I suppose that's no big deal, right? I mean, a Jaguar is, ostensibly, a car that provides drivers with imperious wafting rather than ultimate driving. On the other hand, Caddy's CTS is working the European sports sedan thing for all it's worth, as are the Japanese luxury makes and European sports sedans. Strangely, Healey dismisses the Jag's sporting aspirations because of its super-smooth power delivery– rather than any handling deficit. (TTAC's Justin Berkowitz described the XF as "Ali-light on its toes, whisking you around bends with enough neutral attitude and tarmac-clawing grip to satisfy all but the most suicidal driver.") Moving on, USA Today's resident car critic has a bigger nit [sic] to pick on the all-important build quality side of the equation: "Alas, the front edge of the driver's door panel creaked in the Supercharged, and the driver's door pillar in the Premium Luxury had a faint tapping or creaking." Oh dear. After Healey's usual debate with himself ("The rear fold-down armrest has only a cup holder, no storage for, say, a first-aid kit. Hey, rivals do the same things, Jag says. And next time your kid says, 'Everybody else does it,' you'll accept that excuse, right?), he delivers the usual generally positive summation: "Power, gorgeous body, tasteful interior, a few silly gadgets." 

Did you just win the lottery? Has Ed McMahon been knocking at your door? Wondering what to do with your newfound wealth? Autotrader has just the thing: a wide selection of vehicles priced at over $1m. Want some examples? Scope out these deals:

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These bargains and many more like them are just a mouse click away!

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Again, TTAC is not against junketing per se. Although invitations to manufacturer-sponsored events rarely cross our e-transom (for some unfathomable reason), we have tested cars on the carmakers' dime. All we ask is that automotive publications specifically declare any and all financial contributions towards any given editorial content, within eyesight of the relevant text. In other words, tell readers/viewers if you're drinking the corporate Kool-Aid. OK, now, you may recall that I recently wrote an editorial taking Ford to task for their new "Drive One" campaign. So it was with some interest that I read today's Autoblog post on that very subject. Scribe Jeremy Korzeniewski couldn't have been more an enthusiastic cheerleader if he'd waved pom-poms. "After spending a few days with Ford's main-marketing-man Jim Farley and his team, we can truly say that the excitement surrounding the company's new Drive One marketing strategy is palpable." Uh-oh. "They let us tag along so we could see what all the fuss is about, and the dealers we spoke to seemed pretty pumped about Drive One and felt that Farley's new team at Ford was finally listening to them and doing something with their input. Keep reading to find out what else we heard in Sin City." Or don't. But either way, somehow I don't think AOL picked-up the tab for this bit of reportage. We ask Autoblog to either categorically deny this logical assumption or add a suitable disclaimer at the bottom of their post.

UPDATE: Autoblog has added a disclaimer. We thank them for their rapid and appropriate response, and hope that full disclosure will become the website's standard policy.  

Ouch, the metablogging is hurting my face. Toyota posted to their Open Road blog today with a post so genius they may not even know what it is.

A New Small Sports Car on the Horizon
– Scott Deyager, Corporate Communications

You may have heard that as part of strengthened corporate ties between Toyota Motor Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries in Japan, Toyota and Subaru, which is owned by Fuji, announced plans last week to collaborate on a new small sports car.
We pay by the period here. Semicolons are also expensive. That's why I will continue to use plastic forks, knives, and commas I stole from the diner downstairs.

While the market introduction for this vehicle apparently is targeted for the end of 2011,
Apparently! Ha, I so nailed you new media! I'm implying that you have set a release date without info! Booya!

speculation on blogs, and in newspapers, already is vibrating along nicely.
Screw you, "blogs." And I guess you newspapers, too.

A report last week
Really leveraging the speed of blog posting to your advantage, I see…

in Japan's Asahi newspaper
Which readers of this American Toyota site probably know nothing about, since we had to explain that a company called "Fuji Heavy Industries" is in Japan.
But seriously folks, that's Toyota's great example of assumptions going overboard? Japanese publications are notorious for predictions, concept sketches and photoshops.

speculates
There's that word again.

that this car will be powered by one of Subaru's flat-four engines.
Yep, let's mock them for being optimistic that a 4-cylinder engine with a low center of gravity, which is easily configured to run power to the back wheels, would be the engine in the car. Rather than the cynical assumption they should have made that we're going to stick a Subaru logo on a Scion tC, and then take the rest of the day off.

