Slate has a story about hit-and-run crashes in China that proves that truth is usually stranger than fiction.

Geoffrey Sant, who teaches law at Fordham and is on the board of the New York Chinese Cultural Center, details a trend among Chinese drivers to kill the people they hit with their cars to keep from paying millions in medical costs over their lifetimes. Often, the drivers plead ignorance — that they thought it was a bag of trash, or a box — and rarely serve significant jail sentences.

Incidents captured on video show drivers sometimes backing over their victims several times to insure that they’ve been killed, according to the report.

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Actor Dean Jones died this past week from Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 84. Though he had a long and fairly successful career on both stage (he and Jane Fonda made their Broadway debuts as co-stars) and screen, he found his greatest success as the likeable star of a series of family comedy films made by the Walt Disney studio in the 1960s and 1970s. You’re reading about him at a car site because his best known role was portraying racecar driver Jim Douglas in the 1968 hit movie, “The Love Bug”. (Read More…)

Rolls-Royce took the cover off its new Dawn convertible (see what we did there?) Tuesday in an online reveal ahead of its debut at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

The car, which is powered by a 6.6-liter V-12 that produces 563 horsepower and 575 pound-feet of torque married to a ZF 8-speed transmission, is Rolls-Royce’s answer to what we’ve all been asking: How can I be even more noticeable in my Roller?

Here’s your answer: A 22-second folding “silent ballet” droptop with open-pore wood tonneau, hand-stitched leather everywhere, 16 speakers and self-closing doors.

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So. They finally did it, didn’t they?

Porsche followed the lead of Ferrari (with either the California T or 208GTS, depending on your awareness of history) and Ford (with the Fiesta EcoBoost, of course) by making the entry-level 911 a small-displacement turbo. It had to happen, because in its successful quest to become primarily a manufacturer of unibody “trucks” Porsche became too large to reasonably plead an indulgence, er, exemption from Europe’s state religion of carbon-emissions laws. By the way, the next time you’re reading about the sale of indulgences and all of the other ridiculous behavior practiced by Christian Europe six hundred years ago and you’re feeling very smug about living in era where reason holds sway over craven superstition, take a nice long look at this and tell me how much difference you truly see between now and the era of Leo X.

Will Porsche’s switch to smaller, force-fed engines counterbalance even an hour of one region of China’s use of coal for power? It’s best not to think too much about that. Could Porsche accomplish a similar amount of carbon-production reduction by changing the engines in the Macan and Cayenne, perhaps giving them all ludicrous-pressure four bangers like the one in the AMG CLA 45 and therefore leaving the naturally-aspirated sports cars alone? We really don’t want to think about that. It would be like a husband wondering why his wife comes to bed in curlers but insists on a manicure before his brother stops by for dinner. Could it be that he’s no longer the most important member of the family?

This is not a train that we, the occasional Porsche buyers of America, can stop. And it especially is not a train that you, the person from the Internet who has never bought a Porsche but plans on picking up a Carrera G50 some time in the next ten years if the prices come back down, can stop. All we can do is look back at a few great Porsche Turbos and Monday-morning quarterback Porsche’s new product line.

Let’s do that, shall we?

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Julien Montousse, the man who designed the interiors of the new Miata and Mazda6 for Mazda, and the last-generation Camaro for General Motors, will lead the automaker’s California design team, Mazda announced Tuesday.

Montousse takes over for Derek Jenkins, who left the company in July for a “stealth project” according to Automotive News, who cited Jenkins’ LinkedIn page.  (Read More…)

As the U.S. auto industry technically lost a small amount of new vehicle sales volume in August 2015, sales of the unappealing Cadillac ELR plunged 77 percent to the car’s lowest monthly total yet.

In fact, August 2015’s collapse of the Volt-based ELR’s sales comes precisely one year after the ELR reached its best-ever monthly volume.

