Andrew writes:
I’m a 21-year-old college student with a 2001 Chevy Cavalier with the 2.2L and 5-speed. I bought the car when I started college with 40,000 miles on it and I have driven it to 70,000 miles without any problems, despite not always being nice to it. But now the suspension — I think it’s coming from the front — is starting to make a good bit of noise.
When TTAC’s Tal Bronfer caught a D-segment Hyundai station wagon brake testing in Austria’s Groβglockner High Alpine Road, we concluded that the “Sonata wagon” was
not a simple sheetmetal job
It turns out that was something of an understatement.
Despite being introduced to the US back in 2006, sales of Nissan’s Versa are hardly slacking with age. Sales of the Versa have increased every year since its introduction except for last year, when volume dropped by about 2,000 units, and this year the subcompact sedan/hatch has already set a new annual sales record. Even the newer, arguably better-looking Kia Soul hasn’t been able to unseat the Versa from its perch as king of the subcompacts, having sold only about 60k units this year to the Versa’s 89,500. But despite this continued success, Nissan is replacing the slightly geeky-looking Versa with this, the 2012 Nissan Sunny, which has just been unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show in Southern China.
The French parliament has taken a step toward significantly reducing the non-monetary penalties that accompany most speeding tickets. The National Assembly voted Thursday to diminish the amount of time that minor traffic violations affect a driver’s record, and consequently his insurance rates. The changes came in the form of a compromise amendment to a wide-ranging homeland security bill known by the acronym LOPSSI II.
EVs are, nice wouldn’t there be (putting range and price aside for a moment) one niggling problem: The power has to come from somewhere. And currently, the exhaust that will no longer be produced by the car, will come out of the smokestacks of a mostly coal fired power plant. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could power our cars from sunshine alone? Definitely renewable. And free. Honda is trying to do just that. Read More >
As far as total sales go, India is no China. 1.43 million units were sold on the subcontinent last year, a bit more than a tenth the cars the Chinese had consumed in the same year. But India is revving up quickly. Read More >
Ever wonder what they call Canadian geese in Canada? Me too. I asked a Canadian, but she didn’t speak much English, she was facing away from me during the dance, and I couldn’t hear her over the DJ anyway.
This is the new “Grand C-Max” by Ford. In Europe, the C-Max is a “tall wagon” five-seater that competes with both the “Golf Plus” and the 1987 Honda “Wagovan”. VW sued on that. Said it was too close to the Vanagon. Anyway, there’s a bit of a fetish in Europe for hatchbacks that are just like regular hatchbacks only taller. I have no idea why. They aren’t any more useful. Think of it as our mini-SUV fetish. It’s just that stupid.
Back to this Grand C-Max, which is a small seven-seat minivan. Here in Sarah Palin’s America, there’s no regular C-Max, so the Grand C-Max is now the C-Max. You can have a turbocharged engine with it and a panoramic roof. Remember when you were trying to impress someone else on your favorite web forum and you said that, and I quote, “the only thing keeping me from buying a new car is the COMPLETE LACK of European turbo minivans?” Oops!
“The next 24 months will be tough for us,” said Soh Weiming, Volkswagen’s company’s executive president for China, to Bloomberg. Is Volkswagen running scared in China? Will the bubble finally burst? Soh Weiming is worried. Read More >
I will be appearing on Fox New Channel’s Fox and Friends program tomorrow at 8:40 am Eastern (5:40 Pacific) to discuss my latest NY Times Op-Ed, the auto bailout, and Detroit’s fuel economy issues. And if none of that interests you, be sure to tune in anyway for a chance to see what TTAC’s Editor-in-Chief looks like just moments after rolling out of bed.
