With only a few days until the end of the month, Edmunds issued its June sales forecast. Edmunds expects that 1,270,901 new cars will be sold in June, translating into a 20.7 percent increase compared to June 2011, and a 4.7 percent decrease from May 2012. The Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) is projected to come in at 13.9 million light vehicles. Read More >

The fifth-gen Chevy Nova was built at California’s NUMMI plant for the 1985 through 1988 model years, prior to becoming the Geo and then the Chevrolet Prizm. The Nova was really a rebadged AE82 Corolla, and so most of them managed to survive into the turn of the 21st century. By now, however, a NUMMI Nova is a rare sight; we saw a trustifarian ’87 hatchback in California last winter, and now this well-preserved sedan has appeared in a Denver self-service yard. Read More >

If the year would have ended on May 31^st, Toyota would be the world’s largest automaker by a wide margin, followed by GM, and a distant third, Volkswagen. The year is not over until it’s over, but 5 months are a good indicator for the rest of the year. Let’s have a look. Read More >

The inimitable Ross Bentley likes to say that every driver, at every level of wheel-to-wheel competition, is a team leader. It follows, therefore, that auto racing is a team sport. In any team sport, a good system beats a great talent at least nine times out of ten, usually more. Michael Schumacher won because he built great teams, not because he could do something behind the wheel that others couldn’t. The same is true of Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR, or of the Audi efforts at LeMans.

When I’ve been drinking, or when I am trying to bore a woman into a state so comatose that she no longer has the will to resist, I like to tell the story of how I once drove from the Solo Nationals in Topeka, KS to Flat Rock, MI nonstop, jumped in my team’s Toyota Supra, and in the course of a three-hour stint promptly took us from third place to winning the 24 Hours of LeMons by 57 laps — the greatest margin of victory in series history, as far as anybody seems to know.

It’s a fun story, if you’re easily amused, and like any other story of endurance racing it’s chock-full of little dramas — the thugs from Car and Driver putting a previously-retired car back on track just to try to hit me, a failure of radio communication, Tony Swan’s mental failure and subsequent wall-smacking after I stepped on his throat with some horrifyingly aggressive but contact-free racing. It was a great victory and I’m still pleased to remember it five years after the fact.

Our team really didn’t win because of anything I did, however. We won because they were planning and executing a strategy while I was still packing up my brother’s RX-8 in Topeka. That strategy won the race, and I keep trying to share it with people… but nobody really wants to listen.

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Toyota and BMW will announce a closer alliance as early as Friday, The Nikkei [sub] and Tokyo scuttlebutt say.  According to the Nikkei, the two will share Toyota’s hybrid and fuel cell technology. BMW will try seeking scale effects for its CFRP technology. TTAC will feature a closer look into Toyota’s carbon fiber capabilities once we have finished our own research. Read More >

After the much anticipated (yes!) May World Roundup (no hyphen) article last Monday, I thought I’d spoil you and come back unannounced right in the middle of the week to lighten up a drab day at work. If you’re having a fantastic day at work, make your way out . If when you click on the link above you find you absolutely love that little Roundup of mine, then you are welcome to check out previous world Roundups here for March 2012  (“Has the Hybrid era started for good?”), and here for April 2012 (“Big change coming from India”).

Today, we are travelling through time to have a look at the best-selling models in the USA 20 years ago, in 1992. Yes, 1992 is 20 years ago. I know. I also feel like I just celebrated NYE 1993. But we are all 20 years older now. So if you are having a fantastic day at work, AND you were born after 1992, man/woman, just don’t talk to me ok?

So don’t talk to me and visit 164 additional countries and territories in my blog. There.

Now back to 1992.

And 1992 was the year of the Ford Taurus…

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Judging from their writings, many TTAC commenters are prime candidates for a job as CEO at one of the world’s largest automakers. However, be careful who you work for. Executive pay is all over the map. It ranges from a charitable contribution of $1.71 million given to Toyota’s CEO, to nearly $29 million a year on Ford’s Alan Mulally’s paystub.

