers: big grilles (they really love the grille on the Lancer X) With modern cars being all about gas mileage (judging by their advertising), would they get better highway gas mileage if they were a bit more aerodynamic? (Read More…)
Published in Speed:Sport:Life 26 months ago, but still true today, I believe — JB
This past Friday, I was seated in a long-lead briefing for another auto manufacturer when the whispered word was passed down the line of seated journalists: “There’s an emergency conference call regarding Saab in ten minutes.” Not too long after that: “Saab is dead. There’s no deal.” All around me, I saw men with their heads cradled in their hands, though I could not tell whether it was from sympathy, misery, or simple world-weariness. From the seat next to me, a sorrowful, poignant comment: “I don’t want to live in a world where the ES350 is a best-seller and Saab is dead.”
What a perceptive statement! For there were more than fifteen long years where people willingly deluded themselves into believing that this world was one where the Camry-by-Lexus could rule the sales roost and, yet, Saab could live. With evidence to the contrary literally surrounding them, Saab’s incompetent, careless stewards at General Motors continued to push the lie: Saab is premium, Saab is luxury, Saab can compete with the Japanese and Germans on equal ground. By the time Saab’s lifeless body finally thumped against the ground, the story had assumed the mantle of tragedy. And like most tragedies, it began with a misunderstanding.
One fond memory I have of the pre-recession era was cheap cars. A pristine 1992 Mercedes 190E in a garage kept red that I bought for $1000. The two year old 2002 Infinit Q45 that I bought for $23,600 and sold for $32,500. Heck, even the beaters. Old late 80’s Town Car’s and Crown Vic’s with only 80k or so. The last of the good Saab 900’s. Volvo 240 wagon’s that had been given Volvo OEM components from day one. All of them I bought for $500… or less.
It had been a great time to be a used car dealer and an automotive enthusiast. I sold over 150 vehicles in a space the size of a driveway and had plenty of time to travel, do some local bid calling, and begin my writings at TTAC. I was a happy man.
Who needs a HUMMER when we have the absolutely insane $7.9 million Dartz Prombron Black Dragon Special Edition? Well, “we” will only have it if “we” all move to China. Dartz, the Estonian maker of the world’s most expensive and most whacko 4×4, celebrates the Chinese year of the dragon with this special edition craziness. Only 12 will be made for 50 million yuan each, and they will only be available in China, where they undoubtedly will be snapped-up in no time at all. (Read More…)
People form lasting impressions at an early age. This might explain why, among the general population over 35, neither Audi nor BMW can match the mystique of a Mercedes. Even the bottom-of-the-US-range C300 raises eyebrows from people who’ll give an Audi A7 nary a passing glance (and who’d view spending an extra $8,000 for a […]
To gather the photographs for the Junkyard Find series, I do a lot of walking around self-service wrecking yards, and mostly I’m just tuning out the common cars as background noise. You know, the 15-to-20-year-old Detroit stuff that won’t have any collector value until almost all are gone (as happened with the Pinto and Vega). The chaff. Right now, the Taurus/Sable is king of the Ford sections of these yards (I counted 188 of them in a 300-car section in a California yard not long ago), but you also see large numbers of Tempos and Topazes. Once I decided to pay attention to the lowly Tempo, I was surprised by the number of not-particularly-trashed examples I found at my local yard. Today, and just today, let’s pay attention to one of the most common vehicles in American self-serve junkyards today: the Tempo. (Read More…)
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