The attentive reader of TTAC is not surprised by the news provided by Automobilwoche [sub] that Toyota will introduce a plug-in version of its iQ by 2012. It had been on Toyota’s green roadmap for months. The (not really) surprising news is: You won’t be able to buy the EV iQ when it gets launched. Read More >

Luxury means many things to many people, but nobody doubts luxury cars should be crammed full of the latest technology… and what says “technology” in today’s car market quite like “Hybrid”? In a strange inversion of history, Lexus created the world’s first hybrid luxury flagship from a vehicle that was clearly inspired by the Mercedes S-Class, and now Mercedes is fighting back with its first hybrid sedan, the S400 Hybrid. So, is Lexus’s hybrid head-start enough to fend off a challenge from the vehicle that inspired its birth over a twenty years ago? The only way to find out is in TTAC’s most expensive comparison test ever.

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Is the auto industry headed for a price war? Hyundai Motor USA CEO John Krafcik seems to think so, telling Reuters

I think we can officially say that a price war broke out in the industry. There is apparently a lot of pressure to deliver sales results. I would call this a step backward for the industry. This is short-term thinking in a long-term process that hurts manufacturers and consumers.

Krafcik says GM kicked off the rush for increased volume by cutting prices in January, and that Toyota (which  has increased its incentives by 37.5% since last January, according to TrueCar) “quickly” responded by matching The General’s price cuts. Honda, Nissan and Chrysler have also kept their incentives high, and Chrysler has told Automotive News [sub] that it plans on increasing sales by 45% this year. Says Krafcik

We’ll see if others decide to follow. It’s certainly not in our plan right now.

Krafcik has a point: though sales have recovered over the last year as the economy has come back from the depths of recession, industry-wide incentive spending is up 1.3% in the last 12 months. Rather than taking advantage of the economic recovery to bring incentives down and transaction prices up, automakers appear to be focused entirely on volume. That’s certainly the message GM has sent by announcing that it would no longer release its incentive data. And, as Krafcik points out, the industry has already suffered mightily from such short-term, unsustainable thinking… but not everyone shares his concern.

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Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano today took the unusual step of publicly voicing the Japanese government’s satisfaction with the U.S. government’s findings that Toyota’s electronic throttle control system is free of glitches, ghosts and malfunctions. It was a not so subtle reminder that politics weighed heavily in Toyota’s SUA scandal. Read More >

While Mazda is still talking with Russian politicos about producing cars in Siberia, Toyota is doing it.  Toyota “is moving into the Russian Far East ahead of other Japanese automakers as part of a high-priority effort to tap emerging markets,” at least as far as  The Nikkei [sub] is concerned. Read More >

Maybe it was my lukewarm review. Or maybe it was because Suzuki’s most ardent attempt to date to appeal to Americans connected with only 6,138 of them last year. Despite the unintended acceleration media circus, Toyota sold more Camrys in the average week. Whatever the reason, Suzuki revised the Kizashi after just one model year, transforming the two top trim levels into “Sport” models. Substitute a six-speed manual and front-wheel-drive for the previous test’s CVT and all-wheel-drive, and the 2011 Kizashi certainly deserves another look.

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[Ed: With today’s news of NHTSA’s investigation results, we thought we’d look back at TTAC’s coverage of the Toyota Unintended Acceleration scandal.]

The Toyota Unintended Acceleration Scandal of 2010 was a curious beastie of a media phenomenon. Shortly after I started writing for TTAC, NHTSA opened an investigation into Toyota Tacomas because, as the Center for Auto Safety’s Clarence Ditlow put it,

If there were truly human error, there would be a proportional distribution across models. It’s very difficult to explain how some makes and models have higher numbers of complaints than others absent some flaw in the vehicle.

Fresh as I was to writing about the world of cars, I was sure I had the story dead to rights. I had seen this movie before, when my father told me his epic Parnelli Jones Unintended Acceleration story. Dad had even killed the the family pickup’s engine at a traffic light to prove it… and I knew how bad the brakes in the old Ford were (but that’s another story). Absent a better explanation than mere statistical likelihood, I knew there was only one cause for this problem. With a level of confidence that seems totally at odds with subsequent events, I concluded by suggesting that

the Detroit Free Press and Motor Trend blog, are trying to resuscitate the [Audi 5000] media frenzy, only this time Toyota’s to blame for people mistaking the accelerator for their brake pedal… If a TTAC reader out there has a Tacoma, perhaps they would do us the honor of standing on the brakes while mashing the accelerator for a few seconds. This should prove fairly simply that “unintended acceleration” is possible only when you are not actually on the brakes.

