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Nissan ReviewsThe 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. |
If you want to charge your Nissan Leaf in 30 minutes, Nissan will (at least in Japan) sell you (reluctantly) a pricy quickcharger. It costs about half of what a U.S. Leaf costs – before incentives and rebates: The current quickcharger sets you back 1.47 million yen, in today’s dollars, that’s about $19,000. Soon, this will get considerably, well, more reasonable. Nissan today announced a quickcharger with the same performance, but at half the size and half the price of the old one. Read More >
What does it take for a tuned Porsche Cayenne to be featured at TTAC? It must be nothing less than the most interesting tuned Cayenne in the world. And your eyes don’t deceive you… that’s exactly what you’re looking at. The Eterniti Hemera may or may not have advantages relative to the competition from Mansory, Ruf, Gemballa et al, but its story beats all of them (with the possible exception of Gemballa, er, hollow. Eterniti burst onto the scene when a Twitter squatter managed to spread all kinds of speculation about the company, including that it would use licensed RedBull F1 technology, adding to rampant speculation that the company was somehow associated with Nissan’s Infiniti brand. Of course Bertel Schmitt tracked down the truth, and even though Porsche no longer associates itself with its former dealer and Eterniti founder Kenny Chen, Bertel could have told you nearly a month ago that the Hemera would be a tuned Cayenne. So, though this glorified bodykit of a car may seem like something of a letdown, its strange social-media-parable storyline makes it… the most interesting tuned Cayenne in the world.
It happens to all foreign joint venture partners: They are invited to have tea and a chat with representatives of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). After the pleasantries are exchanged, the weather has been discussed, and statements of mutual admiration have been made, someone from the NDRC side will say: “Don’t you want to start a Chinese brand? We would really appreciate it.” Who can say no to the wishes of the Chinese government?
The latest to say “Ja” is BMW. BMW will build a second, truly “Chinese” brand for China. “We are discussing this with the NDRC, and we will find a solution,” said BMW CEO Friedrich Eichiner to Germany’s FAZ. BMW’s futuristic carbon fiber i cars won’t be BMWs in China. Read More >
Carmakers don’t want to be caught napping when the “next China” is at stake. They are setting their sights on Southeast Asia. Currently en vogue: Indonesia. The country with a population of 237 million has a bullet on the PowerPoints of most major carmakers. Toyota is already there and wants to double down. Read More >
In a blog item bemoaning the likely imminent death of the Honda Ridgeline, Automotive News [sub] Product Editor Rick Kranz accuses Honda of “abandoning” its funky pickup by failing to update its styling or hardware since it was introduced in 2005. His point seems to be that the Ridgeline was a decent enough niche product that withered on the vine… and the sales numbers certainly seem to support that thesis. But if you compare Ridgeline to other Japanese-brand compact-midsized pickups, you find that Toyota and Nissan saw similar drops in volume over a similar time period… as did practically all non-full-size pickups. So could Honda have done more for the Ridgeline, or was its decline inevitable? While you’re pondering that mystery, consider this: Kranz points to the last sentence of a months-old piece for one of those zombie rumors that never really got any play:
Based on conversations with industry sources, the story said a smaller pickup is under consideration, derived from the CR-V platform.
Presuming less payload and towing capacity than the Ridgeline, I can’t imagine why a smaller pickup based on a front-drive platform would be a more successful product formula for Honda.
On the other hand, a CR-V-based pickup is something that hasn’t been tried for decades in this market… and it wouldn’t compete nearly as directly with the cheap full-sizers that are killing the “compact” (actually midsized) pickups. So, is Kranz’s logic sound, or could a CR-V-based pickup mix up the market? Faith springs eternal for me when it comes to efficient utility vehicles… but what say you?
Here’s an open secret: the Mazda3 is the auto-journo’s cop-out. “Hey,” inquires the prospective punter, “I’m actually kinda/sorta in the market. What do you recommend?” Nine times out of ten, the sporty little ‘3 is gonna get a plug. Tenth guy wants a truck.
Now around here, obviously that’s not the case. Ask the TTAC boys what you should buy and Jack Baruth is going to punch you in the face and sleep with your wife, Sajeev Mehta will get a far-away look in his eyes thinking of all the non-running personal-luxury-coupe crap-cans he could add to his stable for the price of a new car, Bertel Schmitt’s going to give you a fascinating but interminable lecture on the nuances of some improbable menage a trois between Nissan, Geely and Fisher-Price, and me? Well, I’m new around here. Again.
Which is why I’m going to extoll me a little Zoom-Zoom.
