Marketwatch reports that Honda and Toyota are warning against using their hybrid vehicles as taxi cabs, on safety concerns. Ford, GM and Nissan have also refused to certify the crashworthiness of their hybrid vehicles as hire cars. The story starts with an August 29 letter, sent from the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), asking automakers to certify that their hybrids or alternative fuel vehicles are manufacturer-approved to be used as taxicabs and safe when modified with partitions and other TLC requirements. This letter in turn came from a Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade (MTBT) legal challenge to TLC’s mandate that all new NY taxis be hybrids or other vehicles that achieve 25 miles-per-gallon. Citing a 2008 engineer’s report that finds hybrids to be unsafe and unfit as New York City taxicabs, the MTBT have held up TLC’s mandate in court, and now that automakers won’t certify their safety, the TLC mandate may be DOA. Issues over safety partitions and their interaction with side-curtain airbags and other safety equipment prevent automakers from certifying the safety of their hybrids when modified for taxi use. Since nobody crash-tests hybrids modified with safety partitions, nobody will take any legal responsibility for them, and thus they may well die on the vine. Meanwhile, in less hellishly violent corners of this great nation, cabbies are turning to hybrids with enthusiasm. As long as you don’t need several inches of bulletproof glass between you and your customers, hybrids are a safe, efficient choice for taxis.

In uncharacteristic style for anything French, Renault wants to expand into new territory. Still. They are “itching to get back into the U.S.,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. Despite a 55 percent drop in stock value this year and rumblings about Carlos Ghosn possibly stepping down from his dual-CEO post, someone at Renault thinks it might be a nice idea to return to the U.S. market. And it might be nice for Scarlett Johansson to tell me the next time she’s going to elope with someone better looking, funnier, taller and richer than I am. But as the philosopher Jagger said, you can’t always get what you want (credit to David Shore for that line). Nissan’s already slumping in The Land of the Free. Renault’s current lineup can’t meet U.S. EPA and crash standards which are different (though not necessarily better) than the Euro NCAP variety. Renault’s diesels wouldn’t have a prayer here without expensive testing or licensing the Bluetec system from Mercedes. And there’s the dealer/distribution problem, which can’t be magically solved by a hypothetical perfect Chrysler tie-up. And then there’s the whole “Americans don’t buy French” thing. And it’s all too bad, because I would love a Renault. But with even Renault saying that they would need to develop three new models specifically for the American market, you’ve got to wonder why the hell they’d bother.

Oh man, this is getting ugly. After Porsche’s Turbo and GT2 lost their fastest ’round the ‘Ring record to the Nissan GT-R, the German automaker was… skeptical. So they bought a GT-R in the U.S. and ran the Nürburgring to verify their Japanese rival’s claim. And so they didn’t, failing to get within 25 seconds of GT-R’s ‘Ring highly hyped lap time. Porsche attributed the GT-R’s triumph to non-standard tires, which would nullify the Nissan’s “fastest production car” lap record. Cornered at the Paris Auto Show, Nissan’s European spokesman Neil Reeve said “Quite simply we’re not going to get into a war of words with Porsche.” And then did exactly that. “The final word from us is that it was done on absolutely standard tyres which are available to customers in the showroom. They’re not trick tyres – absolutely standard tyres, normal road tyres. The GT-R comes with Bridgestone and Goodyear (Dunlop). One tyre gives slightly better times around the ‘Ring. We did it on Dunlop. They’re available with the car.” When car.com.au‘s Andrew Heasley pushed him for an explanation, well, read between the lines. “We absolutely maintain (that) Tochio Suzuki – the chief test driver on the GT-R program pounded thousands of laps – he got to know every inch of Nurburgring (circuit) and how the car performs on the Nurburgring and hence set that fabulous lap. More than that, I can’t speculate. I can’t explain why they couldn’t match the time.”

The forthcoming version of Nissan’s Z-car only gets 200cc more displacement than the current version, but Nissan is saying that improved performance will put the 370 Z on par with Audi’s TT and Porsche’s Cayman. “When we launched the current Z in 2002, it was a symbol of Nissan’s revival, a kind of brand symbol, plus driving performance,” Nissan’s Japanese marketing director Tatsuo Shimada tells Automotive News (sub). “This time with the 370Z, we are focusing more on the driving performance, as a pure driving sports car.” Besides the bump in displacement and power, the 370 Z will be lighter than the outgoing model. Development testing on the Nurburgring and elsewhere has specifically targeted improved handling in order to take on its European targets. Or, in less PR-friendly terms, the Mazda RX-8 R3. The flip-side of all the “taking on Europe” talk is that the Z should probably end up far more expensive than the current model, likely north of the $35k mark. If it can give the Cayman a run for its money though, that will still be something of a performance bargain. In other words, a true Z car. The 370 Z goes on sale in Japan later this year. A U.S. launch date has not been set.

