The best movie so far this summer is not really a film. Jaguar just revealed its new platform to promote the new Jaguar F Type. A 13-minute short film called Desire. It’s not original but it’s still better than GI Joe: Retaliation.
Should you see this new film? Hell yeah you should; it’s awesome. As if you were do something important today. HD version here. If you REALLY don’t know what to do today, here are a few more car movies worth watching. (Read More…)
(Reader John Kit, an avid racer of both slot cars and F2000 cars, discusses an important figure it slot car racing – also named Jim Russell)
Most of you are familiar with the Jim Russell of racing school fame, but there was also another man of the same name. The Jim Russell of this tale was a business consultant in Los Angeles in the very early 1960’s. Needing to pass some time one weekend, a friend introduced him to a new hobby of racing scale cars, powered by electric motors, around a track. It was the then new activity to be known as model car racing.
As the nation’s peacekeepers are learning to live without the venerable Ford Crown Victoria it is also a time to reflect on what police cars were like in the time before the Panther platform debuted in 1978 for the 1979 model year. In 1972, the cruiser of choice for the City of Lexington was the […]
As you know from my previous post, I recently attended a Nissan LEAF drive in Nashville. This was lots of fun and impressively quiet.
On the drive back from to Atlanta, I encountered a very unusual sight. Somewhere in north Georgia, I was passed by a green Honda Accord Crosstour with an Alaska license plate. This person drove more than 4,000 miles to get to that stretch of highway, crossing through much of Canada, the Upper Midwest and half of the South. And my first though upon seeing it was: Someone bought a Crosstour?!
One (not the) car of the future will be extremely low cost, extremely simple, extremely light, it won’t need maintenance, it will be extremely cheap to fix – or so cheap, that it can be tossed when broken. It could look something like the Me.We, a concept car developed by the French architect and designer Jean-Marie Massaud for Toyota.
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While I’m not taken with the styling of the C7 Corvette, it’s hard to argue against the value proposition; $51,995 ($1,400 more than the base C6 Coupe) will get you into a base model C7 Corvette, while the droptop model will cost $56,995. For the improvements in performance, fuel economy and interior materials, it’s a paltry increase. I can’t help but wonder about rumors of an entry-level C7, with a smaller displacement V8 and less feature content. What kind of pricepoint could Chevrolet realistically offer that car at? $52k doesn’t exactly make it a car for the everyman, but for what you are getting, it’s almost impossible to beat.
Companies – or so they say – pay their executives the big bucks to keep them from leaving, or, in corporate-speak to “retain” them. In the case of GM CEO Dan Akerson, they pay him more because he will leave. Nasty people will say “to make him leave.” (Read More…)
The next example of the Fiat 500 range, the rather literally named Fiat 500XL, has revealed itself via a leaked photo. It looks a bit like a Fiat 500L that’s all swollen via anaphylaxis. The 500XL may not even make it to North America, but that’s ok. We’ll take the Panda instead. Apparently, the 500XL will have a third row of seats and grow to nearly 170 inches long, making it just barely acceptable for North American tastes. No doubt it will do well in Europe, which is currently in the throes of crossover fever.
The retreating yen allowed Honda and Mazda to report bigger profits for the last quarter of their April to March fiscal year. Now the two are faced with a new problem, one that will also be shared by its Japanese peers: Higher costs of badly needed foreign investments. (Read More…)
Reader Summicron manages to both praise Jack’s review of the Dodge Avenger while also bringing up a very interesting point. Summicron writes
Baruth does the best job I’ve ever seen of answering the question:
“What does this hardware actually do?”
versus:
“What will snobs think of me if I buy it?”
This immediately made me wonder what vehicle is most unfairly maligned by the auto press and popular opinion?
Hyundai chickened out and took down a clever ad that promotes the zero carbon emissions of its ix35 in a very convincing way: The ad shows a man who tries to commit suicide using a hose attached to the exhaust. The man fails and lives. Instead, the ad was killed. (Read More…)
How much car can you get in this country for sixteen thousand bucks? Well, you could try a base-model Elantra, or with a bit of sharp dealing you might come up with a Sentra. TrueCar thinks you might be able to sneak into a Cruze LS. Certainly you could get a Ford Focus, which might […]
When I go to my local wrecking yards to photograph cars for this series, I’m looking for historical significance. Some might say that the Chrysler P-body (based on the ancient and venerable K platform, like so many Chrysler products of the 1980s and 1990s) lacks such significance, and that I should instead shoot the 60s Chevy pickups and VW Beetles I mostly ignore, but I disagree. Someday, wise old men will discuss the importance of the fourth Plymouth to bear the Duster name, but it’s the “America” series of stripper P-bodies that really get my attention. Jack Baruth explains why the Omni America and the cut-price P-bodies that followed it sold so poorly, and it’s the rarity of these things that gets my attention. So far in this series we’ve seen just two: this 1991 Sundance America and today’s ’92 Shadow America. (Read More…)
Folks who are not intimately familiar with the peculiarities of the European auto industry often call Renault a similar basket case as its French rival Peugeot. January through March, both are down in Europe, PSA (-15.3 percent) more than Renault (-8.3 percent), but the big difference is that Renault has a much wider international footprint. What’s more, Renault owns 44.3 percent of Nissan. This international footprint helps Renault solve problems in ways Peugeot can’t touch. For instance, by making Nissans. (Read More…)
Earlier this month, when Detroit Electric revealed their first car, the Lotus based SP:01, the EV startup’s CEO, Albert Tam, said that the battery powered sports car is only the first of three cars that Detroit Electric will be introducing over the next year or so. Only 999 of the carbon fiber bodied SP:01 will be made but Tam said that next year Detroit Electric will be introducing two more mass market cars, a sedan and hatchback. Tam said that those cars will have Detroit Electric specific styling and interiors but will be based on gliders sourced from an existing auto manufacturer with final assembly being done in Michigan. At the time of the SP:01 reveal, Detroit Electric executives said that the vendor whose platform they’d be using was “in Asia”. They company also said that an announcement of a strategic partner would be made at the Shanghai Auto Show. I assumed that partner would be Chinese and that Detroit Electric would be announcing who their platform vendor for the sedan and hatchback would be. I was half correct.
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