Today, I was in Odaiba, the man-made island in Tokyo Bay. The island is known for its futuristic buildings. Today, it was home of the Japan Classic Car Association’s New Year Meeting. It celebrates the imported car. During the next days, I will show you the nicer ones. We start with the Americans, and a Dodge.
Category: Editorials
The commenters already thanked the Saturday team of contestants for their great work. Let’s thank them again. It was good – at least most of it. Today, we announce Saturday’s winners. We also present a new batch of contestants. Then, we will take a break. But first, Saturday’s winners. Read More >
Keeping with the Deutsche theme, this one seemed like a reasonable segue from the M-B 250 SE featured last week. Read More >
Yesterday I ran you through the best-selling cars around the globe in November, and today we are getting one step closer to a final worldwide models ranking, with our much anticipated monthly rendezvous: the World roundup for December 2012. If last month, all spotlights were on Brazil where Hyundai broke new ground with its locally-produced HB20, in December the focus is on Chinese carmakers abroad with an event that the car industry had never seen before…
You can check out previous World Roundups here for August 2012 (“The Subaru XV topples a legend in Switzerland”), September 2012 (“Ford Focus strong in China”), October 2012 (“One Japanese in the Chinese Top 50″) and November 2012 (“When Hyundai cracked Brazil”).
Not interested? That’s ok, you can check out the best-selling models in 171 countries and territories on my blog. Enjoy!
Back to the roundup.
After I found the very rare Audi-engined ’79 AM General DJ-5G “Mail Jeep” in a Denver junkyard, I thought I’d go back to ignoring most junked DJ Jeeps. They’re very common in Colorado, and this series has always been more about historically significant vehicles than just plain old ones. However, DJs built before AMC bought Kaiser-Jeep, and featuring the nearly-forgotten Chevrolet Nova four-cylinder engine, deserve some attention. Read More >
Friday – thank God – was a great day in TTAC’s Future Writers Week. It definitely was a lot better than Dud-Tuesday. The readers loved what the Friday round of writers wrote. The winners were separated by just a few votes, always a good sign of an exciting race. My favorite came in 4th, which again proves that my tastes are totally removed from the mainstream. And the winners are: Read More >
Last time you heard about me, I took you through the best-selling cars in China over 2012. This time I thought I’d expand to… well the whole wide world. Even then, it’s the same winner…
Not into the world? That’s ok, you can check out the best-selling models in 171 countries and territories on my blog. Enjoy!
Back to the world.
A low-cost Volkswagen, selling for between 5,000 and 10,000 euros, might be earmarked for China, and the range could include – brace yourselves – a station wagon!
By the late 1980s, the Coupe de Ville had become a not-so-imposing front-wheel-drive machine, sharing the C-body platform used by the Buick Park Avenue and Olds 98. GM had squeezed much of the remaining value out of the Cadillac name by that point, and the average age of the World War II vets who aspired to Cadillac ownership had crept up to close to 70. We don’t really notice these cars today, though quite a few are still on the road, but this one caught my eye because it is a very rare GT version. Read More >
We rejoin our tale of high adventure—en route to Golden, CO, for the purpose of taking delivery of a slightly used superbike—aboard a newly acquired and undertested first-gen Toyota Van; in the process of plowing headlong into the high country in southwestern Utah in a driving snowstorm, through the zero-dark hour leg of our non-stop round trip run.
From my point of view behind the wheel, it seems like a fair fight, all things considered. Read More >
This is day five of TTAC’s Future Writers Week. We have three new winners. We have seven new contestants. And I have a huge problem. Read More >
The Wednesday installment of TTAC’s Future Writers Week, where YOU decide who will write for you, ended better than the round the day before. This time, you voted for three serviceable writers, and they are:
Our Managing Editor is losing sleep over the imminent collapse of the BMW and Mercedes-Benz brand images due to their upcoming sub-$30,000 models. When you are finished with your 27th viewing of Benz’s sneak peek at their Super Bowl ad above, let’s discuss. Read More >
We at TTAC are very excited by modular platforms, and it has nothing to do with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorders or a lack of interest in the wider world outside autos. Modular platforms are the next great leap forward for auto makers; green cars help save cute animals, and thus get all the attention, but guess what underpins the Nissan Leaf? A version of Renault-Nissan’s B Platform, which underpins everything from the Cube to the Clio to the Sandero.
I recently rented a midsize sedan from Hertz. Hoping for a go in the latest Fusion, I was instead placed into a new Camry, though it may have been a 2007 Camry. Differences between the two are only discernible to Toyota engineers, though a new campaign gives dealers the ability to tell them apart using a VIN decoder and a magnifying glass.




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