Nissan’s concept cars have been pretty impressive for the past few motor shows. There was the Pivo, a toyish-but-feasible city car that had electric motors in the wheel hubs, enabling it to do 360-degree turns. It was a bubbly, friendly vision of driving in the future. Then Nissan presented the Mixim, which looked like Darth Vader’s mask on wheels. The idea was to make an urban electric car that looked serious, even aggressive. Both owed their design language to Mangas, guaranteeing a certain attractiveness to teenagers. Today in Paris, Nissan unveiled the Nuvo which is equally electric and inspired by Japanese comic books, but in addition integrates nature-oriented themes such as flowers, and recycled materials. I like it, despite its megalomaniac motto claiming it’s “the future of the city car”. Any car that sports a new design language has my sympathies. The Nuvo is a 3+1, comparable in packaging to the Toyota iQ. Nuvo is to be rolled out in the context of the Better Place pilot projects in Denmark and Israel 2011. The Nissan guy I spoke with claims the agressive style of the Mixim doesn’t work for urban drivers, so they had to go for something softer. This may be true for Japan and some countries in Europe, but otherwise I would beg to differ: Germans find cuteness alarmingly unserious, and Americans feel emasculated by anything distinctly unmacho. Still, it’s a fine design.

Nissan’s hefty summer incentives were no match for September’s carnage, with division sales down 38.4%. The Rogue was the only vehicle in positive territory with 5,504 sold, only because very few of them slipped off the boat and onto sales lots one year ago. Everything else was down well into double-digit percent territory: Versa down 12 percent, Sentra down 34 percent, Altima down 42 percent, the new Maxima down 19 percent. The truck side saw horrendous drops with most products in the minus 60 to 80 percent territory. Infiniti fared hardly better, -24%, with the shine off the G37 coupe (down 55 percent) and the new FX (down 15 percent). Godzilla watch: 341 GT-R’s this month, 1052 YTD.

This morning, Bloomberg took a look at Renault’s epic implosion in the past year. Financially, the big French carmaker saw its stock nosedive 55% in the past twelve months. Sales are down, and Renault’s European market share has fallen from 9.7% in 2005 to 7.7% so far this year. And Renault’s traditional strong market segments (i.e. mini-minivans) have been taking a beating from other companies, including French rivals Peugeot and Citroen. To make matters worse, VW is about to come out with a new Golf three weeks before Renault releases its new Megane, and the Golf gets better fuel economy than the Megane across the board. Nissan – of which Renault owns 44% – is at huge risk in the US economy (goodbye Murano, Pathfinder, Xterra, Armada, QX56, FX35, and Quest sales). Oh, and Renault’s big hope for making their estimates for the year is a €160 million royalty payment from Russian manufacturer AvtoVaz for licensing the design of the supercheap Dacia Logan. And speaking of which, Renault is facing declining sales for the Dacia Logan as the global economy gets crappier and people in places like Eastern Europe and Latin America have less money to spend on a new car. With all this in mind, Ghosn – once considered Nissan’s savior – may have to step down from the CEO position at Nissan as a bargain with irate shareholders so that he can keep his Renault job. And you thought things were bad for Chrysler.

TTAC has previously reported deep concerns about the GT-R’s ‘Ring recond. Australian Herald Sun automotive journalist Paul Gover reports that Porsche was sehr unglücklich with Nissan’s claims that its GT-R is faster around The Green Hell than Stuttgart’s mean machines. To test its suspicions, Porsche bought a GT-R in the U.S., flew it to the ‘Ring and ran its own back-to-back tests with the Japanese supercar. Porsche’s expert ‘Ring runner couldn’t get within 25 seconds of Nissan’s claimed record. Porsche also “discovered” that its 911 Turbo and GT2 were both faster around the legendary German circuit than the bonkers Nissan. “This [GT-R] wonder car with 7:29 could not have been a regular series production car,” proclaims August Achleitner, the 911 product chief for Porsche. “For us, it’s not clear how this time is possible. What we can imagine with this Nissan is they used other tyres.” Achleitner’s mob clocked the GT-R at 7 minutes 54 seconds; the 911 Turbo managed 7:38 and the GT2 lapped the track in 7:34. “The Nissan is a good car. I don’t want to make anything bad with my words,” he says. “It’s a very consistent car. But this car is about 20 kilos heavier than the Turbo… This technical puzzle now fits together.  With the other numbers we had problems to understand it.”

