Now part of an alliance with cash and platforms to toss around, Mitsubishi’s growing bolder in its quest to remind buyers that it’s not about to disappear from the American automotive landscape. Buyers, of course, are already helping the brand regain its footing. February’s U.S. sales were the highest since the heady and ominous year of 2007 (up 18.8 percent, year over year).

Through the end of February, U.S. sales are up 23.4 percent over the same period in 2017.

Having crawled out of the five-figure sales number nightmare that plagued the brand over the past decade, Mitsubishi dealers met in Las Vegas recently to discuss the near future. Some requests were granted, but a long-standing demand went unfulfilled. (Read More…)

The National Transportation Safety Board is one of two federal agencies probing the recent fatal Tesla Model X crash in Mountain View, California, and it isn’t too pleased with the automaker for releasing information gathered from the car’s digital log.

Apple engineer Wei Huang died after his Model X slammed into a concrete barrier on the southbound US-101 freeway on March 23rd. The vehicle was operating in Autopilot mode, the company revealed days later. Accompanying Tesla’s blog post were details about the events leading up to the impact, including the claim that Huang didn’t have his hands on the wheel during the six seconds leading up to the crash.

This data release didn’t sit well with the NTSB. (Read More…)

Buried in the hubbub surrounding this week’s New York auto show was a drama unfolding in the wake of a Tesla Model X crash on US-101 in Mountain View, California, not far from Tesla’s Palo Alto HQ.

The SUV, driven by 38-year-old Apple software engineer Wei Huang, collided head-on with a concrete divider where the southbound freeway splits at the Highway 85 junction. The collision obliterated the SUV to the A-pillars and sparked a fire. Huang later died in hospital.

Crashes occur for a myriad of reasons and Teslas aren’t immune to reckless drivers, medical emergencies, and any number of other conditions that can lead to a crash. However, at the time of impact, Huang’s vehicle was operating on Autopilot, the company announced. (Read More…)

It’s 11:40 a.m. Do you know how large your Camry’s pistons are?

Odds are you don’t, and Toyota isn’t sure it knows, either. That’s why the automaker has issued a small but relatively unusual recall for 1,730 Camrys from the 2018 model year. The issue lies with the installation of pistons built to an incorrect specification.

Essentially, they’re too big for their britches. (Read More…)

Tesla’s once sky-high share price has taken a serious hit in recent days, so news of the electric automaker’s recall of 123,000 Model S vehicles couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Describing the recall as voluntary, Tesla sent emails to owners of all Model S electric cars built before April 2016 to warn of an issue affecting the car’s power steering system. The issue involves corrosion impacting the bolts holding the power steering motor to the rack, which can then shear off — leading to a loss of power steering.  (Read More…)

“Hey, what are you doing with my car?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this was my Kia K900.”

That’s the scene Kia Motors wants to see play out in parking lots across America, now that the second generation of the brand’s flagship has seen the spotlight at the New York International Auto Show.

On sale later this year, the 2019 K900 — which sounds like the name of a Soviet submarine — aims to attract the buyers its predecessor lacked through understated style, piles of luxury features, attractive interior fittings, and improved driving dynamics. Kia’s an eternal optimist, we’ll give it that. (Read More…)

Visually arresting, technologically complex, ultra luxurious, and undeniably trendsetting, halo cars sprinkle lustre all over a brand and ensure viewers of hip-hop videos know the artist is absolutely loaded with cash.

Cadillac’s not there yet. Give it time, says the brand’s president — a halo Cadillac model will indeed appear, just not until well into the coming decade. There’s a few things to take care of first. (Read More…)

If you’re a superfan of the 1968 film Bullitt, or maybe just of Steve McQueen, prepare to split the difference between the price of a Ford Mustang GT and a Shelby GT350.

The limited-edition 2019 Mustang Bullitt, the third generation of which bowed in Detroit in January, commands a sticker price of $47,495 after delivery, the automaker announced today — positioning it more than $11k above the GT and nearly $11k below the GT350. Of course, neither of those models offer retro-themed flourishes, nor can you order Highland Green paint.

You also get 20 extra horsepower than the GT for all that expense, which is mercifully 5 hp more than the automaker first estimated. (Read More…)

It had all the hallmarks of a groundbreaking case, one that might define the hazy legal boundaries that exist at the dawn of the autonomous vehicle age. Instead, a settlement.

