Automotive News [AN, sub] reckons it’s got the inside line on Toyota’s “new U.S. plan.” They’re so chuffed with the scoop that their article presents the bulleted battle plan in both the body text and a little gray box. And here it is: “Review and possibly trim the lineup of full-frame trucks; Skip midcycle vehicle enhancements to focus on bigger launches; Introduce more hybrids to North America; Give U.S. engineers a bigger voice in r&d.” AN reckons the headline is the potential truck trimming and hybrid adding bit. Which is certainly important news for a company with a “tattered image” (Toyota, apparently, not the American zombies clinging to profits via pickups, who’ve yet to produce a single large-volume hybrid vehicle). But what of ToMoCo leaving existing vehicles as is for longer?

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Ever since GM announced that Saturn would be winding down, there’s been a niche-brand-like hole in the Canadian car market. And rather than learning from GM’s struggles, Toyota’s jumping right in to repeat them. The Star reports that ToMoCo have announced that Scion is going to Canada. Toyota will start off with 45 dealerships in urban settings (makes sense for an urban marque, I suppose); 20 in Toronto, 18 in Montreal and 7 in Vancouver. It’ll start off as a “store within a store” format. “The next generation of young car buyers is carving its own unique social and cultural experiences and Scion dealers will be part of their lifestyle,” Larry Hutchinson, Scion’s director in Canada, said. By slathering sensible cars which appeal to empty-nester boomers with youth-oriented marketing? Yeah, that’s been working well so far…

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While the human Seven Deadly Sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – clearly play a part in any automaker’s fall from grace, Detroit cultivated its own favorite deadly transgressions. Chrysler’s recurring dirty little habit was premature ejection: spurting cars out of the factory door before they were ready. The shoddily built 1957s devastated the company’s hard earned rep for solid, well-engineered cars. Chrysler only barely absolved itself through the penance of hard work along with the blessing of the sacred A-Body. But in 1976, Chrysler fell from grace again, and this time it took the intercession of the Great White Father in Washington to keep it from eternal damnation. And not for the last time, either.

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Reading a long-term test of a stripped-and-slammed Renaultsport Mégane R26.R in evo Magazine, I couldn’t help but chuckle. In true enthusiast style, the author simultaneously bemoans the disappearance of such factory-racer hot-hatches and attempts to argue that they’re not really that impractical. Between the picture of the author’s bicycle sharing hatch space with a bright red racing cage and his amazingly sincere insistence that driving without a radio is more zen exercise than deprivation, the picture was clear: enthusiasts are absolute nutters. We’re willing to make ludicrous defenses of cars that are as light and stripped-out as possible, while the mainstream begs for ever more weight, comfort and isolation. As at least one commenter in today’s Honda product thread noted, automakers would be nuts to listen too hard to enthusiasts. Unless there were ways to reduce weight without making a car totally unappealing to the appliance fans. Could it be possible?

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Though we don’t have a [sub] for Consumer Reports‘ members-only data, their latest reliability survey summary has enough interesting tidbits to warrant a mention. Based on their subscriber base’s 1.4m autos, and using only data available for at least 100 examples of a given model, the survey is one of the better indicators of reliability out there (although when it comes to this topic there is no gospel). If nothing else, it’s hard to argue that CR’s reliability results aren’t influential, so sales are definitely at stake. The results? All Toyota/Lexus/Scion received ratings of “average” or better, an improvement over last year when CR found Camry V6, Tundra V8 4WD, and the Lexus GS AWD to be lacking. Honda/Acura and Subaru also showed extremely well where complete data was available, and Hyundai/Kia models were average or better except for Sedona and Entourage. Hybrids also scored surprisingly well, with nine gas-electrics scoring above average. But CR is making the biggest fuss over Ford, which they say is “on par” with the Japanese firms on all but a few truck-based models.  The rest of the Detroit firms? Not quite so much.

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As TTAC moves into its next chapter, it’s important that we revisit a topic that has long been a defining factor in our site’s success: our comment moderation policy. TTAC strives to provide the very best discussion on all things automotive, and in order to maintain decorum and high-quality online discourse, we’ve always moderated comments. This will not change, because—as a visit to most other car blogs proves—it’s the only way to prevent otherwise interesting conversations from devolving into ad-hominem, flaming and general unpleasantness. To help combat the internet’s endless supply of insulting, angry, incoherent, thoughtless, unfunny and generally annoying commentary, I’ve enlisted longtime TTACers Jeff Puthuff and Daniel J. Stern to help patrol our community. If you step over the line, expect to hear from one of us. Meanwhile, hit the jump for a little more detail on on community expectations and behavioral standards here at TTAC.

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Remember the scene in Jaws when Quint is being eaten by a great white shark, where he kicks his legs at the beast’s head, trying to avoid its endless rows of razor-sharp teeth? I reckon Lincoln’s designers based the MKT’s snout on Bruce’s man-eating maw. Sure, there’s a touch of Hannibal Lecter’s mask to the MKT’s grill design. And yes, HR Giger’s aliens would feel right at home wheeling this whip to a Humanity’s End party. But there are children who laughed at the liver-loving psycho killer and sniggered at the acid-tongued incubus who will wake-up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, begging Daddy to take them to school in the morning in his sedate sedan. Congratulations, Lincoln: the MKT is the world’s most terrifying family vehicle.

