Michael writes:

Towards the end of the year, we may be in the market for a minivan (Honda Odyssey… this is not the advice I’m looking for, but feel free to weigh in). We have two cars we own outright: 2004 Toyota 4Runner and a 2006 VW Passat with 75K and 65K miles on them, respectively.

Both are in good working order, no issues other than the sign of age. Both have V6 engines.

Question: which one to trade in? I figure they are both worth about $10k trade in based on KBB, with the VW potentially worth marginally more (I could be wrong there). I’m leaning towards trading in the VW since it will depreciate faster and is more likely to have issues as it continues to age and wear.

What are your thoughts (now being greedy)…on both the trade-in AND the minivan choice?

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Someone is really trying to shop around Opel. Or maybe it’s just a tactic to cow German unions into submission?  Two weeks ago, Volkswagen and the inevitable Chinese were floated as possible buyers. What other bogeymen could there be? Ah, yes, the Koreans! Read More >

Back in 2002, on a whim, my father bought the recently re-introduced Nissan 350Z for the simple reason that he loved the way the car looked. He then proceeded to rarely drive it because it was loud, rough, and generally lacking in refinement, and sold it after only a year and a half. I haven’t driven a Z since. Nissan has reportedly worked to smooth over the car’s rough edges, most notably with a redesign for the 2009 model year. So another look seemed in order. Read More >

We haven’t visited Europe since the UK Royal Wedding, so this weekend we are off to troubled Greece. Car sales are in free fall there since the 2008 financial crisis, and it makes for a fascinating market. Please wear at helmet at all times.

If you have already visited one of the many stunning Greek islands and have already counted all the cars there, that’s ok, there are 154 more countries to visit in my blog, and I can tell you it is άριστη (awesome)…

After a high of 290,000 units in 2000, the Greek car market has been on a long-term downtrend during the last decade, giving us a very volatile models ranking: in the last 10 years. There’s only one car that managed to stay on top of Greece’s best-seller for three consecutive years: The unflappable Toyota Corolla.

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Yesterday, The Nikkei was all worked up about a takeover of Russia’s largest automaker AvtoVaz by the Renault-Nissan Alliance. The Nikkei became so excited that it forgot simple logic. More on that here. The Nikkei had it on not so good authority that Nissan would soon buy 25 percent of the Russians, and together with Renault’s 25 percent and change, Japan and France would finally achieve what had been tried before: Rule Russia. We had our doubts.

Do you hear the big hissing sound? That’s the lukewarm air coming out of the story. Read More >

Europeans are either tired of their old cars, or the effects of the cash for clunkers largesse are finally getting digested, or both. Whatever the reason, new passenger car registrations increased by 7.1 percent in the EU in May, as data released by the European Auto Manufacturers Association ACEA shows. Read More >

A month ago, our friends at Carnewschina spotted an odd creation in Kumming, a Chinese city that is famous for other products than cars. The owner of a hair salon (we don’t know what kind of a hair salon, some hair salons in China are famous for other services than hair cutting) was infatuated with the new Lamborghini Aventador. What he didn’t like was the $968,426 sticker price (MSRP, landed in China, taxes included, and yes, you did read right.) So the hairdresser called on the local roadside sheet metal fabricator, showed him a picture and said: “Can you make that?” Read More >

Rumors of Renault and Nissan taking over Russia’s AvtoVaz have been around for a while. We have a new one! The Nikkei [sub] picked up indications that Nissan and Renault will take a majority in AvtoVaz, Russia’s largest automaker.  Except that The Nikkei doesn’t report it as a rumor. The headline “Nissan-Renault To Take Control Of Russia’s AvtoVaz” sounds quite definite. Sadly, it is not true. Read More >

Mitsubishi wants to attack one of the biggest problems of EVs: Their lofty price. Mitsu’s i-MiEV EV retails for 3.98 million yen ($49,200). Government subsidies will slash a million (yen) off that price. Converted to dollars, that $36,900, still steep.  The Nissan Leaf costs 3.76 million yen ($46,500) before subsidies and sells much better than the Mitsumobile. Now, Mitsubishi wants to lop a million yen off the i-MiEV’s sticker price. Read More >