The death, earlier this month, of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg at the self-guided hands of an Volvo XC90 operated by Uber Technologies Inc. in a Phoenix suburb immediately sparked questions of who was at fault. The company operating the pilot project? The automaker that supplied the vehicle for conversion to autonomous drive? The suppliers of the sensors and software needed to turn the SUV into a robot? Road and light conditions? The pedestrian? Or, perhaps, the human occupant whose eyes weren’t on the road prior to impact?

Questions still swirl around why the Uber vehicle’s sensors didn’t recognize the woman crossing a darkened highway with her bicycle, but we won’t hear them answered in a courtroom. (Read More…)

The radically mildly refreshed 2019 Hyundai Tucson, unveiled Wednesday at the New York International Auto Show, might not attract stares and selfies in the same way as the show’s more exotic sheetmetal, but it’ll sure draw buyers to the showroom.

Hyundai needs to collect those buyers. Amid a sales slump it hopes to remedy with an onslaught of crossovers, the compact Tucson crossover is one of the automaker’s largest meal tickets. Sales rose 31 percent, year over year, in the U.S. last month. And, while the Elantra and Santa Fe boast larger sales volumes, the Tucson has the best growth rate — sales are up 32.1 percent over the first two months of 2018.

To reward the buying public for their continued support, Hyundai has made changes to the 2019 model. Who wants a larger engine? (Read More…)

So, who’s excited about the mere possibility of purchasing a German pickup in the relatively near future? Let’s see a show of hands.

Volkswagen says it will build the Atlas Tanoak (pronounced “tan-oke” — unless you’re German, apparently) if the American buying public plays nice. If head office feels good vibes from the concept vehicle’s appearance at the New York International Auto Show, there’ll be a relatively butch-looking new unibody pickup tossed into the midsize market.

Will you be one of the showroom denizens kicking the tires on a Tanoak? While the production version, if built, contains plenty of unknowns — price, payload, practicality — there’s plenty to go on from Wednesday’s unveiling. Maybe a rundown of its would-be rivals is in order. (Read More…)

Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said we’ll learn more about the company’s future Model Y electric crossover — its production date and build location — probably in another six months. Money might start flowing to that project late this year.

Well, by the fourth quarter of this year, electric Hyundai Kona crossovers will actually be arriving in California driveways, followed soon after by Northeastern states and other U.S. locales with zero emission vehicle mandates. This vehicle exists, in the flesh, right now. As the first mainstream crossover EV to land on our shores, the gas-free Kona’s estimated range tops that of the Chevrolet Bolt and (still unproduced) base model Tesla Model 3.

If you can see beyond the Jason Voorhees face, a bland yet revolutionary vehicle awaits. (Read More…)

The next-generation 2019 Subaru Forester, which debuted Wednesday at the New York International Auto Show, looks mighty familiar. That’s because, despite the updated lines, the compact crossover retains the blocky, tall-greenhouse shape of its predecessors.

Subaru flirts with conformity, but never fully succumbs.

Now riding atop the Subaru Global Platform (shares with the Impreza and Crosstrek), the 2019 Forester offers a new trim level, a power boost for the stalwart 2.5-liter flat-four, and greater standard content — especially when it comes to driver assist technology. Unfortunately for brand purists, these standard driver’s aids have eliminated the manual transmission from the Forester lineup.  (Read More…)

We told you the other day that Volkswagen planned to dangle a carrot in front of American consumers. Well, here it is. Like what you see? If you do, Volkswagen wants to know about it, as this Atlas Tanoak concept truck could become a reality — provided enough people feel the same as you.

Eager to gain a stronger foothold in the U.S. light truck market, VW would love to market a unibody pickup built off a lengthened version of its Atlas platform. Unlike the crossover market, however, truck buyers can be fickle. Tribal, even. Does the midsize Tanoak have what it takes to mix it up with the likes of Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, and Toyota? (Read More…)

Remember that scene where a severally obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes (played by the boy from Titanic) can’t stop repeating the same phrase in the movie The Aviator? I suspect a similar phrase hung in the minds of Ford Motor Company executives while signing off on this model.

A large-ish, rear-wheel-drive, three-row crossover (SUV, according to Lincoln) is surely just the ticket to make up for declining passenger car sales —  after all, is there any evidence to the contrary? The way of the future, indeed.

What’s amusing is that, in this case, Lincoln’s future success appears to rest partially on a model resurrected from the past. The first Lincoln Aviator graced our landscape for just three model years, 2003 to 2005, and looked very much like a shrunken Navigator. Well, the second-generation model is clearly cut from the same cloth as its larger sibling, but differences abound. (Read More…)