Alright, so we’ve gone to South America (Argentina,  Brazil), Africa (Libya) and Asia (North Korea). It’s now time to visit Europe, and why not start with Spain, a perilous but fascinating place at the moment.

If you can’t wait for the next update and want to know all about car sales in 154 countries around the planet, simply go here. Es mi blog y es impresionante, sí señor! Read More >

The greatest thing about the Nissan Juke is its absolute peach of an engine, a 1.6 liter, direct-injected, turbocharged little screamer. In fact it’s such a wickedly fun little engine that it’s a shame it exists only in a polarizing vehicle like the Juke. To that end, I noted in my review of Nissan’s funky “sportcross” that

Without the marketers, it’s tempting to believe that Nissan’s engineers would have widened the Versa platform, added the fantastic turbocharged engine, and then decided to simply put a steroidal Versa body on top, creating the king of all B-segment hot hatches.

Well, according to this shot from China Car Times, at least part of that fantasy is coming true. In this first shot of an updated “2011/2012” Tiida (Versa), you can see the phrase “DIG Turbo” gracing its flanks, suggesting that the Juke’s little 188 HP mill (or, at least a detuned version of same) could be headed to the next-gen Versa. Does this mean a high-po “GTI”-style variant is coming to America’s best-selling B-segment car? Let’s hope so. Frankly, the more vehicles that get that feisty little engine, the better. [Awesome “Engine porn” video for Nissan’s 1.6 DIG Turbo after the jump]

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I’ve dispatched one of TTAC’s writers to get to the bottom of the copyright fight that’s surrounding Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” tagline, as Reuters reports that Chrysler’s claim to the line may not actually hold up.
Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

[Moda’s] attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

But the attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”

Meanwhile, another battle over automotive copyrights may yet be brewing: Saab has introduced its own answer to SYNC and Onstar, named IQon, a term which may be in conflict with Nissan’s display technology used in the Juke, named I-Con. Hit the jump to see a video of the Nissan system in action, and let us know if you think Saab is going to have to come up with a new name, or if copyright law will let both of these naems coexist.
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Good news! Google Maps will now point you to the nearest “electric car charging station” if you search for same, reports CR.

[Google] is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing a database of available charging stations (known as EVSEs, or electric vehicle supply equipment) around the United States. Installers of EVSEs have the option of having their stations displayed as public. When we were charging the Nissan Leaf at our facility, not a public venue, our chargers showed up on the Leaf’s navigation system; The navi in the Leaf is designed to remember sites at which it had been charged.

The bad news? Well, just look at that map. Unless you live in California, you don’t need Google to tell you where the nearest charging station is, you need a clairvoyant to tell you where one might someday be built. If you’re still struggling to understand why EVs need to be tested on a local level before the federal government spends more money subsidizing them on a national level, look no further.
[UPDATE: The screen grab above is not comprehensive. Surf over Google Maps for a closer look at EV charging stations in your area]

Have you ever been made an offer you couldn’t refuse? You never know when it might happen, so a little practice can’t hurt. Here’s the scenario: thanks to one of my old friends from New Jersey who has an amazing collection of Louisville Sluggers, 200 thousand dollars has been allocated to TTAC’s writers. $20,000 each. You’re welcome.

There is one catch.

The writers at TTAC have to buy a new car. That’s right. One new car (no BOGO free deals for a leftover Aveo). It can be anything they like. Hyundai, Toyota, Chevy… Jaguar? Fat chance! These fellows can go a little over the $20k mark on the MSRP. But the real world price before tax, title, bullshit fees etc. has to be no more than $20k.

So what car will they get? Will they follow the bleating herd of Billy Joel fans and buy something more milquetoast than a Milan? Perhaps a beige Camcord with an off-creme interior? Or maybe a Jetta that’s been as thoroughly decontented as Christina Aguilera’s last album? Or will it be something a bit more in your face? Like a… well… let me get to that later. I have to go move some mink coats. Just remember, when you’re taking favors from guys in a certain line of work, every decision has consequences…
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The opening minutes of Le Mans contain perhaps the most subtly powerful automotive endorsement in film history. It’s the day before the race is slated to begin, and Steve McQueen’s character, Michael Delaney, is driving his 1970 Porsche 911 around the course, stopping to look at the spot where he’d crashed the year before. There’s nothing exciting about his trip along the small French streets, no speeds above perhaps thirty or forty miles per hour, none of the ridiculous, staged tail-out antics which are now found in everything from video games to Nissan Altima advertisements. There’s merely the plain implication: The Porsche 911 is the car chosen by the world’s finest sports-car drivers. If you don’t want that 911S desperately by the time the sequence is done, you don’t love cars very much — and if you wanted it very desperately, now’s your chance.

