Toyota SUVs and pickups are popular with insurgents in overseas conflict zones, so why shouldn’t the U.S. military kick the tires on some?
The U.S. Special Operations Command just placed an order for up to 556 vehicles outfitted for “unconventional warfare” use, most of them Toyota Land Cruisers, Military Aerospace reports. Read More >
Update: Automotive News is reporting General Motors is now focusing “on the higher end of the market while the Japanese firm sticks to selling vehicles for everyday commercial purposes,” strongly hinting that GM is the one that broke off the collaboration. We’ve added detail below.
After announcing a new bromance with Mazda just over a week ago, Isuzu is calling it quits with its old beau General Motors.
(Or maybe GM caught Isuzu cheating behind its back. Who knows? The relationship dynamics at play between automakers are difficult to flesh out.)
Regardless, midsize trucks — badged as both Isuzus and Chevrolets — will be no more in the Land of Smiles. The duo, which has a truck plant each in Thailand, will decouple their R&D efforts as they move toward engineering new global midsize pickups.
What would your body look like if it evolved to survive a car crash?
That’s the question a group of Australians had in mind when they created Graham, a disturbingly lifelike creation designed to show how vulnerable our bodies are in a low-speed impact. Read More >
Mazda is closing the door on its relationship with Ford and opting to partner with Isuzu for its next-generation pickup trucks.
The automaker announced a new agreement today that will see Isuzu build its next pickup model, bound for everywhere but North America. The two companies previously collaborated on a pickup solely for the Japanese market. Read More >
There’s a good chance that the former managing director of Audi Volkswagen Korea will soon find himself pleading for a sip of Coke during the 11th hour of a grueling interrogation process.
Park Dong-hoon, now CEO of Renault Samsung Motors, was recently identified as a suspect in South Korea’s investigation into the Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal, according to Wards Auto. That means a date with the “VIP Suite.” Read More >
It’s a well-known fact that Islamic State fighters enjoy using hardy Toyota pickups in their pursuit of cleansing the Middle East of people even slightly different from themselves, but they’ll need to restock after last week.
Recent Allied military advances, including a huge, weeks-long push that liberated the Iraqi city of Fallujah, have ISIS on the run, and the U.S. Air Force’s best aerial hardware just caught a huge number of their vehicles making a break for it.
The results, as Defense Department video of the strike shows, wasn’t pretty — for the insurgents or their trucks. Read More >
Toyota will recall a total of 3.37 million vehicles to resolve two safety-related issues, one of which involves an environmental control that can quickly become very bad for the environment.
The largest of the two recalls concerns faulty side curtain airbags that could partially inflate without warning, according to the Associated Press. The issue isn’t related to the Takata airbag recall — rather, the problem stems from small cracks in some driver and passenger side airbag inflators, which can widen over time and lead to the partial inflation of the side curtain. Read More >
Indonesia is the biggest vehicle market in Southeast Asia, and Ford Motor Company is running away from it.
The automaker’s announcement earlier this year that it plans to stop selling vehicles in the country came as a shock to dealers, who now want Ford to compensate them in a big way, Reuters reports. Read More >
South Koreans are used to having a bunch of Americans hanging around, but the arrival of a group of Tesla employees won’t be welcomed by executives at Hyundai.
Tesla wants into the South Korean marketplace, and just posted job listings for sales and engineering positions in the Asian country, Bloomberg reports. Already registered in South Korea, the automaker plans to open up an office in Seoul and hire a recruiter based out of Japan. Read More >
The diesel emissions scandal can’t be blamed for all of Volkswagen’s sales woes.
Today, the automaker announced first-quarter profits fell 86 percent compared to the same time last year, not surprising given its sidelined diesel models, the hit to its reputation, and a hastily cobbled together $18.2 billion scandal fund.
Worldwide sales of Volkswagen passenger cars fell 1.3 percent (year-over-year) this quarter, but the scandal doesn’t tell the whole story. That number would have been in positive territory if select countries weren’t grab-your-money-and-get-out economic disasters. Read More >
It beats hooning your mom’s Honda Odyssey.
A teenager took the top spot in the first three races of the Toyota 86 Racing Series this past weekend, beating back the 38 entrants in the fledgling event.
Former kart champion Cameron Hill’s win is exactly what Toyota had in mind when it crafted the three-year series. Designed as an entry point for up-and-coming drivers, the series pits up to five professional drivers against a field of amateurs, with training being top of mind. (Though a $125,000 prize pool sweetens the deal). Read More >
Ford Motor Company probably wishes it had gone with a CVT.
After weathering years of complaints about the performance of its six-speed PowerShift dual clutch transmission, Australia just added to the misery with a class-action lawsuit, CarAdvice reports.
The suit, which alleges the transmissions are unsafe, concerns 2010–2014 Ford Fiesta and Focus models. Read More >
Three versions of a Renault hatchback spectacularly failed their frontal crash tests in India, earning them zero out of five stars, even with an available airbag.
It’s food for thought for the 125,000 Indian buyers who placed orders for the subcompact coffin, but the Renault Kwid isn’t alone in flunking Global NCAP testing in that car-hungry country.
The Maruti Suzuki Celerio, Maruti Suzuki Eeco, Mahindra Scorpio and Hyundai Eon also failed to earn a single star, reports Business Standard. Read More >
Tesla Motors responded quickly to a bombshell exposé on the low-paid foreign workers helping to expand the company’s California assembly plant.
The investigation by the Bay Area News Group, published in The Mercury News, detailed the hundreds of Slovenian and Croatian laborers brought into the Freemont plant on business visas last year to build a paint shop. Paid $5 an hour, safety protocol among the group was lax, work hours were long, and a serious injury ended in a workers’ compensation lawsuit.
Tesla was cleared of any wrongdoing by an accident investigator, but now the company says it has a moral responsibility to stop all unsafe and unfair work practices at its facility. Read More >
It’s nowhere near the scale of the Volkswagen debacle, but Nissan is in hot water with the South Korean government over dodgy emissions from its diesel SUV.
That country’s environment ministry accuses Nissan of using a “defeat device” to disable the emissions controls on its UK-built Qashqai SUV, Automotive News reports. Read More >
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