Sinkholes, nature’s version of the Morlocks, are fascinating and scary things. They appear out of nowhere, swallowing up homes and vehicles like a muddy repossession agent.

A massive sinkhole currently devouring a major downtown street in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, caused commuter chaos, ruptured a water and gas main, flooded a partly constructed underground LRT station, and took the life of an innocent Dodge Grand Caravan.

The model might have been spared by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, but this vehicle wasn’t. Ottawa was last in the sinkhole news in 2012, when a man (and his Hyundai Accent) was gobbled up by a malevolent freeway.

Let this be a lesson to all drivers: the Earth is hungry.

See video of the meal after the break. Read More >

A certification document published by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) shows General Motors plans to sell a new version of the diminutive Chevrolet Spark in the U.S.

The Chevy Spark Activ, marketed as a “soft-roader” in India (where it will soon be sold as the Chevy Beat Activ), shows up in the CARB document as a 2017 model, alongside the regular Spark. Read More >

At the 23rd Automotive Outlook Symposium held in Detroit last week, participants representing manufacturing, banking, consulting and academia offered up predictions for 2016 and 2017. The general consensus: we’re in for a good time, possibly for a long time. The sales party will continue beyond 2017.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which compiled median results from the symposium, the forecast predicts a total of 17.3 million vehicles sold in the United States this year. In 2017, the total number of sales is expected to dip ever so slightly to 17.2 million vehicles.

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Yesterday, General Motors issued a release stating it will announce big news in Oshawa on Friday. According to The Star, that announcement will include 1,000 new jobs at GM’s engineering center, which now focuses on driverless and connected vehicles.

However, the announcement comes as uncertainty swirls around GM’s Oshawa Car Assembly Plant, a facility that many analysts believe is slated for closure.

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Yesterday, we reported that the 2016 Buick Envision crossover, already on sale in the U.S. and Canada, arrived with no marketing to herald its appearance.

That may be true for the early sales period, but with more Envisions now arriving on lots, Buick says the automaker has a slow advertising ramp-up planned for the new model. Read More >

TTAC is the American car buyer’s influencer of choice. We render verdicts, and the masses abide by our verdicts. Why do Americans buy more than 400,000 Toyota Camrys per year? Because TTAC’s Jack Baruth track-tested a Camry and was more than a little complimentary. That’s why.

Want more evidence of TTAC’s overwhelming authority? On April 11, this article on the subject of the Audi Q3 written by yours truly accused the Q3’s ride comfort of being nonexistent. I said the Q3 is the Audi that makes sure, against all reason, that I possess no pro-Audi bias.

You already know the results of such an article. In response to the critique, Americans would quickly turn away from the Q3, and inventory at Audi dealers would surely build up as customers cancelled their orders.

Or, the Audi Q3 would break its own U.S. sales record in April and then break that record again in May. Read More >

As a six-and-a-half-foot tall red-blooded male who’s driven in demolition derbies and owns John Deere machinery, I naturally gravitated to a big, rear-wheel drive, future Junkyard Find sedan when it came time to replace our family car four years ago. Settling on a Pentastar-powered 2012 Dodge Charger, one non-negotiable item was FCA’s 8.4-inch uConnect screen. The other was ZF’s eight-speed automatic.

As we know, hapless drivers have failed to put their ZF-equipped cars in Park, confused by the spring-loaded shifter’s design, which always returns it to a central position no matter what gear those drivers select. The NHTSA started an investigation and FCA voluntarily recalled over a million 2014-2015 Grand Cherokees and 2012-2014 Chargers/300s.

I got my recall notice in the mail yesterday, which provided me with two things: a “Visor Tips Card” and a good belly laugh.

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Raise your hands if you’ve seen a Buick Envision, or even heard someone mention it?

The Chinese-built crossover is now on sale in the U.S., but you’d be forgiven for not knowing that. Due to a case of odd timing, the model will see a short (and expensive) 2016 model year before all trim lines go on sale this fall as a 2017 model.

With no advertising to be found, it seems General Motors figured “Nah, we’ll tell them about it later.” Read More >

Because we’ll all be travelling around in autonomous electric pods any day now, more and more people want to know whether they’ll be able to hear a pin drop on the sidewalk once those nasty internal combustion vehicles are extinct.

Well, if it’s serene, pastoral bliss you’re looking forward to, don’t expect to find it anywhere near a freeway. The folks at Clean Technica looked at the best studies available on the issue, and the results are bad news for those who think “EV” is another word for “whisper.” Read More >

An updated version of Ford’s tiniest offering was just spotted on the road, and while the camo is strong with this one, it’s clear the subcompact Fiesta now sports higher-end clothes.

Expected to bow in mid-2017 as a 2018 model, the Fiesta (the unofficial car of TTAC) keeps its old platform, but makes big changes in design and, apparently, price. Read More >

After breaking its one-year-old sales record with a sharp increase to more than 61,000 sales in 2002, Jaguar’s U.S. sales decline began with a vengeance. Jaguar USA volume plunged 80 percent between 2002 and 2009 and has not since recovered. Under Ford Motor Company’s tutelage, Jaguar sold more cars in the United States in 2002 than in the last four years combined.

Yet seemingly overnight, May 2016 played host to a completely revolutionized Jaguar lineup. Year-over-year, U.S. sales at the Jaguar brand shot up 80 percent in May 2016. Thanks to two new products which instantly became Jaguar’s two best-selling models and generated more than half of all Jaguar sales, the Indian-owned British carmaker once again appears poised to approach the borders of America’s premium mainstream. Read More >

Volkswagen can start hauling the first of 800,000 Passat, CC and Eos models off of European streets after a German regulator granted approval to the automaker’s diesel emissions fix.

The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) says there’s nothing wrong with the plan to bring 2.0-liter diesel versions of those models into compliance with pollution laws. No doubt Volkswagen execs are happy to cross off another thing off their “to do” list. Read More >

It’s a good ol’ fashioned case of he said/his electric carmaker said.

Yesterday, we all puzzled over the case of the California man who claimed his brand spankin’ new Tesla Model X went Maximum Overdrive and attempted to turn a store into a drive-thru.

In response to media scrutiny, Tesla Motors reviewed the vehicle’s electronic log (isn’t data collection great?), and now says the finger of blame points squarely at the driver, not at a vehicle malfunction. Read More >

“Just because you’re paranoid,” my father used to joke, “it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” WMATA, the metro rail system of Washington, DC, has long been infamous for subpar service, indifferent adherence to schedule, and a truly staggering amount of crime that includes over 100 reported felony assaults in a four-year period.

Starting today, however, WMATA added a new nightmare for commuters who have already been brutalized into submission: the “SafeTrack” program that features maintenance “surges” to replace dangerous and degraded sections of railway. The resulting closures and delays have riders looking for alternatives to WMATA — but isn’t WMATA supposed to be an alternative to owning and operating a private automobile? What’s at the end of this “alternative” rabbit hole?

But if you needed another reason to quit WMATA besides WMATA asking you to quit, there’s a very good “alternative” reason out there as well: roving gangs of rapists.

Read More >

A California man is looking for answers — and repairs — after he claims his five-day-old Tesla Model X unexpectedly accelerated into a building at full speed as he was attempting to park.

Puzant Ozbag took to the Tesla forum to describe the June 5 incident, which launched his vehicle into the wall of an Irvine store and left his wife with minor airbag-related injuries. Read More >