Somehow, while I wasn’t looking, the box office has become dominated by movies featuring superheroes. Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and the like have used various superpowers to make tons of cash for stale popcorn purveyors worldwide. Avengers: Endgame is raking it in as I type. I won’t pretend to drop any movie references […]

Following last week’s announcement of a new, less-populous future for General Motors’ once doomed Oshawa Assembly plant, a promise backed up by $170 million in company cash, the union representing workers at the Canadian facility has revealed when its current products will bite the dust.

Under a company-wide streamlining effort outlined last year, Oshawa would reach “unallocated” status by the end of 2019. That’s still the plan, but two full-size car models will cease production before that. It’s advantageous that Ford Motor Company decided to keep the Lincoln MKT in production, as one of the culled models is the Cadillac XTS. (Read More…)

Kia continues to tease the global market — well, most of it, anyway — with a small crossover it plans to reveal this summer. Our latest glimpse of the upcoming model is this artist’s rendering, which appears to be a rendering of a concept vehicle we’ve already seen.

Suffice it to say the new small Kia will look almost exactly like the SP Signature Concept, a vehicle that, unlike other concepts, looked perfectly ready for production during its reveal earlier this year. (Read More…)

A decade after a well-publicized fatal crash involving a Lexus ES 350, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has withdrawn a proposal calling for mandatory brake-throttle override systems.

The NHTSA proposed the regulation after several incidents involving Toyota vehicles with jammed accelerator pedals, but now the federal agency says it’s no longer needed. Automakers responded in the absence of a hard rule, eventually equipping all vehicles with the feature. Problem solved?

Not so fast, say safety advocates. (Read More…)

Last night, as I drove to the spot where I run in the woods like a creepy person with something to hide, a silver Chevy Spark drove past. The owner of this sub-subcompact model, which has so far managed to avoid Mary Barra’s axe, had outfitted his pint-sized ride with fairly presentable aftermarket wheels. You know the ones: black spokes, chrome outer rim. Not obnoxiously oversized, either.

This driver was motoring with precision and purpose, making good use of his 98 horses. It got me thinking. Clearly, this was all the car the driver could afford (base Canadian MSRP: $9,995 before destination), but he wanted to make it special. Just a little bit better. He wanted to put a personal stamp on his econobox; make it something he could be proud of.

And you know what? That’s great. It made me a little nostalgic of my first car purchase, but it also got me me thinking about the car that didn’t make the cut. (Read More…)

Mercedes-Benz is reportedly considering moving C-Class production out of America to make room on its Alabama assembly line for more high-margin utility vehicles. Despite being the brand’s best-selling sedan in the United States, Mercedes knows it has to acknowledge the public’s growing propensity for luxurious light trucks.

While ignoring the present doesn’t seem like the wisest of business decisions, the market’s current trajectory is no secret. People want crossovers and SUVs and it looks as though Benz will happily provide them, even if it means icing out the still-popular C-Class before the end of next year.  (Read More…)

Exclusivity is the name of the game for high-end automakers. While mainstream brands are busy chasing down volume, they’re courting your betters. Unfortunately, not every manufacturer can simply tag a vehicle with a lofty MSRP and call it a day. They have to convince their smaller customer base that they’re getting something special in return. Enter the most insane special edition we’ve seen in a while: the Land Rover Astronaut Edition.

As the name suggests, this is an SUV literally reserved for those who have been in space — or, more accurately, have set aside the necessary funds to do so through Virgin Galactic.

The vehicle is the offspring of a longstanding partnership between Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations and Richard Branson’s space-fairing lovechild, so owners will actually be more astro-tourist than astronaut. That said, they’ll still be able to proclaim they’ve been to sub-orbital space and motion to their “Zero Gravity Blue” SUV to prove it.  (Read More…)

Having already announced plans to cut thousands of jobs in Europe in an effort to stem the region’s ongoing cash hemorrhage, Ford has reportedly begun re-examining the United Kingdom. Initially, the automaker’s restructuring plan involved ending production at a transmission plant in France, killing the C-Max in Germany, and dissolving its Ford-Sollers joint venture in Russia.

While Ford hoped to shed as many employees as possible through voluntary retirement, it acknowledged it would have to fire at least 5,000 people in Germany and an unspecified number of U.K. citizens in March. The company hasn’t settled on a figure, though inside sources claim it should be no more than 550 jobs — all of which should be of the non-manufacturing variety.  (Read More…)

The howling denizens of the Internet may not be a representative sample of real life, but they are loud nonetheless, and they’ve seemingly had it in for the Toyota Supra since the wraps came off. It’s too much a BMW, they say. It doesn’t feel like a real Supra, thanks to all those German parts […]

Amid splashy introductions like that of the resurrected Toyota Supra, the 2020 Hyundai Venue‘s debut at the New York Auto Show was a different kind of affair. It’s an entry-level vehicle, at least as far as crossovers are concerned, and its lack of all-wheel drive might have some saying it doesn’t even belong in the crossover camp.

In going smaller, slotting an A-segment vehicle below its still-new subcompact Kona, Hyundai says it’s staking a claim in a segment it expects other to populate. Not losing sight of what the Venue is supposed to be meant avoiding AWD like the plague. (Read More…)

It may not be a bombshell report that leaves mouths agape, but it reinforces an age-old bit of driving wisdom: when it starts to rain, slow down and leave a greater distance between you and the car in front.

A new study reveals just how much precipitation plays a role in increasinging the likelihood of a fatal crash. Even in weather docile enough to simply dampen one’s hair, death stalks the roadways like a vulture seeking out scraps of rancid meat. (Read More…)

Like most states, Illinois hasn’t raised its gas tax in years, keeping it at 19 cents since the musically gifted year of 1990, and, like most states, Illinois needs cash for pressing infrastructure repairs. Illinois’ state gas tax joins a slew of other taxes, including income tax, that’s bundled into local pump prices, but one type of driver was able laugh at all the chumps lining up for dino juice.

The electric vehicle driver.

By virtue of their emissions-free powerplant, EV drivers side-step this area of taxation. Unfortunately for the Tesla owners of Cook County and other jurisdictions, those days may soon come to an end. A proposed law would see EV owners dinged $1,000 a year — their contribution to maintaining the roads and bridges their hefty EVs ply on a daily basis. As you’d expect, many are not happy.

Neither are conventional vehicle owners, however, as the proposal would more than double the state’s gas tax. (Read More…)

By 2020, India is projected to become the world’s third-largest auto market, and it’s a market Ford Motor Company wants to dominate. The past year revealed China can’t be counted on to fill financial sails forever.

With this in mind, Ford is reportedly planning a slew of new small crossovers, and could soon put a billion dollars behind the effort. (Read More…)

Top brass at TTAC had a chance to sample the new Supra last week at Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia. You’ll read about it on these virtual pages shortly.

Cars like the new Supra provide a chance to mull an age-old question: in the car world, is it better to share parts of a family tree or not exist at all? Your author has strong opinions on this matter, those of which that are printable will be explored after the jump.

(Read More…)

The Honda CRX is one of my very favorite 1980s cars, hailing from an era when Americans paid well over MSRP and/or waited for months for the privilege of getting a new Honda. Twenty years ago, I owned a few early CRXs (before giving up on the carbureted CVCC examples, which were impossible to get through California’s strict emissions tests due to the “Map of the Universe” tangle of vacuum lines), and I often thought of getting a fuel-injected late CRX.

Such cars were expensive back then, but values have plummeted to the point where I now see 1988-1991 CRXs at U-Wrench-type yards. Here’s one in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Read More…)