Sometimes I just have to choose a Junkyard Find car based on its potential for a good Crab Spirits Story™, and that’s what’s happening today. The Cadillac Cimarron— well, there’s not much we need to say here about the image-tarnishing disaster that finished the brand-devaluing job GM started a few years earlier with the Seville (other than the fact that it took many years to undo the damage and convince car buyers that Cadillacs weren’t just badge-engineered bait-and-switches. The Cimarron never sold very well, and the J-body cars weren’t known for longevity, so Cimarron sightings are extremely rare today; we’ve seen this ’82 and this ’83 Cimarron d’Oro, plus the very first Down On The Street car. Here’s an ’82 that I found during a recent trip to California. (Read More…)

The 234,066 extra new truck registrations in 2013 came about despite the loss of 70,077 sales from trucks that had either died off, been discontinued, or were on hiatus in 2013.

Excluding the Chevrolet Avalanche, Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Suzuki Equator, Ford Ranger, and Dodge Dakota from the equation results in a 16.4% year-over-year increase in truck sales.

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I live in a small, genteel, Southern colonial home that comes with all the local goodies.

An over-sized ceiling fan in every room. A little front porch that offers a palatial view of the rolling prairies of Deliverance country.

Throw in a mint julep, homemade lemonade, and the belting baritone of Paul Robeson, and the world becomes my oyster.

Except not right now. It’s too damn cold outside. Which got me to thinking…

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Clark writes:

Hello Sajeev,

I currently drive a 2007 G35S that works great and has been dead nuts reliable since I bought it lightly used a couple of years ago. It also works just fine for my duties of pickup/drop off of my toddler at daycare. Despite being plenty quick, it’s kind of dull. I really miss having a daily driver that doubles as an autocross/occasional track-day car.

A few weeks back I attended a ford ecoboost event and got to hustle a Fiesta ST around an autocross course. I was pretty impressed and now I’m strongly considering switching over. I also like that it gets ~50% better fuel economy and the 17″ wheels mean cheaper replacement tires than the staggered 18″ setup on the G35 (plus, I think I may be harder on tires than most). Lower running costs wouldn’t hurt my feelings one bit. (Read More…)

There’s a new car sharing program in Columbus, Ohio called car2go (not capitalized). For $0.38/minute, smart cars are available for rent – fuel and insurance are included. They can be driven anywhere, but they have to be returned to a public parking space within the designated “home area”. The Columbus home area is essentially downtown, […]

It doesn’t have a name yet, and the prototype that Toyota unveiled at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show was covered in camo, but the Japanese automaker promises that they will be selling a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in the United States next year. The company is claiming it will have a range of 300 miles and will refuel in less than five minutes. The Corolla sized sedan has been tested in North America’s hottest and coldest locations and Toyota says that the emissions free car will have an electric motor rated at greater than 100 kW (>130 hp) and be able to accelerate from zero to sixty miles an hour in about 10 seconds.

“We aren’t trying to re-invent the wheel; just everything necessary to make them turn,” said Bob Carter, Toyota’s senior VP in charge of U.S. auto operations. (Read More…)

While much of the attention focused on Ford Motor Company’s personnel news has been focused on CEO Alan Mulally’s announcement that he’s not leaving for Microsoft, FoMoCo has made another important decision, who is going to head one of Mulally’s pet projects, Ford’s in-vehicle communications technology. Automotive News reports that Don Butler, 50, the highly regarded longtime General Motors executive who most recently was in charge of Cadillac’s global growth strategy and before that headed the brand’s marketing, was named executive director of connected vehicles and services, effective immediately. (Read More…)

While other automakers explore hybrids and new tech in their pursuit of better fuel economy, Mazda is concentrating on refining the more than century old internal combustion engine. The automaker told Automotive News says that it expects to achieve 30% better mileage with its next generation of ICEs than the fuel economy of its relatively new line of Skyactiv engines currently being rolled out. Called Skyactive 2, the next gen gasoline and diesel engines will debut around 2020, according to Mitsuo Hitomi, who heads Mazda’s powertrain development. “If we want to dramatically improve fuel economy from here, the only route is through lean burning,” Hitomi said at briefing at Mazda’s Yokohama technical center. (Read More…)

Jalopnik’s got photos, both interior and exterior, as well as briefing documents on the Chrysler 200. Power comes from the 2.4L 4-cylinder or the 3.6L Pentastar V6. Yes, it has the 9-speed, a rotary shift dial, and a trick all-wheel drive system that can disconnect the rear axle when not in use.

“So my daddy was like going on the same middle of the same two lines as a black car and then they both crashed. I heard a boom sound and I said “did we crash?”

So that’s the only crash report delivered by someone who didn’t get his bell rung at the scene.

I’ve been speaking to the trooper who is in charge of the accident scene to get a set of precise road conditions for that corner. We’d been driving on unplowed snow on that road for maybe thirty miles; something was different about that turn. In the space of maybe one and a half seconds, I was given a problem that I wasn’t capable of solving.

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Workers at Tesla’s Fremont plant celebrate the 1,000th Model S body built, 2012.

United Auto Workers president Bob King has said that the labor union is interested in organizing Tesla’s assembly plant in Fremont, California and that a group of workers at the site have set up an organizing committee for the UAW. That factory is where Tesla assembles the battery powered Model S. Tesla has prided itself in being different from Detroit and its headquarters’ location, the Silicon Valley, is not exactly a labor hotbed.
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Opel Cascada

It’s being revealed that Opel registered the Calibra and Cascada names with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in December. While some have speculated from the fact that Opel was the registrant of record that General Motors is considering returning its European brand to the United States, more likely the use of Opel was to hide a possible plan by GM to use the nameplates on Buicks. When GM sold Opel’s Astra as a Saturn before shuttering that brand, Opel had been the registrant for that name as well. (Read More…)

So there’s the “real” Datsun 510, which was sold from the 1968 through 1973 model years and is the one everyone means when they talk about the now-incredibly-valuable BMW 2002 competitor… and then there’s the A10 Nissan Violet, which was sold in the United States with 510 badging from 1977 through 1981. These cars are extremely rare, but I found one in Oakland in 2012 and now I’ve found another in Denver. (Read More…)

For the sixth time in seven years, the best-selling utility vehicle in America was the Honda CR-V. 2013 marked a record high for U.S. CR-V sales, as the current smallest Honda crossover climbed above 300,000 units for the first time.

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The joke was that the little Honda was so old and undesirable that it would take a ten dollar bill on the dash and the key in the ignition to attract a thief. With 300K miles on the clock, the little car was old and tired, but my sister Lee and her husband Dave aren’t the kind of people who replace their cars very often. The Chevy Chevette they bought new in 1981 lasted ten long years under their care so the little Civic, purchased used in 1991 from one of my father’s workmates, was on target to last forever. Other cars came and went in the driveways of the other houses up and down the street, but in their driveway the Civic endured, a fixture of solidity and reliability in an ever changing world. And then one day, it was gone. (Read More…)