Other speculation suggests
Okay, seriously, try a thesaurus.

that it will be rear-wheel drive, that it could go on sale as early as 2011, and that it will sell for less than $20,000.
Which we at corporate know would be too expensive (rwd), our engineers need to sleep (2011), and are you monkey crazy (<$20k)?

Stay tuned for updates surrounding this exciting new collaboration.
I'll bet you thought we were going to tell you some information. Validate or invalidate one of the rumors. Or even give you corporate vague-speak about how mostly one company's parts will be used. Well YOU THOUGHT WRONG, baby! High five! I got you so good! Oh also, please continue to come to our site again. When? Every day. Gotta convince the bosses that this blogging thing has legs.

Until today, we were dependent on "spy shots" to clock the new Honda Pilot. Taken by apparently very bored spy photographers lying in wait in parking lots for a glorified Accord-on-stilts (I guess the Camaro was not out testing that day), it seemed to be 10 percent less ugly than Honda's concept Pilot. As of today, the review embargo has expired. Pilot reviews are springing up like… are Eliot Spitzer jokes out of style yet? Honda appears to have forgotten to invite TTAC to the Pilot's launch, but other more "traditional" folks joined the junket. Edmunds says driving the Pilot is not "particularly memorable," but that the car/truck/minivan does its job. Los Jalopniks report that the refreshed Honda SUV is "not very exciting" but still the sensible car they ought to buy (life is too short for sensible, my friends). Car and Driver calls the Pilot "brilliantly packaged." I call it sorta weird looking, though given the current Pilot's core competencies, I'm confident that most folks will find this two-boxer more than merely adequate. TTAC will bring you a review of the new Pilot as soon as it's available to everyday folks.

Part of the fun of this job: remembering what people said. For example, exactly one month ago, the Detroit Free Press was all about "in-sourcing." "'Due to recent UAW concessions,' [Merrill Lynch automotive analyst] John Murphy wrote in a recent note to investors, 'these tasks [parts design and manufacture] can now be sourced to internal workers at comparable costs and without significant investment in infrastructure… We are convinced that an insourcing trend is emerging.'" Anyone who's been watching the domestics rush to send work abroad– from Chinese-made engines in Chevy's Equinox to Indian programmers taking over Chrysler's IT work— would be forgiven for calling bullshit. And now the Freep's sister paper (The Detroit News) reports that "Auto suppliers will shoulder a bigger burden of research and development costs as automakers look to shift some of the billions of dollars in costs of developing high-tech features in future vehicles, executives said Monday at SAE International's 2008 World Congress." In fact, our man Don Walker of Magna, friend of the little guys, reckons auto suppliers' share of the carmakers' total R&D spend will jump from 40 to 60 percent by 2012. 

After Rob Diel read a Detroit Free Press article about the automaker's Indian outsourcing, the Chrysler contract information technology worker posted CEO Bob Nardelli's telephone number and email address in the comments section. It wasn't long before the suits descended on Diel's desk. "They said unlock your laptop and come with us," Diel told TTAC. "When they show up doing that, it's not a good thing." Today's Free Press says "Diel, who expected to lose his job at the end of May, said he made several postings on the Web site under the name 'Chryslerworker,' including: 'Boycott Chrysler. If Chrysler is going to screw all the American workers, than (sic) it is only fair that America screws Chrysler. E-mail Nardelli and tell him what a great job he is doing.'" The Freep has since removed Nardelli's information. Meanwhile, Diel says Chrysler's Indian IT operators wouldn't know how to respond effectively to a glitch in the company's production computers, increasing the likelihood of delays. Diel also says morale in his former department is "just horrible… Nobody cares about doing anything. People are just wandering around; they just go for walks and stuff 'cause it's just so depressing." BTW: you can contact Mr. Diel at tripower428@hotmail.com. [apologies for the low audio levels]

