The Nissan name was first used in 1933, but the company's history goes back much further. Originally known as Kwaishinsha Motorcar Works, the company produced its first automobile, the DAT, in 1914. DAT later became Datsun (son of DAT) in 1931 and Datsuns went on to become the first mass-produced vehicles in Japan. Americans got their first look at the Datsun in 1958 - the 1200 Sedan. The Datsun 240Z was released as a 1970 model and it became the best selling sports car in the world, selling 500,000 units in less than 10 years.
Sajeev and Steve – I have 3 kids ages 8, 5 and 2 and have two cars – a 2009 RAV4 4WD 4cyl with 20k on it as the daily driver and a 1995 525 as the fun-to-drive car (well, more fun than the RAV4, at least) which is just about to turn 200k and I just sense that something very expensive is about to happen so I want to trade up and get something used, but recent, in the $15k – $20k range.
What do you recommend in a sedan that is a good drive, is reasonably economical and won’t cost a fortune to maintain? The catch is that it needs to hold 3 kids in the back!
Consumer Reports released its top picks car list for 2011. According to Consumer Reports, these are the most reliable cars you can (and should) buy. With some notable exceptions, it’s a foreign affair. Out of 10 cars recommended, eight are foreign, or make that Asian: 6 Japanese cars are top picks, followed by two Korean and two American cars. European cars are conspicuously absent. Read More >
It’s that time of the month again. Super-efficient Japan traditionally is first out of the gate with previous month sales numbers. Lately, there have been some who regret that efficiency. For the sixth straight month in a row, the Japanese new car market is tired, down, worn-out. Read More >
It’s not every day that an automotive blogger gets to drive the future of transportation, a radical rethinking of how we interact with our private transport, and yet that’s exactly what I recently did. And no, I’m not talking about the Prius Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV)… that’s just a Prius with some larger batteries and re-worked software. No, what makes our time with this particular Prius noteworthy is that it isn’t technically private transport. Welcome to the future: the public plug-in hybrid (PPHEV).
The analysts RL Polk prove just how hot All Wheel Drive is right now, demonstrating that over a third of all vehicles sold in October and November of last year were equipped with AWD. Even more interesting: last Summer didn’t see the typical seasonal drop in AWD-equipped model sales. Polk’s Tom Libby breaks it down
At the make level, every ongoing make except four enjoyed an increase in AWD/4WD penetration in the September – November 2010 time period when compared to the same time period in the prior year. And the five largest makes based on retail registrations (Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chevrolet and Nissan) all experienced increased AWD/4WD take rates, led by Nissan (up 25%) and Toyota (17%). Lastly, in the 11 months of 2010 for which registration data are available, the two makes with the highest AWD mix among all those that offer both cars and light trucks, Subaru and Audi, have substantially out-performed the industry, with retail registrations up 21% and 20%, respectively, versus the industry gain of 7%.
Everyone doesn’t need AWD, but plenty of people want it… and it’s no coincidence that the two brands most closely associated with AWD (Audi and Subaru) are on sales tears right now. But will AWD continue to climb? Gas prices could put a crimp on the AWD party, but assuming for a moment that gas prices stay flat, where would the AWD fleet mix top out? Will the AWD mix ever hit 50 percent? More?
