Brace yourselves for the inevitable slate of reviews criticizing mushy steering, an uninspired ride and myriad other complaints that most buyers won’t give a lick about. Nissan’s next C-segment hatch, the Pulsar, will apparently not be “sporty”, and Nissan is just fine with that.
You’ve heard this story before: A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across the water.
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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a government entity that regulates and supervises banks, is sounding the alarm regarding risks related to auto loans.
I’ve been on the road for the last few weeks and one of the places I was able to visit was the Smithsonian Institution’s Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport located just outside of Washington DC. Unlike the National Air and Space Museum located on the national mall close to the capitol building, the Udvar-Hazy Center is an enormous facility and although I have visited other aircraft museums that have had larger collections on display, I think it is safe to say that the Smithsonian’s collection is second to none. The aircraft on display span the history of flight and include both military and civilian examples. More importantly, at least for the sake of this discussion, they come from every corner of the globe and as they sit there, lined up beside one another, it’s easy to compare the craftsmanship of one nation’s products against the next.
1956 Packard Caribbean Convertible. Full gallery here.
Last week* was the 58th anniversary of the date that the last true Packard that was built in Detroit by the storied automaker. If you follow the conventional wisdom about Packard, one of the great American luxury car makers, two things are taken as truisms. One is that offering the so-called “junior” Packards in the 1930s, something like Buicks were to Cadillac and Mercurys were to Lincoln, what we might today call entry level luxury, fatally tainted the prestige of the brand, ultimately leading to its demise. The other is that Jim Nance, who ran Packard in its last years as an independent automaker, mismanaged the company into oblivion. Contrarian that yours truly is, I’m not sure either of those things are quite accurate. (Read More…)
In California, Volvo 240s are going to the crusher in huge numbers as the traditional Volvo-buying demographic transitions to the Prius. This has been going on for at least a decade, and every wrecking yard in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas has at least ten 240s in stock these days. Here in Colorado, the pace is slower but I still see a fair number of 240s (and 140s) in Denver-area yards. Today’s find is an early example of the breed, very straight and completely rust-free. Despite what fanatical 240 worshipers say, the 240 two-doors just aren’t valuable enough to be worth saving once they get a little tired. (Read More…)
In today’s General Motors digest: GM recalls a recall; the automaker gains market share in spite of itself; its bankruptcy judge believes it may have committed fraud; the U.S. Senate gets ready for a second February 2014 recall hearing; and Anthony Foxx vows to keep the heat turned up on GM.
Over the past five years, my home has often resembled the fabled Island Of Misfit Toys, with various people coming and going as fate decreed. That would make me King Moonracer, then, and it has made the infamous Vodka McBigbra the island’s princess. In the near future, however, she’ll be moving out to spend more time with her family. This will reduce but not eliminate her ability to call on my fleet of random cars for backup when her well-traveled 2005 Hyundai Accent requires repair.
It’s new-car time, then. She has the ability and willingness to buy a new 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage DE with continuously variable transmission — having driven a stick-shift M35 truck during her stint in the Army, Vodka’s done with clutch pedals 4 lyfe, yo. I’m inclined to agree with her proposed purchase, John Pearley Huffman’s unfriendly Times review aside.
But surely you have other opinions.
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Well, let the speculation rest. The 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata will not debut in Chicago, but at Laguna Seca.
Just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend, Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MIEV owners will have access to 633 CHAdeMO fast chargers, up from 160 stations in January 2013.
Luke Vandezande, Managing Editor of AutoGuide.com, submits his review of the Holden Ute. What if I told you that there’s a parallel universe where Europeans love muscle cars, have their own country music artists and care less for political correctness than Howard Stern in his heyday. Welcome to Australia.
Don’t you just hate it when you ask people to put on a sweater in the winter, metaphorically speaking, and then your tax on tank tops fails to bring in the cash harvest?
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Though Tesla’s low-cost EV won’t be able to put the E in between the S and the X, it will be able to meet its price target thanks an alloy swap in its construction.
Remember the Beetle Dune Concept we showed you a while ago? It’ll be in showrooms sometime in 2016.
“So you honked at me because you believed I was speeding…”
“Because you were driving recklessly and speeding now, it’s got wet roads and you were on your cell phone.”
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