Reuters Energy analyst John Kemp has published a timeline of events that explain the latest crash in crude oil prices. As energy prices enter a new era, we’ll be focusing more and more on this sector, and how it relates to the automobile.
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Despite the ongoing drop in oil prices, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said her company would stay the course as far as fuel efficiency is concerned.
A Ford engineer responds to our last piece on the Ford GT.
In “Ur-Turn: The Hater’s Guide to the Ford GT”, we get a glimpse into the Ford product development cycle for high-volume vehicles. The authors, who humbly claim that it was a broad overview, give a rather complete account of the roles, responsibilities, and procedures behind nearly every Ford product that comes to market. It’s a fascinating process, and it occurs every day at virtually every OEM and supplier. But what happens when a particular design or system defies convention? How do you validate something that is unlike anything your company has ever produced? What happens when you push the product development envelope so far, that you enter a completely new and unfamiliar design space? This is where we’ll find the Ford GT.
Curious fact: America’s two best-selling premium brands and one of the two fastest-growing premium brands are the three premium brands which rely the least upon SUVs and crossovers in the U.S. market.
We correctly believe that much of the growth in the luxury vehicle sector over the coming half-decade will be in the CUV category, but there’s no denying that the major players established productive, popular, profit-generating passenger car lineups many years ago.
• Most new crossovers introduced in 2014 were “premium”
• Majority of Jaguar-Land Rover, Acura, Lincoln sales come from utilities
• Porsche and Cadillac generate half their U.S. volume with utilities
SUVs and crossovers are assisting these brands – BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi – in finding new avenues for growth, but their car divisions are large volume tools.
The same can’t be said for many of the mid-tier and low-volume luxury brands. Cars accomplish very little for Acura and Jaguar-Land Rover, generate only half of Cadillac’s volume, and produce only 45% of Lincoln sales. (Read More…)
“Wait! Is that a…” “Are you British?” “I haven’t seen one of these since I left Venezuela as a teenager, only rich people had Sierras!” Behold random responses from gawkers of TTAC’s Project Car. The surprises continue after several hundred miles under the Ford Sierra’s belt, as life with this fish out of water is […]
One month after Toyota began sales of its Mirai FCV in Japan, around 1,500 have been ordered thus far, well over the 400 the automaker thought it would sell for the entirety of 2015.
Though the new Smart Fortwo is coming to showrooms in the United States later this year, the Electric Drive model won’t be available just yet.
Tesla shareholders felt lighter Wednesday after the automaker’s stock price fell from just over $200/share to $186.09/share after CEO Elon Musk’s announcement at the 2015 Automotive News World Congress in Detroit — held during the 2015 Detroit Auto Show — that his company wouldn’t be profitable until the start of the 2020s.
Who would have thought, in the late 1960s, that the future held front-wheel-drive Chargers, based on a French platform? Or that Carroll Shelby’s name would be on some of those cars? The Shelby Chryslers aren’t worth a whole bunch today, which means that non-perfect ones show up in cheap self-serve wrecking yards all the time; we’ve seen this ’87 Daytona Shelby Z, this ’86 Omni GLH, this ’85 Shelby Charger, and this ’84 Shelby Charger so far, and now I’ve spotted a very rough but still recognizable ’87 Shelby Charger in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Read More…)
“Alec, I’ll take ‘Three-Letter Controversy’ for $800.”
“This item kills thousands of Americans every year. It’s easy for people in Montana to legally acquire and operate one, but New Yorkers have a tougher time doing so and Londoners find it nearly impossible. Using one correctly was once considered to be a normal prerequisite of American manhood but in today’s campy culture it’s often satirized as a psychological substitute for the once-controversial but now societally-approved free and morally ambiguous usage of a substantial penis. Disparaging the ownership and abuse of this item on social media is the number-one pastime of non-beautiful women and twentysomething men who cannot bench press two hundred pounds. Robert Farago created a website about it.”
“Alec, this one’s a no-brainer. What is a gun?”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid the correct answer is: What is a car? No, wait, I’m hearing from our backstage experts. Your answer is also correct.”
Firearms and automobiles have been the focus of the progressive kulturkampf in America since before most of TTAC’s readers and contributors were born. Many strange bedfellows are made in the process, and thus it is that the Atlantic finds itself in the position of praising the automobile for a very particular purpose.
The Nissan Micra has officially lost its title as “Canada’s Least Expensive New Car”. Now, the cheapest new car is now the Hyundai Accent.
TTAC reader James Federico sends us his take on life with a Mitsubishi Delica “It’s a Mitsubishi Delica” “Japan originally, but I bought it from a dealer in London” “About 10 grand” These are the first three sentences I speak any time I exit my van within twenty feet of another human being. There are […]
Everything you wanted to know about rust proofing, the economics of diesel pricing and more.
As the price at the pump continues to plummet — diesel not so much — British valuation guide Glass’s predicts big gas guzzlers new and used will return to the motorway.
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