Jeep Grand Cherokee Ls face another recall — headlights might stop working due to an incomplete software update. This could cause one or both lights to stop working. (Read More…)

One great thing about living in Colorado, where new residents are issued a dog and a Subaru when they arrive, is that I can find examples of just about every Subaru model sold here since the late 1970s in the local car graveyards. That means that I have plenty of opportunities to observe the gloriously weird SVX, once its street days are finished. (Read More…)

We discussed Arrol-Johnston briefly in our Rare Rides Icons coverage of Isotta Fraschini a few days ago. Though the brand didn’t even make it to see World War II, the company’s contributions to the advancement of passenger vehicles make it an important one. Onward, to Scotland!

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Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so it’s gonna be a long, relaxing weekend for those of us in the blog mines.

This means we will be knocking off early today.

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Continuously-variable automatic transmissions (CVTs) are often criticized – and that criticism is often well deserved. Some CVTs, however, operate seamlessly and smoothly, and Nissan makes more than a few of those. Unfortunately, the CVT in the 2021 Nissan Sentra SR I tested earlier this year does the opposite. Its unrelenting whine and drone spoil an […]

It’s been a few months now, so I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it — and yet, it still seems wrong. It feels factually wrong, emotionally wrong, and just wrong wrong. What is “it”, you ask? It’s this: Ram and Dodge topped the 2021 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, ahead of Lexus, Mitsubishi, and Nissan.

If someone told me, “The most reliable new cars you can buy are Rams, Dodges, Lexuses (Lexii?), Mitsubishis, and Nissans …” well, I’m not sure how you’d respond, but I would assume they sold Rams, Dodges, Mitsubishis, and Nissans, and just threw Lexus in there to give the list some credibility.

I won’t go as far as Brightwork Research in calling J.D. Power “a fake entity”, but my gut tells me that there has to be more to JDP’s Initial Quality Study than — well, initial quality — that’s pushing weird brands up in the ranking, and I’ve decided to do a little more research to find out what. If you’re as curious as I am, keep reading.

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It’s that time of year again – time for our best and worst cars of 2021. Chris and I are the ones who most consistently get test cars, so it will be just the two of us putting our heads together. We’ve each picked one best and one worst car, as well as a few that deserve a mention either way.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a formal investigation into 580,000 Tesla vehicles sold since 2017 that allowed customers to play video games inside the vehicle. The company has allowed users to play a variety of games while vehicles are in park, some of which allowed drivers to use the steering wheels and pedals as part of the controls, for quite some time. But an over-the-air software update permitted a few of them to be launched while the car was in motion by the passenger in the summer of 2021. Called “Passenger Play,” the service was limited to games that only used touchscreen controls.

It’s since been axed, however, regulators have taken an interest following some manufactured outrage. The NHTSA has faulted the feature as part of the ongoing distracted-driving problem in an attempt to link it to its crusade against Autopilot. The agency has launched a preliminary investigation into 580,000 Tesla Model 3, S, X, and Y vehicles to determine if they’re attention-sucking deathtraps.  (Read More…)

There’s a very strong case to be made that the cars we drive are influenced, at least in part, by suits in automaker C-suites. Witness the ongoing transformation at Toyota, which has finally shifted back to making cars with a pulse, machines crafted at the behest of noted gearhead Akio Toyoda. Sure, there are hundreds or thousands of people working on any particular project at a given time, but the Big Cheese often influences decision making – intentionally or not.

This is why we sat up and took notice when Hyundai shuffled a brace of people largely responsible for the styling and driving feel of vehicles in that automaker’s showrooms.

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This 10th installment of our Imperial coverage finds us at a turning point in its styling. Virgil Exner had been fired but was allowed to stay on as a design consultant at Chrysler. Exner’s immediate replacement was Elwood Engel, who’d designed the 1961 Lincoln Continental and then jumped ship when he was not promoted at Ford. Chrysler execs wanted out of Exner’s winged, googly-eyed stylistic cave, and Engel took the aged D-body in a very different direction for 1964.

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Having recently posted an article highlighting some of Nikola’s bad behavior, it’s only fair that the company receives some acknowledgment for delivering on a promise. Last week, the company shipped the first examples of its Tre battery-electric trucks in California.

Two test vehicles were issued to Total Transportation Services Inc. (TTSI) to see how the Tre handles running deliveries in and out of Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. The trucking firm has a letter of intent from Nikola to purchase 100 trucks following a trial program of two Tre BEVs and their fuel-cell (FCEV) counterparts once the latter is in production.  (Read More…)

It wasn’t too many years ago the Consumer Electronics Show was strictly the domain of purchasers from big-chain computer stores and a scattered basement dweller who smelled like coding and stale popcorn. These days, CES is one of the hottest tickets of the year for witnessing product reveals including – in recent years – all manner of tech from the world’s automakers.

Stellantis has announced what they’ll have on hand at their booth, a roster that includes an EV that plucks its name from the halls of history at Citroën.

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Nikola Corp. has agreed to pay $125 million to settle charges levied by The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company actively defrauded investors by providing misleading information about its technical prowess, production capabilities, and general prospects.

The settlement comes after a salvo of civil and criminal charges were launched against Nikola’s founder Trevor Milton, who got in trouble for convincing investors that the prospective automaker had fully functional prototypes boasting technologies other companies would have envied when that wasn’t actually the case. Milton was chided for using social media to promote false claims about the business, with his pleading not guilty to fraud charges brought up by the Department of Justice in July.  (Read More…)

The Detroit Auto Dealers’ Association recently got some good news. Michigan lawmakers have decided to give them a $9 million grant to put on a Detroit Auto Show — the first since 2019 —  and effectively “reopen” one of the world’s biggest auto shows. And, while it’s good for the dealers, I have to admit that the news has left me angry with rage.

But why? I’m a car person, so I should be happy, right? After all, Detroit is a major show, packed with cool concept cars and big, international reveals. That stuff’s exciting, who wouldn’t want more of that!? But, sitting here and facing down the start of 2022, I can’t get past the feeling that the traditional auto show is dead — and should stay dead.

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If you’re in the market for a new vehicle, you’ve likely noticed that some of the models you were interested in aren’t available in your preferred format and happen to be accompanied by sizable dealer markups. Well the used market, formerly a refuge for those seeking a bargain and a shrewd way of dodging the steepest period of deprecation, isn’t doing much better.

According to Black Book, the typical transaction price for used vehicles has gone up by over $500 in less than a month. Pegged at $27,000 in November, the average secondhand car now trades for over $27,500. As we’ve recently covered just how wild secondhand vehicle prices have become in 2021, we’ll keep this one relatively brief. But it must be said that automotive values are starting to seem totally disconnected from anything that could be considered rational as cars now have MSRPs a third higher than they were at the start of 2021.  (Read More…)