I rarely ride in taxis. This is by design, since taxis are, in fact, the single scariest vehicles in North America. I’m not talking about taxi drivers, who I find to be really good people – an opinion that’s largely based on the fact that I think I’d be called racist if I said anything bad about them. So instead I’m talking solely about the taxis themselves, which are very scary.
GM received the hao de (O.K.) to build a Cadillac factory from China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), says Bloomberg. (Read More…)
Seeing delinquencies and credit losses going up while used car sales and lending standards deteriorate, rating agency Fitch warned today that “U.S. auto lenders will likely report further weakening in asset quality metrics this year.” Translated into English, lenders will become increasingly dependent on sub-prime loans and exposed to their perils. (Read More…)
Last month, GM CEO Dan Akerson said that GM might move production away from South Korea if tensions with North Korea escalate. Korea labor unions were not amused, saying that Akerson was using the crisis as a pretext to gain the upper hand in upcoming labor talks.
Last week in Detroit, Akerson told GM’s South Korean union leader that he won’t pull GM out of South Korea. He also said he is unhappy with the Korean union, and that he will bring up the matter this week with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, when the “Iron Lady” will visit the U.S. this week.
Now, the union is fuming. (Read More…)
The UK new car market was up a strong 14.8 percent in April.
UK’s SMMT says that April registrations stood at 163,357 units, and that registrations in the first four months of 2013 grew 8.9 percent to 768,555 units. However, even the SMMT warns not to read too much into this. (Read More…)
It seems like just yesterday that your humble author was bitching up a storm about having to deal with a recalcitrant Ford EasyFill fuel filler.
That’s because it was just yesterday.
Had I waited another day to gripe about it, I would have seen that Ford’s already on the job.
The Quality job. Which is supposed to be Job #1.
Monday, May 6th, 2013 is a day that will live in infamy for this storied website. An egregious error was committed by our editorial staff, one so grave that it threatens to undo our credibility and achievements of the past decade that our founder, Robert Farago, and all subsequent contributors, worked so hard to achieve.
Readers of TTAC’s Facebook account know that our luxury-and-performance-car-scribe Alex Dykes currently has his hands on the newest Mercedes CLS63 AMG. One of Mr. Dykes’ current concerns is the fact that the $140,000 Mercedes has no “next track” button on the steering wheel. He has a real point there: that’s one of just six buttons that my 2009 Town Car does have on its steering wheel. Of course, the first thing I did when I took delivery of the Town Car was to swap the head unit for a all-in-one Pioneer thingy. So now that button doesn’t work.
But away from the world of six-digit Benzos and the most delightful cream-color-interior Panthers, there’s a little thing called the Real World. No, not the MTV show! The other Real World! And Hooniverse has its fingers on the pulse.
Sometimes the cheapest vehicle you can buy is one that strongly discourages you from ever becoming a life-long auto enthusiast.
Few cars do a better job with this than the Dodge Dynasty.
What exactly is the SVRA? Why, it’s the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association. Your humble author held an SVRA comp license for a few years in the previous decade, because for reasons I do not understand the SVRA was the official sanction of One Lap of America. In my case, the sanctioning was legit because I was running an old 190E Mercedes, which managed one or two mildly surprising results in my hands.
In general, however, the SVRA restricts itself to old-car racing, with all the over-restoration and 7/10ths driving that implies. To bring more potential drivers into the fold, the organization has come up with an outstanding program that would be appropriate for any car and driver combination from E-Type to F-Type.
I was a late comer to Mad Men, AMC’s highly successful and critically acclaimed drama that airs on Sunday nights. It was only as the fifth season was underway and I started to see reports on the interwebs that Jaguar was playing heavily into their story line that my curiosity was piqued. When my wife suggested that we try it out on Netflix last summer, I agreed. And quickly became hooked.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW THE JUMP
When the Detroit News decided to make a click-tastic slideshow of The 50 Most Beautiful WAGS In Sports, the blogosphere responded with some WAGging of its own — mostly of tongues. Nearly everybody agreed that there was something deeply saddening and pathetic about the fact that a semi-respected Old News bastion is now using Google Image Search and one-click-per-picture tactics to puff up the numbers. Some of the strongest criticism, however, came from a most unlikely source.
Canadians registered just under 172,000 new vehicles in April, more than in any April since 2008. Through the first quarter of 2013, auto sales in Canada were down 1.9%. Imports, by which we mean non-Detroit brands, were suffering the most. Including Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, and Kia, nine Asian brands had posted year-over-year declines at the end of March.
The days of Government Motors are slowly coming to an end. “The U.S. Treasury will begin another round of sales for General Motor stock acquired during the government’s bailout of the auto sector,” the Treasury told Reuters. (Read More…)
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