It was a vehicle seen as barely there. Something of a ghost, really, given how unlikely a person was to actually spy one with their own eyes.
The Nissan Rogue Hybrid.
Last year, we told you that the well-camouflaged Rogue Hybrid had not disappeared — after showing up for 2017, the automaker briefly vanished it in order to incorporate mid-2018 updates bound for the Rogue model line. Well, we’re now here to tell you the Rogue Hybrid will disappear for a much longer period of time. Read More >
Padding out its crossover lineup and going downmarket, like every other premium automaker, Audi presented us with a new model this week — the A1 Citycarver. Based upon the A1 Sportback, the Citycarver is lifted two-inches to provide additional clearance for potholes, urban debris, and the occasional instance of curb hopping. The ride hight also helps the brand’s A1 line take advantage of the severe case of crossover crazies that has swept through the global market.
Good on Audi for downplaying the adventure/lifestyle marketing and calling the Citycarver what it is — a small urban runabout with the ability to leave town. Bonus points for allowing it to maintain its foundation’s above-average looks. Read More >
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Bentley is not Chevrolet. The British luxury automaker’s executive suite does not spend its time searching for the thinnest sliver of white space in the brand’s lineup, eager to find a home for a new utility model.
Thus, the Bentayga — an SUV boasting questionable styling that debuted in 2016 — will continue on as the brand’s sole utility vehicle, its CEO says. For now, at least, Bentley has no interest in fleshing out its go-anywhere-in-style lineup. Read More >
As you read last week, Nissan is busy sharpening its axe, ready to chop the company back to sunnier balance sheets. Some 12,500 positions, or more than 9 percent of the automaker’s global workforce, are poised to disappear as Nissan attempts to recover from a serious slump.
News of the cull came on the heels of a dismal first-quarter earnings report in which the company revealed a net income loss of 94.5 percent. Its operating margin? A prosciutto-thin 0.1 percent, down from 4 percent a year earlier. Something needs to give.
What will give are jobs, a lot of them, and numerous car models — roughly 10 percent of the brand’s global lineup by 2022, the automaker said. Most of those models will be el-cheapo offerings in developing markets. As for sales, the automaker finds itself sliding in a major market where bright points of light are hard to find.
Let’s search for those stars. Read More >
Subaru started its first full decade in North America in the Seventies, where it sold the microscopic rear-engined 360. By the Eighties the company had found its niche among crunchy granola types and professors with four-wheel drive wagons like the GL. But Subaru wanted more; specifically customers with more money. Enter the XT.
In accordance with all that is true in the U.S. sports car market, General Motors is about to sell 2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8 Stingrays by the truckload before settling in to a few years of significantly less volume.
Even casual industry observers understand that trend. Between the hype, the early adoption fervor, and the performance leaps generally represented by a new species of sportus caricus, shoppers tend to turn en masse to the newest, flashiest, boldest two-door. That pattern is amplified by vehicles with legendary status.
Fortunately, the legends aren’t as inherently prone to suffering from dramatic, post-hype declines in demand (See: FR-S, Scion.) History tells us General Motors’ 66-year-old sports car will surge some 40 percent in 2020 and then continue rising in 2021 before dipping somewhat in 2022.
The Corvette average buyer age is a whole ‘nuther story. Read More >
Two months and change after Ford Motor Company ceased production of North America’s smallest Blue Oval vehicle, Europeans are waking up to news that their tiniest offering has a date with death.
The Ka+, a name this writer can’t read without imagining a Bostonian pronouncing the word “car,” will disappear from the marketplace thanks to —what else? — fuel economy regulations that disproportionately impact small vehicles. Read More >
With the 2020 BMW 1 Series having debuted (as a hatchback) earlier this year, we knew a new sedan was en route. In fact, spy shots of the vehicle started cropping up in Europe and China almost immediately. However, that particular vehicle turned out to be a refresh of the Chinese-made 1 Series (F52). But it wasn’t of much concern to us. Here in the United States, the smallest modern BMW sedan to grace our shores (at least until the 2 Series Gran Coupe arrives) is the 3 Series… or is it?
