In a very small way, my family was involved in bringing the Honda CR-V to North America. As Honda hemmed and hawed about bringing their first in-house SUV to the continent, they quietly shipped over a few right-hand drive examples in late 1995 for employees to evaluate. As a car guy with two kids, my father, who was Honda’s in-house attorney at the time, was a perfect candidate, and got the bright blue CR-V for a few days. Festooned with chrome accents, graffiti-like graphics, a JDM fender mirror and brush bars, the right-hand drive CR-V got lots of attention. The CR-V finally came to North America two years later, without all the awful acoutrements that Japanese versions had in spades.

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BMW unveiled what is surely going to be the American Dental Association’s Car of the Year, the 2013 BMW M6, at the Geneva Auto Show. Sporting the fat, bloated body of the 6-Series, along with the M5’s turbocharged 560 horsepower V8, we can only await the arrival of an M6 Gran Coupe now that this anticlimactic coupe has revealed itself.

The Audi Q3 may not have much visual impact, but this is an extremely important car for the Volkswagen Group. As the first car to be built on the new MQB modular platform, the A3 is literally the next generation of car for the entire consortium.

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The newest Porsche Boxster is here, with lots more aluminum, some new engines and styling cues derived from the 991-chassis Porsche 911 that has just launched in North America.

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We saw a Porsche 944 clock in yesterday’s Name That Car Clock challenge, and today we’re going to dig even deeper into my big collection of automobile timepieces for a really tough one. I love the look of this clock so much that I bought it knowing it didn’t work (I bring a 12-volt battery pack to the junkyard when I’m hunting clocks). You decide what year/make/model vehicle gave me this clock, then make the jump to see if your guess was correct. (Read More…)

The initial shots of the Ferrari F12berlinetta looked suspiciously re-touched for our liking, so some live shots were a necessity before making any final judgement on the car. If you ask me, it looks even better without excessive rendering.

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Just when it seemed like the Geneva Auto Show was going to be the automotive equivalent of a Christian Audigier trade show, Jaguar comes out with the XF Sportbrake, something that looks good and has a practical use.

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Everyone expecting there would be some kind of droptop Aventador – after all, what’s the point of a supercar if the people who bullied you in high school can’t see how rich and successful you are? But we weren’t expecting this.

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In 1998, Britney Spears launched a thousand ephebophilc ships with her seminal work – the music video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time“. Featured in the video was a Land Rover Defender – the only reason I know this is because I wasn’t interested in girls when the song came out. Now that I’m much older, I can understand the hidden subtext; Land Rover needs another ragtop SUV!

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Volkswagen’s GTI Cabriolet debuted today at the 2012 Geneva Auto Show, making the Mazda MX-5 look like Caster Semanya in comparison.

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Despite looking very much like a sedan, BMW unveiled their 6 Series “Gran Coupe” at the Geneva Auto Show, as it engages in yet another asinine tit-for-tat response to competing product from Audi and Mercedes-Benz.

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“A stands for attack,” pronounced  Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Daimler Benz, in Geneva, With a quivering stach, Dr. Z unveiled Daimler’s new attack dog, the new A-Klasse. (Read More…)

PSA Peugeot Citroen doesn’t just have problems selling its cars lately. It also has problems selling its stock. To move the paper, a tried and true tactic is employed: Cash on the … where do you put the cash when you sell shares at a fire sale deep discount? (Read More…)

The Volkswagen Group Night may sound like a swing party holdover from the good old days at VW, but it’s not. It’s the Geneva Motor Show pre-party. Everybody who is somebody must be seen at this event. Cars are also shown. Here they are. (Read More…)

Like the Fiat 124 Sport Spider, your typical second-gen VW Transporter typically spends many years as a never-started project in a back yard or driveway (because everyone loves an air-cooled VW bus!), then washes ashore at a junkyard. I’ve been seeing these vans in about the same numbers in junkyards for a couple of decades now, even as only the nicest street-driven examples have been kept alive. Here’s a ’78 with some extremely Malaise-y custom touches that I spotted in a Colorado yard last week. (Read More…)