Have you heard? There’s a new “cross-country record”.

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Another day, another turnaround strategy from Sergio Marchionne. The plan, which won’t be revealed until April, reportedly includes a rear-wheel drive architecture as a key element, with enough flexibility to be used in everything from Alfa to Dodge vehicles.

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The murder rate is up in Tennessee for the second year in a row but the state highway patrol has a solution: spending hundreds of dollars per hour to catch drivers who are texting.

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A new gold dawn for touring cars is upon us if Subaru is to be believed. Come November, the automaker will unveil the future of the Legacy and Outback at the Tokyo Motor Show: The Levorg.

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Once Chrysler’s K platform proved successful, the E (for “extended”) version of the K soon followed. First was the 400, which was then upgraded to the 600 for the 1983 model year. You don’t see many 600s these days, though you might see the occasional Hongqi CA750F version on the streets of Beijing. Here’s a once-luxurious brown 600 I spotted in a Denver wrecking yard. (Read More…)

If reliability is the No. 1 trait your next car must have, you may then opt to visit your nearest Lexus dealership before considering anything from the Ford dealership across the street as far as Consumer Reports is concerned.

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Now that Honda seems to be reviving the Beat kei sports car in the form of the S660, to be shown to the public for the first time next month at the Tokyo Auto Show, Daihatsu has revealed that it will be also showing a small kei roadster with a retractable hardtop as well.

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Reports from unnamed sources critical of competitors are not the most reliable, but Pete DeLorenzo says according to his sources within the auto industry a design shortcoming is the reason why the batteries in two Tesla Model S cars have recently started fires following collisions. Presumably DeLorenzo’s source or sources are within General Motors because they compare the way the battery pack is housed in Tesla to the way the Chevy Volt does it. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stressed how his company protects the battery pack with 1/4″ thick armor plating underneath the car, but DeLorenzo’s source says that is essentially a band-aid solution to the fact that the battery pack itself has only a single protective shield, compared to the three layers of wrapping that the Volt’s battery pack has. (Read More…)

Tesla Motors has used exclusively Panasonic lithium ion battery cells since it started selling electric cars. 2010 photo.

Panasonic Corp., which already is the largest supplier of lithium ion batteries for the electric car industry, has announced that it has signed a new contract with Tesla to supply battery cells for the Model S and upcoming Model X electric vehicles. The Japanese company will supply 2 billion 18650 form factor lithium-ion cells worth up to $7 billion over the next four years. Panasonic has been Tesla’s exclusive supplier of battery cells since it started selling its first EV, the Tesla Roadster. (Read More…)

Under Indian ownership, Jaguar has descended into the sort of theme-park Engish-esque-ness that was once the exclusive property of MINI. A Britannia-flag F-Type-RS is surely just days away at the point as Tata sweats to polish the brand before the inevitable start of Asian assembly. Today’s Jags are interesting and characterful vehicles after a fashion, but as with many other brands, they are still relying on the glamor of a previous age to move the metal.

So let’s return to that age, when John Egan ruled the roost and the pennies were pinched properly and “heritage” was a concept honored mostly in the breach, not the observance.

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On this one you’ll probably have to click the photo so you can appreciate this anonymous commenter’s response in all its smoking glory…

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2016 will be a pivotal year for Holden’s Commodore-based Ute. Declining sales and shifting production capabilities could mean that the traditional Aussie Ute could become extinct, as both the Commodore and Ford Falcon Utes die off.

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The U.S. EPA has released its latest fuel economy ratings and the 2014 Ford Fiesta SE with the 1 liter 3 cylinder EcoBoost engine and a 5 speed manual transmission had the highest mpg rating of any non-hybrid gasoline powered car, 45 mpg highway, 32 city and 37 mpg combined. Both three and five door models had the same rating. Interestingly, Ford will still offer the Fiesta SFE (Super Fuel Economy), which actually gets poorer gas mileage than the 1 liter EcoBoost SE, 30 city/41 highway. (Read More…)

The Opel Astra is extremely popular in Yekaterinburg.

Over the next few weeks I will be taking you on a trip through Trans-Siberian railway, stopping along the way in various Russia, Mongolian and Chinese cities to observe the vastly different car landscapes each time. The last stop was Kazan in Tatarstan, and we are now travelling a further 940 km East to Yekaterinburg in the Ural region.

The Yekaterinburg car landscape is once again very different from the cities I’ve explored before. It’s a mix of less Ladas, more sedans, some brand new models I had not seen yet in the country (not even in Moscow) and the big novelty: used right-hand drive Japanese imports… Jump in for the full report!

If you can’t wait for the next report, you can follow my trip in real time here. Check out 174 other car markets on my blog.

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Toyota remains the number one auto maker by volume, but the gap between it and its main rivals is closing quickly.

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