Chris writes:
For years, my wife and I have enjoyed the carefree enjoyment of running around without a care in the world. Then we had a baby, who is soon going to go from an only child to a big sister. The wife has owned the same car that she bought new when she graduated college: 2000 Honda Insight. Regardless of which side of the hybrid fence you are on, as a car guy, this car continues to amaze me with almost 230,000 miles and no major problems. I have on the other hand gone through a few more cars: Saab 9000, Saab SPG, Ford Bronco, VW Jetta, Nissan X-Terra. My current ride is the X-Terra chiefly bought so I could arrive on muddy construction sites and be taken a little more seriously than my European sports car driving bosses.
After checking the telemetry, and posing for a group shot, it’s official: The Lexus Nürburgring-enhanced LFA did the now common 20.6 kilometer “sport auto” lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife in seven minutes, 14.64 seconds. That’s a hair better than the Donkervoort D8 RS, which completed the same course in 7:14.89 – 5 years ago. It is also the best time amongst the bona-fide production models. Better than the Nissan GT-R (7 min 24 sec), better than the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (7 minutes 19 sec), better than the Porsche 911 GT2 RS (7 minutes 18 seconds). Read More >
I have always rooted for the underdog, except when (for no apparent reason) the guy decides to start punching himself in the face. And so it was with Chrysler’s final Sebring. When the Cirrus burst forth along with the LH sedans almost 20 years ago, they were extremely competitive in style and price. While reliability hasn’t been Chrysler’s forte, you could always justify buying a Cirrus on the basis of America-first-ism, or style, or something. By the time the end drew near for the old Chrysler the Sebring was just a bruised mess from years of self-abuse.
Welcome to Bob Lutz week at TTAC! I spent several hours recently with the auto industry’s most notorious executive, and elements of that interview will be the basis for much of my writing this week. We’ll also be capping the whole thing off by voting on the 2010-2011 Lutzie award for most unfortunate quote by an auto exec. And rather than jumping right into the meat of the interview, I want to kick off Lutz week by looking at a few cars that came up in our meandering conversation. After all, these are not just vehicles… when Lutz brings them up in an interview, they become stories, little encapsulations of his philosophy or the state of the company that made them. Let’s start with a car that I literally had never heard of before he mentioned it almost in passing: the Dodge Dakota Convertible. Eat your heart out, Murano CrossCabriolet… the Dakota was the original “WTF-vertible.”
If you look at Nissan’s performance in China, you won’t see anything of the lackluster growth of the overall Chinese market. Nissan announced August sales of 94,700 units in China, up 26.1 percent from a red-hot August 2010. While the Chinese market is waddling like an uncooked Beijing duck, Nissan China recorded the fourth double-digit monthly sales growth in a row. Read More >
Having the Falcon next to it for scale makes identification of this crazy, small-block-Chevy-powered drag car much easier. It’s not the kind of vehicle you expect to see at Colorado’s Bandimere Speedway on Test-n-Tune Night. Read More >
While Jack is ranting about blackballing PR flacks and journos with pants on fire, let me warn against journalism by Twitter. Here is a prime example: Today, the interwebs are abuzz about a Lexus LFA setting a new Nordschleifen record. The source: A tweet by Chris Harris of EVO. He wrote: “LFA Nurburgring pack just did 7.14 lap of the Ring. That’s mighty fast.” And he followed it by a “Akira Iida was the man who did the LFA’s 7.14. Great time.” That may be the case. What is shameful is what was made of this tweet. Read More >
With GM, “Fiat Group” and Ford improving their sales volume by 16%, 23% and 9% respectively, Detroit is dominating the headlines in early August sales analysis. But Hyundai Group’s 29% is the big percentage winner, and Nissan had a good volume month as well, up 14%. But the “big two” Japanese are continuing to slide, with Honda off 6% and Toyota down 8%. Hit the jump for our developing table…
“When we started working on the FT-86 we had no idea where we would end up,” said Tetsuya Tada, whom I met last Sunday to talk about his work.
“Was it going to be a ridiculously expensive car? Or one anyone can buy? All we knew it was going to be a sports car. The rest was a blank sheet.”
The FT-86 that eventually took shape on this blank sheet will be in showrooms down the street from you, all over the world, next year.
The FT-86 ”may just be the car to herald Toyota’s ‘second renaissance,” if some enthusiast blogs are right.
At the very least, this car will change how we think and dream of a sports car: We won’t. This is not a dream car. For most of us, it will be an impulse buy.
Tetsuya Tada tells its story. Read More >
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