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When shopping for a car to thrash all weekend long on a hairy road course, most of us don’t consider the Nissan Prairie. Why not? The Team Sputnik ’86 Stanza Wagon proved at last month’s Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons that you don’t need an RX-7 or E30 to do well in low-buck endurance racing. Read More >

Reuters found another problem for Japanese car makers: They will miss out on China’s luxury car market. Other than the German competition, the top Japanese manufacturers export all their luxury cars to China. “With Toyota, Honda and Nissan having shut all of plants in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, exports to China will suffer,” says Reuters. That comes at a very inconvenient time. Read More >

If you want to become a leading player in a segment (say, minivans), you have a choice: Either do what everyone else is doing, only better, or do something entirely different, and hope that car buyers see the result as better. With the Mississippi-made 2004 Quest, Nissan attacked America’s minivan market using the latter strategy. The styling was bizarre, the suspension tuning was sporty, the seats were French-inspired, and the gauges were centrally located. And even after revisions relocated the gauges and improved the initially abysmal reliability, the gambit failed. That particular Quest came to a slightly premature end with the 2009 model year. Now, following a one-year hiatus, Nissan has launched another Quest. This iteration is very different from the 2004, but still manages to be very different from the competition. Prognosis?

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We all remember the Starion, with its TURBO badging on everything from the seat belts to the door handles, but who among us can recall ever having seen the other 80s hot-rod Mitsubishi in the wild? Read More >

Japan’s industrial output suffered major damage after one of the world’s strongest earthquakes, followed by an unprecedented tsunami hit Japan last week. Global supply chains are disrupted.

This is today’s rundown on auto plant closures. Read More >

Say what you want about Toyota’s recent struggles, it still knows how to sell the bejeezus out of its C-segment Corolla/Matrix juggernaut. Toyota’s compact twosome outsold its next closest competitor by more volume than the Kia Forte sold on its own. Chevy’s Cruze is also sneaking up on Civic (please note: Feb 2010 volume for Cruze is actually Cobalt), and VW’s new Jetta is streaking up the charts, landing Volkswagen’s C-segment offerings into fourth place (Golf made up only 2,337 of that volume). Elantra and Sentra are neck-and-neck, although look for Nissan’s aging compact to be leapfrogged by both Hyundai and Ford when fully ramped-up volumes of the new Elantra and Focus hit dealers.

On most weekends, TTAC publishes the fun, frivolous kinds of stories that don’t make it into our regular weekly coverage, exposing our readers to everything from the hilarity of the LeMons series, to obscure automotive histories to pictorials of such undercovered vehicles as vintage Snow Cats. This weekend, however, TTAC is feeding you your vegetables: sales graphs of the major automotive segments from February. We start our coverage with the subcompact segment, where the Nissan Versa continues to kill the competition, proving yet again that what Americans are looking for in a small car is a large car. Kia’s Soul held off the Fiesta’s attack on the number two spot, while Toyota’s Yaris slipped to Kia Rio volume levels and the Scion xD slipped to the bottom of the chart. Meanwhile, few of the long-established names in this segment are beating their year-ago numbers, but look for that to change if gas prices keep going up.

While other car blogs interrupt their reporting to show gratuitous pictures from the massive earthquake in Japan, TTAC stays on topic. Even in this confused state, there are better sources for real-time information on the catastrophe in Japan than armchair car bloggers.

“The devastating earthquake that hit eastern Japan Friday will likely deal a severe blow to the nation’s overall economy, as that section of the country serves as a major hub for automobile, autoparts, energy and materials industries,” The Nikkei [sub] reports. The world’s auto industry has barely begun to recover. The disaster in Japan could have a major impact.

While having live news of the evacuation around two nuclear power plants in one ear, here the situation of the auto plants according to the latest news. Read More >