Pininfarina SpA will be see Carlo Bonzanigo succeeding Fabio Filippini as the Italian styling firm’s reigning design director on January 9th.

Filippini’s decision to leave Pininfarina for “personal reasons” comes during a difficult time for the shop. While his responsibility for heading new projects is essentially over, he has promised to remain on board as a personal advisor to company CEO Silvio Angori, and will continue to provide oversight for old projects leading up to a concept car unveiling at March’s Geneva Auto Show. (Read More…)

There’s no shortage of uncertainty afflicting the auto industry these days, but Hyundai Motor Company is facing 2017 like a tense office worker determined to put on a brave face around its colleagues.

After seeing its 2016 delivery targets swamped by a wave of market reality — and after canning the CEO of its American division for missing his own targets — Hyundai claims the gray skies will clear up in the New Year. (Read More…)

General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles all ended 2016 selling fewer new vehicles in the United States than the traditional Detroit Three managed one year earlier.

Yet for a second consecutive year, U.S. auto sales improved to record levels, shooting past 17.5 million units thanks to an end-of-year push that propelled December to a 3-percent increase, not the 2-percent decline forecasted. (Read More…)

Convertible sales have slid steadily for a while now and “everyday” droptops like the difficult to praise Chrysler Sebring have vanished from the automotive market. With the exception of a few premium options from Germany, fun in the sun doesn’t seem to coincide with daily driving anymore.

With their sales volume now trumped even by impractical, short-ranged electric vehicles, lidless cars are less popular than ever. In fact, America’s most popular convertible isn’t even a car (Jeep Wangler), and today’s remaining open-air options are either performance focused, comically small, or extremely expensive European luxury items. That’s likely to remain the case for some time, considering it took us over a decade to get here.  (Read More…)

One year after Faraday Future (FF) revealed its futuristic and racy FFZERO1 concept, the company has pulled back the curtain on its first production car.

The FF 91 is cut from cloth similar to the recently revealed Lucid Air. Both cars are being built by California-based, Chinese-backed companies. And both are scheduled to follow Tesla into the EV Super Sedan market as Trump’s first term hits its midpoint. (Read More…)

An optional CVT, to be clear.

We all know true motoring — as Mother Nature intended — should involve the manual changing of one’s own gears, but even scrappy, youth-infected Honda knows that stick shifts are not the way to have customers beat down your doors.

Hence the availability of a traditionally tepid transmission in its upcoming Civic Type R. (Read More…)

Dave writes:

Should we get a better deal on a special order car vs taking one off the lot? The dealer wants MSRP and won’t budge giving us some story about special orders affecting his allocation. We can’t go to another dealer because the other Lexus dealer in town has the same owner.

We’re looking at an IS 300. The reason for special order is my wife wants an exterior/interior color combo (from the standard colors) that the dealer can’t find in any U.S. or inbound inventory searches.

She’s flexible on other options, just has to have her color combo and is willing to wait for approx 90 days to get it.

Thanks,

Dave

Dave, you seem like a sensible guy, and not a dope fiend at all. So let me drop some knowledge on you about how dealer allocation and special ordering works.

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I remember the day I committed the minor misdemeanor offense of reckless operation as if it was yesterday, although it was actually one day longer ago than the statute of limitations regarding minor misdemeanors in Ohio. I was surrounded by my accomplices — my “gang” if you will — and we were hell-bent on committing some serious traffic offenses.

The situation was this: We were all driving through Cincinnati, Ohio, at approximately 65 miles per hour. This is the speed limit for Route 71 on the north side of Cincinnati. Approximately five miles south of I-275, the speed limit on 71 drops from 65 to 45. There’s no visible logic or reasoning behind this; I-71 is still a five-or-six-lane road at this point. There are certainly times when the road is brought to a standstill by traffic, but the same is true of I-71 between Columbus and Delaware, Ohio, which has a marked limit of 70 mph.

As I passed the speed limit sign together with my gang of approximately 20 visible vehicles — most of which were doing about 70-75 mph but a few of which were going slower or faster than that — not a single driver touched his or her brakes. In the space of a few moments, we had gone from being legal or semi-legal road users to serious violators of the Ohio Revised Code. Had there been a sufficient police presence in the area, every one of us could have been sentenced to 60 days in jail and been subject to impounding of our vehicles.

