An army, they say, is always best equipped to fight its last battle. Perhaps that explains why I spent approximately three hundred and fifty dollars on February 17, 2014 to buy a Britax Pinnacle 90 car seat. Not that I was dissatisfied with the Safety1st Air seat that had shielded him from a blizzard of flying glass and very possibly prevented him from a fatal head trauma just forty-three days prior. Far from it. But I wanted to put John in the absolute best car seat money could buy from that day forward. After all, I’d spent about two thousand bucks on the LaJoie custom seat in my little Plymouth Neon — shouldn’t I go out of my way to find the car seat that would do the best job of minimizing any future impacts?

As fate would have it, my son and I were involved in just one minor crash in the three and a half years that followed, courtesy of an amiable stoner who bumped his Mazda2 into the back of my Accord at just above walking pace during this past winter. Although the Pinnacle is rated for children up to 4’11”, John already feels cramped in it at four-four, so earlier this year I swapped the big Britax out for the smaller Freeway SGL booster seat.

What to do with the Pinnacle? I could sell it on Craigslist, trade it in at one of the used-kids-stuff places. Or I could try to pass along a little bit of the good karma that has attended me and my boy ever since we bought it. Which is where you, the TTAC reader, come in.

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Maybe one day we’ll all look back and wonder how we could have been so wrong. “Of course,” we’ll say over drinks at the back of the pub, “it was all so simple. People wanted cars. Land Rover cars. And we were too stuck in our ways to see it.”

“Crossovers were king back then. Buyers couldn’t get enough of ’em,” we’ll recall, growing agitated over our past myopia. “Harley-Davidson could have put a pup tent on the back of a Tri Glide and sold 50,000 a year. Foolishly, we didn’t notice the simmering desire for a car — a regular car, dammit! — from an automaker that sold SUVs and nothing but since 1948.”

As Rod Serling used to say, this isn’t a future that will be, but one that might be. Yesterday we brought you a report detailing Land Rover’s plans to reveal a high-end luxury car, not an SUV, in 2019, all part of a plan to capitalize on decades of accumulated brand cachet and plunge into a wholly untapped segment. Road Rover is the vehicle’s rumored name, Autocar claims.

Suppose they’re right? (Read More…)

Hoping to make a big splash at next month’s 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, Subaru will showcase two limited editions of its most-sporting models and one that will probably end up being the next-generation WRX or Legacy. Called the Subaru Viziv Performance Concept, the vehicle appears to be an abstract vision of what is arguably the company’s most famous automobile — or its more-dignified brother.

As a modern day concept car, Subaru has dubbed the machine a “semiautonomous performance concept sedan” — which could indicate a bevy of new driving aids. But, since the automaker isn’t too specific as to what those might be, we’re focusing on its shape for now.

First impressions? It’s incredibly wide-looking. So wide that you can actually see the outline of the tires, which appear to have some pretty aggressive negative camber. However, this could be an optical illusion, as a secondary photo highlights some extremely unique wheel arches. Rearward slats seem to be an aesthetic choice while little fins on the top could be indicative of something more functional. Perhaps a sensor to monitor blind spots or something in aid of aerodynamics? Your guess is as good as ours. (Read More…)

What exactly do you get when you combine tidy Japanese proportions and the American sedan-cum-pickup idea of the Chevrolet El Camino? Well it’s not the Subaru Baja or the Honda Ridgeline. It’s the Suzuki Mighty Boy.

Think you can handle all this rarity? Read on.

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Ford’s new CEO, Jim Hackett, has been milling around the company trying to get a sense of what the automaker needs to thrive in today’s car market. Conducting a summer-long assessment of the company’s current status and action points, Hackett is setting himself up with a greater understanding of where Ford stands in order to share his vision of the automaker’s future with investors in early October.

However, we already have some sense of what that future entails. Hackett has already spoken with leadership from the United Auto Workers, easing union fears that he might try to clean house and cut jobs. But his reassurance that there probably won’t be massive layoffs under his leadership doesn’t guarantee low-margin automobiles won’t be at risk.

This isn’t entirely down to Hackett’s management style, either. Investors were becoming annoyed with former CEO Mark Fields’ lofty long-term strategy, which featured fewer near-term goals aimed at bolstering profitability. Some analysts expect Hackett to end production of models that aren’t big earners — which includes just about everything that isn’t an SUV, crossover, or pickup truck. (Read More…)

Think along the lines of a Mercedes-Benz S-Class CC. A BMW 7 Series Allroad. A Jaguar XJ Activ. A Lexus LS SUS.

It will be Land Rover’s Road Rover, Autocar reports. And it’s no joke. Targeted at China and California in particular, Land Rover’s Road Rover may appear at the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show in advance of a 2020 on-sale date. Intended to wage war against the aforementioned full-size luxury cars, the Road Rover is believed to be equipped with a measure of “all-terrain” capability, Autocar says.

While the Range Rover Sport of 2005 was the original move toward more car-like Range Rovers, Land Rover extended its reach with the Range Rover Evoque in 2011 and this summer’s Range Rover Velar. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at the development of a Road Rover.

The brand’s trajectory was obvious. (Read More…)

Reports last week that Geely-owned Volvo would double its investment in Berkeley County, South Carolina, were confirmed today by the Swedish automaker. Volvo’s investment rises to $1.1 billion, the employee count is expected to climb to 4,000, and the Charleston plant will build not one but two Volvo models.

