800 workers at a Daimler plant that builds Sprinter commercial vehicles downed their tools and walked off the job after wage talks collapsed.
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The annual World Congress of the Society of Automotive Engineers is often a showcase for the most trendy technologies that have buzz in the auto industry. Judging by the number of new engine designs shown in the display area, it’s clear that internal combustion is far from dead.
When Chrysler took over the tattered remnants of AMC in 1987, they created the “Jeep-Eagle” division in order to sell Kenosha-ized Renaults such as the Medallion and the Premier. Chrysler back then wasn’t content unless Mitsubishi got involved, and so they slapped Eagle badges on a Mitsubishi Mirage built by DSM in Illinois. This was very similar to the Geo-ization GM applied to Toyota, Isuzu, Suzuki, and Daewoo products sold in North America. You don’t see many Summits these days (you also didn’t see many of them 20 years ago) so this find in a Denver junkyard was a rare event. (Read More…)
TTAC Commentator PartsUnknown writes:
Sajeev,
Long story short, a family friend has an ’86 944 non-turbo sitting in her driveway in suburban Massachusetts. It belongs to her son who lives in Manhattan. Although he loves the car, it simply does not fit his current lifestyle. He wants to sell it, but is not actively pursuing it. His mother is constantly suggesting that I buy it (she knows my predilection for cars). Here’s the deal: it’s been sitting for a few years, driven sparingly. It appears to be in good cosmetic condition and it apparently runs. I know these cars are expensive to maintain.
I’m a busy man, with a wife and two young kids, a demanding career and a Saab 9-5 that I like to tinker with to satisfy my inner mechanic. I value time with my family above all, and while focusing on saving for retirement and college tuition, probably couldn’t afford to dump massive amounts of money into this car. The only reason I’m even considering it is that this guy’s mother has hinted that he just wants to get rid of it, and she said laughing, “he’d probably take $1,000 for it”. Question is, should I even entertain the idea? What, at minimum, would it cost to get this thing roadworthy as a weekend ride considering its relative lack of use (keeping in mind I’m a middling DIYer)? I’m leaning no, but $1,000 for a decent 944 seems like a no-brainer. Almost. I previously owned a 1986 911 Carrera Coupe, which was a fantastic car, but I sold it for precisely the reasons stated above – to prioritize time with my family over spending a Saturday replacing blower motors and ball joints.
Talk me off the ledge. (Read More…)
Sales of cars in Japan nearly doubled in April. Sales of registered vehicles rose 92 percent to 208,977 units from 108,824 a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealer Association reports. Sales of separately tallied mini vehicles rose 96 percent, according to data provided by the Japan Mini Vehicles Association. Consolidated, the market rose 93.7 percent. This does not include imports, which will be reported at a later date. (Read More…)
Our analysts did a stellar job this month. The panel of 15 analysts polled by Bloomberg came very close to the final results. Our perennial winner, Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds, came even closer and takes a very well deserved top spot. (Read More…)
I learned to drive in a Chevy Caprice wagon similar to the one above back in my high school driver’s ed class (circa 1995). It was brown with red interior (don’t hold me to the interior colouring, though), had an instructor’s brake, and its twin was white. Every morning I drove, I would walk from my home about a mile to my old elementary school, waiting for my instructor to pull out of the nearby school district vehicle pool with the Caprice, allowing me to take the wheel to my high school’s parking lot for extra practice.
While I did well in the textbook portion of the course, I received Cs and Ds, managing a B- on the final day of driving. The instructor was worried about my limited skills behind the wheel, and rightfully so; Mom didn’t even own a car, and to this day has yet to obtain her license.
I did get my license, and held onto it until shortly after moving to Washington State, whereupon I foolishly gave up my license.
This is a test of TTAC’s Corvette ZR1 purchased with 0% financing. Better late than never, as I’ve marinated over both new and old ZR-goodness several times in my brother’s garage. No doubt, the Viper killing, LS9-FTW motivated Corvette is a worthy successor to the original, with the power-to-weight ratio to eat 458 Italias and […]
If you want to pretty-up the P&L of a car company, there are two quick fixes: You cut marketing expenses, or you cut R&D. A cut of R&D expenses won’t show up negatively for three to five years, when you suddenly lack new cars to sell. In the meantime, you look like a hero. General Motors plans to cut about a quarter of the workers at its R&D facility at the Warren Technical Center in suburban Detroit, Automotive News [sub] says. (Read More…)
All results of April are in, and large parts of Detroit are unhappy. Sales of GM and Ford declined, the formerly torrid gains of Chrysler slowed down a bit. Reborn Toyota posted another double-digit gain and came within touching distance of outselling Ford, while Volkswagen continues its winning streak.
I do not subscribe to the school of Panther Love, nor do I pledge allegiance to the Brown Car Gods, but this is just too good. A brown Acura ZDX, spotted at Honda Canada.
We live in the YouTube era. If it isn’t recorded, it didn’t happen. Now, Ford’s making it even easier for buyers of the exciting new Focus ST to accidentally provide prosecutors with compelling evidence for conviction.
The year was 1987; the place was the bleak suburban landscape of central Ohio. My friend Woody had decided to buy a mid-Seventies FIAT Spider, one of the over-bumpered 1756cc models, in plain white with a black vinyl interior. It was way cool, and it seemed considerably faster than his previous car, a Celica of similar vintage. We just didn’t how how fast it really was. “We need to test the 0-60,” I suggested.
Essington Drive was the straightest, flattest, least police-infested road we could find for this. Slightly over nine hundred feet long. I held the stopwatch. Woody revved the FIAT to about three grand and dumped the clutch. There was a modest squeak and we were off. Essington seemed awfully short as the speedometer swept past the 30 mark, dallied past 40, and meandered by 50.
“Don’t give up!” I called out. “We can do it!” It was just about possible to read the individual letters of the stop sign ahead when Woody yelled,
“Sixty!” and hauled the Spider down to an unevenly-calipered stop. I looked at the digital stopwatch, which indicated 14.1.
“Fourteen seconds. I might have hit it too late at the end. It could be, like, really, thirteen and a half, probably. ” There was a pause, and then we both said,
“NOT BAD!”
After last week’s Time Machine Dilemma (in which you emerged from your time machine in 1973, on Auto Row and with enough cash to buy a new Ford LTD), I thought of doing a 1974 Oil Crisis Diminished Expectations Economy Car Time Machine Dilemma. However, the really challenging econobox-shopping decisions came a bit more than a decade later, when the Hyundai Excel and Yugo GV arrived in a marketplace full of Japanese subcompacts duking it out for supremacy and Detroit trying to stay relevant. Yes, 1986! So, you exit your time machine in front of the Chevrolet dealership with $5,645 in your pocket. That’s enough to buy a new Chevette at full list price (the out-the-door-price would almost certainly be lower, but we’ll go with MSRP for this exercise). Do you get the antiquated-but-simple rear-drive Chevy for your penny-pinching commuter… or something else? Let’s look at your choices. (Read More…)
According to Edmunds, 6.5 percent of new vehicles sold had a manual transmission, more than double that of 5 years ago. What’s next? The return of diesels? Wagons?
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