Hyundai doesn’t get every bit of a car perfect before introducing it. No auto maker does. But Hyundai does pay attention to feedback from reviewers and owners, and often upgrades its cars in response to criticism. Only in its fourth model year, the Genesis Coupe already has had its interior upgraded twice.
I don’t think I’ll make a series out of it but this is the second time this summer that I spotted a car in a car show parking lot that wasn’t what it first appeared to be. When you go to an American Motors Owners meet, you expect to see some uncommon cars, so I wasn’t surprised to see what I at first thought was a mid 1980s Chevy El Camino parked off to the side. When I got close enough to read the trucklet’s badging I realized that it was even more uncommon. It had a Spanish name like the El Camino but it came from different GM division than Chevrolet. (Read More…)
See a pink car? Shoot it! This glorious metallic pink Hummer comes all the way from Scarborough Ontario, courtesy of Russty1, who says: (Read More…)
If car racing is not for you, you can always compete for who has the loudest and most expensive car audio system. From April through September contestants congregate at the Columbus Motor Speedway for a race of the biggest and baddest sound systems. (Read More…)
GM must feel like well-to-do Eurotrash coming to America: Lots of cash in the bank, but lousy credit. GM wants to change this and is talking to banks about doubling its $5 billion line of credit, the Wall Street Journal says. (Read More…)
New panic at GM’s European Opel dependence: Opel needs to shed 30 percent of its workers. This is the supposed target of a “secret strategy” that has been agreed between Opel and GM, says BILD, Europe’s largest circulation newspaper under the headline “One out of three jobs imperiled!”
Based on an anonymous inside source, BILD writes about a three-step phased plan:
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While there is renewed chatter about a renewed GM bankruptcy, ratings agency Fitch thinks otherwise. The agency that assesses the chances of defaults by companies and countries raised GM’s default rating from BB to BB+, which is once notch below investment grade. (Read More…)
I still haven’t gotten around to building my 1/25 scale Billy Carter Redneck Power Pickup kit, but that won’t stop me from adding more projects to my “get to it someday” collection… which I’m about to do, now that TTAC reader Neb has pulled my coat about the huge lineup of 1960s and 1970s plastic model kits being made from the original tooling by Round2 Models. (Read More…)
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for the Dany Bahar-era of Lotus; the company is auctioning off his 2003 Esprit, which was restored with a fresh engine, paint job and interior. A Brembo/AP braking system, a center exit exhaust and a bigger spoiler are among the unique touches on this 36,000 mile cream puff. For a man with such questionable judgement in business, his taste in cars is quite good.
Our newest segment, “Suspension Truth”, comes to us courtesy of Shaikh J Ahmad. An engineer by training, Shaikh is the owner of Fat Cat Motorsports, and a self-styled “Suspension Wizard”. Shaikh creates custom suspension components for a variety of cars, including the Mazda Miata and RX-8, the Nissan 350Z, Mini Cooper and Honda S2000. Back when I had my 1997 Miata, I ordered a set of coilovers from Shaikh, based on his reputation for creating suspension setups with a previously unheard of balance between ride and handling. The Fat Cat coilovers are one of the few products I’ve ever bought that were able to live up to the hype. Over the next few weeks, Shaikh will delve into the science of suspensions, and provide his own analysis of a number of production cars.
What’s your least memorable train ride? Simple question, right? If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume all of them. Unless a screenwriter threw you into an adventure film without your consent, it’s what we’d expect. This brings to mind a popular driving metaphor – ‘handles like it’s on rails.’ That’s our ideal in suspension tuning, to be glued to the ground and also as comfortable as possible. Easy when you’ve controlled every degree of freedom as with a train track and groomed earth beneath.
Today, the last Mazda6 will “roll off the assembly line in Flat Rock today as the Japanese automaker hands the keys to the plant back to its one-time parent, Ford Motor Co.,” says the Detroit News. It is part of a sad and messy affair that makes Ford look stupid and vindictive. (Read More…)
Few cars are subject to such intense rumor-mongering as the Ford Mustang. Luckily, an Automotive News report has confirmed two nuggets of information that will mark some of the biggest changes to Ford’s pony car.
Renault has re-badged the Nissan Sunny and named it Scala for the Indian market. The French automaker is conducting media drives in Himachal Pradesh right now, where more details of the car have been disclosed. Mechanically, the Scala is a carbon copy of the Sunny. The design changes were done by Renault’s design center in Mumbai. (Read More…)
Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, an examination on the class divides in present-day America, features a handy quiz for “cultural elites” to answer, as a means of getting a sense of how much of a “bubble” one lives that isolates them from rural America. Among the questions asked are whether one owns or has owned a pickup truck (also: whether one knows an evangelical Christian, whether one has eaten at T.G.I Friday’s in the past year, and have you ever participated in a parade that did not involve global warming, gay rights, or a war protest). (Read More…)
When it comes to buying a used car there are two basic negotiating mindsets. You can either be fair and decent or unfair and obnoxious. If you seek to chisel and deceive then chances are you will get a bad car. Only the desperate and deceitful are willing to put up with that type of BS.
Want a ‘great’ car? Then realize that many sellers respond extremely well to honesty and decency. Win – win is no sin. So, karma lovers, here’s some tips for negotiating the purchase of a used car by observing the Golden Rule.
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