TTAC’s march towards media domination continues, as Bertel Schmitt’s excellent piece on Toyota’s factory of the future has been picked up for syndication by Fortune Magazine online. Read it here, read it there… just read it!
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Omar writes:
Hello all,
Love the site. One of the only sites that actually reviews cars instead of just reading like a feature press release.
I am in the market for a car. However, it is a bit different than most. I finally finished school and am in a position to buy a nice car up to about $200 000. I hate when auto sites use the line ”buyers in this category don’t care about costs”. I do! There is a difference between a guy who can buy one car like this and has to think about it vs. Someone with a supercar stable.
I am kind of all over the map right now. My main choice is a v8 vantage due to the not over the top looks and classic style. However, I am wondering if a pre-owned F430 or Gallardo would be a good choice. Or should I save up for another year and try for a 458? Each car has pros and cons and I’m still heavily leaning toward an Vantage. What would you do?
In his review of the Ford Fiesta, Jack Baruth identified a personality type that anyone who spends time on car websites will recognize: “Mr Euro.”
Mr. Euro is the guy who, for some reason, wants the cars he cannot have in the United States. He’s the guy who says he would drive a 520i “in a heartbeat” given the chance, the dude who thinks we’re missing out because the Renault Twingo stays on the froggy side of the pond, the fellow who desperately wants a Vauxhall Zafira for child-lugging purposes.
Indeed, some of us might even recognize a little “Mr Euro” in ourselves. Especially when we consider the Hyundai i40, a Passat and Mondeo-benchmarked, Euro-only, wagon-first, expression of Hyundai’s “modern premium” aspirations. Hundai’s reps claim [via Autocar] the i40 will offer “all the credentials of an Audi but an affordable price,” and say that a four-door sedan version (coming in 2012) “would match the VW Passat CC for style.” Too bad America’s Mr Euros make up such a tiny segment (and spend all their money on used cars and maintenance) that Hyundai is likely to never bring it to the US.
Automotive News [sub] reports that Global Vehicles, a firm with a contract to distribute Mahindra pickup trucks in the US, has dropped its lawsuit in US court in an apparent attempt to rescue its distribution deal. The contract between Mahindra and GV called for British arbitration of disputes, and apparently the British arbitration panel required that all claims be handled through it rather than in US courts. The dropped suit would have required Mahindra to press forward with its US launch regardless of pending arbitration. Mahindra, meanwhile, has said it is looking outside of its deal with GV for a US distributor, so it’s not clear if GV’s olive branch will even make a difference.
Activists in Winnipeg, Canada yesterday charged city leaders with using photo radar to exploit a hard-to-see sign used to provide notice of a change in the speed limit. To make its case, WiseUpWinnipeg broke out a copy of the official regulations governing signs, the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Device (MUTCD) for Canada, to determine whether the speed limit signs were placed in accordance with national standards. The group concluded that several of the signs are substantially out of compliance.
Read More >
They say blogging doesn’t pay, but in this case, it pays. When the incomparable Bertel Schmitt wrote his Toyota exoneration story, none of us knew that he was just one quick sex-change operation away from scoring a $10 Amazon gift card. It’s true. A marketing organization with no connection to Toyota (chuckle) has decided to comp “mommybloggers” free gift cards for getting the word out about Toyota’s exoneration.
Details, and a photo of the mommyblogger who blew the whistle on the whole sordid operation, after the jump.
Beijing’s draconian license plate limits have a stimulating effect on the creativity of Beijingers. To skirt the new rules, complex schemes are being devised. Beijing’s courts are turned into accessories of the fraud. According to China Daily, the scheme goes like this: Read More >
Last year, Toyota invested $50 million into Tesla. Tesla turned around and spent $42 million of the new money and bought the land and buildings of site 2 of NUMMI in Freemont, CA. As it turns out, the deal did not include the fixtures. Nothing another $17 million could not fix. Read More >
As a site dedicated to arming consumers, industry observers and enthusiasts with as much worthwhile information about the world of cars as possible, we have to give it up for TrueCar. At a time when some automakers are dialing back the amount of data they share with the media and public, TrueCar’s regular data dumps represent one of the best sources of free information about the current state of the car market. And not only is it based on the analysis of millions of transactions, but it’s presented in a format that even the most laid-back of industry armchair quarterbacks can quickly understand. You can find the entire February forecast here, or, check out the gallery below for a TTAC-curated tour of some of the highlights.
