The deer emerged from the forest and leapt into the roadway in a sudden swift movement. The sights and sounds of the busy two lane highway assailed the animal’s senses and drove it towards panic. In the opposite lane a car flashed by at close to 60 mph and the noise of its passing echoed off of the thick brush behind the animal. With threats from ahead and behind, the animal pivoted and fled up the roadway, running headlong into the white RAV4 which, despite the driver’s best efforts, was still traveling somewhere north of 50 mph when it struck the animal. (Read More…)

When Nissan invited me to sample the Versa Note hatchback, tucked away in a corner was the new-to-America Nissan NV200 compact cargo van. No, this isn’t a relative of the NV2500 that started out our commercial week in 2012, instead it’s a purpose-built cargo hauler [very] loosely based on the underpinnings of the Nissan Cube. […]

A survivor car is a pretty narrow category in my opinion. It means that a vehicle has come through the years with all of the originality that made it highly desirable in car guy world. Lately, the definition of a survivor car has been diluted down to a wishy-washy. I watched a TV program that featured survivor cars and tried to include a repainted car in the collection as a survivor model.

So let’s re-establish a set of basic ground rules about what makes the grade as a survivor car. (Read More…)

Compact cars, many of which are now as roomy as older midsize cars, collectively sold at a significantly better rate in the first half of 2013 than in the first half of 2012.

It may have proven to be a bit of a disappointment thus far, but 35,764 of the extra 87,149 compact sales have come from the Dodge Dart. Exclude small Dodges from the equation and compact sales in America are up 4.8% this year. America’s auto industry has produced a 7.5% improvement. (Read More…)

The NHTSA is looking into whether GM is doing the right thing with cars it has recalled. According to Reuters, “the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has opened what it calls a recall query to look at whether a stress test GM is using on a portion of the recalled cars is good enough, because a fire occurred after the procedure that was meant to catch the problem.” (Read More…)

17/29 mpg city/highway. That’s what the C7 Chevrolet Corvette is expected to return as far as fuel economy figures go. When the C7’s “Eco” mode is selected, it will apparently be capable of the magic 30 mpg mark.

(Read More…)

See this Mustang up above? This is the Hertz Penske Mustang. While every other blog is going to talk about how awesome it is that it harkens back to the Shelby GT350H and how cool it would be to track one, we have every intention of doing so.

(Read More…)

Less than a year after joining the WTO, Russia finds itself dragged in front of the same. The EU launched a formal trade dispute with Russia, claiming that its Eastern neighbor is “illegally protecting its carmakers with a recycling fee levied on imported cars,” as Reuters reports. (Read More…)

In the first six months of 2013, the volume achieved by America’s auto industry was 5% smaller than it was in the first six months of 2003. This is an important statistic, one which goes a long way in understanding how America’s appetite for the smallest German roadsters (and hardtops, and hardtop roadsters) has dwindled. (Read More…)

Jeremy writes:

Hi Sajeev,

G’day from Down Under. Big fan of the Vellum Venom column of yours. Car design, and more importantly the smaller details of car design have always fascinated me, even though I couldn’t design a car if my life depended on it. The first bit of design that really hit me was the first appearance of BMW’s “Angel Eyes” on the E39 M5.

Anyway, I’ve always wondered when and more importantly why have the “pull-type” door handles become the norm? (Read More…)

Prematurely pronounced dead, trucks are back in favor. They never went out of style with one eclectic clientele: Thieves. “Thieves continue to target large pickups and large SUVs at higher rates than other vehicles,” says the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) that keeps track of these things. “No. 1 on this year’s list, the four-wheel-drive F-250 crew cab, has a claim frequency of 7 per 1,000 insured vehicle years, or nearly 6 times the average for all vehicles.”
(Read More…)

European SEAT sales showed new signs of life lately, but the vital stats of Volkswagen’s Mediterranean brand still are weak enough for doctors to recommend a lot of rest. SEAT recommends to have workers stay at home an extra day of each week, Reuters writes.

According to the wire, SEAT “wants to halt production for 16 days on one of its lines, between September and December, affecting 2,800 workers, and stop production for 35 days next year on another line, affecting 3,800 workers.” (Read More…)

Fiat bought another 3.3 percent of Chrysler, “bringing it a step nearer to its goal of creating the world’s seventh-largest automaker by sales,” says Reuters. What Fiat really wants is to consolidate loss-making Fiat with profitable Chrysler, and to get “access to some of Chrysler’s cash flow for investments in new models,” the wire says. (Read More…)

Car sales in Russia disappointed a month ago, and they disappoint again: Russian sales of new cars and light commercial vehicles dropped 11 percent in June, says Reuters. For the first half of the year, sales are off 6 percent while Russia caught a whiff of the European contagion. Now, all hopes are on the government and cheap credit. (Read More…)

Akio Toyoda at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show

If you want to sell cars, you need to market them.  Except in Japan, say the Detroit 3. In Japan, it’s easier and cheaper to complain about closed markets and manipulated currencies than to waste money trying to sell cars.  After the jump, you will find a list of automakers that will display their cars at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show. You probably can imagine who is not on this list. (Read More…)