America’s minivan segment generated only 3.4% of the U.S. auto industry’s new vehicle volume in 2014, down from 5.2% in 2007. Why do automakers bother? Consider Toyota as an example. Sienna sales in 2014 rose to their highest level since 2007, but instead of accounting for slightly less than 17% of all U.S. minivan sales, […]

Not about to let Google or Tesla tackle the automotive space without competition, Apple is rumored to be entering the game with its own EV project.

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Japan’s Mag-X got their first look at the new Honda S660, successor to the Beat sports car, at an event in Hokkaido. Also spied in the background, a camo’d Civic Type-R.

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Will a 911 Turbo by any other name be as sweet? Porsche thinks so.

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Want to continue to drive in Paris? You’ll need a new vehicle starting this summer, when the French city begins restricting older vehicles from its heart.

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The big daddy of despot and celebrity rides will model its new suit when the Mercedes Pullman arrives arm-in-arm with a C-Class PHEV in Geneva next month.

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With the return of two storied nameplates like the Ford GT and Acura NSX, it’s easy to understand why the only Chinese automaker with a display at the North American International Auto Show last month in Detroit, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., didn’t get much attention. For the past decade or so, a number of Chinese car companies have had displays and press conferences at the media previews to the Detroit show, some of them with plans to export cars to North America, but so far little or nothing of substance has come to fruition from those plans. Whether or not they end up selling Chinese cars here, it does make a little bit of sense to take advantage of the presence at the NAIAS of thousands of members of the international press. That’s probably why GAC used the 2015 NAIAS to have the world premiere of their GS4 compact SUV. In addition to the GS4, which appears to be more of a car based crossover than a serious SUV, GAC also showed their GA6 sedan (which they say was developed for “the higher end market”) and the WITSTAR concept (that included it’s own built in aquarium between the back seats). (Read More…)

Mercedes-Benz USA’s S-Class outsold its next-best-selling rival by more than two-to-one in January 2015. S-Class volume jumped 22% from the level achieved in January 2014, a year-ago period in which the latest S-Class was already on sale.

In other words, no longer are we observing massive S-Class upticks because the new car is being compared with the low late-in-lifecycle achievements of the W221 S-Class. Since the W222 S-Class arrived in the fall of 2013, more than 32,000 have been sold in the United States. (Read More…)

Living in Northern California, electric cars are a common sight – all you have to do is look in the left lane. There are numerous Tesla Model S’s, Nissan Leafs, and the occasional Ford Focus or Chevrolet Spark EV. Plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt, Ford Fusion and C-MAX Energi, and the Prius hybrid can be seen every day. BMW is planning on releasing plug-in hybrids of its core models like the 3-Series and the X5 in 2016. Four years ago, that wasn’t the case.

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Full gallery here

Last month, Dodge announced the Viper GTC model. The “C” part of the name presumably stands for “custom” as paying the $10,000 premium over the base Viper give customers access to literally *millions of custom paint, interior trim, striping and wheel combinations. I’m tempted to say that truly custom, or as our British cousins like to say, bespoke, items can’t be ordered from a list, but the heart of what Dodge is promoting as the Viper 1 of 1 program is a color palette of 8,000 hand-sprayed exterior color paint options. I worked in an automotive paint research and development lab for more than 20 years. Eight thousand colors is a huge selection and one of the features of the 1 of 1 program is that once an exterior color is picked, that will be the only Viper painted that color for the model year, making it a true one of one collectible. Ironically, though, the rainbow colored Viper they used to promote the program at the Chicago Auto Show wasn’t actually painted. (Read More…)

Volvo wagon sales increased 11% in the United States in January 2015.

An 11% improvement represents a scant increase of 67 units compared with January 2014. (Read More…)

Obviously, the Ford GT was the big hit from the Chicago Auto Show. But what about the rest of the field?

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From  “Commuting in America 2013” via AASHTO. Lots of growth in private transportation, but public transit, telecommuting and walking to work have stayed fairly flat. Despite prognostications of a newly urbanized populace that’s hungry for public transportation, the statistics seem to tell a different story.

H/T Glenn Mercer

While the mechanicals are unchanged, the Hyundai Elantra GT gets a new, Sonata-inspired face and 17″ wheels.

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The year was 1968 and it was a good one for Brazilian motorists. GM launched its Opala and Volkswagen its 1600 (sedan). Meanwhile, Ford launched its first car aimed at a broader swath of the market, the Corcel. Up until that time Ford aimed at better off consumers and commercial applications. Its only car was the Galaxie 500 and F100 pickup besides medium and large trucks. It signaled the future direction of the market in Brazil as this Ford was in reality a Renault…

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