Here is a table of the May production numbers of Japan’s bigger carmakers. What do we see? Read More >

I love General Motors. I’m bringing this age-discrimination suit action because it’s the right thing to do — for me, my family, as well as my GM peers who have been severely affected by GM’s conduct.

A critical aspect of GM’s turnaround was breaking a culture that has been held up for decades as an example of insularity, stagnation and inefficiency [for more read Ron Kleinbaum’s classic four-part editorial on the subject here], a task that various recent CEOs have gone about differently. Fritz Henderson had a “change agent” vanguard approach, while Ed Whitacre took more of a “set tough goals and fire regularly” tack towards GM’s culture wars. But regardless of differences in tactics, everyone’s agreed that GM’s culture needed to be seriously retooled if the company’s huge advantages after a government-backed bankruptcy-bailout weren’t going to be pissed away, and as a result a lot of GM’s “lifers” found themselves on the outside looking in. And rather than slinking away, one of those jilted lifers is suing GM for age discrimination.

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Chris writes:

Hi, love the site. I want a play car, but my wife and I have to agree on the purchase.

First, the details on our current situation. My wife drives a 2001 Suburban with 120,000 miles on it. I’m driving a 96 Cherokee 4wd with a 5-speed and 90k on the meter. We’re both happy with our daily drivers.

What I’d like to have is a car with, say, 50-75k miles on it, maybe built in the mid-2000’s, that we could take on trips. Perhaps something less thirsty for $4/gallon gas than the other two vehicles. And I’d like to stay in the $7,000 to $12,000 range, with a preference for the lower end.

I’ve got it narrowed down to a few contenders:

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The UK government on Sunday officially terminated the policy of concealing safety and revenue information for individual speed camera locations. The Labour government had held this information secret, but Road Safety Minister Mike Penning, a member of the Conservative Party, insisted on making it readily available to the public online.

“We want to improve accountability and make sure that the public are able to make informed judgments about the decisions made on their behalf,” Penning said in a statement. “So if taxpayers’ money is being spent on speed cameras then it is right that information about their effectiveness is available to the public.”

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Would you pay over $3000 for a 20 year old car? How about if it was a base 1991 Chevrolet Caprice in faded battleship grey with only 37,000 miles? As much as I love driving a big boat, owning an ancient mariner like this Caprice would have been no picnic. By the time you end up replacing all the worn items and catch up on the maintenance issues, you would be looking at nearly $4,000. It wasn’t a great deal. But with 95 dealers all looking at the same vehicle crossing the block, I got to see a lot worse.
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TTAC’s man-about-the-junkyard Murilee Martin has made the bold claim that we live in the golden age of cheap superchargers, but when it comes to new cars, we may be entering another “golden age” for superchargers as well. Eaton’s Ken Davis tells Automotive News [sub] that his firm is looking at doubling its supercharger sales as the technology comes into its own as a fuel-saving measure. Though turbochargers have received the lions share of attention as the industry moves towards downsized, forced-induction engines, Davis argues that supercharger have their own role to play in the effort, specifically when it comes to “downspeeding” engines to produce better power at lower RPM. He adds

Audi is our largest supercharger customer, and we are on a couple of platforms with Nissan… Nissan will bring their supercharged vehicles here. We’ll be on Audi and Volkswagen platforms, too. We are starting to get some attention.

Yesterday was a long, long day on Pike’s Peak. Above 10,000 feet, the Colorado sun bakes the will to live right out of you, while the lack of oxygen starves lungs and engines alike. Constant wrecks and breakdowns shut down the course for long periods, but all these things were just minor irritants, forgotten as soon as the next racer came fishtailing up the hill. The big news, of course, was the demolition of the 10-minute barrier by Monster Tajima, but every entrant got plenty of cheers from the thousands of dust-huffing hillclimb fans lining the route to the summit. Make the jump for some of my photo highlights from the day. Read More >