Volvo announced its intention to build its South Carolina plant in May 2015. The first vehicles, set to be third-generation Volvo S60s, will begin rolling off the assembly line in the fall of 2018, just one year from now. By 2021, Volvo revealed today, the company will also be assembling its flagship SUV, the XC90, in South Carolina.

Surprised? Of course not. (Read More…)

  “Rumble, young man, Rumble!” — Muhammad Ali It’s strange to think that the modern iteration of the Dodge Challenger has now been in production for twice as long as its inspiration. One has to either admire or despair at the way that Dodge has managed to keep this one-trick pony on the lips of […]

Interested in distinguishing its premium models from the rest of the flotsam and jetsam, BMW is launching a “new” black-and-white logo it will use to market its “flaggschiff” units around the globe. The updated look was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show and will be used for the 7 series and i8 coupe, as well as the forthcoming 8 series coupe, convertible, i8 roadster and X7 SUV.

Rumored to be similar to the cheesy carbon variant of the company’s emblem found in numerous aftermarket Ebay listings, the new logo is essentially the old one, only desaturated into monochrome with the company’s full name — Bayerische Motoren Werke — written out in its entirety. However, there seems to be some confusion as to how the new logo will be used and what its heritage actually entails.  (Read More…)

Think of the words “Jaguar” and “sports car” and the mind instantly conjures up images of the flowing XK120 and #NSFW E-Type roadsters of yesteryear, each sporting a properly British straight-six engine under a kilometer-long hood. Okay, okay — the final E-Type variant doubled the cylinder count, but you get the idea.

The tradition of open-top two-seaters continues to this day with the F-Type, albeit with a much more diverse array of engine offerings. As the tech press talks up a future of autonomous people pods, and as crossovers threaten to overwhelm every longstanding brand, Jaguar wants automotive puritans to fear not: the Jaguar sports car isn’t going anywhere.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t change with the times. (Read More…)

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you might recall the incident nearly four years ago when your humble author managed to collect a Hyundai Sonata in the B-pillar. Both I and the woman in the front passenger seat were nontrivially injured in the crash, but the months and years of pain and surgery afterwards were made considerably easier to bear by the fact that my son, who was sitting in the right rear seat, escaped injury. I cannot tell you what I would have done or how I would have felt if he had been injured or killed.

Five months ago, a woman in Albuquerque made a left-hand turn across a busy urban intersection. As she did so, her Ford Escape was struck by a police car traveling at nearly 70 miles per hour. The six-year-old boy in the right rear seat was killed.

After a comprehensive investigation, the county sheriff has recommended that no charges be filed against either the driver of the Ford Escape or the officer who struck the vehicle. Their rationale for that recommendation is easy to see and there’s no reason to Monday-morning quarterback a crash with a result this tragic. We should, however, be talking about the circumstances that made that crash not only possible but likely.

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It’s not a secret most of us at TTAC are not, to put it charitably, overly enamored with the current crop of alphabet soup adorning the trunk lids of most new cars today. The market has endured alphanumeric model names for years, but at least, say, in the ‘80s and 90s there was a very good chance the numbers stood for engine displacement. Not anymore.

This is why I am glad Kia has chosen to simply make up words for its new product. The Stonic is allegedly a portmanteau of ‘speedy’ and ‘tonic’. All right, then. At least it’s not the 6000SUX or something.

Automotive history is littered with many great and bizarre names. Here’s a few: (Read More…)

It has taken a few decades, but Toyota Cressidas now show up at the big self-service wrecking yards in respectable numbers. I find these Lexus ancestors very interesting, so I shoot most of the ones I see; so far in this series, we have seen this ’80, this ’82, this ’83 wagon, this ’84, this ’84, this ’86 wagon, this ’87, this ’89, this ’90, and this ’92 (plus this ’79 and this ’86 wagon in my Junkyard Gems series).

Today’s Cressida is a zero-rust ’83 wagon in California. (Read More…)

Mazda has announced a recall of roughly 58,000 Mazda6 sedans in the United States and Canada. The cars in question were produced between November 3rd of 2014 and December 9th of 2015 and guilty of some shoddy welding. Cars from the 2015 and 2016 model years could have wires under the front passenger seat rubbing against welding debris, running the risk of an electrical short.

The end result is a dashboard plagued with warning lights and, in some instances, the loss of power steering. Shorting can also run the risk of disabling the airbag. Mazda has decided to conduct a voluntary safety recall even though it says the warning light illumination is in full compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. (Read More…)

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in our universe and hydrogen-powered vehicles produce only a single emission: water. It’s no wonder a handful automakers have touted it as the next-step in “sustainable” transportation, because it looks great upon a cursory examination. But it hasn’t held up under increased scrutiny and numerous manufacturers have been highly critical of fuel cell cars.

Earlier this year, Jaguar Land Rover’s technical design director called hydrogen-powered vehicles a disaster in practical efficiency. Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk went even further, calling the technology “incredibly dumb.” More recently, VW Group also hinted that it thought there wasn’t going to be much of a future for fuel cells. Matthias Mueller’s address at the Frankfurt Auto Show was heavy on electrification and light on hydrogen, with Audi spearheading the technology.

Although, if president of Audi of America Scott Keogh is to be believed, it looks to be a rather dull spear they are using.  (Read More…)