Brand                Mid-size                    Full-size

Toyota             Camry:25,745               Avalon:1,939

Nissan             Altima:12,149                Maxima:5,901

Hyundai             Sonata:7,898                Azera:339

Ford                Fusion:10,834              Taurus:5,077

Chevrolet       Malibu:10,479            Impala:13,047

Chrysler         Sebring:1,451              300:3,411

I saw the strangest thing yesterday. Driving down a country highway there appeared to be a tattered old Toyota pickup and a 1990’s Chrysler LHS spread amongst five foot tall weeds. Further peering in resulted in an Escort Wagon, 3 Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertibles and 2 Sebrings. I wondered… had Monsanto finally invented some special car seed to plague the Americas? Not yet. Thankfully. Instead it was a dealer friend who was literally hiding his compulsions amongst the kudzu. His case may be extreme since he apparently has nearly 30 vehicles strewn throughout his prairie land. But he’s not alone.

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Bloomberg reports that the US International Trade Commission has launched a probe of alleged patent violations which could result in the banning of all Toyota hybrids from the US market. Paice LLC won a 2005 civil suit against Toyota, in which Paice’s founder Alex Severinsky sought a court order banning the sale of Toyota’s Prius, Highlander and Lexus RX400h hybrids. Instead, an appeals judge awarded Paice $4.3m in damages, and ordered Toyota pay Paice a $100 royalty per hybrid sold in the US. In the current case before the ITC, Paice claims that Toyota’s Camry, third-generation Prius, Lexus HS250h sedan and Lexus RX450h are “are materially the same” and violate the same patents as those in its first case. If Paice can convince the ITC that Toyota indeed violated its patents, he will still need to prove that the little-known company has a market to protect. But Paice doesn’t actually want Toyota to be banned from selling cars. In the words of one patent attorney,  an “injunction would have given Paice strong leverage to negotiate a lucrative licensing deal with Toyota…Paice always felt that their technology was worth a lot more than [$100 per car] to Toyota.” Read More >

The FT-86 concept, based on an RWD variant of the Subaru Impreza chassis, has been revealed at the Tokyo Auto Show. And behold, the Toyobaru coupe of internet legend appears to be in near-production trim. With a 2.0 boxer four, a six-speed manual and a forecast base price of under $30k, the FT-86 hopes to live up to the promise of its AE86 reference point. If nothing else, it signals the possible end of a long winter for Toyota’s enthusiast lineup, which effectively went into hibernation when the MR-2 Spyder was canned in 2007. But don’t get too excited. The FT-86 production model won’t go on sale in Japan until “late 2011,” so it’s anyone’s guess when it will become available in the States.

Friends, we are gathered together to pay our last respects to a fallen brother. Saturn was the love child of Roger Smith and Hal Riney; one was the Chairman of GM, a manufacturer of cars; the other, an ad man extraordinaire, a manufacturer of emotions. Let us savor their own words as we remember the brand that was Saturn, starting with these from Roger: (Saturn will be)“a quantum leap ahead of the Japanese, including what they have coming in the future. In Saturn we have GM’s answer – the American answer – to the Japanese challenge. It’s the clean-sheet approach to producing small cars that in time will have historic implications…(Saturn is) the key to GM’s long-term competitiveness, survival, and success.”

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Derren Brown is, for me, the World’s greatest illusionist. In his career, he has, played Russian Roulette (and won), predicted the National Lottery numbers live on TV and tricked bookmakers in paying out on bets which hadn’t won. But this problem, I think, would have been beyond him. How do you revive a car plant in a high cost country? The answer? A 4 month break.

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Hyundai’s on a roll. It wasn’t too long ago that the only things its cars generated were pollution and repair bills. Today, however, Hyundai cars are generating awards, increased sales, and most importantly, opinions. Read the comments section of any post on anything Hyundai, and people will have something to say. Many have good things to say, some do not. In either case, Hyundai has changed something: people care enough about its cars to have an opinion.