Yes, "it" is the new BMW 1-Series. Like many of James Healey's reviews, there's a huge disconnect between the headline ("BMW 1 Series is small but sassy"), the critic's observations and his conclusions. Combining the old "I'll ask myself a question and then answer it" format with the bi-polar "I'll raise an objection and answer it" routine, Healey plays it straight down the middle. After arguing with himself about the small Bimmer's large price tag, he concludes "Nothing unexpected for a BMW. Hey, here's one: the stupid trim pieces on the inside door handles of the test cars, a 128i convertible and 135i coupe. The pieces are mated so that you grab the joining line every time you use the door handle. Unattractive. Rough-feeling. So there." Nuh. Healey's three word summary: it's a keeper. While our Justin Berkowitz wouldn't agree, BMW might well describe TTAC's 1-Series review the same way Healey refers to the 1-Series convertible's roof rattles: faint but troubling squeaks.

This clip from GNTV is almost 18 minutes long. I love Maximum Bob's "poor, pitiful misunderstood GM" schtick for the first five minutes. Then the winner of TTAC's 2008 annual Bob Lutz Award goes into a rambling rant about blogs in general and how important his is (in specific). At the 10 minute mark, Lutz addresses his "global warming is a crock of shit" comment; he was wronged because it was "off the record." MB didn't think it was that big of a thing until the print media picked it up– and they only found out about it because he posted his "here's what I really meant" backtrack in Fastlane. At the 14 minute mark Bob's asked how GM will make use of "social media" in the next few years. It gets seriously boring as he pontificates on the evolution from bulletin boards with notices tacked up on them (which he refers to as "fiberware," whatever that means) to blogs. Maximum Bob never really passes on any usable information, but it's an interesting excursion into LutzLand. I'm disappointed that he never mentioned the Deathwatch series. And I have to wonder what this guy did to get him to do this, and what he cut from the final vid. Think we could get Bobbo to agree to doing a video for us?

Sorry, I know: it's all very Inside Baseball. And I just got through excoriating Automotive News for not publishing the Ford Taurus spy shot. And God knows TTAC is not perfect. (Ask me; I'm OCD.) But this website is nothing if not a bully pulpit for a certain otherwise unemployable automotive publisher/writer who considers the blurring of editorial and advertising about as defensible as Barry Manilow's Grammy Award for Copacabana. Anyway, the April 14th paper edition of AutoWeek contains a heavy cardboard, full-color, two-sided, pre-perforated advertisement for the Danbury Mint's $495 18" die-cast replica of the 1930 Cadillac V-16 Roadster. For some strange reason, page 22 offers a review of same by Jay Engel. The sub-head proclaims the toy– I mean, reproduction, a "work of art." Apparently, the Danbury Mint has launched "what some collectors who have seen the project up close consider to be the tour de force of Danbury 23 years of die-cast replication… From the gorgeous two-tone metallic green paint to the mechanical dazzle of the hallowed V16 engine to the cornucopia of functional features, this finely detailed replica does everything except burn gasoline." I gotta admit: it's a nice looking model. But AutoWeek's "review" is hardly what I'd call a model of editorial integrity. 

I like Automotive News [AN, sub]. Although AN often fails to ask American automakers the tough questions, at least they're not Detroit lap dogs, cheerleaders or apologists (like some news orgs I frequently name). But what's with their article on the Ford Taurus spy photo? It starts off innocently enough, chronicling the turn of events that led TTAC to post the shot (without any legal blow-back, I might add). "The buzz intensified when Ford's legal department moved quickly to force several of the Web sites to take down the picture — leading many to conclude that the photo was the real deal. The photo vanished from the Internet for about 24 hours before it reappeared and spread rapidly." And then, suddenly, they make a not-so-bold, not-so-Woodward-and-Bernstein run for the [allegedly] moral high ground. "But neither Automotive News nor our affiliate AutoWeek will run the photo. We don't have permission from the owner, we don't know where it was taken, and we wouldn't run a photo taken inside an automaker's property." Hang on; if they don't know where the shot was taken how do they know it was taken inside an automaker's property? And now that the photo's all over the place, why wimp-out? It gets worse. "If curiosity gets to you, just type '2010 Ford Taurus' into your favorite Web search tool." 