196 ELRs were sold in America in August 2014, a figure which decreased by 85 units the very next month and by 151 units a year later. (Read More…)

2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid Limited 2.0-liter, DOHC I-4, CVVT, hybrid (Gas engine: 154 horsepower @ 6,000 rpm; 140 lb-ft @ 5,000 rpm, Electric motor: 51 horsepower @ 1,770-2,000; 151 lb-ft @ 0-1,770 rpm) 6-speed automatic Lithium polymer battery 40 city/44 highway/42 combined (Hybrid SE, EPA Rating, MPG) 39 city/43 highway/41 combined (Hybrid Limited, EPA Rating, MPG) 40.8 mpg (Observed, […]

1993 wasn’t a great year for the station wagon in the American marketplace; the final Volvo 245 came out that year, minivans and SUVs were kicking hell out of wagon sales as families decided that each child required a thousand pounds and/or 150 cubic feet of gear for any trip, and nobody seemed aware that wagon versions of everything from the Sable to the Camry were available for sale.

It’s easy to forget that the not-so-hot-selling Diamante had an even slower-selling wagon version back then, but I was reminded by the sight of this one in a Northern California wrecking yard. (Read More…)

Porsche announced on Sunday that when its new 2017 Porsche 911 Carrera and Carrera S go on sale in March 2016 they’ll be force-fed air through twin turbochargers — and not naturally aspirated like nature intended.

Instead of a 3.6-liter flat-six behind its rear wheels, the new 911 Carrera and Carrera S will sport a twin-turbocharged, 3-liter, flat-six engine. (Porsche didn’t directly specify in its statement the engine’s number of cylinders, so if you want to play a fun game today, read how some outlets have written around it.)

As our own Tim Cain points out, the output of the new turbocharged Carrera and Carrera S, which is 370 horsepower and 420 horsepower respectively, is shockingly close to the 415 horsepower produced by the 996 Turbo from 2000.

Unsurprisingly, Porsche boosted the price too — a new Carrera will run $89,400 before delivery and options, which is more than $5,000 dearer than the current generation.

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Nissan on Monday released a teaser of a new crossover concept car that will be unveiled this month at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

The crossover, which Autocar suggested could be the next Z, could also be its next-generation Juke, which should be updated by 2017.

According to the automaker, the concept could be a “new way to feel driving excitement” (Nissan left it open to the reader) because some of us get hot and bothered when we see a crossover.

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Seven spectators are dead after a rally car plunged Saturday into a crowd of 20 people, killing at least seven and injuring at least 12 more, media outlets are reporting.

The BBC reported that six people were initially dead after the crash in the province of Galicia, which is in northwest Spain. The Daily Mail reported that a young girl who was severely injured in the crash died from her injuries Saturday night.

The La Coruna rally was immediately cancelled after the deadly crash.

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Speaking at the Formula One Italian Grand Prix this weekend, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne told Reuters that a merger with General Motors was at the top of his list.

“That discussion remains a high priority for FCA,” Marchionne told Reuters. “We consider it to be the best possible strategic alternative for us and for them. General Motors does remain the ideal partner for us and we represent a not easily replaceable alternative for them.”

(Emphasis mine. But what are the other “strategic alternatives?”)

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California electric vehicle drivers may pay $100 more in registration fees each year under a proposed bill that aims to raise $3.6 billion each year through gas taxes and fees that would repair and maintain California’s roads, according to the Associated Press (via Autoblog).

The proposed fees would be a sweeping reform to transportation funding that would increase California’s gas taxes by $0.10 per gallon, add $35 to vehicle registrations and increase vehicle fees by 35 percent over five years.

Already, gas and oil companies are lining up against the proposal. (Read More…)

AutoNation won’t sell any cars with open recalls, used or new, at its dealerships, according to Automotive News.

AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said the costly policy would mean that roughly 5 percent to 10 percent of cars on its lots would be unsellable at any one time. The change in policy for AutoNation comes while different bills work their way through Congress that could prohibit used car dealers to sell cars without recall repair work.

“The recall situation for the U.S. auto industry is a black eye. It is a dysfunctional nightmare that the industry should be ashamed of, and customers are right to be angry and confused,” Jackson told Automotive News. “As part of the industry, we have to hold a mirror up and say, ‘What can we do better as a company?'”

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Toyota announced Friday it would invest $50 million in research facilities at Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study and develop artificial intelligence for future safety and autonomous driving.

The facilities will teach computers to recognize and monitor objects — a swerving car vs. a parking one was provided as one example — on the road that drivers are too busy for because “Candy Crush.”

The joint programs at MIT and Stanford will first develop enhanced safety systems designed to “share control” with drivers and computers. Eventually, researchers believe, people will just forget that they care and give up driving to the robots.

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