Speaking of GM’s future lineup, there’s no sign in GMI’s 2013 projected lineup of the on-again-off-again Spark city car (A-Segment) that we had heard would be here now. Hell, they’ve had the cupholders ready since 2009. So what’s the Spark up to?
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GMInsidenews.com has put together its take on GM’s forthcoming 2013 lineup, which will see the launch of only a few new cars including the Cadillac “ATS” small sports sedan and “XTS” DTS replacement, as well as Buick’s Gamma II-platform “Baby Buick” and a similar Chevy model. Other tweaks are said to include 250+ HP for the Regal and Verano Turbo engines (i.e. wait on that Regal GS unless you’re going to tune it yourself), a new interior for the Lamdas and SRX, a diesel engine for the Cruze and more. Hit the jump for all the details…
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Having seen its RX-8 banned from Europe for flunking emissions tests, Mazda may be going to extreme lengths to improve the efficiency of its next-gen rotary engine (codenamed 16x) which has been in development since 2007. Autocar reports

The 16X’s capacity has been raised from 1304cc to 1600cc, and it is also physically smaller and partly built from aluminium. The changes are designed to improve two of the biggest issues with rotary engine performance: fuel economy and torque delivery.

The Mazda source said the new engine “needed a smaller hole on the wall [of the combustion chamber]” as a result of eliminating the space-hungry normal spark plug. He also admitted to Autocar that the use of laser ignition “was absolutely possible”.

Recent advances in Japan have created high-power lasers made from ceramics that measure just 9mm in diameter and 11mm in length, easily small enough to fit into a car engine.

Not only would laser ignition allow the 16x to burn leaner, it would also allow more precise control of ignition points and timing. More importantly, it would cement the Wankel rotary’s status as the least-necessary, most overly-complex and thoroughly awesome engine ever created. And they say emissions standards always make cars less interesting…

Every June cars.com trolls the protectionist elements of the car guy world by trotting out its “American Made Index,” which has been topped by the Toyota Camry for the third year running. So what’s cars.com’s criteria for the American Made Index? According to a presser

Cars.com’s annual American-Made Index ranks the most-American vehicles based on percentage of their parts that are made domestically, where they are assembled and how many are sold to U.S. buyers.

That last bit goes a long way towards explaining the Camry/Accord dominance: this is not just a measure of assembly and “domestic parts content” (which NHTSA strangely counts as parts made in the US or Canada), but popularity with Americans as well. If, on the other hand, you just look at the raw 2011 “domestic” parts content percentages… well, it tells a slightly different story.

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“And it goes like [human excrement],” said a freshly minted Nissan spokesperson who requested anonymity on account of him having been on the job for only two weeks. The “it” was Nissan’s latest racecar. It needed a special announcement, because it entered the hall with utmost stealth. None of the usual straight pipe roar.  The Nissan Nismo racer is silent power. Read More >

Eight percent global market share. Eight percent operating profit. And all of that by 2016 – two times eight, get it? In Nissan’s glitzy waterfront headquarters in Yokohama, CEO Carlos Ghosn today presented a six year plan, called “Power 88.” The plan is audacious and auspicious at the same time.

Let’s do the auspicious part first. Read More >

Bad news for the ballers: Auto Motor und Sport reports that if you want to snap up the last of the Bugatti Veyrons, you’re going to have to spring for the Grand Sport convertible version. Which means you’ll be paying at least an extra $280k over the EB16.4 Coupe’s $1.7m pricetag. Perhaps sir would rather look at something on our pre-owned lot?

Since cementing its premium-retro-cutesy positioning in the marketplace, MINI’s been leveraging its two platforms into a niche-munching binge. Soon the MINI lineup will range from cozy Coupe to two-door “Sport Activity Vehicle,” and will include two convertibles, multiple versions of the two-door hatche, two-and-a-half-door hatch, and four door SUV. So what’s missing? A Moke? A Delivery van? What about a re-interpretation of the old Mini Pick Up? You and I may feel like the MINI brand  already has plenty of niche offerings, thanks, but here is indisputable proof (found in a supermarket parking lot) that the market thinks MINI hasn’t chased enough niches. Carry on then, lads…