When I was a young pup shucking out new Willow Green 1995 Explorer XLTs at MSRP or close to it, the Explorer Sport was the unwanted, low-markup, undesirable-demographic, showroom-poison, short-wheelbase, ugly-duckling, obvious-descendant-of-the-Bronco-II, credit-criminal-friendly… oh, you get the idea, right? Nobody wanted them and we didn’t bother to stock them in any quantity.

Those days are long gone, and so is the two-door SUV; the last short-wheelbase Explorer to darken a dealer’s floorplan left the factory over a decade ago. Now, Explorer “Sport” means six-cylinder Ecoboost.

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Welcome to Car Fight, the comparison test with no basis for comparison. In this edition, we join Editor-In-Chief Bertel Schmitt and Editor-at-Large Ed Niedermeyer in sunny Southern California, where they’re arguing over which sedan makes a better $35k-ish commuter chariot, the 2012 Hyundai Azera or the 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid. Niedermeyer: Well, Bertel… you asked […]

For all intents and purposes, Porsche is part of Volkswagen. Except for one niggling detail: Officially, Porsche still owns Volkswagen, and not Volkswagen Porsche. See complicated graph. Volkswagen had planned to swallow Porsche whole, and to add it to Volkswagen’s large collection of brands, but there were some nasty details. The most worrisome detail is solved: The tax bill. (Read More…)

Tennessee is so 2011 for the UAW. The hot new locale for foreign plant organizing campaigns is Mississippi, where the UAW is trying to organize workers at a Nissan truck plant.

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TTAC’s patent-pending China sales oracle is back to old form again. A few days ago, GM China reported a May sales increase of 21.3 percent. Today, China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced its official numbers, and sales are reported to be up 22.6 percent in May. (Read More…)

I have nothing against U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood personally but the fact that a chucklehead like LaHood has a job with any kind of legal authority makes me despair for the republic.

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During my week with the Toyota Prius c (reviewed previously by Alex) I averaged about 62 miles-per-gallon. On my standard suburban run to the kids’ school, the trip computer once reported 82 mpg, and topped 70 mpg a number of times. But drive the Prius c “normally” with the A/C on, and the gas engine […]

Last week, we admired this fine slab of Oldsmobile Broughamitude, and the very same Denver wrecking yard also boasts the 88’s Buick B-Body sibling. It’s no Brougham, but it is a Limited! (Read More…)

India is touted to become one of the biggest car markets in the world by the end of this decade. However, there is a lot of uncertainty in the Indian automobile market. Fuel prices fluctuate (usually northwards) abruptly, while the Government tries to cover its mis-governance by increasing taxes on cars when its least expected. But which is the car that Indians are buying the most? It is the Maruti Suzuki Alto! (Read More…)

Second in a Series, the format of which I described in the introductory remarks of Part One, this article will focus on specific modern technologies—not at all egregious in themselves—that have, in my opinion, been applied and utilized in a most egregious fashion in the modern automobile. Boldly going where no one ought to go, ON TO THE BIN!! (Read More…)

Survivor cars are the new gold standard for car collectors. The ultimate dream for collectors is finding and purchasing a documented low mileage 427 Vette. You can do a ground up restoration, but a 1967 427 435-horse Sting Ray is original only once.

After that, what you have is a different car by varying degrees because it’s like an organ transplant in humans. (Read More…)

Even after its death, Saab is still good for some excitement. Today, the Wall Street Journal breathlessly reported that an “electric-vehicle consortium buys Saab assets.” When you click on the link in Google, you get your assets handed to you via a rude 404: Page not found. The same is happening with many sites that reported a sale of Saab’s assets to a company called National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), which is as Swedish as chopsticks.

What is behind those missing links? Who is the nice man who goes thumbs up next to China Communist Party Polit Bureau member Li Keqiang? And why has he allegedly just bought Saab? (Read More…)

By the time you read this, a collective sigh of relief from all of Harvard Square (and most of Boston) will have already deafened your ears.

Tom & Ray are ending their radio show, Cartalk, after 25 years of amusing and entertaining our fair nation.

Thank you Tom & Ray. For thousands of shows, hundreds of new insights, and two Ben & Jerry’s ice cream bars I never paid you for.

Looking back at our first meeting…

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When GM’s marketing director Joel Ewanick recently announced that the largest American automaker would not be producing or buying Super Bowl ads next year, it got some attention. The Super Bowl commercials are, well, the Super Bowl of commercials, so that attention is understandable. GM’s pullback from Facebook ads also got considerable publicity in the run up to Facebook’s IPO. Lost in all that advertising news was another announcement by Ewanick, one that may be the most important marketing news out of the RenCen lately because it demonstrates GM’s move to make Chevrolet its global brand. Last week in Shanghai, GM and the UK’s Premier League Manchester United soccer team announced a five year sponsorship deal making Chevy the team’s official automotive partner.

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senna3x @RacerJones I got an email from you-know-who last night. They want to buy my ID lol

RacerJones @senna3x No way. I guess they’re tired of people ignoring their new-user shills and sponsored conversations. Might as well try to buy names everybody knows and use those names to market stuff, right? Did you sell, or am I still talking to an actual human being?

senna3x @RacerJones no I’m holding out for more cash lol still an #actualhumanbeing or lets make that #ahb lolz

RacerJones @senna3x tell you what. If you-know-who is trying to buy #thecrew out, we should start putting #ahb on every post. So everyone knows we haven’t sold out.

TDIRiotGrrl @RacerJones @senna3x count me in #ahb #ahb #ahb for lyfe! #thecrew #nosellout

From his seat in his half-height cube, covering his screen carefully with his broad shoulders against walk-by supervision, surrounded by color-printed shots of Evolutions in full rally flight and one of his now-departed Evo IX just caressing a cone at that one autocross he did a long time ago, Jones snickers. Actual Human Beings. That’s what they are now. Him, Senna, Riot, KeyzerVTEC, about ten other people. They started using #thecrew around the time things the original writers left and things got “awesome”. As the old-time posters abandoned the site in droves, #thecrew has come to represent the old-school people, the ones who know the way things used to be. #thecrew. Now, they can add #ahb. For, he supposes, lyfe.

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