Posts By: Matthew Guy
January started strong for several automakers in America, with the industry shifting 1,157,407 cars and light trucks last month. That represents a 1.2 percent increase over this time last year.
More than one company is guilty of padding its numbers with fleet sales, though. In one instance, it represented nearly a third of January’s reported sales for that automaker.
(In the interest of providing readers with all the news they can use, we sometimes tap sister publications when an article attracts our interest. In this piece by Matthew Guy, published by Off-Road.com, our in-house truck lover tries to find out when Nissan’s promised six-cylinder Titan will finally make its appearance.
Nissan has been doing a good job getting back into the full-sized truck game, rolling out various cab and bed configurations for the Titan along with an array of trim levels. There’s still one thing missing, though – a V6 engine.
Right now, truck customers walking into a Nissan showroom are limited to a single engine in the half-ton Titan. The 5.6-liter Endurance V8 is a great motor, cranking out nearly 400 horsepower and an equal amount of torque and allowing drivers to tow nearly 10,000 lbs, but not everyone needs that hauling capability. (Read More…)
Fifty thousand dollars is not exactly what springs to mind when one mentions the words “base model vehicle.” In fact, it’s likely to be precisely the opposite.
Thing is, this series isn’t solely about el-cheapo wheels. Sometimes, it’s about those rare occasions when an entry level trim for a particular model is the best one of the range. This is one of those times.
Taking a page from its own playbook, the launch of the littlest Mercedes-Benz sedan will mirror the steps taken by the brand when it foisted the CLA onto the American market in 2013.
According to the company, roughly three-quarters of early CLA buyers were people who had never before owned a Mercedes. The company thinks, likely correctly, it’ll be able to duplicate that feat when the A-Class sedan goes on sale late this year.
For 2018, Buick split its new Regal into two body styles: a liftback and a wagon dubbed the TourX. SUVs and crossovers make up a large chunk of the Tri-Shield’s sales, but these two machines will arguably swallow as much or more cargo than some of their high-riding showroom brethren.
Upon the Regal’s rollout for 2018, the marque estimated the TourX take rate would be around 30 percent. Now, thanks to either a rethink of market demands or someone’s innate love of wagons, Buick has revised that number upwards.
Every week, Murilee regales us with a selection of something notable from his junkyard travels. Whether it’s an Audi 100 with infernal inboard brakes or some oddball Camry, the man never fails to disappoint.
Surely, he’s not the only one to prowl the yards across America. What’s your best score taken from a machine in The Crusher’s waiting room?
Porsche threw a party at its museum on Thursday, marking and celebrating 70 years of sports cars. The first vehicle to bear the Porsche name was registered on June 8, 1948 – a 356 “No.1” Roadster. With it, Ferry Porsche’s dream of a sports car turned into a reality.
Mixed in with the event’s nostalgia was a look to the future, as CEO Oliver Blume outlined a three-pronged strategy to diversify its lineup. The three pillars? Plug-in hybrids, combustion-engined sports cars, and sporty electric vehicles.
Sticking with its bullish profit predictions for 2018, FCA announced today its fourth quarter earnings for 2017 in which net profits nearly doubled to almost a billion dollars.
With a new Ram 1500 waiting in the wings, the old Ram set to print money while selling alongside the new one, and a healthy Jeep brand serving a public thirsty for crossovers, FCA’s cupboard seems particularly full right about now … so long as the company keeps its focus.
Hyundai has dropped a few details about its next Santa Fe, including a dimly lit teaser photo. In a confusing bit of theatre, the company says the trucklet will make a world premiere at an unnamed location next month before debuting at the Geneva Motor Show in early March.
Hyundai refreshed its two largest crossovers just two model years ago. With consumer tastes running hot in that segment, the Korean automaker knows it needs to keep up with the Joneses (and the Toyotas and Nissans).
Last week we brought you a story about the Kia Telluride and comments made by company execs about its production chances. Hyundai-Kia chief design officer Peter Schreyer reportedly said, “For sure, we are working on that car” to a group of Aussie journos.
Now, WardsAuto is furthering the narrative, reporting that Orth Hedrick, Kia America’s product planning veep, told them the brand will “have some announcements soon” on a production version of the seven-passenger Telluride.
I’ll be the first to freely admit that I am completely befuddled when an automaker officially markets a car as a “.5” model year. Barring a vehicle receiving notable updates six months before a complete overhaul, I profess to not seeing the point of half a model year. In this case, a new turbocharged engine is on tap for 2018, hence this car’s odd relationship with the calendar.
We’ll round this one up, then. The Mazda 6 sedan is an attractive car, offering a decidedly non-wallowy driving experience and – ye gods! – a manual transmission. It doesn’t hurt that one of our scribes just paid his own hard earned money for one. We’ll let you guess who in the comments.
Despite being one of the first brands that springs to most consumers’ minds when “SUV” is mentioned, Jeep doesn’t currently have an entry in the popular three-row segment. The slapdash Commander occupied that space in the late Aughts and the company is making noises about a potential Grand Wagoneer but those plans, for now, remain hazy.
A three-row Jeep has finally appeared. It’s called the Grand Commander and is slated to appear at this year’s auto show in Beijing as a model exclusive to China.
The most gonzo of all current Corvettes, the ZR1, packs a 755 horsepower wallop from its supercharged LT5. Chevrolet, as it has in the past with other notable versions of popular models, offered up the first retail copy to the highest bidder at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale.
Rick Hendrick, who is reported to already own a couple of Chevys, ponied up the cash and won the auction … despite not even being in the room.
Our roads are a mess. It doesn’t seem to matter where in America (or Canada) one travels, there stands a very good chance that one will find crumbling infrastructure. In fact, the United States ranks eighth in the world in national infrastructure quality, behind Germany and the U.K., but above France and Canada, according to one recent study. Some days, it sure seems worse than that.
Which leads us to today’s question: what’s the worst road in your neck of the woods?
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