The email had all the stopping power of a fart at an office Christmas party.
“TEAM JAPSPEED DRIFT TEAM TO RETURN TO AUTOSPORT INTERNATIONAL”
“Were they returning from 1943?” I wondered. How could any team be named “Jap” anything in 2015?
As it turns out, there are a lot of automotive-related companies and events with the prefix Jap. JapFest, JapAuto, JapSpeed. JustJap. Uh, huh.
I mean, “Jap” is still a bad word, right?
On Wednesday, Dehli, India banned the registration of diesel SUVs and luxury cars with larger (over 2,000 cc) engines.
That, and a judge in Australia is really confused about Volkswagen’s “defeat device,” the Federal Reserve interest rate hike and California not doing exactly what Google wants, after the jump.
Five new chiefs for research, sales and production will lead Volkswagen, the automaker announced Thursday, including a new engineering chief to replace Ulrich Hackenberg, the longtime boss at the center of the diesel cheating scandal.
The automaker also announced a smaller, more linear organization for its chiefs. Volkswagen cut in half the number of managers who report directly to new CEO Matthias Müller, according to the automaker, which could help end the cutthroat corporate culture that contributed to the pressure to appease former CEO Martin Winterkorn.
“These structural changes speed up the decision-making process, reduce complexity and increase efficiency,” Müller said in a statement.
I call Scions “the acronyms from hell” because even I have trouble keeping up with all of them. iQ, iA, iM, tC, xB, xD. Did I forget one? The xA and…wait! I forgot the FR-S, but that’s only because I rarely see those go through the auction block. Everything else, save the two new iA and […]
Ford Motor Company has announced that, in partnership with the Corning glass works, the new Ford GT supercar will have a windshield and engine cover made of what they call Gorilla Glass Hybrid.
In case you don’t know, Gorilla Glass is Corning’s brand name for the ion-exchange-strengthened glass used in smartphones and tablets. Instead of two sheets of annealed glass laminated with a middle sheet of clear polymer — as in conventional safety glass — Gorilla Glass Hybrid replaces the inner layer with Gorilla Glass.
(Read More…)
Forty-nine cars worth more than $2.2 million dollars arrived for one-week stays in my driveway during the 2015 calendar year. Seventeen of them were traditional four-door sedans, including an XSE V6 version of America’s most popular car — the Toyota Camry. Another 15 were utility vehicles of one kind or another: the tiny Jeep Renegade and Mazda […]
James writes:
Hi Sajeev,
I’ve got a 2003 Impreza WRX (blob-eye) that’s covered 96,000 km now. I bought it two years ago from the original owner, who seemed to take very good care of the car (every receipt since new). The car has been almost faultless.
About 4,000 km ago, at 92,000 km, the original clutch was clearly on its last legs. Under wide open throttle in 3rd gear, the clutch would slip and struggle to get power down. So off it went to a local WRX specialist to have the clutch replaced with a new kit: new pressure plate, machined flywheel and new Exedy OEM (standard, not heavy duty) replacement clutch.
However, when I got the car back, it felt completely wrong.
General Motors has delayed delivery of its Canyon/Colorado diesel trucks for an unspecified problem at their “final validation” stage, the automaker told TTAC on Wednesday.
“Those trucks are still in final validations and we hope to ship soon,” said Brian Goebel, a spokesperson for GMC.
More than 60 trucks ordered by customers are in varying stages of production, according to customers who shared order details with TTAC. Several of those trucks’ delivery dates have been pushed back multiple weeks, and many of those orders go as far back as the beginning of August.
The joke that spotting a high driver is as easy as looking for the car safely going 7 mph on the interstate isn’t entirely accurate, according to Denver police.
“You’d be wrong. We’ll see the same levels of intoxication between someone who’s been using alcohol and someone who is on drugs,” Denver police Captain Mark Chuck said Wednesday. “There’s virtually no difference.”
Spotting those signs of impairment could become very important as federal regulators devote resources to developing nationwide standards and training tools for law enforcement. The recently signed federal highway funding bill, dubbed Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, directs the Transportation Department to study how to spot marijuana-impaired drivers as more states legalize the drug.
Ford will have a rear-wheel drive, hybrid F-150 truck by the end of the decade, Ford CEO Mark Fields told NPR on Tuesday.
“Well, we do have plans to have a rear-wheel drive hybrid truck but the end of the decade. So yes, we’re working on electrified F-series, and it’s really around a conventional hybrid,” Fields said during an interview.
The automaker announced earlier this month that it would invest $4.5 billion in electrification and will unveil a refreshed hybrid Fusion at the North American International Auto Show next month as part of that plan. The hybridized, full-size pickup will arrive by 2020, although the automaker doesn’t plan on total market domination for the truck — at least right now.
Like any after-school special will tell us, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Infiniti revealed Monday its refreshed Q50, complete with three turbocharged engines in varying levels of potency. The new VR-series engine, which will be replacing Nissan’s everlasting VQ-series engine first in the Q50, will be a twin-turbocharged 3-liter V-6 that produces 300 horsepower and 400 horsepower in two different tunes.
The base mill in the Q50 will be Mercedes’ turbo four, lifted from the Q30, which makes 208 horsepower. Oh yeah, and there’s a refresh for the QX60 too.
If you see this Cadillac a-rockin’, you should submit a complaint to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
That, and depressed 2016 sales outlooks, the Federal Reserve rate hike, a Chinese electric vehicle Warrior and CarMax, after the jump.
The European Union’s anti-fraud office is investigating Volkswagen for misusing publicly funded loans to develop illegally cheating software in its cars, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Volkswagen was provided the low-interest loans by the European Investment Bank to develop engines that were more fuel-efficient and produce less carbon dioxide, according to the report. In September, the automaker admitted that 11 million vehicles worldwide polluted more than advertised and used an illegal “defeat device” to fool emissions tests.
The automaker’s woes compounded Wednesday: A European bank — partly funded by the U.S. — announced it would suspend a $327 million loan to Volkswagen that would have been used to build a $1.2 billion factory in Poland. That factory was slated to build commercial vehicles.
German transportation authorities approved Wednesday Volkswagen’s fix for 8.5 million illegally polluting cars in Europe, according to the automaker.
Fixes for the automaker’s 1.2-, 1.6- and 2-liter diesel engines include software updates and, for Volkswagen’s 1.6-liter models, a mesh air pipe that calms air ahead of its intake mass air sensor.
The fixes are approved for Europe only.
Last month, Volkswagen officials submitted its proposed fix for North American cars to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board. Those fixes have not yet been approved by those agencies. (Read More…)
The U.S. auto industry generated an overall sales increase in November 2015 despite notable decreases at American Honda and Volkswagen Group, and a shorter-than-normal November selling season.
So strong were the numbers produced in the lead-up to and during November that analysts and forecasters are all but certain that 2015 will go down as the best year ever for auto sales volume in America. Just six years removed from the doldrums of 2009, auto sales in 2015 are expanding for a fifth consecutive year, rising 52 percent compared with 2010 and 5 percent compared with 2014.
This is the theme of auto sales coverage as we approach the end of 2015, as bestseller lists highlighting the strength of pickup trucks and ever more popular crossovers are being prepped. But what about the small figures behind the big numbers; the less well-known stories which contribute to the overall theme?
These are they. (Read More…)
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