Renault’s “We Live In Modern Times” series of ads for its Twingo subcompact were a favorite at TTAC’s “Shameless Sexual Exploitation Weekend,” but it’s this Italian Twingo ad that has the French automaker back in the news. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has banned this Publicis-produced spot from both state-owned RAI television and his own Mediaset broadcasting empire, for its overt use of lesbian themes. It’s not clear exactly what motivated Berlusconi’s decision, but for a guy who is now most famous for his “bunga-bunga” group sex parties and underage girlfriends, it’s one hell of a hypocritical move.
When BMW relaunched the Mini brand in 2001 with a modern interpretation of Alex Issigonis’s classic, it made a big splash by proving that high-end customers would pay top dollar for a well-branded subcompact car. The only problem was that not everyone could live with the Cooper’s size limitations, so BMW extended its wheelbase and added an third suicide door, creating the Clubman. The Clubman did not make the kind of impact that BMW hoped, as it turned out that four doors were as important as the Clubman’s extra space. Accordingly, BMW developed a four-door “SUV” for the MINI brand, giving it a potential brand boost in the size-obsessed US market. Now, for reasons that are difficult to fathom, MINI is previewing a two-door concept version of the Countryman known as the “Paceman.” Because customers have been clamoring for the (relative) inefficiency of the Countryman paired with the (relative) impracticality of the Clubman? Or because Land Rover just debuted its own “Sports Activity Coupe” and MINI can’t help but chase the pointless niche with its own me-too offering? No prizes for guessing…
Automotive News [sub] reports that Mitsubishi Motors North America has reached a deal with the workers of UAW Local 2488 to keep its assembly plant in Normal, Il open for the foreseeable future, building vehicles based on a new platform. Mitsubishi previously missed a deadline to assign new products to the Normal plant, forcing the firm to increase base wages there. With wages increasing and no new products in the offing, many have speculated that Mitsu would exit the US market, a move its CEO has strongly rejected. In fact, it now appears that Mitsubishi will cut back or abandon its European production rather than exit the US. But the new deal with its US labor force hasn’t shed any new light on how Mitsubishi will achieve its goal to quadruple sales… and until the firm announces new products for US production, this mystery will only deepen.
Here’s a question that may well be impossible to answer, due to the numerous gray areas involved. Sure, we could set all kinds of limitations (e.g., “production run” applies only to engines built by the original manufacturer) and of course you stumble into the quagmire of defining when changes to an engine design become significant enough to result in a different engine… but why should we do that? Read More >
The good old simple days, when a couple of knobs pretty much took care of everything a dashboard had to offer. Take your time with this Clue, because I’m just sitting down to put it together. See you in a few hours.
A hearty congratulations go to texan01 who knew a Tempest transaxle when he saw one.
Lotus has approved its Emas city car concept for production in 2013, giving the sportscar firm an in-house competitor to Aston Martin’s Cygnet rebadge of the Toyota iQ. The extended-range electric car was first shown at the last Geneva auto show, when our own Martin Schwoerer praised its “enormous’ interior space, and well-engineered packaging. The Emas uses Lotus’s three-cylinder range extender, mated to an electric drivetrain with a peak output of 75 kW (101 HP) and 206 lb-ft of torque, and will be the only non-performance vehicle in the Lotus range. But it won’t be the cheapest bit of Lotus-branded kit you’ll be able to buy when the brand relaunches, as the NYT reports
Lotus will also put its name on an array of quotidian objects like key fobs, cellphone holders and laptop bags, which a Lotus publicist described as “cool, high-end pieces that provide an entry level to the brand.”
But with so much emphasis being placed on turning Lotus into a “lifestyle brand,” there’s a major cloud hanging over the whole project: though Lotus is one of the quintessentially British brands, the firm says it will shift production to a supplier on the European continent (think Valmet and Magna-Steyr) if the British government doesn’t make with a £40m ($62m) Regional Growth Fund loan to support a new factory in Hethel. Which means that if the British government doesn’t take a huge gamble on a firm that even Bob Lutz thinks only has a 60 percent chance of success, Lotus will not only no longer be a true British brand, it won’t even build is own cars. But should British taxpayers bankroll such a risky play at a luxury niche?
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