Despite Toyota’s announcement of a new generation of RAV4 EV, mostly for CARB compliance, it seems that RAV4 EV production has never really stopped – at least not on a one-off basis.
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Category: Toyota
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Toyota ReviewsToyota 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. |
My commonwealth is known for a few things: Bourbon. Baseball bats. Bourbon. Horses. Bourbon. College rivalries. Bourbon.
I did mention bourbon, right?
The Land Cruiser is one of those vehicles that washes up in self-service junkyards only after its body and interior become so thrashed that even bottom-feeder truck shoppers can’t stand the idea of being seen in the thing. Contrast this with the legions of great-looking 1980s Jaguars you’ll find in the very same yards. Read More >
Just-Auto issued a breathless press release with the hot news that the nasty Chinese government has said no to a joint venture between Japan’s Subaru and China’s Chery. If this sounds like deja vu to you, then you are an ace analyst. Send your CV to just-auto. Read More >
As I walk into Toyota’s basement-bunker Tokyo conference room for the annual results conference today, the Toyota people are all smiles. Genuine smiles. Not the frozen polite smiles so common in Japan. Happy, relaxed smiles. Looking in their faces, I read that this will be a day of good news. Read More >
Scion has had a sordid past. Originally, Scion was Toyota’s solution to a lack of 18-25 year old shoppers. Over the past 9 years however Scion has lost their way and lost their youth. Their median buyer just turned 42. The tC coupe, which started out as a car for college kids, now has a median buyer of around 30. Scion claims the FR-S is a halo car – to me, that means the FR-S will be bought by older drivers (who can actually afford it), attracting younger buyers to their showrooms. Despite being out of the target demographic, Scion flew me to Vegas to sample the FR-S’s sexy lines to find out.
No, the first-gen Tercel wasn’t related to the Corolla, but the marketing suits at Toyota USA hoped that some of the Corolla’s reputation for reliability would rub off on their smaller, cheaper, front-drive subcompact. It worked, mostly because the Tercel really was as bulletproof as the Corolla. It was also noisier, slower, and less comfortable, but painful memories of the Iranian Revolution-fueled 1979-80 oil crisis made the not-so-thirsty 83-horsepower Tercel very popular in North America. Most entry-level subcompacts don’t survive 31 years on the street, Toyota or not, and so this example I sighted in a Denver self-service junkyard is a rare find. Read More >
Even with vehement denials of a boosted Subaru BRZ, Subaru has still managed to debut a turbocharged version of the 2.0L Boxer engine. And just because the BRZ won’t get it doesn’t mean other products won’t.
A leaked spec sheet (from Temple of VTEC) for the 2013 Honda Accord shows that manuals aren’t dead yet, but CVTs are also in – at least for 4 cylinder models.
Now that GM has published global production numbers in its quarterly report, we can take a first read of how the race for world’s largest automakers may end this year. It will be a tight race. And GM is likely to lose the title it took last year. Read More >
Ford was America’s top-selling brand in April. The best-selling car was Toyota’s Camry. America’s favourite utility vehicle was once again the Honda CR-V. GM was down 8%. The Prius Plug-In out sold the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf. Fiat sold more 500s than they had up to this point.
These facts were either readily apparent from the get-go or made obvious by earlier coverage. Each month we break down all the data at GoodCarBadCar.net. The April 2012 recap is well underway. Here are some of the most interesting April 2012 auto sales facts which have been gleaned while sorting through the U.S. numbers.
Google received the first license the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to test driverless cars. The Las Vegas Sun believes this is the first such license issued in the country. Does that mean that driverless cars will roam Nevada? Not exactly. Read More >
I’m shocked and honored by the warm reception the Vellum Venom series has earned from TTAC’s B&B. Your comments are read, digested and will influence the series, but some comments move quicker than others. To wit: Josh Howard’s photochop of my Chevy Cruze image.
“You were so right about the smoothing out of the Cruze front end and getting rid of the small fake DLO plastic piece in front. This car looks WAYYYY different and more Toyota-like with some of the changes you suggested. – JH”
Now imagine Josh’s changes with a bow tie in the center and we are done. This “Vellum Venom Cruze” looks Acura-like, a bit more BMW E36-like and much like any other classically proportioned sports sedan from the modern era. But wait, we aren’t done re-designing this little hit from the big General. Hit the jump for another rendering of Epic Win. Read More >
I can sense from where I sit upside down in Sydney, Australia, that through my posts you are getting more and more knowledgeable about exactly which cars sell best: the Top 265 best-selling models in the USA over the first quarter of 2012 now have no secrets for you, as do the Top 318 best-selling models in Europe in 2011 and the Top 100 best-selling models in the World in 2011… So I thought I would give you even more recent data.
How about the best-selling models in the world in March 2012?
More of the same I hear you say?
Fine, you can find sales info for 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, all one by one. So don’t be shy and click away!
But to answer the question…
Actually, no. It’s not more of the same.
And I’ve got one word for you to prove it: hybrid.
For the 11th straight month in a row, Toyota’s Prius topped the list of Japan’s best-selling cars in April. Toyota’s new compact hybrid, the Aqua, known in the U.S. as the Prius c, was a close second. Read More >
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