When the next generation Chevrolet Colorado was announced last fall, it was heralded as the start of a new era in mid-size trucks in the US. Aside from the diesel engine and manual gearbox we were promised, the Colorado might also get a Ford SVT Raptor-rivaling off-road variant. (Read More…)
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Perhaps it’s appropriate that the term “collectible diecast” most often refers to detailed scale models of cars and trucks. After all, the industrial process of molding metal parts by forcing liquefied low-melting point metals into a die was known as “hydrostatic moulding” before Herbert H. Franklin reportedly coined the term “die casting”. Franklin, who started the first commercial die casting company in the world, was also the founder of the Franklin Automobile Company, the most successful American maker of cars with air-cooled engines. It was the money that Franklin made in the metal die-casting industry that allowed him, in 1901, to engage engineer John Wilkinson, who was the technical genius behind the Franklin cars, which stayed in production into the 1930s. I’ve been working on a post about Wilkinson and the Franklin cars, but right now let’s look at a couple of other brands of cars that wouldn’t have existed were it not for Franklin’s success with die-casting. Those ‘car’ brands are TootsieToy and Matchbox. It was TootsieToy that likely first made die-cast model cars and it was Matchbox that took them from being mere toys to being accurate scale models. (Read More…)
How quaint it all seems, looking back 10 years and remembering how the enthusiast public was fretting about the Dodge Neon SRT-4 and its half-shaft threatening 250 lb-ft of torque. How could a front-drive car put such twist through the front wheels? Well, now we’re dealing with Fusions and Sonatas putting down similar figures, and the newest crop of turbocharged front-drive hatchbacks are putting down some staggering numbers.
Under fire from the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee for not having fired General Motors’ top counsel Michael Millikin, CEO Mary Barra defended her decision to keep him on the company payroll during Thursday’s hearing over the February 2014 ignition recall crisis.
Wednesday, Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania introduced the Hide No Harm Act of 2014, which would criminalize the act of corporate concealment.
Another ordinary day at GM’s proving grounds, right? Well, I’m wondering what the hell a 2016 Camaro mule is doing with a CNG powered Impala.
Although diesel and pickups go together smoothly in our minds, this is the first light-duty diesel-powered pickup truck available in our market since before I was born. I wasn’t born yesterday.
2015 Corvette Z06. Full gallery here
The Chevrolet Corvette may be outselling all of Porsche’s sports car models combined, but GM will still sell fewer Corvettes this year than the number of Chevy Cruzes they are likely to sell this month. You might think that one of General Motors’ lowest volume cars could not contribute much to the company’s bottom line, but the success of the 7th generation Corvette will mean hundreds of millions of dollars more in profit this year for the automaker. (Read More…)
It’s hard out here for a full-size car. Sales are declining on a consistent basis, as crossovers and falling demand for V6 and V8 non-premium sedans eats into the once-proud full-size segment. Talk of Ford killing off the Taurus seems to float around, while at least half of all sales in the broader segment seem to go to fleets. Market forces might claim their next victim in the form of the Hyundai Azera.
A perennial candidate for most beautiful of all times lists is the Studebaker Avanti. It’s admittedly somewhat of a polarizing design since the Avanti also sometimes shows up on lists of the oddest looking or ugliest cars ever made. I’m in the former camp and think it’s a great looking piece of human creation, but I can understand those who think it looks a little funny. Perhaps that’s how it should be as the Avanti was created to get people’s attention for Studebaker, the last independent car company in America, which was quickly becoming irrelevant as its financials got worse and worse. Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert did what he could with limited resources and a board of directors that seemed determined to run the more than century old company into the ground. The Avanti was part of Egbert’s plan in the early 1960s to give Studebaker, a company with a dowdy reputation in consumers’ minds, a new image, a rebranding in today’s parlance. (Read More…)
Power and weight figures for the 2015 Ford Mustang have been released, and while the 5.0L Coyote V8 gets a nice bump in power, the V6 gets dialed back a bit, to help put some distance between it and the new Ecoboost 2.3L engine.
Toyota’s updated Sienna isn’t going to set any hearts ablaze -or convince TTAC readers of its supremacy vis a vis our beloved Chrysler minivans – but it does have one feature so compelling that I am going to get one from the press fleet just to sample it.
Small and midsize pickup trucks accounted for 10.6% of the new pickups sold in the United States in June 2014 as their collective volume slid 9.3%.
Overall pickup truck sales slid 5.1%. Sales of the core set of six full-size trucks fell 3.5%.
One year ago, in June 2013, this group of non-full-size trucks generated 11.1% of the pickup truck volume.
German business publication Manager Magazin is reporting that Volkswagen could be interested in acquiring Fiat. The Agnelli family, which controls the industrial conglomerate, is apparently looking to exit the volume car manufacturing business.
The Society of Automotive Engineers recently introduced a new designation standardizing maximum towing ratings, with the aim of sorting out the mess automakers have made with their internal measurements of towing capacity. Called J2807, the new system’s first champion is none other than Ram, who have gone all-in with the standard.
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