It was that simple… wasn’t it?

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After tarring and feathering Toyota for alleged sudden unintended acceleration, after inventing a mass murder of 89 that creates a massive 261,000 hits on Google, after dragging executives in front of tribunals of the Washington Inquisition, after shaking down Toyota for unprecedented $48.8 million in fines, after NASA engineers subjected Toyota cars to torture worse than waterboarding, the NHTSA today announced that they found … Read More >

Toyota’s Senior Managing Director Takahiko Ijichi had a surprise for the press that congregated today in the windowless basement conference room of Toyota’s downtown Tokyo office. They were invited to hear the results of the 9 month period from April to December. The scribes had prepared for the worst. As the numbers were released, some furiously begun retyping the prepared stories in which they had planned to insert the expected bad numbers before hitting SEND. Instead, Reuters reports: “The world’s top automaker posted a smaller-than-expected fall in third quarter profits and hiked its sales forecast for the year to March 31 by 70,000 vehicles to 7.48 million, thanks to better than expected sales in Asia, Japan and Russia.” Read More >

Vincent writes:

I’m having a bit of a dilemma in the car buying/selling front. First off, I’m a 21 year old college student. Last year, using money gifted to me by my wealthy grandparents (yes, I’m a spoiled brat. Sorry) I impulsively purchased a 97 Mercedes C36 AMG (yes, I’m an awful spoiled brat). It had a plethora of problems including the previous owner installing a faulty air intake, improperly lowering the car and damaging the suspension, and some thermostat issue. Several thousand dollars later, my mechanic got it back to speed. It hasn’t had any problems since, but I definitely can’t afford to fix it if anything else were to happen. Furthermore, premium gas is a bitch, especially here in Vancouver where gas is at an all time high. It doesn’t snow often here, but I’m not comfortable driving it when it does.  I am contemplating selling the C36 and purchasing something more practical (I’ve had it listed on classifieds for months, but eh, no bites)

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More than three years ago, on New Year’s Eve of 2007, our Beloved Leader, the dearly departed Robert Farago rattled the Best and Brightest with one of his thought (and sometimes aggression) provoking questions. This time, it was: “What’s the plural of Prius?”

Damned if I know, but a few days ago, the TTAC server reported repeated search terms for the very same  “What’s the plural of Prius?” I decided to do my journalistic duty and investigate. The results were shocking. Read More >

This is the fifth and last installment of the Pictorial History of the  Brazilian Car, a five part series, brought to you by our boy in Brazil, Marcelo de Vasconcellos. Part one one took you back to the beginnings, part two did let you revisit the turbulent 60s. Part three took your to Brazil’s malaise years, with nothing more than facelifts. Part four took you to a Brazil of change. The fifth and last part finally brings you to the past decade.

The 00s

The Workers’ Party finally elected their eternal candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as President. Before he took power, there was some panic and almost 5 reais were necessary to buy a dollar. Inflation seemed to be back. Read More >

Are you one of those who don’t watch the Super Bowl for the game, but for the ads? After taking mostly a leave of absence during carmageddon, carmakers will be out in force this time. There will be so many car commercials that “it looks like there will be auto gridlock in Super Bowl ads,” says USA Today. To get more impressions, carmakers are using YouTube to make the most out of the expensive airtime. Here comes a selection.
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Mahindra’s abortive plans to bring its rugged diesel-powered pickups to the US began back in 2007, just as gas prices were starting to run out of control. Now, after years of delays, steadily-increasing prices and general neglect of the compact pickup market have served only to whet our appetite for efficient little developing world-style trucks. Throughout the the last several years, Mahindra has battled with its US distributor, pulled out of other US efforts and generally failed to deliver… all while dangling the dream of a 30 MPG diesel pickup at hopeful enthusiasts. But, as it turns out, Mahindra’s problems don’t end with distribution: though its diesel engine was approved by the EPA, we hadn’t seen EPA confirmation for the long-held 30 MPG goal. Well, the EPA just released the window sticker for the Mahindra TR40 [via MahindraPlanet], a 4X4 four-door version of its 2.2 liter diesel pickup… and it gets nowhere close to 30 MPG.

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