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Pity Takanobu Ito. Like many (ok, some) of us, the CEO of Honda is torn between his love for speed and the desire to be perceived as environmentally responsible. On the one hand, he lambasted Toyota for building its $375k LF-A supercar, saying that to his mind the fuel-cell FCX clarity (once described by Jonny Lieberman as “exactly like a Honda Accord”) was his idea of a modern sports car. On the other, “I would like to make a sports car,” Ito tells Automotive News [sub]. “Once we have that technology and once we have cash on hand, I would like to see Honda have a sports car that symbolizes our technology.” Is he referring to the forthcoming CR-Z? Because, as cool as that car looks, it will hardly satisfy the LF-A jealousy we detect in Mr Ito’s voice. And you have to imagine that the creator of the NSX is as qualified as anyone else to design and develop the first 21st Century green sportscar. But what would that look like? Assume any price point up to the LF-A’s insane $375k sticker, and give us some specs. And remember, at this point, green is relative… and quantifiable only in terms of marketing.

That’s right. Buy a $110,000 Tesla Roadster, and according to the Denver Post, the state of Colorado will give you $42,000 in tax breaks. That’s 85 percent of the premium over a Lotus Elise. Colorado’s alt-fuel and zero-emissions tax credit system gives between 50 percent and 85 percent of the premium over a comparable gas-burning car, but as a zero-emissions vehicle only the Tesla can claim the full 85 percent discount. “Most of them are (Toyota) Priuses and hybrid vehicles,” say CO revenue department spokesfolks. Still, the colossal incentive on the two-seat Roadster was enough for the state legislature to limit discounts to no more than $6,000. But that limit doesn’t go into effect until January. Between now and then though, there’s practically no reason to buy an Elise in Colorado… unless you want to be able to fill up at a gas station. [Hat Tip: Freedmike]

The birthplace of TTAC, pistonheads.com, reports that the Land Rover Defender has finally left the ramparts. I’m sure the Defender will have plenty of defenders, but I will not be amongst them. Setting aside the idea that the Defender could behave like a modern car on a normal road (a preposterous suggestion), the 25 to 61-year-old vehicle’s main selling point was its go-anywhere ruggedness and simplicity of repair (a necessity as much as a virtue). It’s been completely trounced by Toyota’s off-roaders in both not to say all departments. I’ll give the Landie its narrow track and relatively light weight, a boon to anyone who’s ever had to literally pull a vehicle out of the muck, but we are talking about a hand-built automobile with about as much passive safety as a camel. OK, less, given the relative speeds involved (close call) and all the Defender’s sharp bits. As for the future, “Apparently [the new Defender] will use either the platform from the current Range Rover Sport and LR4, (which doesn’t fill us with confidence for its mud-plugging ability, but Land Rover insists that the new car will be just as able in the rough stuff), or a significantly more advanced version of a ladder-framed vehicle.” Or, alternatively, nothing.

Because of an unusual concentration of radio and television broadcast antennae in and around the Detroit suburb where I live, just about every car company and automotive electronics vendor that does business in North America tests their cars for resistance to radio frequency interference in my neighborhood. Ford in particular seems to like the testing location – it’s only 20 minutes from Ford facilities in Dearborn and convenient to do worst case real world testing.

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Home game machines are no good. Playing something that realistic makes the need for cars disappear

So goes the Gawker hive-mind translation of a quote, attributed to an unnamed Toyota executive by Masahiro Kawaguchi, in an editorial published by the Mainichi Newspaper of Osaka (got that?). Best of all, Kawaguchi’s piece apparently goes on to attempt a further causal link to Japan’s falling population. “Guys used to work hard at their job so they could get a stylish, cool car for girl’s to ride in,” he argues. But isn’t the connection between falling car sales and a falling population easy enough to establish without blaming videogames? And what about the geographical arguments for an inevitable leveling-off of car sales in Japan? Or perhaps Mr Kawaguchi was subtly blaming some other, non-car-related “realistic video game” for a declining birth rate. Either way, the comment reflects a gnawing paranoia that is no longer unique to the auto executives of Japan: how do we sell cars to young people in mature markets? I always thought they used video games.

The Mainstream Media has a thing about safety-related stories. It started with the “if it bleeds it leads” paradigm, and has become a predictable hobbyhorse thanks to the fact that you’d have to be the worst kind of sociopath to even consider arguing against more safety. If the MSM likes anything more than trench-warfare debates, it’s coming together afterward over a hot cup of won’t someone think of the children? But facts are facts, and as the WSJ reports, driving a car has literally never been safer. There were 1.19 deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled in the second quarter of 2009, the lowest number since the NHTSA began keeping statistics in the 1970s. And the IIHS’s recent gee-whiz test results don’t even tell the whole story, although they do indicate that the lobbying group may be losing some relevance. Beyond passive safety features like improved steel, engineering and airbags, active safety features like stability and traction control are preventing a great number of deaths. As are roadway improvements like rumble strips and median dividers, not to mention increased DUI and seatbelt enforcement. In short, great strides have been made. Which means it’s time to think about changing the conversation about safety. As the video above proves, we’ll never completely wring the danger out of the practice of piloting tons of metal around at speed, but the latest statistics show that it might be a good time to consider prioritizing lower vehicle weights over a safety-at-all-costs approach. After all, even the most fanatical safety advocates are now focusing on distracted driving and motorcycle deaths.