So, radio funny guy Adam Carolla let the world know that he's one of the presenters of the new American Top Gear. And we can now, finally, confirm the rumor that drift king Tanner Faust is the Tiff Needel of the team. But the big news here is that NBC execs pulled L.A. Times auto writer Dan Neil from the U.S. show after a viewing his audition tape– despite a signed contract with the Pulitzer prize-winning critic. Neil says he's "very disappointed" with the network's decision, but understands their motivation. "They couldn't handle my heat," he joked. "Seriously. It's probably because I'm not very good on TV." The clock is ticking on finding Neil's replacement. Anyone heard anything?

We weren't the only ones giving Toyota grief about their $20m contribution to the Audubon Society. The Green Company That Also Sells Gas-Guzzlin' Trucks has gone on the defensive after readers of their Open Road blog castigated the Japanese automaker for the largesse. It seems the National Audubon Society is one of the plaintiffs in a suit against the National Park Service for alleged failure to regulate beach driving at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. Readers felt Toyota's donation "is being used against people who use their 4-wheel drive vehicles" and "to help fund the closure of the beaches of the Outer Banks of NC." ToMoCo says not so. After all, "we build and sell four-wheel-drive vehicles that have developed an enviable reputation in the four-wheeling community and many of us here are enthusiastic four-wheelers." To that end, their donation "will be used only to fund conservation projects, train environmental leaders and offer volunteer opportunities, not for lobbying or legal efforts." Yes but… a contribution of that size will free Audubon to redirect organizational funds that would have been used for those purposes, increasing their legal and lobbying firepower.  

will know that I'm a firm believer in branding guru Al Reis' dictum that the tighter a brand's focus, the more powerful it is. A Porsche that only makes sports cars is a stronger brand than a Porsche that makes sports cars and SUVs. TTAC's Best and Brightest will also recognize the blatant hypocrisy of this stance. This website does three things: news, reviews and editorials. The clumsy nature of our site design represents my ongoing– and largely unsuccessful– attempts to reconcile this triumvirate. An opportunity has recently arisen to right this wrong, and I want to get your feedback. How would you feel if we had three inter-linked car sites? The first would be a kick-ass news blog. TTAC would be the second: home of editorials, forums, social networking and all news-related comments. The third would be a car review site. TTAC writers would populate all three sites, which would maintain our high standards of editorial integrity. Your feedback would be most appreciated. Meanwhile, Justin and I discuss the day's news.

I'm sure many TTAC readers will recall the great Audi 5000 "unintended acceleration" legal turmoil of the mid-80's. The legal/media feeding frenzy set Audi sales back by a decade, despite the fact that every case of "unintended acceleration" was found to be caused by human, not mechanical error. Well, those bastions of quality journalism, the Detroit Free Press and Motor Trend blog, are trying to resuscitate the media frenzy, only this time Toyota's to blame for people mistaking the accelerator for their brake pedal. Apparently the NHTSA has received 33 complaints that Toyota Tacomas are driving themselves off the roads, and has launched an investigation into the 2006-2007 model years. "Toyota has said to us they've found nothing wrong with the truck and it's our fault," says one "victim." "They're basically calling us all stupid." Of course, after a crash nobody wants to take responsibility for the fact that they may have hit the gas instead of the brakes, but what is motivating this investigation has nothing to do with the facts of the individual cases. No, the investigation is being spurred by the fact that only four "unintended acceleration" complaints have been logged against non-Tacoma pickups in the period that 33 were logged against the 'yota. "If there were truly human error, there would be a proportional distribution across models," says Clarence Ditlow, head of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington. "It's very difficult to explain how some makes and models have higher numbers of complaints than others absent some flaw in the vehicle." Yes, but it's very easy to prove that your brakes are more powerful than your engine. In fact, if a TTAC reader out there has a Tacoma, perhaps they would do us the honor of standing on the brakes while mashing the accelerator for a few seconds. This should prove fairly simply that "unintended acceleration" is possible only when you are not actually on the brakes.