It’s not often that automakers go to the trouble of bringing a car to Canada, but refrain from selling it in the United States. With one tenth the population and different homologation laws than the United States, the costs rarely make it worthwhile for automakers to import unique products to the Canadian market.

Looking for a way to stop the chronic bleeding of money at it notoriously loss-making Opel division, GM has been crunching numbers to see what it would cost to close one of its European plants. Bad news for GM stockholders: Relief won’t come cheap, and it won’t come soon. (Read More…)

Despite rising gasoline prices, America’s newfound appetite for new cars continues. Both J.D. Power and Kelley Blue Book predict very strong auto sales for the month of March. (Read More…)

Along with a facelift, the 2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK soft-roader will get a BlueTEC diesel option in the United States, in addition to the standard 3.5L V6 gasoline engine (now making 302 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque).

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I once had a vehicle that sat on my lot for over 9 months. It wasn’t anything too bad. A 1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager in the tannest shade of brown. But no one wanted the thing.

I couldn’t figure it out. Did it have too many miles on it? Did brown all of a sudden become the new purple, orange or lime green? It did have four doors instead of the three door minivan albatrosses that were common during the pre-Y2k era. But I couldn’t get so much as a nibble on it for months on end.

Denial can be a hard pill to cough up. Lo and behold, this is what I figured out.

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While Citroen showed some thinly veiled teasers (above) of their DS9 flagship before the car’s debut at the Beijing auto show, spy photographers in France caught the car being photographed at the bustling Place de la Concorde in Paris (click to see the spy shots). The DS9 looks like it will take the C6’s fastback profile even further, with a shape more like a Porsche Panamera – or the original Citroen DS.

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I just spent two weeks on vacation in Vietnam, and my pre-trip expectations of seeing fleets of left-behind-by-the-French Peugeots, left-behind-by-the-Americans Falcons, and left-behind-by-the-Soviets GAZs turned out to be ridiculously inaccurate. I saw a few old cars (more on that later), but most of the cars in Vietnam are boring late-model rides like Kia Rios and Toyota Innovas. However, I did see quite a few conspicuous-consumption statusmobiles in Saigon and Hanoi; the grumbling old-time revolutionary veterans no doubt refer to the current Hanoi leadership as CINOs. Here’s an example I spotted near St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. (Read More…)

Have a Jeep, need a pickup? No problem! For only $595, Crewbed will sell you – a crewbed. Invented by Goodyear, AZ real estate salesman Calvin Williams, the 88 pound collapsible bolt-in platform transforms a JK, TJ or YJ Jeep into a mini-pickup.

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Did any of the Afghani Mujahideen drive Datsun pickups to battle after the Soviets invaded? Probably, but the Toyota Hilux got all the press. For the same reason today, Malaise Era Toyota pickups tend to be kept alive, while their Datsun, Mazda (via Ford), and Isuzu (via Chevy) counterparts get crushed when they finally suffer some problem that costs more than $200 to fix. I’ve been seeing a steady stream of these Datsuns in junkyard for 20 years now, and here’s the latest one. (Read More…)

After a rash of crashes involving pricey supercars in China, a bus company in Jinghua, China, is taking action. It teaches its bus drivers:

a.)    How to spot a super car

b.)    How much that super car costs.

Not in order to raise brand awareness amongst its bus drivers. (Read More…)

After rumors from Renault and announcements by Nissan, Volkswagen lifted the skirt on its plans for the ultra-low-cost segment. Volkswagen wants to build cars for the €5,000 to €7,000 ($6,600 to $9,200) price bracket, development chief Ulrich Hackenberg told Germany’s auto motor und sport. (Read More…)

Long faces in hachi-roku land. Following a multi-year propaganda campaign, expectations for an “affordable” sports car collide with hard (currency) realities. (Read More…)

After GM’s  IPO, stockholders looked with great anxiety at the 32 percent the U.S. government still holds in General Motors. Allegedly, the U.S. government wanted to shed that share as quickly as possible, and someone dumping the stock does not make for rising stock prices. Now, GM is sending out smoke signals that a sale is far from imminent. GM’s chief spokesman Selim Bingol wrote in a blog  that “the day will eventually come when the Treasury sells its GM stake. When is anybody’s guess (we have no say in the matter).” (Read More…)

From the Times of India to Jalopnik, all have the harrowing story that the Chinese government did “ban the word “Ferrari” from online searches.” According to the reports, a young man was killed on Sunday after his Ferrari 458 was split in two in Beijing. The reports say he was the son of senior Communist party official. According to the reports, that caused the word “Ferrari” to vanish from Internet searches in China. The Daily Mail wrote yesterday: “All references to the Italian supercar company were mysteriously removed from China’s online search engines in the early hours this morning.“ Jalopnik explains in its trademark shallow detail “why Chinese censors banned ‘Ferrari’ from internet search.”

I happened to be in China since Sunday. I volunteer life, limb, and personal freedom to put the story to the test. (Read More…)

Do you know what a biohazard is? Different industries have different standards for the word. In the auction business it means any vehicle where the occupants blood stained the interior. A few drops. An open gash. If a person had the misfortune of bleeding or dying in their car, it will be announced at an auction as a ‘Biohazard’.

Most of these vehicles are sold at’salvage auctions such as Copart & Insurance Auto Auctions. The general public feels queasy about these vehicles for good reason, and I always thought it would be a neat idea to group some of these cars together and have nearby high school students and DUI offenders visit the carnage.

Then again, maybe biohazard vehicles should be exhibited for a far broader audience.

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