News of Audi’s marketing efforts for the upcoming A3 has been making the rounds on the auto blogosphere for all the wrong reasons. As Automotive News reports, the 60-odd page launch guide given to dealers is supposed to be a codex for appealing to Millenial buyers with “farm-to-table” food, craft beer and Spotify playlists. Since the goodwill towards my angry-young-millennial shtick has evaporated over the past two years, I’ll say that this whole thing sounds like Audi trying to copy GM’s ham-handed youth marketing efforts. For now, let’s bring it back to the product.

The A3, as we know, is a front-drive Audi 4-door that only comes with a two-pedal transmission and is based on the same MQB platform as the Golf. And I’m really looking forward to it.

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A week ago, I asked the Best and Brightest for help in understanding my wife’s desire for a 7-seat vehicle. Uninhibited by the premise of the question, recommendations on what to buy poured in:

• Honda CR-V
• Mazda CX-5
• Planned Parenthood gift certificate
• Cadillac XTS in Pearl White Tricoat
• Dodge Caravan
• Anything except a Dodge Caravan

Several readers submitted well-formulated responses, but the volume of possibilities was dizzying. Mitsubishi may have had a similar problem when redesigning the 2014 Outlander.

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When the snow melts here in Ohio it can only mean two things: there are more potholes in the roads, and it’s time for me to start detailing cars again! Let me tell you, one of my favorite things to do is get a winter’s worth of salt off a car. Since my hose is still frozen under a few inches of snow, let’s start by looking at cleaning the inside of the car, specifically, the carpet.

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For those who don’t share my fascination with diving, a saturation dive is conducted at deep depths for extended periods of time at depths of hundreds of feet. I have read with bemusement the various “deep dives” that have been conducted by various publications into the workings of modern automatic transmissions. These deep dives tend to be more akin to splashing about in the shallow end of a pool. The name Saturation Dive is an engineer’s attempt at humor, namely to convey that this series of articles is much deeper than the stereotypical deep dives.

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The father of the Prius and Toyota chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada foresees hybrid sales climbing from 13 percent of global sales today to 20 percent in the near future.

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Within four months of each other, Honda, Mazda and Nissan have opened new factories in Mexico, taking advantage of the opportunities within the nation’s automotive industry to grow a new export base into the United States, Latin America and Europe while also gaining ground in the rapidly expanding local market, all in direct challenge to the Detroit Three and other automakers on both sides of the border.

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An automotive coolant Daimler claims is too dangerous to use in their vehicles, despite the warnings from the European Union to cease usage of an older coolant considered harmful to the environment, was found to be safe according to a report made by EU scientists.

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So many Chrysler P bodies in American wrecking yards today, so many that Shadows and Sundances generally make up a good quarter of your typical self-serve wrecking yard’s Chrysler section. You still see some of these cars on the street these days, though hit-bottom-years-ago resale values mean that a running Chrysler P is becoming semi-rare sight. I think the low-buck Shadow America and Sundance America are interesting enough to photograph, as is the Sundance Duster, but most of the time I just tune out the Ps when I see them during junkyard expeditions. The Shadow ES, with its goofy 80s-hangover tape graphics, manages to attract my attention, so let’s admire the exquisitely of-its-timeness of this ’94 that I spotted in Denver a couple months ago. (Read More…)

TTAC Commentator sastexan writes:

With the extreme cold throughout the US and seeing a few shredded tires on the highway this week (in fact, I had a flat myself – not sure what caused it but possibly doing donuts in the FR-S on a parking lot last week with lots of broken up ice on the edges), I got to thinking about spare tires. (Read More…)

Toyota Prius next to a traditional Mongol ger in Terelj National Park

After giving you my first impressions on the unique Mongolian car landscape, I now take you to Terelj National Park, 80 km East of the capital Ulaanbaatar and already complete countryside. What I first observed in Ulaanbaatar is still valid here, namely a huge part of the car landscape is composed of the first two generations Toyota Prius. I have also seen proportionally more Toyota Verossas in this part of the country. More after the jump…

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

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February 2014 sales of America’s six continuing full-size pickup lineups grew 1.8%, but GM’s truck twins, the newest trucks on the block, fell 8.9%. Ford, Ram, Toyota, and Nissan combined for an 8.7% year-over-year increase to 94,225 units. The Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra’s decline equalled a loss of 4960 units compared with February 2013.

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Racing is more than the story on track. If there’s thing I’ve learned in the last few years of rassin’ adventures is that the real battle in racing is the one leading up to getting the car on track. Not just the mechanical struggle of preparing a car to drive in conditions its creators had never anticipated, but in the personal struggles the teams could never had anticipated, too.

Some may have noticed we’ve been quiet on our Lemons exploits last fall, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Plain and simple, the deal for our 450SLC fell apart in such spectacular fashion that we decided to tactfully push it under the rug and move on with plans for our own in-house team. Sure, we’d wasted a ton of money, travel, and time off work, but what would the point be of publicly humiliating the person who had let us down?

That was our opinion, anyway. But Brandon Spears, owner of the Syndicate Lemons team, “builder” of the 450SLC we’d arranged to rent, and the letter-downer in question, had a different opinion about letting sleeping dogs lie.

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Acura has a habit of debuting concept cars that look nearly identical to the production version – which is part of the reason why we’re showing you the concept version of the Acura TLX, when undisguised photos of the real thing have surfaced.

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One of the constants in the world of old iron is the amount of scorn heaped on vehicles from the Me Decade, aka the Seventies. I still retain a boatload of scorn for the music from the back nine of that decade (disco sucked then, now and forever for me), but I liked the 70s vehicles, and that makes me somewhat of an outcast in car circles.
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This Wednesday night, in Louisville, KY, we’ll be recording our first podcast since our august founder, Robert Farago, gave up the practice in the Cretaceous Era. Those of you who listened to our guest appearances on The Smoking Tire’s podcast know that it’s critical we not let this one turn into an long and drawn-out mockery of various really quite decent people in the autojourno biz. So…

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