In what just-auto calls “ a hammer-blow to the proposed takeover,” Scania told Saab-buyer NEVS that it won’t allow the use of  Saab’s heraldic animal, the griffin. Scania (owned by Volkswagen) says no because the buyers are Chinese. (Read More…)

Fans of the Maybach brand are suffering through a dark day today; the brand was officially taken off Mercedes’ press website this week, with the word “discontinued” slapped next to the venerable re-badged W140 cars.

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The Nikkei’s good contacts to Suzuki (CEO Osamu Suzuki occasionally blogs for The Nikkei) did not fail the Tokyo wire. Yesterday it was reported on a rumor basis, today, it is officially confirmed that Maruti Suzuki will restart production at its Manesar factory on August 21, about a month after a mob killed the firm’s human resources manager and burned down parts of the factory.  The factory makes the Swift hatchback. (Read More…)

Owners of current shape Range Rovers are bracing for devestating depreciation, as the introduction of the next-generation car looms, making owners of the current vehicle look like pathetic try-hards saddled with an out-of-fashion luxury vehicle.

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A Norwegian driver took evasive action to avoid  a moose, only to hit a bear, Reuters reports from Olso.

According to the wire report, the driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225 kilometers north of Oslo, went around the animal, not realizing that a bear was following the moose.

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GM’s Opel unit is faced with dwindling demand and wants to shorten workers’ hours at its Rüsselsheim plant, media from Reuters to Germany’s Manager Magazin report. Rüsselsheim makes the Opel Insignia, and for that, the rapidly deteriorating southern European markets are especially important, an Opel spokesman said. A shortened work week at Opel’s engine plant in Kaiserslautern is also being negotiated, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says. However, this is Germany, and it is not as easy as is sounds. (Read More…)

Back when I reviewed the final Mazda RX-8, I ranted on at some length about my envy of my RX-7-driving college classmates who were the rich sons of high-ranking South Vietnamese military officers and government officials. Still, except when I was shopping for a Mazda rear end for my 20R Sprite Hell Project, I haven’t paid much attention to the many RX-7s I’ve seen in wrecking yards over the years. First-gen examples aren’t uncommon even today; here’s an ’85 I found in a Denver yard last week. (Read More…)

The sink itself is a recycled oil sump

Israeli artist Ronen Wasserman turned recycling into an art form. Literally. For the Ronmen TinMan design studio, Wasserman creates on-off furniture pieces from recycled car parts. Says TinMan in its mission statement: (Read More…)

Last week, Jalopnik ran a story bemoaning the loss of Joel Ewanick, complete with some appropriately DeLorean-esque winks towards possible conspiracy and a note that Mr. Ewanick just busted out a $1.4 million mortgage for a home in Detroit. This doesn’t seem like a good deal; surely $1.4 mil should get you, oh, I don’t know, 1,400 homes in Detroit.

What was so great about the guy who apparently green-lit “Chevy Runs Deep”? Perhaps a look into what GM once considered to be good marketing copy will offer some insight.

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… most, if not all of them seem to land in the moderation queue at the moment. This appears to be caused by a computer problem of so far unknown nature, and is not due to some baton-wielding police action. (Read More…)

A few years ago, we drove the Switzer P800, a Nissan GT-R that put slightly over seven hundred horsepower to the wheels. Switzer has since gone on to sell dozens of P800 kits; in fact, your humble author worked with Switzer for the summer of 2010 in an advisory capacity to help sell even more of them. If you’re going to drive a GT-R, you might as well drive a really fast one, right?

Switzer’s customers weren’t satisfied with 800 horses at the crank, though; they wanted a thousand at the crank. And once that was done, they wanted a thousand. At the wheels. Getting to that level wasn’t easy.

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Last year I recommended the Hyundai Elantra Touring for those who “want a simply designed car that’s easy to see out of, capable of toting a bunch of stuff, solidly constructed, and fun to drive.” A replacement was on the horizon, and I wondered if it would retain the ET’s increasingly uncommon strengths. Well, the […]

Tycho of Beijing’s Carnewschina is onto a rapidly trending phenomenon among the big boys of China: Heavy trucks with convertible tops. It appears to be an aftermarket mod that is not always strictly voluntary:  Trucks sometimes roll. Due to the amazing build quality of Chinese trucks and the help of a few hundred migrant workers, a rolled truck quickly is back on its many wheels. With parts essential for a repair safely secured, the chop-top truck is back on its merry way. (Read More…)

The Wall Street Journal has an extensive report in which Neal Boudette caught BMW cheating with its sales numbers. Boudette unmasked the shocking practice of car makers selling cars to dealers instead to customers: “Hundreds of BMWs counted as sold in July remain in showroom inventories and are still advertised for sale as new cars, according to dealers.” The WSJ dug deeper into the scandal.

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Ben Klayman, Reuters’ Detroit-based crack car correspondent, wrote a very good feature on self-driving cars.  After interviewing many sources, he comes to the conclusion that “it’s been more than half a century since some of the first concept cars boasting self-driving features were presented to the world”  and that this probably will not change anytime soon. Even Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and the staunchest supporter of the technology cautiously says that “self-driving cars should in our lifetime become the predominant way.” (Read More…)