Developing a new car with traditional technology costs an arm and a leg. Add future technology, and you are starting to talk real money. You need to spread the R&D costs across a lot of cars. The trouble is, massive sales of EVs are still just a dream. What to do in such a dicey situation? You look for partners. Renault and Daimler hammered out a new agreement. “Renault will supply the electric motors for the Smart and Twingo, we develop and make the batteries for both models,” Daimler’s head of research and development Thomas Weber told his hometown paper Stuttgarter Zeitung in an interview that will appear today in the print edition. Read More >
The third annual Gator-O-Rama 24 Hours of LeMons endurance race is in the books, and a 29-year-old Datsun just beat out 80 or so competitors— most of them less than half the Datsun’s age— to bring home the Win On Laps trophy for Team Z-Wrecks. Read More >
Three usually reliable research organizations agree: When automakers release February sales this coming week, they will be strong. Analysts see a sales increase of about 20 percent, and a SAAR in the 12 million territory. Read More >
In January, car imports to Japan shot up 53 percent, reports Automotive News’ [sub]Asia Editor Hans Greimel from Tokyo. Quick, who do you think takes top honors? Read More >
Everybody, please say hi to Matt Gasnier, our newest TTAC contributor. Matt has a strange car fetish: He counts them. Out of Sydney, Australia, Matt runs a blog named Best Selling Cars. If your want to know what cars sell best in Austria to Zimbabwe, Best Selling Cars is the go to site. What cars do Afghanistan and Sudan have in common? The Hilux. Which car is most popular in Sweden? It’s not a Swedish car. Matt will grace TTAC regularly from now on. He wanted to know where he should start. My answer: “Wherever.”
Said Matt: “Why don’t I start with A.” – ED
Most of the car world is either still recovering from the GFC gloom or is suffering the hangover of a couple of artificially boosted years. Only a few countries are at their highest levels ever. Among them China and Brazil (doh!) but little do people know that Argentina also belongs to this super-exclusive club. Read More >
In an extended interview with Reuters, Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn talks about the balancing act of leading two global automakers while maintaining their unique identities, a balance Ghosn says he wants to try to preserve even as the alliance looks to restructure its capital. Renault’s 44.3% stake in Nissan has caused some trouble with financial analysts because, as Ghosn puts it,
we are challenged (by financial markets) over how much capital we have imprisoned into the structure of the alliance. It’s a fair challenge. We are going to be studying and analyzing this with outsiders also, what are the ways to respond to these expectations from the financial markets without challenging the operating model which consists of keeping the two companies vibrant, motivated, engaged and keeping their identities
Does that mean a full merger? A new corporate structure? Where is Ghosn looking for answers as he attempts to give the markets what they want while maintaining the delicate balance between the needs of his two firms?
Though it appears that it may take even more government stimulus to achieve President Obama’s goal of putting one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, online auto juggernaut Edmunds has come out against existing EV tax credits in a commentary by CEO Jeremy Anwyl. Anwyl’s argument is rooted in the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy‘s finding that the tax credit-qualifying Chevy Volt is only the 13th-greenest vehicle on the market while its greenest, the natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX, remains unsubsidized. Anwyl argues
The problem is this: When the government picks a technology, it crowds out development of other, potentially promising alternatives, like the natural gas engine used in the Honda Civic GX (above). LNG is not a new technology. I had friends who converted their vehicle to natural gas back in the Seventies. But how much are we hearing about it today? Or what about hydrogen fuel cells? A few years back, they were the stars of the major auto shows. Were any fuel-cell vehicles on display at the recent Detroit auto show? No. Every automaker was busy touting EVs.
Dear TTAC: After six months of commuting by bus from New Jersey to Manhattan, I’ve decided to treat myself by buying myself a car (my wife commutes with our 10-year-old RX300), getting a monthly parking space through my company and driving into work every day. Please don’t try to talk me out of this decision: the buses are routinely late, stop at every corner between my house and the highway, take me to the wrong part of town, and generally take at least twice as long all-in as driving in the few, blessed days when I’ve driven to the office.
Nissan raised a tempest in a chatroom (or 20) when it claimed a 7:29:03 Nürburgring lap time for its GTR, and taunted Porsche that this time beat its 911 Turbo. Porsche took the bait, claiming that its drivers couldn’t replicate the GTR’s lap time and that Nissan must have used non-stock tires. Nissan fired back, and as the controversy became mired in he said-she-said nonsense, the fanboys graduallylost interest. And now, years later, Nissan is literally shoving the controversy into the faces of Porsche owners in hopes of getting even more mileage over one of the sillier controversies in the world of performance cars. But can you imagine this nearly three-year-old taunt actually stinging Porsche owners into considering a GTR?
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