(photo courtesy: chrysler.worldcarmodels.net)

My apologies if this comes off as a pimpatorial for Faurecia, but this question deserved to go unedited. – SM

Bryan writes:

My 300 Luxury Series has wood interior accents that shine like cabinetry with a little Liquid Gold. Worried that I might be harming them, I tried to determine the correct product for that wood. Little did I know that the wood is paper-thin and bonded to a substrate in a molding process that uses resin and compression. Faurecia SA is Chrysler’s interior supplier, and they make interiors for many other companies too (see their Pinterest page). (Read More…)

Seyth Miersma of Autoblog has been exploring Cuba through a car enthusiast’s lens as of late, and it isn’t easy. In fact, the seasoned writer tried to rent a car in the island nation and ran into some cultural roadblocks.

CubaCar, Cuba’s state-run car rental service, may let you reserve a car at one of their many locations, but actually getting a car seems to be a bit of a headache. Also, it isn’t what you would call cheap or convenient.

(Read More…)

Millennials. Who knows what they’re thinking? Well, maybe GM and Dodge did … in the early and mid-2000s.

According to Edmunds, the 18-34 age group of used car buyers are flocking to some discontinued metal including the Dodge Magnum, Chrysler Pacifica, Pontiac Aztek, Chevrolet Trailblazer and Saturn Outlook.

But, why would they be buying models that were so derided or unpopular when new?

(Read More…)

Miller Motorsport Park is going to be caught up in a Chinese finger trap of lawsuits thanks to one butthurt losing bidder.

Center Point Management, represented by Andrew Cartwright, is taking the winner — Geely subsidiary Mitime — and Tooele County to court over the bidding process.

According to Deseret News, the lawsuit filed by Center Point Management states the county broke local and state laws by “basing its decision on future benefits of uncertain value” instead of Center Point Management’s higher bid amount.

(Read More…)

Safety technology tends to have a trickle-down journey. ABS, airbags, and other technologies we now take for granted have slowly bee adopted over the years and are now standard equipment. The next technology to join that group might be automatic braking — or autobrake — depending on from what company you buy your next new car.

Ten automakers, along with the NHTSA and IIHS, have agreed to make automatic braking standard on their cars going forward.

(Read More…)

An alleged prostitute who jumped off the Bay Bridge to avoid arrest in August was “hella drunk” from splitting a fifth of Hennessy, according arrest affidavits reported by the Contra Costa Times.

According to the report, 25-year-old Erlynn Kay Sanchez-Edwards was arrested in Oakland after police searched for the woman for nearly a month after they say she crashed a car she had stolen, then jumped off the Bay Bridge to icy water nearly 70 feet below, swam and hitched a ride with a truck driver.

Sanchez-Edwards was charged with three misdemeanor counts of hit-and-run driving, evading a police officer and driving without a license. The water temperature when Sanchez-Edwards allegedly dove off the bridge was likely below 55 degrees, and survival time in the water can be 30 minutes to 1 hour. Maybe less in evening wear.

(Read More…)

The keen eyes at Motor Authority spotted something that sounds like it’s probably true, but no one knows for sure yet, like life on Mars.

“Forza Motorsport 6” lists its specs for the upcoming Ford GT at officially 630 horsepower and 539 pound-feet of torque to motivate 2,890 pounds of supercar with a 43-57 front-to-rear weight distribution. If true, it would be the first word for Ford’s hyper car, which the company teased has “more than 600 horsepower.”

Ford announced that production of its hypercar would be incredibly limited — 250 per year — and that buyers would need to apply to buy the car.

(Read More…)

Dodge announced for its Charger Pursuit cars Friday an available 12.1-inch Uconnect touchscreen, which is five times larger than its 5-inch model available in some of its cars.

The 12.1-inch screen — which is only available on Charger cars for police for now — is meant to eliminate mounted laptops in the front seats of many police vehicles. The screen can be connected to a laptop in the trunk via ethernet cord, and can display functions such as lights, sirens, forward-mounted cameras and radio information.

(Read More…)

Photos of the 2016 Honda Civic have popped up online in Civic forums, ahead of the car’s official reveal on Sept. 16.

The photos follow closely the Civic Concept we saw in New York, including the taillight array (although it doesn’t go all the way across the trunk.)