I don’t have anything else to say. Lieberman thinks the Hyundai Sonata (decent car, really) handles better than the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S. I think Lieberman has been hitting the wine early in anticipation of the Jewish holidays. There are, however, some cars with great enthusiast reputations that some of us are just not on board with. Lieberman doesn’t like the MINI. I don’t get the fuss over the 1-Series, Nissan 350Z, or even the Nissan GT-R. P.J. McCombs just doesn’t love the Lexus IS-F. Jay Shoemaker doesn’t dig the Maserati GT. And so on. It just goes to show, there’s nothing truly objective about cars. Even the truth. Especially the truth.

A fine-handling car carries on a conversation with the tips of your fingers and the seat of your pants, and not just near the limit of adhesion. Whether the engine’s up front, in the middle or out back; whether the powerplant propels the front, rear or both wheels, a true “driver’s car” is a master of communication and balance. While many cars have been successfully marketed based on their “ultimate driving,” very few are capable of delivering such erudition. Many are downright pigs, offering nothing more than understeer followed by more understeer. As Jonny Lieberman’s review indicates, the Mazda RX-8 is not amongst them. It is an under-appreciated gem.

Only two cars in the RX-8’s price range arguably handle better: the Honda S2000 (in its final year) and Mazda’s own Miata. Neither has a rear seat or is remotely as livable as the RX-8, and the Honda is insanely expensive to insure. And i enjoy driving the RX-8 more.

While I haven’t always been a fan of Motor Trend, the October 2008 issue includes a “giant handling test” that’s well worth reading. They lead off with instrumented testing, where the RX-8 doesn’t fare well against a group that includes the Dodge Viper ACR, BMW M3, Mitsubishi Evo, Porsche 911 Turbo, Nissan GT-R and Audi R8. So I figured they were going to bury the RX-8 in their rankings.

But another part of the comparison test involves a subjective component, where professional road-racer Randy Pobst ranked the RX-8 third, behind only the $120k Audi R8 and $63k BMW M3 (the light steering apparently comes alive on the track). Ahead of even the Porsche— and Pobst races a Porsche.

In the purest sense of a sports car, the rear-drive RX-8 is the most satisfying through corners. I felt like it was a glove on my hand. I could put it right where I wanted. Extremely well balanced, easy to drift, unfettered by weight. The all-wheel-drive cars tend to understeer, and then when they do break loose it’s a big event and a lot happens. In the RX-8, on the other hand, things happen a little bit at a time. It’s just so much fun to drive. The more powerful cars feel like riding a horse. The RX-8 feels like wings bolted right to your arms.

Note that Pobst says “the most satisfying through corners,” not merely “one of the most.” I couldn’t agree more. I’ve driven an RX-8 on WV16 and OH26, two roads packed with challenging curves. It was the most satisfying driving experience I’ve ever had.

I’m aware of the arguments against the RX-8, most of which center around the rotary engine. Yes, the Wankel’s fuel economy is poor. In my experience, the car gets 15 mpg in all-out hooning mode, 17 in typical suburban driving, and 21 when cruising on the freeway. But plenty of vehicles have been sold that do worse. And the recent fuel price spike indicates that it’s not all about frugality. In the first eight months of last year, when gas prices were lower, Mazda still only shifted 4,417 RX-8s.

Next up: the lack of low-end torque. There’s a fix: downshift. Where some engines reward a downshift with a raucous fuss, the rotary begs to be revved. Sure, the RX-8 doesn’t launch strongly, but once underway on a winding road, power is not an issue. I’ll grant that there’s a certain adolescent thrill to rocketing oneself and 3,500+ pounds of metal and plastic forward by merely pressing down on a pedal. But is this really what performance driving has devolved to?

Apparently so. Mazda developed a unique engine and chassis for the RX-8— bits not shared with a midsize sedan. They’re offering a lightweight car with outstanding handling and a livable ride. They even toss a usable rear seat into the deal, AND an amazingly low price for a bespoke low-volume car (under $30k new, under $20k used with low miles). And yet Mazda sold just 2,591 RX-8s in the first eight months of 2008.