This according to a table circulated among reporters who, perched precariously in the 6^th floor balcony of the National Convention Hall at the Pacifico in Yokohama, observed Nissan’s 113^th ordinary general shareholders meeting today. Read More >

Members of the MR2 Jihad generally refer to the creature on the hood emblems of their cars as the “Screaming Eagle,” but I say it’s a stoic, tight-beaked Robot Eagle. I hadn’t paid much attention to this emblem, since it’s quite small and mounted on a car snout that sits quite close to the pavement, but then a 24 Hours of LeMons team composed of Toyota engineers created a gigantic Pontiac Trans Am-style decal version for the hood of their MR2. Robot Eagle! Read More >

Last week I wondered whether the Ford Focus could soon become the world’s most popular car… The response may lie in today’s article as it is time for our monthly appointment: the World car sales Roundup for May! You can check out previous world Roundups here for March 2012  (“Has the Hybrid era started for good?”), and here for April 2012 (“Big change coming from India”).

Not your thing? No worries, you can visit 164 countries and territories in my blog, go on, you know you want to!

So in March we talked hybrids, in April we talked India, this month my accent will be American, Chinese and South African…

Yep – all in one.

And yes. I have decided that Roundup doesn’t have a hyphen between Round and up. Because I can.

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While the regular junkyard visitor might run across the occasional FJ60 Land Cruiser in a cheap self-service yard, especially here in 4WD-centric Colorado, there are some Toyota trucks you just don’t see in such junkyards. One is the 4Runner (I’ve found exactly one so far) and another is the FJ40 Land Cruiser. But wait— look what I just found! Read More >

Today, Germany’s Spiegel Magazin reports what we suspected since last December: “BMW and Toyota edge closer.”  Both, says the magazine, will “enter a close partnership that transcends the projects that were agreed in the past.” Read More >

“It’s just sooooo much better on coke, you just wouldn’t believe it, that’s how I prefer it, really, it’s so much better it almost isn’t worth doing it sober.” Though I remained professionally impassive behind my Prodesign 4360 eyeglasses, I was simply amazed at the story that my old high-school classmate was telling me over a few drinks. Back in 1986, she’d been just another quiet, reasonably pretty girl, and in the present day she’s a suburban housewife with the requisite $70,000 Toyota and the mandatory country club memberships. In between, however, she’d apparently done some pretty crazy stuff, including a couple of cocaine-laced three-way weekend throwdowns in Las Vegas. “You go to Vegas for your car thingies, don’t you?” she inquired, her nostrils flaring in Proustian sympathy.

“Er, not any more I don’t,” I hastily replied. Twenty minutes later I was quite deliberately out the door, heading home on my little Honda motorcycle, and feeling quite square. Not my kind, dear. I’ve never done cocaine. Never plan to. But it seems like every woman I meet nowadays has climbed a veritable Everest of the stuff. Was I missing something? To find out, I decided to ask my resident expert on kink, drugs, department-store clothes-shopping, and all other things vaguely disreputable.

“I suppose sex might be better on cocaine the first few times,” the infamous Vodka McBigbra told me as I knelt in my driveway, scrubbing bugs off my Boxster’s smudged 3M nose shield, “but every guy I ever saw who used coke to enhance sex ended up giving up the sex in order to focus more intently on the coke, you know? There’s just never enough of it, you understand? There are these great hits, but then there just isn’t enough. I don’t think you understand.”

Oh, sweetheart, but I do understand. After all, I’m an automotive journalist.

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The folks at Toyota have been complaining about the low euro and the strong yen long enough. Now, they are putting the low Euro to work. Starting in May 2013, Toyota will ship its Toyota Yaris from Toyota’s Onnaing-Valenciennes plant in France to the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Read More >

“Reliability, safety and availability” were the criteria Edmunds used to arrive at its 2012 used car best bets. They are taken from the pool of 2005 through 2010 cars, because two to seven year old cars usually are the better deals.

And the winners are: Read More >

Europe’s car market is slowly swirling down the drain. Sales in May were down by 8.7 percent. Five months into the year, the market is down 7.7 percent.

Europe’s best-selling cars are impacted disproportionately. Eight out of ten suffered double-digit percentage losses. Only one car managed a slight increase in May. Read More >