Delivering to us a bit of a head-scratcher, a friend of the site offered up a handful of photographs of a Chinese-market 1 Series donned in camouflage. The twist? It was sitting inside of a warehouse located on our East Coast and not halfway around the world.
The first thing that many people do when their new car is ready for its first set of replacement tires is to ditch them for something else. Whether that’s a tire with a high tread mileage guarantee, an ultra-grippy tire, or the cheapest thing they can find, few people actively seek out the exact same tires that their vehicle came with from the factory.
If OEMs could have just selected the best-rated tire from the Tire Rack website, or asked people on a forum what they preferred, and called it a day, wouldn’t they have done that? If you think you’re smarter than an entire team of OEM engineers, then go ahead and slap on that 80,0000-mile-guaranteed set of tires. But, you will want to understand what you might be giving up in the process. Read More >
On Wednesday, we reported Nissan was preparing a financial report that was presumed to involve quarterly profit falling by around 90 percent — necessitating roughly 10,000 job cuts. At the time, Nissan gave some vague confirmation that the estimates were accurate while halfheartedly attempting to refute them.
However, when the official numbers came out on Thursday, the reality was worse than initially assumed. Nissan reported an almost 99-percent drop in operating profit in the latest quarter, citing falling sales in every major market except China. Rather than 10,000 job cuts, it’ll require 12,500. Read More >
I spent part of my week in the nation’s capital so I could testify in front of Congress about a report I wrote.
Uh, sorry, that’s what Robert Mueller did. But I was there, mere blocks away in Georgetown, to drive the all-new Cadillac XT6.
When we stopped at a Virginia vineyard for lunch, Cadillac took the time to show us an updated version of the XT5 crossover (formerly known as the SRX).
While we’ve dinged the media for erroneously reporting that automakers were unilaterally “backing” California in the fuel-economy fracas that’s currently taking place within American politics, it appears four of them actually are starting to choose a side. However, this again requires a bunch of clarification. Despite not adhering fully to the state’s ideal emissions scenario, Ford Motor Co., BMW Group, Volkswagen Group, and Honda Motor Co. released a joint announcement stating they have reached a voluntary agreement with the state of California to adopt compromised vehicle emissions rules.
Since there’s nothing binding in the joint agreement and automakers make (and break) promises all the time, the deal is largely meaningless. Doubly so, since the fuel-economy rollbacks have yet to be finalized. But this does illustrate how a handful of manufacturers are willing to accommodate others in order to get a nationwide solution. It also shows a softening of California’s previously ironclad environmental stance, which is much more interesting. Read More >
J.D. Power’s Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout Study, cleverly nicknamed as APEAL, was released on Wednesday. While we absolutely wouldn’t recommend using it as the foundation for your next vehicular purchase, it is a fun way to examine how the public views the various brands after 90 days of ownership.
Technically an automotive popularity contest, the 2019 APEAL study examines an owners’ “emotional attachment and level of excitement with their new vehicle across 77 attributes, ranging from the power they feel when they step on the gas to the sense of comfort and luxury they feel when climbing into the driver’s seat,” according to its publisher.
Expectedly, premium brands performed better overall — no doubt helped by their high-falutin owners’ smug sense of self-satisfaction. But there were a few pedestrian nameplates that managed to buck the trend and find themselves in the mix. Read More >
Encore, not Regal. Regal TourX if you please, not the Cascada. No to the LaCrosse, yes to the Enclave. Regal Sportback shunned, Envision approved.
This isn’t an elementary analysis of the pro-crossover/anti-car trends of the marketplace or GM’s China-centric Buick brand. Rather, it’s the message Buick seems to be sending in its own advertising.
Of course, that’s not the official line from Buick PR. But the more you watch the six-month-old “Mistaken Identity” commercial, the more you wonder what Buick must think of its own cars. Read More >
Last time on Buy/Drive/Burn, we considered three-door Japanese SUVs from 1989. In this edition, we move forward a couple years in history and down a size class. Up for grabs are compact SUVs with removable roofs, all of them Japanese.
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