Today, Germany’s Spiegel Magazin reports what we suspected since last December: “BMW and Toyota edge closer.” Both, says the magazine, will “enter a close partnership that transcends the projects that were agreed in the past.” (Read More…)
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Keith writes:
Hello Sajeev,
My conundrum is as follows: I am a graduate student with another 1.5 years left of school. I commute at least 200-300 miles a week living in rural Maine (so a car is a must for me). My ride for the last 4 years has been a 2002 Mazda Protege5 with manual transmission. Bought in August 2007 with 69,000 miles, now at 143,000 miles. The car has never outright let me down and I love the balance between fuel efficiency, utility of the hatch, and fun to driver factor. What I don’t love is that it keeps rusting away. I have had minor rust repairs performed in the past to get it to keep passing inspections – the rear wheel wells, the floor beneath the rear seats. The rust around the windshield became bad enough that it started to let a little rain water in (though me and a tube of silicone quickly “cured” that). This car is by no means cosmetically perfect anymore, but it still drives great and has been kept up mechanically. Again, grad student – I feel like I am supposed to have a beat up looking car. (Read More…)
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the Jeep Patriot was the Cherokee reincarnated; the last utilitarian Jeep with solid axles, four doors and a real back seat. Instead, this boxy “baby Jeep” is the most unlikely offspring of the Chrysler/Mitsubishi alliance that gave birth the “plastastic” Caliber and the Compass (aka the Lady […]
Volvo is looking to establish a North American manufacturing foothold, but rather than doing it themselves, they’re looking to collaborate with another automaker – and Fiat is high on their list.
We try to be responsive to our readers. David Dennis took TTAC to task for not covering the start of deliveries of Tesla’s new Model S electric sedan at the former NUMMI plant in California yesterday. It’s a fair criticism. Starting production and making actual retail deliveries is a major milestone for any new automaker, particularly one promoting what may be a disruptive technology. The problem is that while we’re perfectly willing to dig for news in unlikely places, we’re still at least a little bit dependent on companies’ publicity machines. If a company launches a car at what Jalopnik’s Matt Hardigree characterizes as a “highly choreographed affair”, is it our fault if we’re not invited to the dance?
Some of the greatest car collections are not public friendly for a very simple reason. You can’t trust the public. That’s why some guys keep their collection on a “need to know basis”.
This is one of those cases where you don’t seem to have it. Not to worry, we smuggled-in a camera. (Read More…)
What would you do with 900 Saabs?
That is the golden question that will be answered this Wednesday. Ally Financial, GM’s past and future finance arm, seized nearly 900 vehicles on the ports of New Jersey and California once Saab Cars North America missed payments on their outstanding loans. Much in the way of litigious discussions were pursued in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and now the final axe of Saab dispossessory will be swung with an online hammer through GM’s SmartAuction web site.
Can you buy one?
As Jack mentioned, we’ll be at Toronto Motorsports Park on Monday to film episode deux of TTAC Track Days with Jack Baruth. Any of the B&B who wish to spend a day with myself and Jack are welcome to join us. Now that everything is set in stone, I’m happy to announce the lineup for the next installment.
GM is recalling 475,418 Chevrolet Cruze models built in the USA as a preventative measure against possible engine fires.
After several hours of slinging a 991 Carrera S around the track (review to follow), I can’t say I was particularly looking forward to relinquishing the keys to the Porker for the keys to the, uh, porker. I was here to drive both cars, and I’d already had plenty of up-close views of the Pano through the windscreen of the 911 as it clogged up turn 3, seeming to flop over on its flank like the wounded Bismark.
Back of the pack out on the grid, I waved several 911s and a heavily-modified Evo ahead out of politeness, not wishing to be the clot in this small, fast group of experienced drivers (with one notable exception). Nice and easy through turn one and two, squeezing on the throttle a bit through the back straight, with an eye to unforgiving concrete barriers and a thought to the coldness of the tires and the track.
Over the hump at turn two, swing wide out to the right and squeeze on the power as I straighten out the wheel, and suddenly I’m thinking: well that’s not right.
Not right at all…. (Read More…)
In what Fisker insists is not a defensive reaction to a cascade of bad news that has put the company’s continued survival in doubt in at least a few observers’ minds, Fisker’s ad agencies, eMaxx Partners and Mono, have run a series of ads strung out over five pages of Friday’s Wall Street Journal print edition.
The Corolla has been with us since the 1966 model year, the Civic since 1973. The Sentra didn’t appear until partway through 1982, and first-year examples are quite rare (the closest I’ve come in the junkyard is this ’83 sedan). Here’s one that I found at a Denver yard a few weeks ago. (Read More…)
“It’s just sooooo much better on coke, you just wouldn’t believe it, that’s how I prefer it, really, it’s so much better it almost isn’t worth doing it sober.” Though I remained professionally impassive behind my Prodesign 4360 eyeglasses, I was simply amazed at the story that my old high-school classmate was telling me over a few drinks. Back in 1986, she’d been just another quiet, reasonably pretty girl, and in the present day she’s a suburban housewife with the requisite $70,000 Toyota and the mandatory country club memberships. In between, however, she’d apparently done some pretty crazy stuff, including a couple of cocaine-laced three-way weekend throwdowns in Las Vegas. “You go to Vegas for your car thingies, don’t you?” she inquired, her nostrils flaring in Proustian sympathy.
“Er, not any more I don’t,” I hastily replied. Twenty minutes later I was quite deliberately out the door, heading home on my little Honda motorcycle, and feeling quite square. Not my kind, dear. I’ve never done cocaine. Never plan to. But it seems like every woman I meet nowadays has climbed a veritable Everest of the stuff. Was I missing something? To find out, I decided to ask my resident expert on kink, drugs, department-store clothes-shopping, and all other things vaguely disreputable.
“I suppose sex might be better on cocaine the first few times,” the infamous Vodka McBigbra told me as I knelt in my driveway, scrubbing bugs off my Boxster’s smudged 3M nose shield, “but every guy I ever saw who used coke to enhance sex ended up giving up the sex in order to focus more intently on the coke, you know? There’s just never enough of it, you understand? There are these great hits, but then there just isn’t enough. I don’t think you understand.”
Oh, sweetheart, but I do understand. After all, I’m an automotive journalist.
The folks at Toyota have been complaining about the low euro and the strong yen long enough. Now, they are putting the low Euro to work. Starting in May 2013, Toyota will ship its Toyota Yaris from Toyota’s Onnaing-Valenciennes plant in France to the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. (Read More…)
“Reliability, safety and availability” were the criteria Edmunds used to arrive at its 2012 used car best bets. They are taken from the pool of 2005 through 2010 cars, because two to seven year old cars usually are the better deals.
And the winners are: (Read More…)
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