Even though headlights have evolved from uniform circles illuminating the roadway in largely the same way to diverse units that look and function very differently, their overall performance has improved immensely. Nobody is going to jump from a 1955 DeSoto to a 2018 Dodge and think “Wow, these headlamps are just terrible.”

However, the International Institute for Highway Safety has been on a two-year mission to make modern headlights look bad and there are two possible explanations as to why. Either the IIHS genuinely believes the current offerings from manufacturers are unsafe, or it’s trying to promote competition within the industry to produce a better bulb. The truth, as usual, is likely somewhere in the middle.  (Read More…)

The odds are still stacked against such a purchase, but next year stands to become the greatest year yet for vehicles not entirely powered by internal combustion.

In its look at industry trends for 2018, Edmunds reveals a number of no-brainers: the passenger car segment continues its sad decline, luxury SUVs remain a massive growth market, and the amount of new car buyers choosing to lease remains static at 30 percent.

One segment, however, stands to hit the accelerator next year. Green vehicles — covering the hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicle segments — will break out of the micro-niche category and catapult firmly into the “niche, but approaching mainstream” realm.  (Read More…)

Maybe it’s the Hoth-like climate and the urge to do anything in one’s power to warm it up, but Canada has so far taken a laid-back approach to the fires plaguing older Smart Fortwo models. A big part of the problem is that no one’s telling the country’s transportation regulator about them.

The models bursting into flames in the Great White North are of the same vintage as those which sparked an investigation by the United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, Transport Canada has yet to open a defect investigation of its own. (Read More…)

Volkswagen Group said on Thursday that it would be petitioning Germany’s constitutional court to overturn the appointment of a special auditor to investigate the actions of its management during its diesel emissions scandal. Appointed last November, the auditor’s goal is to establish whether or not VW’s top brass withheld information about the manipulation of vehicle emissions as they related to testing.

Even thought the automaker has said it wanted to improve transparency shortly after the scandal kicked off in September of 2015, Volkswagen wants the work of the auditor suspended prior to the constitutional-court hearing against it. This begs the question: Does VW still have something to hide or is it so fed up with the litigation surrounding “dieselgate” that it’ll do just about anything to keep officials from dredging up the past?  (Read More…)

We drove the new 2018 Nissan Leaf in California earlier this month, finding it to be an effective foil to the Prius Primes and Chevy Bolts of the world. With far more mainstream styling than its predecessor, the Leaf stands a good chance of hooking customers who would have never considered the old model.

Now, we’ve learned the company will bring a Leaf GT concept to the Tokyo Auto Salon in early January, a Japanese event most easily described as a fantastic mashup of CES and SEMA.

(Read More…)

Yesterday I talked about the worst kind of subprime lenders and how they misused the courts to collect their profits. There was a broad spectrum of reader response, including a few people who felt compelled to discuss the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and therefore won the presidency. (To which I can only respond: that’s like awarding the Super Bowl win to the team with the most rushing yards.)

Here’s what we didn’t discuss: our own experiences with subprime loans and/or bad car deals. I suspect that there are some members of the B&B who have never so much as walked by a subprime lender; I also suspect that there are plenty of readers who are currently in a subprime situation right now but don’t want to admit it.

So for today, let’s consider two topics: a) What’s the worst car deal you ever made? and b) did you ever use a subprime source? I’ll start, of course.

(Read More…)

Mike writes:

Ok Sajeev, I got one for you.

I own a 2009 Nissan Xterra 4wd X model.  It has nearly 100k miles on the clock.  In the past week, whenever I start the vehicle, I hear a chattering noise coming from the passenger side dashboard.  The noise persists as long as the passenger air bag light is lit; when that light goes off, the chattering stops.  So I took the truck to my local Nissan dealer, whom I trust, and I was told that the problem is the passenger side blender door of the HVAC system – apparently there are gears in this assembly which are not moving freely or properly. 

The cost to repair is estimated at about $600 because of the necessity to remove the whole dashboard.  The dealer’s service people told me to do nothing until the HVAC system fails to function properly, and it is currently functioning properly except for the above described noise.  My question: how is a bad blender door mechanism linked to an airbag light?  Can airbags chatter on vehicle startup?

Thank you as always for your excellent advice. (Read More…)

Two weeks ago, an image of a supercharger embossed with the iconic Shelby snake made its way onto the internet, followed by another claiming to depict the biggest set of rotors ever affixed to a factory Mustang.

