In the good old days, when things were how they were supposed to, the first world got new cars first, and the third world got them three generations later. This time-tested principle is being set on its head. It started as an ugly trend in Japan, where Japanese received their new Latio ages after people in China or Thailand had already wrecked it. Subaru did a similar stunt with the XV. Now this disease is spreading to Europe, and the carrier is the Ford EcoSport. (Read More…)
VW will reward the manual-diesel-wagon brigade with not one but two products set to satiate your Euro lust. In addition to the next generation Golf Variant (aka the Jetta SportWagen), Volkswagen confirmed that the next-gen Golf GTD will make it to our shores as well.
Let’s say you want a Fünfer BMW, but you are experiencing cash flow issues.
Mei wen ti, no problem if you are in China. Creative and innovative Chinese companies are here to help.
Here is how it works:
So… what did you get up to last weekend? Probably nothing like what the founder of Skatterbrane (Guitar) Pickups, Rod Kinkade, did. He lost his temper with a group of professional cyclists who were out on a training ride and he rammed one of them with his Oldsmobile Aurora, nearly killing the victim. It was completely unprovoked and he would have gotten away with it if a couple of brilliant men hadn’t run him down and brought him to justice. Now he’s been charged with felony assault. He admitted to the incident, and he’s going down, make no mistake about it.
It’s also possible that none of the above is true.
On a constant basis, emails arrive in my inbox with complaints about the way segments are broken down at GoodCarBadCar. And rightly so. All vehicles are not as closely aligned with a competitor as, say, the Toyota Camry is with the Honda Accord. We all see the potential for cross-shopping differently, so I’m not offended when an aggressive reader calls me an idiot because I displayed sales figures for the Audi A7 alongside sales figures for cars like the A6, 5-Series, CLS-Class, and Infiniti M rather than the Porsche 911, as per his request.
Today, GM did something highly unusual: It abandoned all spin and said that sales in China were down pretty much across the board in February: “General Motors and its joint ventures sold 215,070 vehicles in China during February. Sales were down 10.6 percent from the same month last year due to the week-long Lunar New Year holiday falling in February this year.” We at TTAC understand. (Read More…)
A Volvo 140 doesn’t always jump right out at you, thanks to its similarity to its still-with-us-in-huge-numbers descendant, the Volvo 240 (especially when viewed from the rear), so I probably overlook a few of these in junkyards. The 140 isn’t an uncommon sight in Denver, and I’ve found this ’68 142 and this ’69 145 just in the last year. I’ve always liked these cars (though I’ve only owned one example, and it was quite troublesome), so it makes me a little sad to see another one about to get crushed. (Read More…)
Even though Ford Ranger is dearly missed, Ford is claiming that Ranger customers are content with upgrading to an F-150 with one of Ford’s V6 powerplants – and they’re hardly alone in opting for the smaller powerplant.
A U.K. court dismissed a libel lawsuit from Tesla against the BBC show “Top Gear,” Bloomberg reports.
The case had been thrown out before. Tesla appealed. (Read More…)
JP writes:
Sajeev
I’m following up on this Piston Slap episode: soon after the column, a family member needed a car temporarily for work. He ran the Satan Fe for 7000 miles and to 3% brake pad life last fall without a hitch. After that, the Satan Fe didn’t seem so devilish but it was still one more Hyundai CUV than I needed. I decided to hybridize your advice with my ambitions. I got the ridiculous offer from Carmax (they told me it would head straight to auction). Then I put a funny and honest listing on Craigslist (“Korean snowmobile…I mean 2002 Hyundai Santa Fe”). I started at $500 below the local rate and I slowly dropped the price. (Read More…)
Not to be outdone by the bull from Wolfsburg, BMW’s adopted super-luxury brand, Rolls Royce, offers its “most powerful and dynamic Rolls-Royce in history.” The Wraith, a car “with just a hint of the noir,” as Rolls says in an email. (Read More…)
Here’s the funny thing about being a failed designer-turned-blogger in today’s world of information overload: designers make mistakes and we get to discuss them. The autoblogosphere is buzzing about the upcoming C7 Stingray softtop, but as my mangled merging of GM’s PR photos show, someone forgot to sweat the details before hitting the news wires. (Read More…)
The volks who worry about Volkswagen being incapable of directing its big band of brands should make a trip to Geneva. Today, the boys from Wolfsburg launch a barrage at all target groups.
Aimed at the “blogger who drives mother’s old Celica and googles for super car pics” segment, Lamborghini delivers more bull: (Read More…)
I haven’t recommended a new Lincoln in well over 20 years now.
With rare exception, the brand never lives up to the hype of whatever a Lincoln was supposed to represent at various times in recent history. The ultimate luxury coupe that was the Mark VIII. The import fighting LS. The Lexus/Mercedes wanna-be that was the Lincoln Zephyr. All of them were flops in the new car marketplace for a long list of good reasons.
Even the Lincoln SUV’s, then and now, seem to be little more than overpriced Fords with razor thin chrome accents. While the current alphabet soup of names makes it nearly impossible to recommend any new Lincoln without delving into a smartphone for confirmation that the MK-whatever is indeed an MK-whatever.
There is only one Lincoln truly worth it. The Town Car. An old one. A well used one. But maybe not as used as this one. (Read More…)
It’s an Audi, what do you expect?
TrueDelta recently updated the stats from its Car Reliability Survey to include all of 2012. Unless the car in question is a 2010 model (covered by J.D. Power’s VDS), statistics that indicate how it has been holding up since last April aren’t available anywhere else. Put another way, we’re currently eight months ahead of the folks with the new auto issue.
Among fairly new cars, so few received red “sad faces” (for an especially high reported repair frequency) this time around that we can cover them all here.
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