Toyota Motor Co., the world’s largest automaker, has been producing cars for more than 70 years. It wasn’t until after World War II, however, that production started to pick up. Toyota went from making 8,500 cars a year in 1955 to 600,000 in 1965. Models like the Toyopet and Land Cruiser hit the United States in 1957. Today Toyota is among the leaders when it comes to hybrid technology.
We continue our look at the rock stars of car magazines, the concept cars splashed across the covers, cars that rarely if ever went anywhere.
The cover concept dream cars that I find most intriguing are the stillborn ideas, cars that were not quite vaporware, but that also never made it past prototype stage into production. Some were from specialist manufacturers, others from new startups and yet others from large and established firms. Some, like the six-wheeler Panther, were so unique that they have stuck in my memory for decades. Others completely slipped my mind. Most of them, I’m sure, sold more magazines than cars.
If I asked you to name a major Japanese automaker that developed a mid-engine sports car you’d most likely mention Toyota and the MR2 or Honda’s highly esteemed Acura NSX. You probably wouldn’t mention Nissan. Read More >
Ford’s Escape wasn’t the best-selling compact crossover in June, but it only needed to cruise to an easy victory as the best selling compact crossover in the first half of 2010. Honda and Toyota’s offerings are still over 10k units behind the mighty Escape on the half, with the Equinox claiming fourth place, and Rogue and Forester neck-and-neck for fifth.
In this day and age, it’s nothing short of a minor miracle that giant multinationals still build cars that are as ridiculously potent and expensive as the LF-A. Especially giant multinationals which have made good headway in recent years with a green-friendly, Prius-powered image. The LFA is rare enough that few non-car-nuts know it exist, let alone associate it with their new ES350. It costs $375k a pop and Toyota still loses money on each one built. In fact, thus far, only this video (a promotional shoot by Lexus Europe at the 2010 Goodwood Festival Of Speed) comes close to properly explaining why this car was built (starting at around the 1:10 mark). In fact, I challenge anyone to come up with a more concise argument for the continued existence of hugely expensive, hugely fast cars.
Like GM’s infamous “payback” commercial, this Toyota ad walks right up to the point of a big lie, allowing the viewer to believe something while they’re actually being told something subtly different. Toyota never says “we spend a million dollars every hour on safety-related technology,” but they sure make you want to believe it. In reality, the “million dollars every hour” represents Toyota’s global R&D budget, some undisclosed portion of which is spent on safety-related technology. Toyota’s explanation of this intentionally confusing claim, after the jump. Read More >
Know what to do next time you see a higher price at the pump? Don’t buy gas on May 15? How lame. Learn from the folks in India. According to the BBC, India’s opposition parties have called a general strike against fuel price rises, and “normal life has been disrupted in many parts of India.” Read More >
A hybrid version of the Nissan Fuga (better known as the Infiniti M35/45 on these shores) could deliver an up to 90 percent better fuel-efficiency than its conventionally powered model, Nissan’s chief engineer for hybrid systems told The Nikkei [sub] today.
“We expect fuel economy to improve by 60 percent to 90 percent” over the conventional model, chief engineer Koichi Hayasaki said at a media briefing. Read More >
The BBC reports that new car registrations in the UK have inexplicably risen 10.8 percent in June 2010 compared with this time, last year. What makes this “inexplicable” is the fact that sales have risen, despite the fact that the “cash for clunkers” scheme had ended on March the 31st, 2010. “The new car market continued to perform above expectations in June,” said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) chief executive Paul Everitt said, “The results indicate improved business confidence and a strengthening economic recovery.” However, a quick look at the SMMT report reveals a potential answer. The article shows that fleet sales grew 25.3 percent. Those pesky fleet sales! Let’s take a quick look at some of the brands and their performance, shall we…? Read More >
For this edition of Magazine Memories, we’ll be reviewing what I like to call “cover concepts”. For decades, perhaps since the buff book genre began, putting a completely new and typically exotically styled concept or dream car on the cover, more often than not accompanied by hype that the car will actually go on sale, has been a staple of the automobile magazine industry. Hindsight tells us that most of them were indeed dream cars, never really making it to production. The dreams were so vivid (and so much in vain) that this will be a three-part series that barely scratches the imagined body paint.
