We’ve seen the Unununium and Ununquadium Legends of LeMons, but we mustn’t leave out the nearly-as-amazing Ununhexium Medal Winners! Read More >

Though not technically a new debut at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, the “Prius C” concept was probably the most interesting vehicle Toyota showed at Cobo Hall this year. If nothing else, it certainly shows the promise of an expanded Prius brand far better than the “Prius V.” And if there’s a single market where this “baby Prius” can give Toyota’s eco-brand spin-off a boost it would be Europe, where small, efficient cars rule. But, it seems, this is not to be. Autocar reports

The strength of the Japanese yen seems almost certain to keep a production version of Toyota’s near-80mpg hybrid supermini based on the Prius C Concept hatch out of Europe. Read More >

PBS Newshour looked at GM’s future, focusing on the Chevy Volt. TTAC editor Ed Niedermeyer was a featured guest. If you want to skip to Ed’s appearances, they’re at 4:19, 5:43, and 9:08 (Or, in the clip embedded above). Transcript below the jump.

I wonder if I’m the only person that found this ironic. Actually, I wonder if anyone at PBS Newshour even knows who Alfred P. Sloan was.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided funding for this project

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What killed Saturn? Blandness. An unending sea of uninspiring designs and sibling ripoff’s destroyed what could have been GM’s most successful project of the last 30 years. Of course they’re not alone in the branding malaise. Ford had Mercury. Chrysler had Plymouth. A lot of folks here would argue that Toyota’s Scion is becoming a living testament to compromises that yield a death defining brand. Throw in Acura’s (lack of) reputation, Infiniti and Kia during their low points, and even the winners can sometimes be losers. Which means that with no cache, a Theft Recovery title, and 93k on the odometer, I bought it cheap. $1600. Therefore I can…

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You know… that’s not a horrid-looking little interior right there. What does an adorable little “yacht tender” Aston Martin Cygnet cost, anyway Jeeves? £30,995 base? Why that’s a duke’s whisker away from fifty thousand of those colonial greenbacks! One could nearly afford three Toyota iQs for that amount of filthy lucre… and aesthetic improvements aside, they’re the same ruddy vehicle! But then, one imagines that the Aston version at least offers the sporting thrills one expects from such a storied… what’s that now? It takes 11.8 seconds to reach 62 MPH? Egad Jeeves, we’d go faster if you pushed me in the old S3! In fact, a peasant-powered Bentley is both lower-emissions and infinitely more befitting ones station than a rebadged Toyota. So much for all that “progress” nonsense…

Wheh, that’s a big question… and I was dismayed to see myself giving such a short answer to it in my Newshour appearance. There are a host of reasons for my swift “no” answer to that question… here are a few of them:

1: GM Doesn’t need saving. The Government “saved” GM.

2: The market projections for EVs are all works in progress.

3: GM isn’t actually committed to the electrification of the car. It’s committed to gas engines and transmissions and the idea of “range anxiety”… for its “electric car.”

4: If GM were committed to electrification, and that was a prudent business gamble, it would still be chasing Renault-Nissan just as Honda chased Toyota in the race for hybrid leadership not so many years ago. And like Honda, GM seems less committed (in the literal, mechanical sense) to the electric car than the emerging global leader, Nissan. Yes, the Volt is mechanical marvel, unrivaled in its complexity… but only because it clings to its gas technology. Honda’s hybrid half-step, never introducing an electric drive mode to its “mild” hybrids, seems pragmatic by comparison. Toyota’s sole ownership of the “hybrid halo” is instructive (and worrying for Toyota, considering it’s been taking a GM-esque tack towards EVs lately).

5: Even after GM starts selling tons of electric cars (in a scenario where that is indeed possible), it will be working uphill to re-establish consumer trust (in all its products) that was squandered over decades.

I could go on, but I’d rather hear your answers to the question.

Fuji Heavy will delight its Subaru clientele with a full redesign of its Subaru Impreza. After four years, the car got a bit long in the sprockets. Launch is scheduled for this year, says The Nikkei [sub]. Read More >

If you want to get ahead in the car business, this is required reading. If you just like cars and don’t give a hoot about who makes them where and why, then you may skip this. Read More >

Not many folks remember Mazda’s Chevette competitor, the rear-drive Mazda GLC. OK, it was more of a Toyota Starlet competitor, but there’s a certain Chevette-ness about its lines. I spotted this super-rare machine at a Denver self-service wrecking yard yesterday. Read More >

All Chinese drive bicycles, make that cheap QQs. No, all Chinese drive big Buicks, I mean, all Chinese are chauffeured around in A6s and Mercedes S-Class.

All wrong. So, what do Chinese really drive? Read More >

The Cobo Consensus on Toyota’s recently-released Prius V seemed to be a nearly-unanimous “nice, but couldn’t they have done more?” Unused to the Japanese and European-market practices of building a number of slightly-varying models on compact and subcompact platforms, the American press seems to agree that 60 percent more luggage space does not a new model justify. Which may be why word of this similarly-expanded Honda Fit “wagon” has yet to break into the stateside autoblogosphere. Or, it may be the fact that Autoexpress isn’t necessarily the most reputable source of leaked images. Either way, Honda’s B-segment MPV is an intriguing entry… if only as a Euro-market curiosity.

Toyota’s minicar subsidiary Daihatsu is leaving Europe. Daihatsu will end auto sales in Europe on Jan. 31, 2013, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Reason given: “The yen’s strength has made exporting vehicles from Japan next to impossible.” Read More >

On the road, behind the wheel, there is no such thing as an accident. There is only a swelling potential of mistakes, building towards an event that happens or does not. You are drunk but the road is empty and you know the way; not enough potential. You are tired, the phone is ringing, and your left front tire is underinflated; now we’re talking. Then you swerve to avoid a pothole and the oscillation chain begins. Potential fulfilled. You are about to have an “accident”.

I say this because I do not remember the “accident” that put me on my back for nearly a month in a disinfectant-stinking hospital room, my eyes taped from the airbag burn, my arms broken, pumped-up on a cocktail of things I cannot even pronounce. They say my Town Car hit the edge of a line of Jersey barriers and flipped forward, landing on the top edge in a ballet of megaton kinetic energy that shattered the windshield and creased the roof down into the bench seats. Single car. I don’t remember. But I remember what happened afterwards.
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The first of some 400 lawsuits pending against Toyota in the wake of the unintended acceleration scandal will go to trial by 2013, reports Bloomberg. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna has asked plaintiff lawyers to select “bellwether” cases from the hundreds of personal-injury, wrongful-death and economic-loss suits pending against Toyota to go to trial by 2013. Selna didn’t specify what types of cases would become bellwethers, cases which crystallize the case’s arguments and provide precedent for damages in other cases, but he did state that evidence discovery for them should be wrapped up in 2012. But before any of the federal trials open, there are still state-level trials to be heard. According to Bloomberg

Selna told the lawyers today that two state-court cases involving sudden-acceleration allegations are scheduled to go to trial in Texas in February and March of next year. Wylie Aitken, who is the attorney maintaining a liaison with state cases, said during a break in the hearing that both of those cases are personal injury claims.

First of all, nitpickers, I know that unununium was renamed Roentgenium in 2004. Atomic Number 111 will always be unununium in my heart, and (as soon as I can find a cheap source for the stuff) it will be used to stamp out the Murilee Martin Legends of LeMons awards for the most psychotic inspiring 24 Hours of LeMons racers of each season. The ’10 season produced a bumper crop of LeMons Legends, but only four received the coveted Unununium Medal. Let’s see who they are! Read More >