China’s Gasgoo says that “Dongfeng Nissan has already begun preparations for domestic production of the Nissan Leaf pure electric hatchback.” Domestic as in Made-in-China. They quote Dongfeng Nissan CEO Fumiaki Matsumoto, who allegedly said: “We have already finished preparatory work for the Leaf. We hope that we can cooperate with the government and suppliers to bring over the Leaf as soon as possible.” That of course piqued our interest. After some calls, we can say with certainty: Instead of millions of Leafs roaming the streets of China tomorrow, we have a case of Lost In Translation with a French-Japanese-Chinese cast. Read More >

Japan’s major automakers appear to recover faster from the impact of the March 11 tsunami than previously feared (or hoped.) Nissan’s Executive Vice President Takao Katagiri said today that Nissan’s Japanese vehicle production in May was the same or greater than its output in the same month in the previous year.

“We will also probably be able to maintain a normal level in June,” Katagiri  told The Nikkei [sub].  At the annual results conference in May, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn had predicted that the company would be back to normal by October. This remains the official party line at Nissan. Read More >

This past weekend, a young man named Lucas Ordonez finished in second place in the reasonably-well-contested LMP2 class at LeMans. The video-gaming world has taken notice, because Mr. Ordonez entered racing as the winner of the PlayStation GT Academy a few years ago.

This proves the truth of what every basement-dwelling, sunlight-allergic gamer geek has been saying for years: being fast in a racing video game makes you fast in real racing. After all, if a kid from nowhere can step from his couch into a racing program and fulfill the lifetime dream of nearly every sports-car racer in the world, surely “Gran Turismo” is a genuine, realistic training tool, right?

Naturally, the truth of the matter is not so simple.

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I’m a horrible car guy; I dislike convertibles. It’s not really for the usual reason car buffs dislike going topless, it has nothing to do with the inevitable loss of stiffness or added weight and complexity and everything to do with the reduction in practicality. I realize that a practical convertible is something of an oxymoron, but some are worse than others. It’s no wonder the convertible landscape is littered with has-beens, convertible sales only account for 2% of passenger car sales in North America and premium ‘verts are an even smaller part of the pie. It is therefore no surprise that the G37 convertible is only the second ever Infiniti convertible.

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Since Nissan’s PR and communication folks are probably having a busy morning anyway, we thought we’d bring this video to their attention. According to this apparently quite tech-savvy Leaf owner, the Leaf’s CarWings system will automatically send your location data to any third-party RSS feed you sign up for. As he puts it in the video

“There’s a lot of personal data there. I’m not sure if you really want Fox News to know exactly where you’re at, how fast you’re driving, that kind of thing… when you read those RSS feeds in your car, you might want to think twice about hitting that button”

Why would signing up for an RSS feed require that constantly-updated locational data be sent to the RSS provider? The video’s maker assumes the data is for “CarWings internal use” and yet he shows that it gets sent to third parties. We know GM monitors Chevy Volt user data anonymously through Onstar, but one assumes that this kind of data is fairly well protected from third parties. In the case of the Leaf, that may not be the case. We’d sure like to know if this is true, and why…

[UPDATE: Nissan tells us: “Owners have to opt in or agree to share their data every time they sign in.  If they don’t, then they pass on the benefit as well.  They will however, lose any remote control or data logging capability but the choice is in the hand of the driver every time.”]

Bloomberg’s running a lede that’s sure to ruffle a few feathers at Nissan’s communication and customer service organizations this morning: “Nissan Motor Co. is aggravating the customers it needs most.” How so? According to the report

Nissan, which wants to become the top seller of electric cars, repeatedly delayed deliveries to some U.S. buyers who reserved the first 20,000 Leaf plug-in hatchbacks, according to interviews with customers. They said Nissan unexpectedly dropped some from the waiting list temporarily, asking that they reapply if they couldn’t prove they’d arranged installation of home- charging units that can cost more than $2,000.

Nissan has long admitted that the Leaf rollout would be a challenge, and the recent tsunami-related chaos in Japan hasn’t helped. But Bloomberg doesn’t quantify how many customers have been dropped due to their lack of charging system installation, other than to report that 45% of the 20k customers who reserved Leafs by last September have continued the ordering process. And it turns out that the delays aren’t irritating so much because of Nissan’s intransigence or lack of transparency, but because certain buyers stand to lose their California tax credit before their Leaf arrives.

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