Imagine what happened if the representative of a large Japanese or Chinese car company would demand that America should close some car factories before easier access to foreign markets would be contemplated. All hell would break loose, and the Seventh Fleet would steam in the direction of the loose cannon – if it is not already there. What happens if the representative of Ford says that Japan should be required to reduce the size of its auto industry before being allowed into regional free trade talks with the United States and eight other countries in the Asia Pacific? Business as usual. (Read More…)

GM made immense quantities of full-sized Chevrolets in 1969. How many? According to the Standard Catalog, the total production of ’69 Biscaynes, Bel Airs, Impalas, and Caprices was 1,168,300 cars. Well into the early 1980s, these things were as commonplace on American streets as mid-2000s Camrys are today. Given that nobody with the money to restore a ’69 big Chevy is going to waste time on a non-hardtop four-door (what with the large quantities of restorable coupes and convertibles still extant) we can assume that the few remaining sedans will be flushed out by $250/ton scrap-steel prices and crushed during the next few years. (Read More…)

Germany defies the European downtrend of car sales. In April, Germans bought 2.9 percent more cars than in April 2011. Europe’s largest car market most likely has cushioned the fall in other EU countries again, which will be evident once ACEA numbers for the EU are published in a week or two. (Read More…)

Don Hogenson led a different life before he became a family man. He was a professional football player with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Then he embarked on a career as a professional wrestler.

That all changed when his family got bigger.

Enter this 1966 Rambler American station wagon. (Read More…)

Although Canucks have been enjoying the BMW X1 xDrive28i for over a year now, the launch of the X1 in the United States will see both the four-cylinder model, and a 3.0L twin-turbo I6 version, dubbed the xDrive35i. And it’s fast.

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Motor Trend had Randy Pobst take the Ford Mustang V6 and the Subaru BRZ out on track. With predictable results.

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Why should the superstars of cone-chasing hog all of the B&B’s attention? Today we will see some of the worst autocrossers to ever exit a course backwards, hit a tree, or strike a corner worker. The fun begins with the above video, which proves that some people just can’t operate a Mustang, but’s it’s far from the worst incident on our parking-lot hit parade…

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Reports are emerging that the Nissan Juke R will cost $600,000 (about $450,000 euro) once Nissan starts selling their steroid-enhanced crossover.

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A few years ago I offered a strong thumbs up to the outgoing Nissan Versa. Plenty of room. A small touch of sportiness when it came with a hatchback. Good feature content. I even gave it kudos for offering a slightly frumpish French design that went far beyond the flying wedges and amorphous blobs of the time.

Times have changed. Small cars are starting to look good again. Thank God!

The 2012 Versa has been reviewed here, there and pretty much everywhere. A lot of auto journalists hate it with a passion that was once reserved for no hit wonders like the Saturn Ion and Suzuki Forenza.

Is it really that bad? American consumers are saying, “Hell no!” with sales up a stunning 30% from April 2011. At least from the sales numbers (8,300+ units last month and climbing) it looks like a car loaded with penurious plentitude is just what Dr. Recession ordered.  To help us out I have asked two completely fictional car experts, Jacque Hedonist & Stefan Frugalist, to help us figure this out.

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Audi claims to have broken the dreaded “weight spiral” with their next upcoming A3. The new car will weigh nearly as much as the first-generation car did in 1997, despite being faster, safer and more luxurious.

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Nearly two months have gone by since the last Name That Car Clock challenge (a Lincoln Town Car timepiece of uncertain vintage), but I’ve got dozens of additional car clocks in my collection of junkyard prizes. Today, we’ve got a tough one— a generic-looking analog flanked by oil-pressure and ammeter gauges in an underdash cluster. Quartz car clocks have been around since at least the early 1970s, and this one doesn’t show any country-of-origin identifiers. Before you make the jump, make your best guess about the year/make/model of the car from which I extracted this chronometer. (Read More…)

Renault-Nissan is buying a majority stake in Russian automaker AvtoVaz. For those not in the Russian Car Appreciation Society, AvtoVaz is the maker of Lada cars.

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The four-wheel-drive Honda Civic “Wagovan” was very popular in Colorado, and you still see them on the street around here. The front-wheel-drive version, however, is quite rare throughout North America. It was a very sensible family hauler, with its high-30s highway fuel economy and big-for-its-size cargo space, but it couldn’t compete with Chrysler’s minivans. Here’s a rare example that I spotted last week in a Denver self-service yard. (Read More…)

Everybody believes they know what a beater is.

“My old 10 year old Chevy Cavalier is a real beater!”, they may remark in some self-affirming way. “Why it’s old and it has 120k miles, and the paint is faded… and…”, they will continue to go through the list on the mistaken belief that any car made in the late Clinton to Bush era is a beater. They’re not. At least not quite yet. Any car that can be scanned or diagnosed with a conventional OBDII scanner is not a beater.

Then there is the modern day Yuppie beater. “I have a late 90’s Mercedes E-Class that’s a true beater!” Never mind that the car would fit in at any country club if the owner bothered to give it a good detail.

In my humble opinion, these types of cars are not beaters at all. What qualifies? Well let’s go through the list shall we?

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Bentleys making booty calls in public-housing projects? General Motors sucking on the public teat like a corporate version of Marilyn Chambers and receiving a billion-dollar money shot in return? Sex bloggers turning the walls of the Seattle W’s finest rooms into something that, when viewed with ultraviolet light, looks uncannily like a Jackson Pollock painting? It’s all too much!

Let’s scrub our minds clean with just under three minutes of great footage from last weekend’s SCCA National Tour autocross, complete with a top-notch video course description from one of the best technical drivers out there. Seriously. This is one to watch, if only to see the absolute truth with which every cone in every slalom is properly anticipated and pre-dialed.

Now, if we can just keep Bertel from putting any more big-eared auto show girls above the proverbial fold, we might all keep our jobs until tomorrow afternoon…