As I exit the sleek, svelte coupe and to buy some ice cream, the car is crackling and popping like a campfire doused. I feel there’s something contradictory about this. After what I did for last hour or so — blasting around back roads at speeds far above socially acceptable levels, manhandling the tiller just to keep it straight […]
Find Reviews by Make:
Latest auto news, reviews, editorials, and podcasts
Based on pageviews, you guys didn’t particularly love Wednesday’s Ferrari. So, let us consider something at twenty percent of the price, but with maybe 85 percent of the performance:
Toyota MR2 Turbo: 94.5 inch wheelbase, 2,700 lbs, 200 hp
Ferrari 308 GTSi QV: 92 inch wheelbase, 2,800 lbs, 240 hp
No, I’m not kidding. I don’t have proper instrumented test data at my fingertips, but the generally-close-enough accuracy of Wikipedia for both cars tells me that the performance probably isn’t too far apart.
Ford will sell a backseat kit for its Ford Mustang GT350R because it’s the family car you’ve been asking for, the automaker announced Thursday.
Ford will sell the backseat it removed back to you for $999 (before installation), and it’s even made from the same herd of Alcantaras as the front seats. The rear seats will sport seatbelts and all original GT350 restraint systems.
The demand was clear, according to Ford Performance folks: people want a four-seater, track-ready car that could pull double duty owning all the apexes and hauling kids — which is not already called a Focus RS. (Read More…)
General Motors CEO and Chairwoman Mary Barra met with Canadian government officials in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, but didn’t reveal any specifics for the automaker’s languishing Oshawa, Ontario plant, according to CTV News.
Barra spoke with Navdeep Bains, Canada’s economic development minister, before she met with new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Bains promoted Oshawa as a place for GM to build cars and develop technology for future cars. The Oshawa plant currently produces several outgoing models including the Cadillac XTS, Buick Regal and several others with uncertain futures including the outgoing Chevrolet Equinox.
Chevrolet built the Camaro in Oshawa before shifting production to Michigan last year, which resulted in 1,000 job cuts. (Read More…)
President Barack Obama ran a victory lap in Detroit because the bailout worked.
That, GM’s Maven goes beyond “The Tipping Point,” the ignition switch trial takes a turn for the weird, and more Obama … after the break!
The streak began in 2002 and remains unbroken. Yes, 2002, which began with the Patriots winning the Super Bowl and ended after George W. Bush’s GOP was strengthened during the first mid-term elections of his presidency.
The Toyota Camry was America’s best-selling car. And the Camry has topped the best-selling cars leaderboard every year since.
In 2015, the Camry’s lead over the second-ranked car grew to 66,000 units from 40,000 in 2014. As U.S. passenger car volume declined in a record-setting year for the auto industry, the Toyota Camry’s sales did not. As midsize car sales slid 2 percent, U.S. Camry volume increased to the highest level seen of America’s most popular car in seven years.
Threats to the Camry’s supremacy in 2016? They stand shoulder to shoulder with the Camry inside Toyota’s own showrooms. (Read More…)
The dog startled me, as much as I likely startled him. A blind corner coming over a rise, a low-hanging tree branch, and a bit too much aggression on early morning dew-sparkled tarmac conspired to pucker canine and human alike. The stability control kicked in moments after oversteer presented too much of the Fusion’s glowing taillights to […]
If loving Texas is Rong, I don’t want to be right. I’m referring, of course, to my pal Blake Z. Rong, who currently lives in, and sort of loves, the Lone Star State.
One of the best (or worst) parts of living in Texas is the unhealthy codependency between the people who live there and the trucks they can barely afford and never use for trucky things but insist on owning anyway. The bond between Texans and their ridiculously-appointed Cowboy Cadillacs is so strong that all of the full-size purveyors offer a Texas-focused variant that slathers bling and chrome on an otherwise affordable half-ton.
We’re talking RAM BigHorn, Nissan Texas Titan, GMC Sierra Texas Value SLE, Tundra Texas Edition, and, of course, the Chevrolet Silverado Texas Edition. If you are in Texas, and your Silverado is not a Texas Edition … well, I don’t know what to say other than that you clearly have no sense of decency. But fear not. Thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Rong, I’m here to make it right. Ten lucky TTAC readers are going to have a chance to upgrade their rides to a TEXAS EDITION, at my cost. Is there a catch? Of course there is!
Robin writes:
Hi Sajeev,
Back with a topic that might be real to many Texans and others of warmer climes. I’m close to 220,000 miles on my 94 Nissan D21. She’s still motoring along and I’m doing my to keep her maintained.
We’ve just come through the dog days. Back when it was hitting 112° in Dallas, I was finding myself stuck in afternoon rush hour traffic on 75 and the coolant temp was pushing upwards into a zone that definitely had my attention. Fortunately, the traffic cleared and I could get back up to speeds that moved sufficient air across the radiator. (Read More…)
Dealers are shaving thousands off of Volkswagen’s Golf GTI — up to $5,000 at some dealers — and the hatchback is relatively easy to find at rental car counters across the country.
So, is everything going OK with 2015’s North American Car of the Year™?
General Motors CEO and Chairwoman Mary Barra defended Wednesday her company’s decision not to put airbags in some of its cars in international markets.
“In many of those places the technology is available and it’s a customer choice if they want it,” Barra said, according to the International Business Times. “There’s many cases where we are well above standards, but we also have to look at affordability otherwise you cut people out of even having the availability of transportation.”
Barra made the remarks in Davos, Switzerland, which was a response to a letter sent to her last year by consumer advocacy groups in the U.S. — including Consumer Reports — requesting the automaker standardize safety features in its cars worldwide.
At a one-day workshop Tuesday sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission to discuss the future of automobile dealers in the U.S., executives from General Motors and Tesla jabbed at each other over electric car sales.
GM CEO and Chairwoman Mary Barra touted the new Chevrolet Bolt as being one of the few all-electric cars that could be purchased in all states.
Later, at a direct-sale discussion, a lawyer for Tesla chided Barra by saying that it was GM’s persistence in shaping dealer law nearly a century ago that has forced Tesla out of six states including Michigan and Texas.
“Because they voluntarily chose generations ago to use a certain business model, (GM thinks) everyone that comes after should be required as a matter of law to use the same model,” Tesla lawyer Todd Maron said Tuesday. (Read More…)
FCA has to clean up its act in a hurry, or pay a lot more to sell cars in the future.
That, Europe wants Volkswagen to treat its owners the same as American owners, General Motors’ lawyers get down and dirty and Porsche’s plug-in 911 … after the break!
One of my CCS Design professors had a saying: it’s all about Proportion, Proportion, Proportion. Just typing that makes me cringe. Perhaps it’s a popular phrase for car design wonks, or a riff from the restaurant business.
However, the theory is valid: Imagine if the Pontiac Aztek was proportioned a la Range Rover Evoque. It’s a fair notion. If that were the case, the Aztek may not have been bound for every “Top 100 Ugliest Cars” list since 2000.
Proving the theory is this 1988 Jaguar XJS. It’s a beautiful grand touring coupe because the proportions are right. (Read More…)
Once more into the breach, dear friends / Or close up the segment with our heavily-rebated dead. This is the third time I’ve encountered this generation of Ford Focus SE, having enjoyed the car on its press preview and suffered through an overheated PowerShift sedan in Florida traffic a year later. Now I return once […]
Recent Comments