As The Wall Street Journal‘s Dan Neil explains, pedestrians aren’t just annoying, they’re also responsible (in part) for some of the most astonishingly dull designs in all of autodom… like the 2011 VW Jetta. Trends towards rising beltlines, strangely high hoods, reduced visibility, and general carved-from-cheese-ishness in automotive design can all be tied to European pedestrian crash test standards. With a little help from unimaginative designers, global product strategies and consumer apathy, of course.

The Automotive X-Prize is over, and the Edison2 Team has won the “Mainstream” class with its Very Light Car. It may not look like any mainstream car you’ve seen recently, but it does fit four passengers, offers air-con, heater, an audio system, and a 200 mile range. And using a 250 cc ethanol engine, it got 102.5 MPGe, while accelerating to 60 MPH in 14.2 seconds. But this was not necessarily a hard-fought victory: Edison2 was the only team that even made it into the finals in the “Mainstream” class. Meanwhile, the X-Tracer motorcycle shown above won the “Alternative” class. In fact, it won the whole damn competition with 197 MPGe while accelerating to 60 MPH in just over 6 seconds. So, despite the ego-boosting rhetoric from Nancy Pelosi, and the other politicians speaking at the awards ceremony, the Automotive X-Prize didn’t so much advance America closer towards a fuel-efficient future as it proved that motorcycles are way more efficient than cars are. The much-maligned gas guzzlers that we know as “mainstream cars” are in little danger from this lot.

This is the interior of the forthcoming Fiat 500 Sport, built in Mexico for the US market [UPDATE: Fiat’s PR team insists that this is not the US-market version… we will revisit the story when real photos come out]. After the jump, you can find a photo of the Italian market Fiat 500’s interior. Spot the differences (there’s one big one we’re thinking of) and win the respect of TTAC’s Best & Brightest. Help us understand why these changes were made, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming the next TTAC comments section superstar.

Read More >

With 15 “new or refreshed” Chrysler Group products launching over the next 4 months [complete product plan in PDF format here], we’re about to find out definitively if a company’s product can be turned around in a little over a year. Given how complex automobiles are, and how deeply uncompetitive many of Chrysler’s products have been, the odds are obviously stacked against Auburn Hills… and Chrysler’s $50m loss on the Grand Cherokee launch is a sign of how scary things can get in a product blitz. But the real question here isn’t how many recalls Chrysler is risking, or how much money it could lose on launch costs and “associated industrial inefficiencies” but whether consumers will actually notice a difference.

The “mid-cycle refresh” is a familiar phenomenon for the American consumer, and few of them fundamentally change the character of a car. Though Chrysler is doing “deep refreshes” on cars like the 200 (neé Sebring), reworking the body, drivetrains, suspension and interior (also, the Durango, 300 and Charger will be “all new”), a number of the new launches will be of plain-old refreshes… like the 2011 Town & Country pictured here. Will the deep changes to some vehicles be lost in the flood of refreshed Chrysler Jeep and Dodge vehicles? More importantly, will refreshes like this one convince consumers that Chrysler has really changed?

Via Chrysler’s Facebook page come these first images of the “heavily refreshed” 2011 Chrysler Sebring, which will henceforth be known as the 200.

This is the Hyundai ix20, a a European-style subcompact MPV in the style of Honda’s Fit. Or, more precisely, in the style of Kia’s Venga. In fact, the similarities between the new Hyundai and its Kia-branded predecessor are strong enough to hint at a future of GM-style brand differentiation issues for the Korean concern.  And here’s the real irony: both cars share a platform with the Kia Soul, an American-style B-Segment MPV (possibly the only car to fit that description). Couldn’t Kia have rocked the Soul and left the ix20/Venga segment to Hyundai? Or was the Venga simply too good-looking to die? Either way, these two taught twins are a bit close for comfort.

Over the last 24 months, the Mercedes R-Class has motivated a mere 6,469 Americans to plunk down $50k+ for a Mercedes-badged non-minivan. Now that it’s received a much-needed facelift that removes most of the slug-inspired design cues, will it sell any better? From the ash heap of history, the Chrysler Pacifica has recorded a “no” vote. What say you?

