Toyota has released 2017 prices for some of its small cars, and it looks like a name change (and modest power increase) tacked a slight premium onto the Toyota 86, formerly the Scion FR-S.
A sign of our automated times, it looks like the manual transmission’s days could be numbered in the Corolla lineup. Read More >
Updated with details on all-wheel drive being standard equipment for Alltrack.
Volkswagen of America needs a winner as it reels from the ongoing diesel emissions scandal, and its forthcoming Alltrack — a jacked-up, all-wheel-drive version of the SportWagen — is hopefully just the ticket.
As Volkswagen prepares to launch the new model on American shores, it’s all hands on deck for the German automaker as it sends representatives from its internal training department to every single dealership in the United States.
If you collected all of the ink spilled over the Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup’s chances of entering production, it would overflow the unibody model’s abbreviated bed.
Well, Hyundai just put a year and a half’s worth of rumors to rest, confirming to Motor Trend that the car-based pickup is definitely a go, and will appear in 2018 as a 2019 model. Read More >
TTAC’s membership in the Ford GT club just got a whole lot less exclusive (sorry, Sanjay), after Ford Motor Company announced an extension of its supercar production.
Ford Performance will tack on another two years of GT production, meaning thousands of jilted would-be buyers still have a chance to score the carbon fiber beast. Read More >
For the third time in recent years, Cadillac has unveiled a stunning concept car to showcase the brand’s future design language, but forgive us for taking Cadillac’s hint at a production model with an Elmiraj-sized grain of salt.
The Escala, revealed last night at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, is a pillarless liftback sedan with styling that previews the automaker’s future products. Or so we hope. Read More >
Earlier this year, Ford Motor Company claimed 100 miles of electric range was just fine, then turned on a dime and said no, no, that’s not right at all.
The about-face on EV range came from CEO Mark Fields, who couldn’t have helped but notice the insane demand for Tesla’s Model 3 after it launched at the end of March. Now, the automaker wants to get serious about electrics with a two-car Model E line, Autocar reports. Read More >
Hyundai Motor America CEO Dave Zuchowski is making a name for himself as a worthy successor to the frank-talking John Krafcik. Not hiding behind PR caution or fear of tipping off competitors, Zuchowski told Wards Auto that Hyundai is getting ever closer to a decision on the Santa Cruz.
“It’s definitely making progress,” Zuchowski told Wards in an otherwise crossover-centric interview. Introduced as a small pickup truck concept at 2015’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the Hyundai Santa Cruz whetted the appetite of a surging non-full-size pickup truck market. The green light the Santa Cruz has been waiting for, however, is not yet shining bright. Not quite yet. Read More >
Infiniti has a revolutionary new engine in the works that’s both a high-compression mileage-maker and a low-compression pavement burner, giving drivers the option of being lean or mean at any given time.
The world’s first variable compression engine, dubbed the VC-T, ate up 20 years of design work before Infiniti went public with its achievement. The automaker plans to unveil the revolutionary engine next month, at the Paris Auto Show. Read More >
For the past few years, startup Elio Motors has said that the “target price” of their enclosed tandem three wheeler was $6,800. As the company and their vendors finalize the design of the production vehicle and seek financing for that production, Elio has announced a “locked in” base price of $7,300, though that price for now only applies to the first 65,000 reservation holders (and it appear that those who already have placed reservations may pay as little as $7,000).
Since more than 56,000 people have already put down reservations for the Elio trike, if you want to buy an Elio and lock in that $7,300 price, there are fewer than 9,000 slots remaining. There was no word on what the price will be after the first 65,000 are reserved.
The pricing announcement is tied to the company’s still active application for a $185 million loan from U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Read More >
Last week, we told you how Mercedes-Benz planned to go the BMW route and turn its looming roster of electric vehicles into a sub-brand.
All the automaker needed was a name to slap on its gas-free offerings. Well, according to UK trademark application filings first reported by Autocar, the new sub-brand’s name is… Read More >
Rising like the Phoenix from the ashes of bankruptcy, the Fisker Karma has been reborn as the Karma Revero.
Karma Automotive, the company created by China’s Wanxiang Group after buying Fisker Automotive’s assets, just released images and video of the sort-of new Revero. The lightly refreshed plug-in hybrid luxury sedan has all the style of its short-lived predecessor, with an added bonus: reliability (or so the company hopes). Read More >
The third addition to the Honda Civic lineup was recently spotted at a UK port, providing a glimpse of a vehicle we’ve only seen in prototype guise.
The Honda Civic hatchback shown at the Geneva Motor Show in March wasn’t a production model, but images posted on the CivicX forum show what American buyers can expect. Read More >
Sick of your GM-loving friends showing off in their Denali HD pickups? Wish your Super Duty had more flash, but can’t afford an XLT or King Ranch? Ford heard your cries.
Ford Motor Company announced the return of the STX appearance package to its F-150 line today, and as an added bonus, it’s letting Super Duty buyers join the club too. Read More >
Green cars should cut through the air like a bird, not a wall, but a team of stylists at General Motors’ South Korean design studio wasn’t thinking of that when they put together the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt.
The main goal of the team crafting the first “affordable” 200-mile electric vehicle was creating a vehicle with enough interior room to satisfy a nation of crossover fanatics. The result? A veritable brick, but a spacious one at that. Read More >
In his Master Plan, Part Deux, some of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visions make a lot of sense, like a compact SUV based on the Model 3 platform, and a pickup truck, which will presumably have more than enough torque to haul around a big load (and plenty of space for a big battery pack).
That’s not at all what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about some of the more speculative parts of the Musk vision: the self-driving vision. (I first wrote about some of the dystopian aspects of self-driving cars for TTAC in 2010.)
Musk wants you, the owner of a Tesla, to click a button and have your self-driving car go off and Uber itself during the day while you’re at work, earning you money. It will come back to you at the end of the day, ready for you to use again. This vision is going to have a very harsh collision with reality. Read More >
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