This is clearly ridiculous, so it’s time to ask the question that is always relevant in situations like this: Cui bono?

(Read More…)

Despite a year’s worth of absolutely scathing publicity and countering hype from the company, Faraday Future finally presented the world with an electric vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show last night.

The car — called the FF 91 — would become the quintessential futuristic vehicle if it lives up to even a third of Faraday’s claims. Faster than any Tesla, with better range, more sensors, and an incredible user recognition program, it was an extraordinary example of what Faraday needs to bring to the table in order to continue existing.

Faraday’s presentation contained a number of strange moments that touched upon the myriad of criticisms against it, without addressing anything too directly. After two countdown timers, Senior Vice President of R&D Nick Sampson took to the stage to remind the press of Faraday’s achievements over the past two years — suggesting its incongruous structuring and clean-slate history were assets. Sampson presented a short film of FF’s factory construction locale in Nevada — currently stalled due to non-payment — and the following speaker introduced North Las Vegas’ mayor in a sign of good faith.  (Read More…)

2016 wasn’t just a disappointing year for celebrities.

After stating that it would place between 80,000 and 90,000 vehicles in the hands of adoring customers before year’s end, Tesla failed to clear the delivery bar it had set for itself. While production numbers crossed the threshold, 2016 deliveries fell short, numbering only 76,230.

Still, the electric automaker — which has set much loftier production goals for the near future — doesn’t seem too concerned. (Read More…)

A new year dawns and a lot of people are making resolutions about what they’d like to do or not do, depending on whether you’re talking about going to the gym or smoking. So, while most of those resolutions will come to naught — like they have for the past All Of The Years — I was thinking about something else that will never happen.

Follow me on a little flight of fantasy, and let’s see where we end up. (Read More…)

Sometimes a manufacturer churns out a base trim that is — all things considered — the primo choice for that particular model. Here’s a candidate.

While I may have dipped into the good cheer while penning last week’s Ace of Base, the B&B can rest easy knowing I have been off the sauce for at least the last couple of hours. Hey, where I’m from, the Christmas season extends to January 6^th.

Ford made a lot of noise yesterday, broadcasting announcements ranging from a sudden aversion to the label “Hecho en Mexico” to the imminent construction of hybrid Mustangs and F-150s. Now, I get the appeal of hybridization — especially when it results in MOAR POWERRR for fun stuff like burnouts or towing a four-ton trailer. Taking technology that was originally developed to save fuel and subverting it to produce shocking 0-60 times or stump-pulling torque is akin to weaponizing a wind farm.

(Read More…)

A lawsuit has been filed in Germany against Volkswagen in the hopes of forcing the automaker to buy back emission-cheating cars in Europe in the same manner it was ordered to in the United States.

The suit, filed today by a solitary vehicle owner, will become the test case for thousands of other European claimants and aims to put pressure on VW to compensate continental customers for the ongoing emissions scandal. (Read More…)

So, Ford’s press conference earlier today took a cluster bomb approach to the act of doling out news. Are you ready for a hybrid F-150? Will Chevrolet film a commercial showing how easy it is to pierce the battery pack with a toolbox?

Never mind that for now — it’s the looming hybrid Mustang that’s the real shocker, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. We’re all pretty certain that the V6 ‘Stang is a dead pony walking (trotting?), and that 2017 will be the 3.7-liter’s last go-around. That leaves a big gap between the 2.3-liter EcoBoost and the 5.0-liter Coyote, which Ford will soon swap for a 4.8-liter unit with gobs of refinement.

Mark Fields wasn’t dishing too many details this morning, but he did make it pretty clear that the mid-range power choice in future Mustangs will be a hybrid setup with “V8 levels of power,” starting in 2020. Undoubtedly, you’ll find a four-cylinder engine married to that battery pack and electric motor. (Read More…)

If you live in the United States, odds are that you prefer NASCAR over Formula One. However, if you occupy space anywhere else in the world, the opposite is likely true.

Liberty Media, the American company that purchased Formula One for $8 billion earlier this year, is planning to flip the script and revamp the motorsport to better appeal to everyone — especially Yankees.

The strategy revolves around stretching the traditional weekend of practice, qualifying, and actual race into a full week’s worth of events and coverage, aping the stock car strategy of turning a single competition into an automotive Burning Man.   (Read More…)