Some of the cover cars were more concrete, representing cars that made it to production, mass production in some cases, but again hindsight gives us some perspective on unrealistic expectations or journalists buying into the hype. Examples of this category would be the May 1979 edition of Car and Driver, announcing the arrival of GM’s latest attempt to sell small cars, the all-new front wheel drive X cars, with a large photo of the Chevrolet Citation in its “performance” package X11 trim. The cover copy reads “REVOLUTION! GM blows everybody into the weeds with new front drive compacts!” Read More >
Toyota’s having some pretty rotten luck recently. First was “acceler-gate”, the mass hysteria of how Toyota cars were going out of control and murdering innocent people. Then came stories of people blaming Toyota cars for accidents, when in reality it was the driver’s fault (or in the case of Jim Sikes, a scam). You would have thought this would pour oil over troubled waters for Toyota, right? Nope. The malaise continued. Then came the public humiliation of the senate hearings. Did anybody in the media point out the conflict of interest for the senate? Well, if they did, nobody listened. So, while Toyota is fire fighting in North America and is having a bit of a rough time in Europe, at least things are OK in Australia. A market where Toyota dominated for 5 years. Well… Read More >
Despite having more cash than debt for the first time in decades, GM is going back to Wall Street in search of fresh debt. Over the weekend, The General has been in talks with several banks to secure a $5b revolving line of credit to shore up its liquidity position ahead of an IPO that’s rumored to take place in August. At $5b, GM’s desired line of credit would essentially replace the $5.8b the automaker has repaid to the Treasury, and will help it deal with a number of pressing cash needs to maintain its shaky global empire. But with so many pressing uses for the cash, and political pressure mounting for a rapid IPO, can GM deal with its issues and take on more debt and be worth what the government wants it to be worth? Troublingly, the answers to these questions are not to be found on GM’s balance sheet.
In what amounts to a landmark policy shift, NHTSA now recommends that customers take quality problems in their own hands, and perform recalls themselves. Take NHTSA Campaign ID number 10V305000. Read More >
When word of the BMW EV called „MegaCity“ first made the rounds, our Ed Niedermeyer called it “BMW’s long-rumored Neo-Isetta EV.” Now, BMW opened the first button of their electric blouse. Read More >
I remember when a 15 year old car was as wore out as an old mop. Rust. Electric gremlins. Dark oils and brownish fluids spewing out of nearly every seal and gasket. When the auctions had a car that was nearly old enough to drive itself, it was usually already smoking (out of the tailpipe)… and drinking (it’s own oil and coolant). The jalopies that came from the bad old days of the 1980’s almost always left a puddle of ‘remembrance’ which you had to be careful not to step on when looking at the next elderly statesman. A run of old cars would result in a nice white cloud above everyone’s head and a post-auction headache for yours truly. It was a nasty smelly world not too long ago.. but now…
Because we are halfway through the year, we’re mixing things up a little by comparing June sales to six-month totals instead of to June 2009 sales.
Toyota takes the C-Segment crown with the one-two punch of its mixed Corolla/Matrix sales. A breakout here would be nice, but since Toyota’s not offering, we’ve included the HHR with Cobalt and the Jetta with Golf to even things up a little. Credit the Focus for selling with the best of them without a hatchback platform-mate, and note that the Elantra’s monthly number has improved considerably relative to its six-month average.
These six sedans are the fleshy part of the American car market. Big-name D-segment sedans sell like crazy, and pretty much made Honda and Toyota what they are today. Their dominance of this segment, often called “Camccord” after their two best-sellers, remains unchecked as each has spent three months on top of the chart. But there’s danger down below. Hyundai’s Sonata has been making steady progress all year (June excepted), and the Malibu has enjoyed more modest, but equally steady growth. Altima all but matched Camry in February, and gave Accord a scare in March. There’s still a tight pack of four nipping at the heels of the big dogs. Time to start coming up with a new nickname for the D-Segment?
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