Even after Chrysler debuted the company-saving K Platform in 1981, the older Simca-derived Omnirizon continued to be built in large quantities. Sightings of te Dodge Omni, Plymouth Horizon, and their many siblings and cousins are very rare today, but I still run across the occasional example in the wrecking yards. We saw this ’78 Horizon not long ago, plus this ’84 Turismo, and today we’ll take a look at an even later Omnirizon. (Read More…)

Many years ago, when I was a partner in a Madison Avenue ad agency, our client Swissair asked us to come up with an ad that asked affluent American Express holders to do their Christmas shopping in Zurich, Switzerland. I wrote “Merry Swissmas” on a sheet of paper. My Art Director Juergen Dahlen  came up with a picture. It was pasted on foamcore, was run over to the Swissair offices and met with applause. Two weeks later, I had a lady from American Express on the line.

“Christmas! You can’t say that!”

“It’s Swissmas.”

“Come on, I know what you wanted to say.”

“So, what should I say?”

“You know. Happy holidays.”

“Alright. I’ll change the headline to Merry Swolidays.”

“You are kidding me.” (Read More…)

Mazda’s new CX-5 SUV is enjoying brisk sales in Japan, and Mazda can’t keep up with the demand. Waiting times of five months or longer were common, says The Nikkei [sub], especially for the top trim lines with fuel-saving diesel engines and leather seats. Mazda would love to deliver them a little faster – but it does not have enough tires. (Read More…)

Car thefts are on the decline, reports The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) in its annual review of trends in car heists. While vehicle thefts have not been this low since 1967, there is a disturbing new trend: Stolen key codes.

Leading the list of the most stolen vehicles of last year is the 1994 Honda Accord: (Read More…)

Security experts told Reuters that car computers “are vulnerable to hacks by attackers looking to steal cars, eavesdrop on conversations, or even harm passengers by causing vehicles to crash” and that automakers have failed to protect these systems.

“You can definitely kill people,” said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit told the wire service. (Read More…)

“It should be right at home on the roads and farms of the US,” writes the Herald Sun in Australia,  “but tariffs and the strong Australian dollar could prevent the Commodore Ute following the sedan as an export.” (Read More…)

Toyota’s best-selling Corolla was deemed as not appropriate for the hatch-enamored Europeans. To correct this shortcoming, Toyota’s Nice-based design center came up with the Auris. It is, well, a hatched Corolla. The car is not available in trunk-fascinated America. The Auris is a Toyota mainstay in Europe.  It is also available in Japan, where it adds to the army of Toyota models, sometimes also under the name Blade. Today, a new Auris was announced in Japan. (Read More…)

Black taxis are a menace, in China and elsewhere.  The criminal taxi element and Chinese rip-off artists joined forces and created a whole fleet of fake taxis, Carnewschina reports. (Read More…)

What good is a twenty-minute test drive?

Well, when most sources are getting a ten minute test drive, a twenty-minute one is twice as good. The problem, of course, is that range is as critical to an electric car as tensile strength is to parachutes; it’s the difference between a safe arrival and a harrowing trip. Without a genuine understanding of the Tesla’s range, we can’t say for sure whether it’s a great car or not.

That doesn’t mean we can’t pass along what we did learn during those twenty minutes.

(Read More…)

Your humble author hates the Lamborghini Urus with the fury of a thousand indignant suns. I am also completely over the whole self-congratulatory Pebble Beach/Monterey Historics business which is currently occupying the attention of the entire West Coast buffet-browsing crew.

Out of consideration of the fact that some of you might not feel the same way, however, heeeeere’s Urus!

(Read More…)

Why does a car need wheel openings in the front fenders, anyway? The Nash Airflyte, aka the “Bathtub Nash,” proved that long, low, and wide (and a postwar American car-buying public starved for anything with four wheels and an engine) would move the iron off the showroom floor in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I’ve been thinking about building an Airflyte-based project car lately, so I returned to the Brain-Melting Colorado Junkyard to do some window shopping. (Read More…)

Out of concern for reader sensitivities, TTAC increased the age limit of its bikini beauties

Every year around this time, the two automotive editors that do not vacation say: “Where are July’s European sales numbers? Weren’t they supposed to be here a week ago?”

No. They will be he here in September. ACEA, the trade group that tallies these things, is closed, and it tans its industry body at Europe’s and the world’s beaches. Only in Europe does the employee’s right to month long holidays stand in the way of timely data. (Read More…)

Should Volkswagen management miss its self-prescribed and audacious target of becoming the world’s largest automaker by 2018, as of today it would have someone else to blame than itself: Bernd Osterloh, chief of Volkswagen’s works council and therefore vice chairman of Volkswagen’s supervisory board, is against further acquisitions in the foreseeable future. “We are twelve brands now, and we need to stabilize the group first,” Osterloh told Germany’s Handelsblatt in an interview. Osterloh is especially against buying Proton (and with it Lotus): “As important as distribution and production in South-East Asia may be: Labor does not support an acquisition of Proton in Malaysia.” (Read More…)

Aaron writes:

Sajeev,

I currently own a 2007 WRX Wagon with a little over 100,000 miles on it. I love this car, even enough to overlook getting merely 21mpg. Anyways.
As is true with many import car owners who love too much, I started modifying the car almost as soon as I got it. It currently has a 3″ exhaust, a tune, and some miscellaneous other engine bits, with suspension components on order. The car is my current project, and I plan on keeping it for some time. There’s a slight problem though. (Read More…)

Brazil was once VW’s home away from home. Here, it felt loved and welcome. It controlled 50 percent of the market. Time passed. An Italian upstart arrived and eventually robbed it of first place by being more agile. VW meanwhile grew bigger appetites and found a new home in China.  Brazil, the ex-favorite, the dark, mysterious, tropical, big bosomed former love affair relies on the crumbs that fall off the table of the slanted-eye enchantress. (Read More…)