There’s a new guy in charge of sculpting Bentley’s voluptuous British bodies.
The automaker announced today that John Paul Gregory has been appointed Head of Exterior Design, putting him in charge of the team crafting future Bentley models. An eight-year veteran of the company, Gregory replaces Sangyup Lee, who jumped ship to the new Genesis brand back in May. (Read More…)
Mosul is the largest population center in northern Iraq, but it has been in ISIS hands since extremist militants overran the city of 2.5 million in June of 2014.
Taking the city back has proven a challenge, but the Iraqi Army, backed by Allied forces, plans to deploy a new tool to make it happen. It’s no longer than a Mazda MX-5, and not nearly as sexy, but Iraq thinks this four-wheeled robotic death car gives them a big advantage. (Read More…)
Micah writes:
Hi –
My wife and I live in New York City. For most people, this would mean no car, but our neighborhood isn’t on subway lines, necessitating wheels for errands, and we often leave the city on day trips. Our car – a ’98 Jetta – has needed nearly $2,000 in repairs over the past 18 months (and repairs are necessary, at an increasing rate), so it might be time to move on. We both agree that the best car for us is a Mercedes-Benz GLK Bluetec (yes, we test drove the previous generation), but that’s more for when we plan on moving out of the city next summer. We sorta need something until then. What are our options?
We were standing trackside and talking about the new Acura NSX. My brother had just driven it to the overall win at the first-ever SCCA Targa event. It would have been nice if the NSX he’d been driving had also been a Targa; I believe they were called the NSX-T back in the day. No such luck. The new NSX does not (yet) come in Targa form. What can you do. We all have to face our own share of disappointment. Each worm to his taste, as the proverb says — some worms prefer to eat nettles.
My brother was off somewhere doing something so I was talking to a couple of occasional TTAC readers. They admitted that they skip my stuff and focus on the good solid tangible sales data from Tim Cain. I did not love them for this. But I discussed the NSX with them nonetheless, and at one point somebody said something along the lines of, “It’s a great car, but how are you going to fix something that complicated 20 years from now, without factory or dealer support?” And that was the sentence that triggered my Matrix moment, a mind spinning down a rabbit hole into a deja-vu past.
From the everyone’s a winner! file comes this story. Soon, whenever a Massachusetts resident hails an Uber, the state will hand part of their fare to their direct competition.
Reuters reports that Massachusetts lawmakers are poised to levy a five-cent-per-trip levy on ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft — a new corporate welfare initiative that is the first of its kind in the U.S. (Read More…)
At a recent Nissan truck and SUV event in Carmel, a senior Nissan rep indicated there is zero chance the Smyrna, Tennessee based operation will alter its winning mid-size pickup formula.
When asked about the prospects of a unibody Frontier, Dan Passe, Senior Manager of Nissan Brand Communications, laughingly responded, “We don’t normally comment on future product, but a unibody Frontier is not happening.”
Honda is encountering strong demand for its recently launched, second-generation unibody Ridgeline, but Nissan will not follow Honda down the dedicated lifestyle truck path.
Electric vehicle customers who want to get into a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt before anyone gets their hands on a Tesla Model 3 could be in for a wait, according to a report.
CleanTechnica claims that substantial deliveries of the 200-plus-mile Bolt won’t take place until January, with pre-orders moved from August to November of this year. (Read More…)
A July 2016 surge to 22,960 sales produced the best month of U.S. sales for General Motors’ Buick brand in nearly three years.
“Year to date, Buick retail deliveries have grown 6 percent,” General Motors claimed in its monthly release, “and Buick has gained 0.1 percentage points of retail share.”
GM also said 2016, with 114,105 retail sales through July, represented the best seven-month retail start to a year since 2005 in the United States.
But don’t get too excited, LeSabre lovers, Skylark supporters, and rooters of Regals. We’re talking about 2005, when U.S. Buick sales had already fallen by more than a third in only three years. (Read More…)
Every country has its linguistic eccentricities. The Brits continue to call transport trucks “lorries” (and then there’s all that “boot” and “bonnet” stuff), while other locales adopt their own unique terminology for the same object or thing.
The first-generation Buick LaCrosse was sold as the Allure in Canada because “lacrosse” is Quebecois slang for something to which an entire Seinfeld episode is dedicated.
Australia is no different, but many people Down Under aren’t happy with a new term that is creeping into the country’s vernacular: “truck.” (Read More…)
A funny thing has happened on Canada’s Atlantic Coast — and maybe in Canada as a whole.
You see, we have a fairly small automotive press corps on Canada’s eastern coast (and I say we because I just moved from Atlantic Canada). As such, we have an equally small press fleet.
Each week, a very nice man moves all the press cars around for us journalists as if we’re important in some way. This very nice man probably logs somewhere near 500 kilometers each week moving cars around for us. It’s a ton of driving — specifically, a ton of driving that Tim and I and other journalists don’t need to do, making this a pretty sweet deal for us. We sit on our respective buttocks (buttockses?) and the very nice man shows up at our home with a brand new car. In return, we do basically nothing and give the very nice man the keys to the previous car, which we are thoroughly bored of by that time anyway.
However, when the Mitsubishi Mirage G4 came to our fleet, it stopped neither at Tim’s house nor mine.
Apparently, the 10-speed automatic transmission co-developed by Ford and General Motors doesn’t impress Honda, because it wants a gearbox with more cogs.
The Japanese automaker recently filed a patent for an 11-speed, triple-clutch transmission, AutoGuide reports. (Read More…)
Toyota has released 2017 prices for some of its small cars, and it looks like a name change (and modest power increase) tacked a slight premium onto the Toyota 86, formerly the Scion FR-S.
A sign of our automated times, it looks like the manual transmission’s days could be numbered in the Corolla lineup. (Read More…)
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since I said “I do” to Ford Credit and the 2015 Ford Fiesta ST. In that time, we’ve gone autocrossing, battled tractor trailers, bought a whole lot of groceries, and even got rid of the FiST’s big brother. However, it’s been a little […]
If you’re concerned that the red glow in the night sky could be distant wildfires, don’t be alarmed — it might just be a bunch of three-year-old Hyundai Elantras.
After the automaker recalled over one million vehicles three years ago to fix defective brake lights switches, a different model has now developed a brake light affliction. (Read More…)
One- to three-year-old-vehicles are pouring back onto dealer lots, but the predicted drop in used vehicle prices hasn’t happened yet.
Consumer choices (meaning: trucks, trucks, trucks) and the high value of returning vehicles are keeping used prices near record levels, but analysts still expect a drop later this year, Automotive News reports. (Read More…)
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