Remember TTAC’s Future Writers Week? You chose the writers. The writers wrote. The stories are in (well, most of them …). Here is the first one. Do you like it? Tell us. The stories will be published in the sequence in which they arrived in TTAC’s mailbox.

Despite living in California for nearly eight years now, and recently becoming a citizen of these United States, I still consider myself to be an Englishman. To be English in America is a generally pleasant experience – no man will ever get tired of pretty girls telling him how cute his accent is – but it is also a life full of little differences which remind you every day that this is not your home, even though it is where you live.

One such difference I have noted, particularly around this site, is the American perception of Volkswagen, which I find quite puzzling.

So please indulge me by engaging in a brief mind exercise and bounce this scenario around your brain for a moment: What if everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen? Read More >

Dope is legal in Washington State. To find out when reefer madness turns into vehicular mayhem, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News passed out marijuana to volunteers and put them behind the wheel to see how they are doing.

Even at four times over the legal limit, the unscientifically picked lab rats drove O.K. After additional bongs, their driving suffered a bit.

For decades, big corporate profits were blasted as a sign of greed, especially by unions. GM changed all that. When a sheep dipped GM, free of legacy finance costs, and not paying taxes due to losses a normal company would not have been able to carry over after a bankruptcy, declared a record $7.6 billion profit in 2011, chests of GM boosters swelled with pride, as if the profits had been theirs. A year later, there is $2.7 billion less to be proud of. GM’s European millstone, Opel, continues to drag the company down. Opel’s operative losses more than doubled to $1.8 billion for all of 2012. Read More >

“It fuel starves on left turns on about… seventy Ohms.”

Now that is not something you hear every day about a “tuner car”, is it?

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Tim Horton’s, the Canadian coffee chain that’s home to the legendary “double-double”(the local slang for two cream, two sugar in one’s coffee), has announced a pilot project to install EV charging stations in the parking lots of its coffee shops.

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Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Unlike the poorly interpreted plans for Mazda to be a “premium” brand, PSA really is planning to take Peugeot upscale, despite having zero brand equity, an upscale Citroen line and zero exposure to the profit center of the future, low-cost cars.

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Three years ago, at a groundbreaking ceremony for an LG Chem Battery plant in Holland, Michigan, President Obama promised that this and other pants will be “a boost to the economy in the entire region.”  Instead, the plant has become an example for what is wrong with a state-directed command economy. It also is yet another chapter in the Chevrolet Volt debacle. Read More >

Chrysler will be the first truck maker to offer a diesel engine on a half-ton pickup, when the Ram 1500 gets an oil-burner in Q3 of this year.

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The United States and the European Union will begin talks on a free-trade agreement, which may take as long as two years to complete. The deal is expected to be worth some $613 billion annually, and could have some interesting implications for the auto sector.

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As a journalist, if you ask an OEM rep about any given car’s redesign or next generation, you’ll undoubtedly be met with a terse “we don’t comment on future product plans”. But if you’re an analyst? Different story.

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The U.S. transportation system is in danger of falling apart, and will take down the economy with it, Bill Shuster, chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee, said today while Reuters was keeping notes: Read More >

BMW took a break from the arduous job of creating new variations of its Mini, and went to a party. Even that was strictly business, Mini was the official partner of the Grammy after party at the Chateau Marmont, a  hotel famous for its dead celebrities. Read More >

Those who watched the State of the Union address last night and have an interest in autos may have noticed a conspicuous absence; Barack Obama failed to mention his goal of putting 1 million EVs on the road by 2015.

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Toyota swept J.D. Power and Associates 2013 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study  with its Lexus brand on top and by earning seven segment awards—more than any other automaker in 2013. General Motors received four segment awards and had Buick in place 6 and Chevrolet barely above average, while Volkswagen is an also-ran. Read More >

Mercedes-Benz has finally released production photos of the A45 AMG – and while it couldn’t be more different than the rest of the rear-drive, V8 AMG lineup, it looks enticing in its own way.

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