With the wife and kids out of the house on Sunday I finally had a little private time. Naturally, I did what a lot of men do when they find themselves home alone – I caught up on the current season of Top Gear. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about the world’s most popular television program. On the one hand I am generally unimpressed with lengthy reviews of million dollar hyper cars or high end luxury cars, the seats of which my ass will never grace, but I do enjoy the challenges and the occasional look back at cars of the past. Naturally, I was quite taken by this season’s premiere episode, a modern day test of the hot hatches of the 1980s. (Read More…)
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Long rumored to wear the Alfa Romeo badge, the next-generation Mazda MX-5 may instead don a Fiat or Abarth necklace in 2015 if Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne has the last word.
Porsche 919 Hybrid LeMans Racer Goes After The Two Thirds of Gasoline’s Energy That’s Wasted As Heat
The problem with battery electric and fuel cell cars is gasoline. Petrol is genuinely a superior fuel, at least in terms of energy. It has so much energy per gallon, 116,000 btu/gal, that we can use it in an engine whose theoretical maximum efficiency is only 37%. That means that with all the gizmos a modern gasoline powered internal combustion engine has that increase fuel economy, still two thirds or more of the energy in the fuel is being turned into unusable heat, not motive force.
UPDATE: Mere minutes after our prior editorial was published Chrysler announced that they will be withdrawing their request for funding from the Canadian government, and
“…confirmed its intention to begin to allocate to our Windsor, Ontario plant the development and industrialization of the next “people carrier” architecture (the so-called next minivan and derivatives)”
We are awaiting a call from Chrysler to discuss the matter. In the mean time, you can read the official announcement here.
The biggest news for North America’s auto industry was announced at Geneva, and it wasn’t a new product debut. According to Automotive News, FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne has decided on a location for the next assembly plant, and things aren’t looking great for the current plant in Windsor, Ontario.
Just as the B&B suspected, the Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge is indeed powered by a twin-turbo V6, and it comes from the Nissan GT-R. With all-wheel drive and a 7-speed gearbox (of an unspecified nature), the Eau Rouge should blast to 60 mph in under 4 seconds. Can’t outshine its big brother, can it?
A sharp-eyed TTAC reader based in Korea has sent us some spy shots of the 2015 Hyundai Sonata. The shots purport to show the car’s front end, interior and a snap of a Korean car magazine claiming AWD and a 6-speed DCT for the KDM model. Authentic? Who knows.
Why do we continue to lust after the Volkswagen Scirocco when the Audi TT exists? They’re similar cars, with a similar shape and if the two were to be sold in North America, their pricepoints wouldn’t be terrible far off one another. The answer is simple – because we must fetishize every vehicle that doesn’t make it to our shores are a priori superior to whatever dull crap is being gobbled up by Americans. Except that the TT has just leapfrogged the Scirocco, and it will be coming to North America.
Our photographers bring you live shots of the Jeep Renegade on the floor at Geneva. They even took snapshots of a Diesel Trailhawk, the best combination that we won’t get in North America. Gallery after the jump.
You’re looking at the next Toyota Yaris. Seriously. Under the terms of a deal struck with Toyota, Mazda’s all-new Mexican assembly plant will build the next Mazda2 and the Toyota Yaris on a single, Mazda-derived platform.
Jaguar released this teaser of their new 3-Series competitor, the XE. All we know is that it has an all-new 2.0L 4-cylinder with a turbocharger and is based on an scalable aluminum architecture. Expect a full debut at September’s Paris Auto Show.
TTAC Commentator Modestholdings writes:
Best from the West, young man,
The Boss has a pretty nice ’94 Escort LX wagon sourced by yours truly, and it happens to have found the sweet spot betwixt my picking it and her loving it. A grand for this one-owner handshaker and she’s managed to put about 23K on it in the last year — points of interest are far and few between here in Wyoming. (Read More…)
What you’re looking at is a four-wheeled ATM for Fiat Chrysler. The Jeep Renegade is a unibody crossover based on a Fiat car platform. To satisfy the Jeep faithful, it has an available all-wheel drive system with a 20:1 crawl ratio, 8.7 inches of ground clearance and a rock crawling mode as well as a 2,000 lb towing capability with the 2.4L 4-cylinder (Euro-spec diesels get as much as 3,300 lbs). None of that matters as much as the fact that it’s an entrant for Jeep in one of the automotive world’s fastest growing segments.
Subaru, Nissan and Chrysler were the big winners this month, with GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai-Kia blaming poor weather for their decline in sales for February. Subaru, up 24 percent, seemed unfazed by the cold snap.
N.B: You can now access the full table at Automotive News. Tim Cain will continue with his full segment of sales segment analysis pieces.
Today’s article on Caroline’s transformation into a “pinup girl” was one of the most popular things we’ve run in some time. (One of the most popular things that didn’t involve automatic-transmission technology, anyway.)
For those of you who want to see more of the cars and the girls, TTAC After Dark is here to serve. None of the photos are strictly NSFW, but you might not want to sit there and look at them in the company of your boss (or your wife). Click to continue:
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