The unavoidable implication: handling simply isn’t a high priority for more than a few thousand people a year. When driving enthusiasts have to choose between handling and torque, nearly all of them choose torque. This certainly lets a lot of other manufacturers off the hook; torque is much easier to provide than communicative steering and a finely-balanced chassis. Just drop a powerful engine into a sexy-looking car (e.g. any of the new wave V8 muscle cars), and sales will follow.

In the future, when electric motors drive the wheels and steering is via wire, the torque temptation will only increase. Electric motors can certainly deliver low-end grunt, so few people will mind that any steering feel these vehicles provide will be entirely artificial. My advice to those with limited budgets who really care about handling, whose driving isn’t all in a straight line: buy a Mazda RX-8 while you still can.

“Q:I recently purchased a 2008 Nissan 350Z. I allowed a friend of mine (from Australia) to drive it to the airport yesterday, and noticed that after stopping at a red light, he would start the car in second (instead of first) gear. He said this is better for the engine and would prevent first gear from wearing out. Is he correct? And if not, is this bad for my car?

Ray: Well, your friend certainly did teach you a valuable lesson: Don’t let any of your knucklehead friends drive your new car again!

Tom: Starting in second is not good for the engine. The engine is perfectly happy to start in first gear. In fact, starting in a higher gear under the wrong circumstances could cause you to “lug” the engine, which is bad for it.

Ray: But more important, starting in second is bad for your clutch. You need to use more gas and let the clutch out more slowly when starting in second. That wears out your clutch more quickly.”

The current fiscal crisis has its roots in easy money– on all sorts of levels. But even as the new car credit market goes into deep freeze (i.e. mainstream lenders finally tighten their lending requirements) and the product pipeline is beginning to suffer from serious constipation (as dealers just say no to ’09 inventories), plenty of stores are selling as if the go-go days aren’t gone. This press release from stuttering spinmeister Kevin Nay at Haldeman Nissan demonstrates that sales may be slow, but the pitch remains the same. “Nissan New Jersey dealer, Haldeman Nissan is now offering customers auto deals from $89 a month and with the release of their new auto deal site they are meeting the needs of frugal shoppers worldwide. For a limited time car shoppers can also take advantage of private sale offers. Nissan New Jersey dealer, Haldeman Nissan is now offering customers auto deals from $89 a month and with the release of their new auto deal site they are meeting the needs of frugal shoppers worldwide.” The $89 deal [for the Nissan Sentra] on the site has fine print aplenty– but I can’t read it. Or click on it. I’d kinda hoped the downturn would inspire dealers to clean-up their act. If anything, they’re getting worse.

The first time I met an American muscle car, my friend Ben was encouraging me to carve the donut in the Sears parking lot just a little tighter and give it just a little more gas. He wanted to hear the 1977 Chevy Malibu’s big block snarl like he knew it could when you pressed the pedal all the way to the floor boards.

The “Green Machine,” as we called it, would eventually die and give way to my friend Eric’s equally green 1969 Chevy Impala, motivated by a freshly rebuilt small block 327. If we weren’t busy buying gas, we were taking Eric’s ride out to the city’s unofficial drag strip (if they didn’t want racing, why did they build a quarter-mile stretch, straight as an arrow, right along the water front?) and going head-to-head with all varieties of tuned imports.

Oh, how those times have changed for my two friends. Eric has since moved to the big city and has sworn off cars, while Ben cruises around in a gas-sipping, 2wd Rav-4. Don’t even bother asking these two about either of their cars–Ben will laugh it off and remind me of the spade of problems the Malibu had and the family of raccoons who took up residence in the trunk once the car was put out to seed. Eric might reminisce for roughly 30 seconds before glancing down to the street and realizing he has about as much a chance of parking an Impala in New York City as Tara Reid does of being granted sainthood.

So what happened? Reality, that’s what. Before the this generation’s car buffs turned their attention to Hondas and Scions, the only reasonable thing to buy was eight cylinders of American power. As gas prices began steadily rising out of their $2 resting place, my friends were losing their $100-a-tank cherries well before $4-a-gallon fuel was even being fathomed by Detroit. The Impala was great, but at $100-a-week to drive it, there wasn’t much left over for date night.

From the girlfriends’ perspectives, switching to a car where the steering little less slippery and the acceleration a little less powerful was a good thing. The looks of European and Japanese cars were also easy bargaining ploys. Why should they drive something that (in their opinion) looks bloated when they were trying to keep their own bodies from appearing that way? For the ladies involved, a sensible Corolla was a no brainer–of course, this was before the automotive industry realized that a chrome bedecked grill and window trim are good things and not necessarily an out-moded design concepts.

