Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho was sitting in his company jet, ready to go to Beijing for talks with the Chinese leadership, but the jet never got off the ground. After Chinese aviation authorities refused landing permission in Beijing, Cho left his plane and went home, NHK reports. (Read More…)
After I went to California and induced some dude at Toyota to loan me a Hot Lava Orange Scion FR-S earlier in the month, I figured I’d see if Audi’s PR types had forgotten how I compared the R8 to my hooptiefied ’92 Civic. Sure enough, Audi’s institutional memory proved to have some threadbare spots, […]
After yesterday’s 1972 Dodge Tradesman van, we might as well stick with Dodge trucks of the Nixon Era for another day. Big simple pickups remain relevant long after their car counterparts get discarded, but sooner or later every 11-miles-per-gallon old work truck develops some expensive problem and becomes worth more as scrap than as a vehicle. This Dodge held on for 41 years before washing up in this San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)
Lexus debuted a gorgeous mystery coupe, dubbed the LF-CC, and took all the fun out of it by making it a hybrid. I’ll take an Audi S5, thanks. Does anyone see a hint of Scion FR-S in the rear view of this car?
The Paris Auto Show is about to kick off tomorrow, and some of the product set to debut has me cursing myself for not maxing out my Visa on a flight and a room at the lovely hotel that’s walking distance from the Porte de Versailles, where the pretty girl with crooked teeth sits patiently at the front desk. And how could I forget the wizened gran-mere hovering over the table at breakfast, replenishing your plate with cheeses and baked goods that one could never hope to find at Publix?
Alas, I am not part of the A-List club that gets driven from the Georges V to the Expo Hall in an S-Class, and so rather than sucking down a Gauloises or getting a glimpse of Carla Bruni (I was blessed with such a privilege in 2010) I’m stuck in North America, having to use my brain rather than just repeating back what my PR minders told me over a glass of Cotes-de-Rhone.
Did Ken Lewenza hose Sergio Marchionne and Chrysler? Ask me that a few days ago and I may have said yes. Now that the terms of the CAW and Chrysler have surfaced, I’m not so sure.
The 2014 Mazda6 wagon was shown in the buff today, causing the American contingent of journalists to spontaneously ejaculate in their pleated Wal-Mart trousers. Meanwhile, Europeans yawned with the sort of withering ennui that would have made Derrida blush. Predictions of the Mazda6 Skyactiv-D wagon 6MT selling 400,000 units have been running rampant today, mostly from “Top Auto Writers” who don’t own cars – let alone new cars.
Hey, remember when Porsche made an effort to make the C4s visually distinctive? Yeah, neither do we. But the new one has stop-start and is good for the polar ice caps. Anyways, if you squint really hard you can see the big visual change on the 2013 911 Carrera 4S. The “4S” badge on the decklid.
Oh, Happy Days! The Messianic Age is upon us. God so loved the world that he sent his only son to do battle with the Porsche Cayman R in an epic shootout organized by an over-the-hill Australian journalist. At least this one has a bunch of crap from TRD on it.
Jack thinks Porsche may have ripped off the Ford Taurus X with their new Panamera Sport Turismo concept. I say the taillights are a rip-off of the 1993 Mazda RX-7.
The Audi S3 promises 300 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque from its 2.0L turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Err, wait a second. That’s not the hot hatch you are looking for. The real pictures are below. You can tell it’s the real thing because of the LED headlights. That’s what makes it premium, dontchaknow?
Fresh out of Weight Watchers, the next-generation Volkswagen Golf was apparently greeted by smoke-bomb wielding Greenpeace protesters. Wouldn’t something other than a fuel-efficient compact hatch be a better target for one’s environmental anguish?
In Part 1 of our talk with Infiniti CEO Johan de Nysschen at his new office at the Infiniti world headquarters in Hong Kong, we talked about his new job, about new directions for Infiniti, and for the brand. In the second part, we talk about the new cars Infiniti will bring, where they will be made, what engines will be in them, and what deNysschen thinks about the plan to sell half a million by 2016.
In April at the Beijing auto show, Nissan’s Andy Palmer said he wants to see 500,000 Infiniti sold by 2016, while conceding that this is “an aggressive target.” In the last fiscal year, Infiniti sold 141,000 units worldwide, 105,000 of those in the Americas. In carefully crafted words, de Nysschen explains what he thinks of the 500,000 unit target: (Read More…)
TTAC has written many times about the growing dependency on China, and now there is a voice that says that GM is more enslaved to China than it is to Washington. (Read More…)
Researchers at MIT’s AgeLab finally have proven what designers have long suspected: Some typefaces are easier to read than others. Because this would be a boring message, and because the New England University Transportation Center and typeface vendor Monotype were also involved in the study, the researchers put it in context with in-dash menus. And came to the conclusion that the choice of typeface is a matter of life and death. (Read More…)
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