Sledgehammers aren’t a common mechanic’s tool. Yet there it was. In my neighbor’s hands as he sought to knock some sense into his old Saab. The trunk had leaked from day one and the wiring harness made the rear lights as helter-skelter as a Charlie Manson jailhouse flashback. The cops pulled him over for the third time in a week and as a special, “Thank you!”, to his car, he decided to give it an early Christmas present. Jersey style.
Read More >
Winter testing continues for the platform underlying Mercedes’ four compacts of the apocalypse, and Auto Motor und Sport’s cameraman have caught copious footage of the fun. But remember, the traditional B-Class hatchback won’t be headed stateside, having been nixed by MB’s US dealer net. Instead, we’ll get
a crossover, a sporty coupe and a sedan
based on the same front-drive platform. Heck, the platform may even spawn a baby Infiniti CUV, positioned under the EX, as part of Daimler and Nissan’s hookup. Given that this test mule is validating the internals of a new direction for the Mercedes brand in the US, do we like what we’re seeing?
Here at TTAC we often find ourselves bemoaning the lack of compact pickups on the US market, and trying to determine if that fact is due to weak demand or a lack of OEM investment into the segment. But now Chrysler has announced a new entry-level Ram 1500, codenamed “Adventurer,” which proves that full-sizers are the reason compact pickups are doomed in the US. According to ChryCo’s release, the “Adventurer” is
a value-priced, HEMI®-powered Ram 1500 regular cab truck that appeals to a cost-conscious, new-vehicle buyer who doesn’t want to give up performance and capability. The unnamed new Ram 1500, like the Ram Tradesman, offers buyers a standard HEMI V8 engine with its 20 mpg rating for the same price competitors are charging for their V6 engines.
The price? $23,830, including destination charge. That’s less than a V6, automatic 2WD Toyota Tacoma and nearly identical to a V6, automatic, 2WD Nissan Frontier. And at 20 MPG hwy, the Adventurer’s efficiency tradeoff is relatively small considering the performance advantages of its 390 HP HEMI V8. Though we applaud Ram’s decision to bring an entry-level, utilitarian pickup to the table, we bemoan the fact that this makes selling a compact pickup that much harder.
Sean writes:
I am looking to purchase either a 2002 Acura RSX automatic with 105,360 miles for $6995 from a dealer or a 2005 Scion tC manual with 86455 miles for $7986. Which car do you think is better and a better deal?
Today, I saw a new, and so far the finest specimen of Japan’s new export products: A car factory. Remember when the Nikkei wrote about a new Toyota factory in the Miyagi Prefecture with a U-shaped assembly line where the assembly time is cut down to a third? Not only did they get it wrong. They missed the best part of the story: Budget car factories, ready for export. Of course, that’s not how it was sold to the natives.
Ohira is a little village near Sendai. Sendai is a town two Shinkansen hours north of Tokyo. The area is famous for its beef tongue, not the hottest export item. Ohira was known for exactly nothing until Toyota decided in 2007 to relocate their factory from Sagamihara, in the outskirts of Tokyo, up into the woods of Ohira.
A year later, the whole region went into shock: Read More >
The Aveo name may be all used up in the North American market, but in emerging markets around the world it still enjoys quite a bit of equity. So, when this thing goes on sale stateside in September it will be called the Sonic… but for at its global launch in Seoul, South Korea, this latest Chevy-by-Daewoo is simply the new Aveo.
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