But what was so great about these muscle cars wasn’t their design or their power (all though these factors did wonders for attracting hordes of allegiance pledging teenagers to the hot-rod cause), but rather their simplicity. With an engine compartment roughly the size of my first apartment, we could literally climb inside the Impala and take apart its carburetor or adjust the throttle control, the air filter, or whatever part was rattling around this week.

With today’s cars, people don’t even bother to look under the hood. When something as simple as a headlamp goes out on a Nissan Altima, those of us mechanically-disinclined begin groaning and looking for a qualified service rep. Now that every car has a transverse-mounted four banger shoe-horned into a compartment three sizes too small, the last thing a car nut (or anyone else for that matter) wants to think about is changing a starter, let alone tinkering around for another 20 or 30 horsepower.

Somewhere in the build up of technology toward more and more efficient cars, working on them stopped being fun and starting being a scary, confusing, diagnostics-machine-requiring money pit and therein lies the problem with the notion of an American muscle car. Unless Detroit can find a way to make them fun–not just to drive but to work on, too–we’ll never have the same passion for this particular automotive genre again. If gas prices continue to rise, the best American muscle will come in the form of highly tuned V6s or diesels that sip their fuel, rather than guzzle it by the gallon.

All this is not to say we shouldn’t keep trying. My lovely, modern-car disparaging wife sites the PT Cruiser and the Chevy HHR as her favorite cars, not because they’re loaded with muscle (which they ain’t) but because they made risky design choices during a time when dull was the automotive standard. As she sees it, if we can’t make them fun (i.e. faster than hell) let’s at least make them pretty. Until America can strike that happy balance between muscle and beauty, the big 2.8 are doomed to the go the way of that ’77 Malibu: up on blocks with a family of raccoons living out of the back.

[This article is presented without editing.]

“If the Lexus feels like it’s being pushed out of the way by a 130-kilogram NFL lineman on his way to get a fresh libation from a scantily clad Budweiser girl, the Nissan feels like said Budweiser girl is his girlfriend and he smacked you, full-force, upside the head with a telephone book because he thinks you’re hitting on her.” The writer here is not Dan Neil or Jeremy Clarkson. And in case you hadn’t figured it out already (and I know you had), the scribe is Canadian. While the rest of David Booth comparo in the National Post doesn’t ascend to greater heights than this excerpt, his summary’s rhetorical hammer hits the proverbial nail on the metaphorical head. “The IS-F is as sporty as Lexus can make it without sacrificing one iota of luxury; the GT-R is as luxurious as Nissan can engineer it without sacrificing even a bit of performance. The IS-F is a slightly softer competitor to BMW’s M3; the GT-R is a stiffer, more committed alternative to Porsche’s 911 Turbo.” Well, that makes it easy to choose. Porsche Turbo please.

According to AutoWeek, it’s currently a backlash of one: Scott Weires. The Florida attorney canceled his order for a GT-R after learning that Nissan’s taken the accident data recorder black box thing to a whole new level. “Unlike an EDR [electronic data recorder], which activates only when sensors indicate that a crash is imminent or has occurred, Nissan’s VSDR [vehicle status data recorder] runs constantly, collecting information such as wheel and engine speed. The device, thought to be a first in the automotive industry [tell that to BMW M3 owners], stores more than a few days’ but less than a week’s worth of data on the vehicle’s operation, Nissan says. The VSDR cannot be deactivated.” Never mind speeding, although that’s certainly a worry. It’s all about the warranty. “Nissan specifically warns owners that they could void warranty protection by running a car with its vehicle dynamic control (VDC), governing traction and stability, turned off. (In fairness to Nissan, the owner’s manual does allow owners to defeat VDC when wheelspin is needed to rock a car that’s stuck in snow or mud.)” Sure, that’s fair. And there’s another, justifiable concern: “We do realize that some customers will take their car to the track for all-out driving,” Ed Hibma, senior manager for technical support with Nissan North America. “But racing is different.” Pistonheads will remember (though I can’t recall the exact details) that manufacturers have been known to prowl the internets for racing photos. Paranoid? Consider the fact that the Japanese-spec GTR limits the car to 111 mph– unless the GPS knows you’re on a race track (not racing). Or the GT-R’s 156mph U.S. speed limiter.