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TTAC commentator JollyJerry posits the following:

I’m looking for some recommendations and insight on highway cruisers that would coddle me and my girlfriend on a long multi-state road trip. I’m a tall lanky guy at 6′ 4″, so the Scion xB has been a perfect car for me so far. It’s definitely the wrong car to take for a long trip because it hurts my back, and I can’t stand the engine, wind, and road noise after a few hours. Here’s a list of cars I’ve been researching just to give an idea of what I’ve been looking at on TTAC and other sites: Ford Crown Victory / Mercury Grand Marquis / Marauder Toyota Avalon Chevy Impala / Monte Carlo Chevy Caprice Lexus LS Chrysler 300M Pontiac Bonneville Hyundai XG350. The ideal car would be cheap (<5k), reliable for at least a few months, incredibly comfortable on our bums and backs, and dead quiet. For this car, I wouldn’t care about looks or handling if I could get the above list. Good mileage would be a nice to have too because we’ll cover a lot of miles. Last generation domestic full-size sedans seem to do well on price and comfort. I’m more afraid of the Buicks and Cadillacs because of repair costs. Cost is also a big factor for most of the European sedans. What do you all think? Is there a car I’m missing that would be great for traveling all over the country and then selling?

The BMW 1-series was a bust as was the Audi A3 in America. Sales are in the tank and everyone sits back and wonders why we don’t buy small cars. We buy small cars, just not yours. Heck look at the MINI. Maybe BMW is just not as cool. Oh right, BMWs are way cool and they own MINI. Maybe it was the Euro against the dollar, price walk ups from the 1-series/A3 to the 3 or A4 respectively, true mileage gains, looks . . . I don’t know. Or maybe these manufacturers are looking through beer goggles. Let me break it down for you like a fraction through flip flops and tip tops. First some flops . . .

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I am that oddball of pistonhedonism who has never lusted for speed. In fact, caution genes run in my family. To wit: my parents installed seatbelts in the ‘57 Chevy in 1960, eight years before they became mandatory in new cars. Our ‘65 404 was probably the first Peugeot station wagon in all of France to have rear shoulder belts. My father, an academic economist, showed the men at the factory how to install them. I didn’t get tagged for speeding until I was just shy of 40, and that for doing all of 35 in Rock Creek Park. (Gail Wilensky, the Porsche driving head of Medicare under George H.W. Bush, was hitching a ride downtown with me in my then 16 year old Toyota Corolla with the busted window from a smash & grab, but that’s another story.)

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So exactly how did Ford achieve quality equal to Toyota? Or are their TV ads misleading, as the ads from decades ago which proclaimed “At Ford Quality Is Job One”? This was the question in my mind as I returned to the Sharonville Transmission Plant after exactly 30 years. A long term friend, who did not jump ship in 1979 as I had done, when it looked like Ford was going to self destruct, got me past the guard post for a tour of the plant. Jerry had seen what he called “a compete transformation of Ford Motor Company” during his 37 years. He said I would not recognize the place.

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“My client was terrified. She slept with a machete next to her bed and she slept with mace. She could barely sleep or eat normally.”

Los Angeles attorney Nicholas Tepper explains why Toyota and its ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi went too far with their viral “The Other You” campaign. Tepper calls the effort a “terror tarketing campaign,” and according to his lawsuit [via Ad Age… follow the link to watch the ad], his client “became physically ill” because she was convinced “a disturbed and aggressive” stranger was en route to her house. No wonder Akio Toyoda recently admitted “Toyota has become too big and distant from its customers.” Thumbs down.

[via The Freep]

If Ford, Honda, Toyota and Nissan are nursing headaches after the Cash For Clunkers party and GM and Chrysler are still asleep in puddles of their own vomit, Hyundai Group never went to sleep and is still partying hard. With sales up 26 percent over September ’08, Hyundai is holding a clinic on the difference between a soft landing with an excuse and real success. And Kia [via Autospies] isn’t far behind, with sales up 24.4 percent. As if to prove that nobody has it easy in today’s global car game, Bloomberg reports that the strength of the Korean Won is gouging Hyundai’s overseas profit. Still, in the American market, Hyundai wouldn’t trade places with any other manufacturer.

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The three Japanese majors saw September sales slides that were generally closer to Ford’s mild Clunker hangover than GM and Chrysler’s cliff dive belly-flop. Honda‘s 20 percent overall decline was the worst of the bunch, and was led by a 30 percent drop in Acura sales. In contrast, Toyota-brand vehicles fell 19.1 percent while Lexus actually recorded a 7.3 percent increase. Nissan-brand sales declined a mere 5.8 percent, while Infiniti fell 15 percent.

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