Remember the Saturn Vue? It’s back, baby, and more cannibalistic than ever. Starting in 2011, the refreshed Chevrolet Captiva will be undercutting Opel’s Antara, itself a rebadge of the same Daewoo Winstorm. Because what Opel needs right now is to prove that sometimes it’s worth paying a little extra for a German brand on your rebadged Korean Crossover. That’s what you call giving a brand a sense of purpose. Meanwhile, does anyone out there actually miss the Vue?

Ever since its interior took TTAC’s Best and Brightest by surprise, we’ve been keeping an eye on Kia’s K7 flagship sedan. Now Autospies has caught one cruising stateside, revealing a design that’s less edgy than some of the other Scheryer-era Kias, but that fits right into the American automotive landscape. And not the way its predecessor the Amanti did…

In the interests of truth, we feel compelled to point out that this is not, in fact, the 2011 Jaguar XJ. But considering the damn thing had hardly changed in 35 years, it’s easy to understand why the Detroit News thought it could get away with just slinging up a photo of the previous year’s model. And though that may have worked for the better part of the last four decades, now that Jag has a truly new XJ, it’s just cruel. Or sloppy. Either way, it’s plenty ironic.

There are no rumors to report here, just a hypnotic video of Mazda working through its new Kodo design language on a compact hatchback concept. As with the Shinari concept, Mazda’s stated goal of becoming “the Japanese Alfa Romeo” is well-evidenced, and though it’s early days yet, the new direction looks promising. But then, anything that looks less like a stimulant-crazed Pokemon than the current Mazda3 would have counted as improvement.

The last time we looked at the evolving Opel Astra coupe, I wondered

what do you call a Buick coupe that could fit under the hood of a classic Riviera?

Though we have a much better idea of what the Astra Coupe looks like, and we know that the Astra sedan/wagon will be called the Buick Verano in the US market, the question remains unanswered. Surely “Buick Verano Coupe” is too bland for what could (in theory) be the next Integra/RSX. Skyhawk? Apollo? Wildcat? Or is the dearth of promising names indicative of the challenges facing any compact Buick Coupe?

Via Autocar come these pictures of a jacked-up Fiesta variant undergoing development testing. Rumors of a Fiesta-based MPV have been rampant, as European competitors have been bombarding the B-segment with bigger, and/or butched-up new models like Kia’s Venga (and it’s forthcoming sibling, the Hyundai ix20), Opel’s suicide-doored Meriva, Toyota’s Verso S,and VW’s PoloCross. Ford’s Fiesta-based entry could resemble the brand’s Iosis-Max concept, and it will probably be built in Romania. Based on the dearth of camouflage, we’d also guess it’s going for the “butch” more than the “big” section of the B segment. Needless to say, it’s unlikely to ever arrive in the US, where the idea of taking a B-segment hatch into the dirt occurs only to the desperately  unwell.

Yes, it’s real. And no, it’s not an Impreza. But it will help Chevy continue its campaign of cannibalism against Opel, as GM’s presser notes that

Hatchbacks play a critical role in many markets. The total compact segment in Europe represents around 4.8 million units which is over a quarter of the total market, with hatchbacks representing around 65% of that volume. We therefore expect to see increased business in a number of regions, while sending out a signal that Chevrolet is now a serious mainstream player in Europe.

Look for the production model to debut at the forthcoming Paris Auto Show… meanwhile, my first-ever beef with the Cruze (that it seemed styled to be a sedan-only model) has basically been settled. For the Europeans, anyway.

The de-Ramification of the Dodge brand took another important step today, as Dodge previewed its new Ram-free logo. Similarly, the new 2011 Durango (on which the updated logo appears) has also had the Ram taken out of its Rama-lama-dingdong… er, technical underpinnings. Once a big BOF bruiser, the Durango has had a unibody makeover along the lines of Ford’s Explorer, making 2010 the year of the Cross-retro-ver. But will the old SUV brands remain relevant after becoming poster boys for automotive and cultural excess back when gas prices spiked? More importantly, does anyone actually like the new Dodge badge?