The GT500 rumor mill went ballistic.

Now, we have official — albeit inadvertent — acknowledgment from Ford that a new Shelby GT500 is incoming, courtesy of the company’s OEM service portal, which revealed wiring diagrams and a slew of service procedures which incidentally confirm several details about the upcoming Über Mustang.

(Read More…)

What has three cylinders, a removable roof, and is technically illegal to own in the United States? Why, it’s the Smart Roadster, of course.

Come have a look at all the illegal plastic you can get for twenty grand.

(Read More…)

Ford has been fine-tuning the Lincoln brand for a while now and improving the cars is only half the story. A luxury nameplate needs more than a lineup of quality autos, it needs prestige. Since taking on Matthew McConaughey as its official spokesmodel, Lincoln has witnessed an uptick in sales — growing by 1.6 percent year over year through November 2017 in the United States.

How much of that can be attributed directly to the Oscar-winning actor is up for debate. But you don’t mess with the formula when you start making headway, so Lincoln has decided to press onward with another weird add with him in the driver’s seat of the 2018 Navigator.  (Read More…)

Porsche has had more than a few victories in motorsport, so we’ll allow their latest PR move as an appropriate homage to successful racing campaigns of yesteryear – even if the liveries are applied to a crossover. It would be much better if Porsche had slathered this paint and stuck these decals on a bevy of Caymans or 911s.

Still, in this sleepy week between Christmas and New Year’s, it’s neat to see shoutouts to great designs of the past. Porsche chose Singapore as the venue to show off these specially painted Macans.

(Read More…)

It’s sometimes hard keeping up with the specific engineering feats Tesla actually plans to pull off and the forward-thinking visions uttered just to keep the tech press salivating (and its readers buying up shares). Is CEO Elon Musk actually sending a tunnel with an elevator in it to Jupiter? Wait a minute — it’s possible that promise fell victim to the purple-monkey-dishwasher chain of distortion before it reached this author’s ears.

One thing we’re more or less assured of now, following Musk’s stint at the Twitter pulpit Tuesday, is that Tesla will build an electric pickup truck. Yes, just as soon as the compact Model Y’s out the door. This means Tesla fan club members and curious buyers will have to wait until after the Model Y crossover finishes development and finds a place in which it can be built — not an overnight process by any means.

What we’re left with is a pickup that’s a blank slate in terms of size and design. Grab your pencils. (Read More…)

With everyone weighing in on the ultimate fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it almost seems as if we’re cataloging their bets to see just how right or wrong they’ll be in the negotiatory aftermath. Considering there has been such a limited amount of progress on the trade talks, there honestly isn’t much else to do.

Suggesting that NAFTA is “is going to blow up in 2018,” Jerry Dias, president of the Canadian union Unifor, has planted his flag on the side of a total breakdown of the agreement. Unifor represents 23,500 Detroit Three auto workers living north of the border, plus some 16,000 working in the supply chain.

As a union leader, Dias is prone to hyperbolic statements. However, his insight into the situation runs a little deeper than most. (Read More…)

It was halfway down an email that was anonymously forwarded to me a few weeks ago, buried between torpid paragraphs grown thick and encrusted with the deliberately Byzantine language of Wall Street analysis. And it said something like this:

In Detroit, Michigan thus far in 2017, nearly one in eight of all available civil lawsuits filed in the city involve (this firm) suing borrowers. Overall, 72% of these lawsuits resulted in the company garnishing the wages or tax refunds of borrowers. In essence, the company is a new kind of hybrid: a debt collector that originates its own loans — a combination that has proved extraordinarily profitable for investors as the business of lending to troubled borrowers has surged since the financial crisis.

A debt collector that originates its own loans, generating more than 10 percent of all civil lawsuits in Detroit. Something wicked this way comes.

(Read More…)

What was the last car you rented? If numbers reported by The Wall Street Journal are accurate (and we have no reason to believe they are not), chances are it was probably a Nissan.

Why’s that? Well, flying in the face of everything that’s ever been taught in the popular How Not to Scupper Resale Values 101 class,  Nissan has been pumping the rental market full of Rogues and Altimas, to the tune of nearly 300,000 units in 2017. That’s the most of any automaker and 10 percent more than the traditional offender in this field: General Motors.
(Read More…)