As a terrible year draws to a close, Nissan can’t seem to put its bad luck behind it. In a case of “the hits keep on coming”, the automaker’s vice chief operating officer, Jun Seki, announced his departure from the company less than a month after taking on the position.

Seki, once a candidate for the CEO chair, was tasked with helping turn around the struggling company in the wake of the Carlos Ghosn scandal and concurrent sales plunge. At the same time, an American dealer group is suing Nissan over alleged Ghosn-era financial misdealings.

A merry Christmas it was not. Read More >

Unpopular sedan offerings are getting the axe across the board this year, prompting a QOTD series about the best offerings in each size class. We’ve previously discussed compact and midsize offerings, and we round out the end of 2019 with everyone’s favorite: large sedans.

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Christmas is upon us, and New Year’s Eve is lurking just around the corner. So with that in mind, here’s a look at how we’re operating these next two weeks.

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Remember when General Motors talked about delivering an autonomous vehicle, sans steering wheel or pedals, and how the Department of Transportation said Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards basically made it impossible? Well, GM hasn’t given up the fight to disassociate drivers from driving.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has started talks with GM over the automaker’s petition to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles on American roads last Friday. Acting NHTSA Administrator James Owens told Reuters that the petition (issued in 2018) is currently under review.

“I expect we’re going to be able to move forward with these petitions soon — as soon as we can,” Owens said, suggesting a final decision would be made in 2020. “This will be a big deal because this will be the first such action that will be taken.”  Read More >

Today we take a look at a stylish grey Alfa Romeo that is the only example of its type. With coachwork from one of the greatest names in the business, it’s Fifties artwork that moves.

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Prior to Congress taking the rest of the month off to relax and presumably gear up for an impeachment trial, they first had to settle their year-end tax package. Automakers were hoping that would include an extension of electric vehicle tax credits, but it was a doomed proposition.

An extension was initially included in the bipartisan Driving America Forward Act, which manifested this spring, before being incorporated into the Democrat-friendly GREEN Act (Growing Renewable Energy and Efficiency Now). That got it through the House but not the Republican-controlled Senate, which wasn’t interested.

While the current $7,500 EV tax credit remains in place, Tesla and General Motors have both reached their 200,000-vehicle quota. Naturally, they (and other automakers) lobbied for an expansion, one which would have seen a $7,000 credit kept in place until a manufacturer sold 600,000 electric automobiles. Several Republican lawmakers openly shared their distaste for the plan, though few more openly than Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who had an opposing bill — called the Fairness for Every Driver Act — interested in reducing subsidies on the grounds that EV credits have already done enough.  Read More >

Buyers of the revamped-for-2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid seem pleased with their vehicle’s upgraded fuel economy, but ask them about range, and you’re liable to get an earful.

In an unusual development not often associated with non-EVs, RAV4 Hybrid owners have begun complaining about lackluster driving distance — an issue that stems from the model’s redesigned gas tank. Read More >

One of the bigger stories this year, albeit one that occurred mostly in the background of splashier news, concerned a fun-to-drive compact car that did pretty well for itself over the past decade. For 2019, that car got a makeover and a push upmarket, aligning it more closely with other models in the lineup. That car was the Mazda 3 — and the 2019 model year brought big changes not only to its content, but also its price.

Gone was the American-market’s base 2.0-liter engine and most of the model’s manual transmission availability, and these omissions played an obvious role in inflating the model’s entry price by roughly three grand. Looking back on the sales decline that marked the new 3’s entry to the market, Mazda’s leadership is expressing regret. Read More >

As the calendar flips into 2020, various and sundry beancounters have begun bleating that we’re all spending way too much money on cars. The folks at AAA remarked earlier this year that the average annual cost of vehicle ownership amounts to $9,282, or $773.50 a month. That’s the highest cost associated with such since they began tracking expenses in 1950.

Santa is just around the corner (no, really — go look) so TTAC is here with a fictional present: assuming there is a monthly bank error in your favor of $773.50, what would you go out and buy today?

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A system designed to detect obstacles on the road ahead and automatically apply the brakes is acting up in current-generation Mazda 3 vehicles. Seems it’s seeing things that aren’t there.

On Friday, Mazda announced a recall of 35,390 Mazda 3 sedans and hatchbacks in the U.S., spanning the 2019 and 2020 model years. Read More >

In the lengthy run-up to the Mustang Mach-E‘s arrival date, Ford made the fairly unusual decision to order dealers not to advertise the EV crossover at a price that falls below MSRP. Ford wants its first ground-up electric vehicle to sell for full price, and to ensure it does, it made the even more unusual choice of eliminating invoice pricing, making both invoice and MSRP the same.

At the customer-dealer level, things may be different, but not all buyers have to worry about paying full MSRP for the Mach-E. The first discounts are on the books, but you’ll need to be a member of the Blue Oval clan to ensure any savings. Read More >

Earlier this fall, word arose that Fiat Chrysler had resurrected a practice from the bad old days of the company — a sales bank of unallocated vehicles churned out by over-productive factories and pushed on dealers with little use for them. The company claimed otherwise, saying that its new “predictive analytics” system was simply in the process of being refined to better guide the flow of certain models and configurations to dealers.

With 2019 nearly at an end, unordered inventory is once again on the rise, Bloomberg reports. And not by any small amount, either. In response, FCA is reportedly pulling out all the stops to get these vehicles into consumers’ hands before 2020. Read More >

Today’s Rare Ride is part Belgian, part Italian, and almost unheard of. It’s an OSI-Ford 20M TS sports coupe from 1967.

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The fun police, also known as European regulators, are causing sleepless nights for that continent’s automobile manufacturers, all thanks to their imposition of ultra-stringent Euro 6 emissions standards.

You’ve already read about Mazda cutting back on 2.0-liter MX-5 sales in the UK to lessen the brand’s fleetwide emissions output. Now, Mercedes-Benz’s performance arm might have to cull a great number of AMG-badged vehicles to keep itself in good standing. Read More >

As everyone in your Twitter feed screams for revolution, evolutionary advancements in technology (and other things) are still proving capable of generating big gains for society. For new vehicle buyers, too.

Jeep’s Wrangler Unlimited EcoDiesel is a case in point. Launched for the 2020 model year, the oil-burning off-roader nets buyers 260 horsepower and a whopping 442 lb-ft of torque — some 307 lb-ft more than a base Wrangler of 30 years ago. Despite boasting only a half-liter of additional displacement and weighing significantly more than a 1990 Iron Duke model, the EcoDiesel returns an extra 8 mpg in combined driving.

Let’s take a look at what the EPA had to say about Jeep’s newest offering. Read More >