The Civic will be powered by a 1.5-liter turbocharged four with direct injection mated to a six-speed manual or CVT. (Read More…)

Nissan released Friday a video and a name to accompany the teaser image we were given last week and brace yourselves, it has the letter “z” in it.

The Nissan Gripz Concept will be shown in Frankfurt first this year. According to Nissan, the crossover “concept” follows desert racers such as the 240Z and road-racing bicycles, apparently.

Nissan cleverly slipped in a “z” in the name, perhaps as a smokescreen that the Gripz could be the next-generation Juke (which is due in 2017), or perhaps as a signal that nothing in this world is sacred anymore. Earlier this year, Nissan design chief Shiro Nakamura said that the next-generation Z car could be something that appealed to different, younger buyers aka a crossover.  (Read More…)

Long-defunct German automaker Borgward has a new life in China if you couldn’t already tell by the photos. The automaker released images of its first new car — since I dunno, the Eisenhower administration? — and it looks destined for the land where rules for intellectual property are much more relaxed than public demonstration.

Buick business up front, Porsche party in the back.

The Borgward BX 7 is a five- or seven-seater crossover with a 2-liter, turbocharged four that will be produced in China, according to German site AutoBild. The fledgling German automaker is backed by Chinese truck maker Foton who says the carmaker could eventually sell 500,000 cars annually.

The Borgward BX 7 will go on sale first in China, then in Germany by 2017, according to the report.

(Read More…)

Wake up, ladies and gentlemen, and listen to the happy news: we are in an automotive renaissance. The kind of renaissance that comes around but once every decade or two; the kind that’s accompanied by new designs and new powertrains and new features and new competition.

I am referring, of course, to the cargo van renaissance.

I’m not sure if you’ve realized it, but that’s exactly what’s going on around us: a renaissance of cargo vans. An explosion of new models, and new segments, and new powertrains, and new features, and new designs. When we look back years from now, we will all agree that the cargo van segment was forever changed by the years 2014 and 2015.

(Read More…)

My enthusiasm for Nissan’s dirt-cheap Leaf in Colorado is well documented. Here in the Centennial State, we have 100 ways to make a 2015 Nissan Leaf affordable for poor journalists like me — thank you, Beer Baron Governor.

For me, the specter of a brand-new car for less than $10,000 is too good to pass up — and even good enough to delay my quest for the best Alfa Romeo Milano in the U.S. That even felt weird to type.

So on Thursday afternoon, I packed up the girlfriend, my expectations for a rock-bottom priced Nissan Leaf and hit the local dealership for a rendezvous with the least-expensive new car in America.  (Read More…)

Scott writes:

Hi Sajeev!

I have a 2015 Civic, but my question applies to lots of cars.

I live in Maine, which has lots of nice weather for driving around with the windows down. The buffeting, or “helicopter effect”, with the windows down is driving me batty! Also the “white noise” of the rushing wind is quite loud when the windows are open. I can adjust the windows to limit both issues somewhat, but is there anything else I can do? (Read More…)

I was driving around the other night in New York City and decided to see how many miles are on all the taxi cabs. This is something you can do with a $25-a-month subscription to the Carfax app. You just type in the taxi’s license plate number and — BOOM! — you have the entire Carfax report complete with mileage, service history and precise dates of all nine of each taxi’s accidents.

So I ran maybe 20 or 25 taxi cabs through Carfax and I discovered something: the Ford Crown Victorias aren’t the highest mileage cabs in New York. Not even close. In fact, I had trouble finding a Crown Vic with more than 200,000 miles on the odometer and more than three accidents, which is “just broken in” by New York City taxi standards.

It wasn’t the Toyotas, either. When you go to New York City now, the yellow cab fleet is dominated by Toyota Camrys of the two most recent generations, which seem to be a little zippier than the old Crown Vics. However, I didn’t find a Camry older than the 2012 model year, so I guess these haven’t been in service long enough to rack up the serious miles.

Same goes for the new Nissan NV200 van, the “taxi of tomorrow.” These are starting to get pretty common in Manhattan now, but they just haven’t been on the road long enough to rack up serious miles. I only ran one or two, and neither came back with more than 100,000 ticks on the odometer.

So the winner of the great What New York City Taxi Has The Most Miles On It competition? That would be…

(Read More…)