India is a country with absolute imbalance as far as policies and regulations go. Earlier this year, the Indian Government abruptly increased excise duty on cars by 2-5%. This increase came at a time when the automobile sector was already facing a slow down. Soon later, one of the states increased local taxes and registration charges. Now to make matters worse, the Supreme Court (the highest judicial forum of India) has abruptly banned all kinds of sun control films on cars (with effect from 19th May 2012). Read More >

““This looks just like golf cart fires we have down here… I’ve worked homicide scenes with less secrecy. There have to be about 15 engineers down here working on this one.”

So spoke Fort Bend County, Texas, chief fire investigator Robert Baker, in the course of blaming a brand-new Fisker Karma for a house fire that did “over $100,000” worth of damage to a brand-new, completely tasteless stucco-pimple monstrosity of an “upscale home”.

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A study commissioned by Canada’s federal government suggests that Canada could be in a position to benefit from strong auto sales from the Big Three OEMs, and a lack of capacity could lead to more manufacturing jobs for Canada, including the revival of mothballed factories.

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Even with vehement denials of a boosted Subaru BRZ, Subaru has still managed to debut a turbocharged version of the 2.0L Boxer engine.  And just because the BRZ won’t get it doesn’t mean other products won’t.

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Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told voters in Ohio that he deserves “a lot of credit” for the auto industry turnaround since the bailout era.

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A leaked spec sheet (from Temple of VTEC)  for the 2013 Honda Accord shows that manuals aren’t dead yet, but CVTs are also in – at least for 4 cylinder models.

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The Kia Sedona is practically a fossil from a previous geological era compared to its American and Japanese competition – and for 2013, the aging Sedona will finally die off. But that doesn’t mean Kia is abandoning the minivan market.

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Today, Opel revealed the real name of its Junior. Via Facebook. Everybody, say Hallo to Adam. Give that boy an apple!

There is an old saying that, “Victory has a hundred fathers. But defeat is an orphan.” JFK has been attributed to having said this quote right after the Bay of Pigs with the word ‘thousand’ replacing ‘hundreds’. But the truth is that those words originated from a far worse time. Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Foreign Minister to Benito Musolini, was the one who may have popularized this saying. Or it could have been the peasants of his hometown. Or perhaps his parents. To be frank, I think most philosophical sayings originate from parents while they’re raising their kids.

What does this have to do with our cars? Well, in our modern world we call cars that start 99.5% of the time, “Bad!”. Cars are usually more reliable than the kids and adults who drive them… and why not?  Reliability is a given today just as plastic has become an acceptable interior adornment in most cars.

Durability is also a given as well. Yesterday’s 150,000 miles is now trumped by today’s 250,000 miles. Let’s be blunt about it. Most cars, if properly taken care of, can last well beyond our willingness to keep them.

But there are exceptions…

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Now that GM has published  global production numbers in its quarterly report, we can take a first read of how the race for world’s largest automakers may end this year. It will be a tight race. And GM is likely to lose the title it took last year. Read More >

Ford was America’s top-selling brand in April. The best-selling car was Toyota’s Camry. America’s favourite utility vehicle was once again the Honda CR-V. GM was down 8%. The Prius Plug-In out sold the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf. Fiat sold more 500s than they had up to this point.

These facts were either readily apparent from the get-go or made obvious by earlier coverage. Each month we break down all the data at GoodCarBadCar.net. The April 2012 recap is well underway. Here are some of the most interesting April 2012 auto sales facts which have been gleaned while sorting through the U.S. numbers.

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The number of people killed on U.S. highways fell in 2011 for the sixth straight year, the longest streak of declines in the nation’s history, Bloomberg reports.

Crash fatalities are down 1.7 percent to 32,310 from a year earlier, NHTSA data shows. How can you counteract this alarming trend? Pile young people in the car. Read More >

Google received the first license the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to test driverless cars. The Las Vegas Sun believes this is the first such license issued in the country. Does that mean that driverless cars will roam Nevada? Not exactly. Read More >

There is new trouble brewing in an important part of GM’s business: Ally, the former GMAC. Nearly 75 percent of the credit that GM dealers in the United States use to finance their inventories is from Ally, says a Reuters report. The report also says that Residential Capital (ResCap) – Ally’s mortgage servicing and lending unit – is again on the verge of being put into bankruptcy. Read More >

For the 11^th straight month in a row, Toyota’s Prius topped the list of Japan’s best-selling cars in April. Toyota’s new compact hybrid, the Aqua, known in the U.S. as the Prius c, was a close second. Read More >