When you look at a Kia Soul, you likely peg it for just what it is – a boxy, utilitarian commuter vehicle. You wouldn’t expect it to be a blast to drive, or full of coddling luxury materials and content. Sometimes, what you see really is more or less what you get. This is one […]
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Posts By: Tim Healey
I had just returned from driving the 2020 Kia Soul in San Diego (review forthcoming later today) when Kia fulfilled a promise made to the media via a note in my inbox.
The pricing info that wasn’t ready for our drive event was now live.
While most of the pricing is in line with what one expects of a boxy compact commuter, if you fancy the GT Turbo, be prepared to pony up.
Volkswagen walked journalists through its much-hyped electrification strategy at the 2019 Chicago Auto Show, giving the automotive media a preview of the automaker’s plans.
MEB, which is an acronym for the German Modularer Elektrobaukasten, is the platform underpinning the company’s push from internal-combustion engines to electrified vehicles. The company intends to roll out 50 battery-electric vehicles and 30 plug-in hybrids across Volkswagen Auto Group’s 12 global brands between this year and 2025 as part of a larger strategy to field 300 electrified vehicle models across the dozen brands by 2030.
That’s obviously an aggressive strategy — one requiring a closer look.
Journalist Randy Essex of the Detroit Free Press took to those same digital pages last week to discuss how great his new car-free life is, even during the life-threatening cold of the polar vortex.
To which I say, good for him. If he’s happy living a car-free life in Detroit, more power to him. But his article is just the latest part of a conversation happening, at least in certain circles on social media, about going car-free.
This isn’t to pick on Essex. Again, if not having their own car works for him and his wife, that’s fine with me. To each their own, you do you, all that jazz. But going car-free won’t work for everyone, and urbanites, especially urbanite auto journalists, need to remember that.
If you’re freaked out that the so-called Green New Deal will soon render you carless, or perhaps driving an EV against your will, I am here to tell you: Relax.
If you’re hoping the Green New Deal will save the planet from a climate crisis the federal government itself has predicted is just a hair over a decade away, I am here to tell you: Those backing the deal have their hearts in the right place, but their heads in the clouds. Or perhaps somewhere lower and darker. (Read More…)
A thought struck me the other day – since joining TTAC, I’ve liked just about every Honda I’ve reviewed. I even found little fault with the Clarity, which I was otherwise neutral towards.
That doesn’t mean I like every Honda. I drove the Fit for 10 minutes at a media event last fall (no review … 10 minutes isn’t enough time) and while I found it pleasant, it didn’t resonate with me the way the first-gen car did. The HR-V is fine, but I don’t think it would be my first choice in that class. I have yet to drive the CR-V and Pilot.
Realizing that I like most of Honda’s present offerings, I started wondering. Were I to work for an automaker, forced to switch vehicles every 60 or 90 days in order to cycle through the lineup, which brand has a roster I like enough that I’d want to rotate completely through?
Chicago has proven a sleepy show for news for quite some time now.
This year, however, there was a hint of something stirring. While there still wasn’t a wealth of product news, there was more than normal — and most of it didn’t involve minor trim changes (okay, some of it did).
I wandered the halls at massive McCormick Place last week to take in what was a busier show than normal. Starting with Subaru, here’s my “hot takes” about what I saw on the show floor. Just for the hell of it, let’s embrace a grading gimmick.
My first press trip as the M.E. at this august website had me driving the Honda Civic Type R on a track outside Seattle. And on road, as well. I pronounced it worthy of the hype. So naturally, I had to see how it handled the daily grind. There’d be no track driving – I […]
Honda really wants to prove that its 2019 Passport five-seat crossover has off-road chops. To that end, it’s possible I had more wheel time on washboard-surfaced gravelly roads than I did on paved surfaces during my day with the newest trucklet on the block. Some of this was by my choice – I chose to […]
Automotive journalists are often accused of falling in love with wagons just because of their bodystyle. Sometimes, however, a wagon is likable for reasons that have nothing to do with shape. Take the 2018 Jaguar XF Sportbrake. Sure, it’s a sexy looking wagon, but Jaguar hasn’t forgotten that there’s more to life that just being […]
One of the repeating refrains I heard in Detroit this year went something like, “It’s the last winter show, and yet it’s not even that cold!”
Cold, of course, can be relative – Southern Californians tend to define it differently than Midwesterners. Still, Sunday and Monday were tolerable for life-long Northerners like myself, but Tuesday did offer a chill that reminded us that it was still January.
The weather is always a major topic of discussion at Detroit – whether there’s piles of snow downtown or mild temps in the 50s (I’ve experienced both). The Sun Belt folks whine while the Rust Belt residents whine about the whining and so it goes. I don’t know exactly how much the weather plays into the decision to move the show to the summer, starting next year. Only the Detroit Auto Dealers Association employees are privy to those discussions. Obviously it’s a factor, but how much of one compared to other factors is unclear. (Read More…)
Ford’s 2018 introduction of the EcoSport is one of the most cynical attempts to quickly capture sales in a suddenly hot category in the long history of automakers trying to do just that.. Challenged to quickly find a way into the fast-growing subcompact crossover class, Ford simply moved the EcoSport – already available in other […]
Count me among the dismayed that Ford’s new 2020 Mustang Shelby GT500 is only available with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.
I speculated that Ford made that choice because no human can shift gears faster than the DCT, and because Ford maybe couldn’t find a manual that can handle the estimated torque of the GT500, which is sure to be a high number.
Turns out, I was right.
The teaser parade is over, and the 2020 Toyota Supra is now fully visible to the world.
Toyota’s fifth-generation Supra follows the FT-1 Concept, as we all knew, and was developed by Toyota’s GAZOO Racing.
The #savethemanuals crowd may weep, but the Ford fanboys will still rejoice. The 2020 Ford Mustang GT500 is here. It’s loud, it’s powerful, it looks cool, and it has no clutch pedal.
That’s right. The more than 700 horsepower expected from the 5.2-liter supercharged V-8 will funnel through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission from Tremec. Drivers will take back manual control via paddles.
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