The nice people at BEST Motoring have produced another one of their entertaining pseudo-races. This one features the GT86/BRZ twins vs. the current Miata. It can be watched and enjoyed solely on its own merits. If that isn’t enough, and you want to hear some thoughts regarding the setup of the race, the performance of the respective vehicles, and the showmanship involved, click the jump.
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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. |
With a rising yen and forecasted sales of 200,000 units, Toyota is looking to kick Prius production into high gear on North American shores.
In 1990, budget-conscious car shoppers who wanted to buy American-built (if not American-designed) could pick up a Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon America for $6,995, a Pontiac Sunbird coupe for $7,858, or a Ford Escort Pony for $7,423. The Escort had penal-colony-grade amenities and was on the final model year of a very elderly platform (though not as outdated as the Omnirizon), but its simplicity and gas-sipping ways made it a fairly good seller, especially after things got crazy in Kuwait. Read More >
Here some background on the GM/Isuzu tie-up. Japanese wire services such as The Nikkei [sub] and Jiji report that GM approached Isuzu and “informally proposed acquiring a stake” in the Japanese truck maker. The source is an unnamed executive of Isuzu.
According to The Nikkei [sub], GM and Isuzu will start negotiations in early May for a roughly 10 percent share. If the negotiations are successful, Isuzu President Susumu Hosoi and GM CEO Dan Akerson could meet this summer to sign the agreement. Read More >
Uh oh. Here we go again. GM apparently wants a 10 percent stake in Isuzu to build commercial vehicles.
There are some cars that no one will appreciate… but the owners. A bad brand name. Fatal and expensive defects from times past. Even a body style made of a designer’s frump can turn a brilliant vehicle into a showroom relic. This week I majored in buying unloved cars. Seven cars. Seven sins. More than likely seventy-seven plus days on the pavement.
Now that nearly all of you know are familiar with the Top 100 best-selling cars in the world and the Top 318 best-selling models in Europe, what if we looked no further than the United States of America and go through the Top 265 best-selling models here over the First Quarter of this year…
No?
So you’re bored with home already. But that’s ok because I have 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!
Now for those of you who are still interested, I will start by saying that no, the Honda Element is not the least selling car in the country, but just: with just 3 models sold in the last 3 months and down 99.8% year-on-year it ranks #261 out of 265 models accounted for…That would be because the model has been discontinued and is no longer produced.
Why did I focus on the Honda Element? Just because.
For more see below the jump.
We’ve seen a few NUMMI-built Junkyard Finds in recent weeks, including this ’87 Nova and this ’87 Corolla FX16 GT-S. However, the car that really comes to mind when you think of NUMMI is the Geo Prizm. Here’s an example of GM’s rebadged Corolla that I found at a self-service junkyard about 20 miles from the car’s birthplace. It’s the circle of automotive life! Read More >
Toyota will launch a domestically produced plug-in hybrid in China before the year is over and will follow with EVs once certification is completed, said Dong Changzheng, executive vice president of Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co., to a small group of reporters at the Beijing Auto Show. The cars will be marketed under a yet to be announced “Chinese” brand. Read More >
The last two Vellum Venom editorials discussed the differences between 1980s and 2000s automotive design aesthetics, for two vehicles with similar missions for their respective brands. The point? We’ve gone silly in our proportions and we need way more ATD (attention to detail) from the auto makers. Behold, my point coming to life: the 1991-ish Toyota Camry.
Before we proceed, remember what one of my design teachers said: success depends on proportion, proportion, proportion! Read More >
After 15 years of sales in the United States, the Corolla had become as familiar to Americans as the Nova or Dart. By 1981, Toyota had confused matters by badging the unrelated Tercel as the “Corolla Tercel,” but the actual Corolla was still selling well. With the gas lines of the 1979 energy crisis— by some measures more painful that its 1973 precursor— still fresh in car shoppers’ memories, the stingy Corolla made a lot of sense. The Corolla was getting sportier-looking as the 1980s dawned, too; compare this car to the smaller and frumpier Corollas of just five years earlier. Here’s a nice example of the Celica-influenced fourth-gen Corolla liftback, spotted last month in a California self-service yard. Read More >
The last time TTAC took a look at the Camry Hybrid was back in 2006. For 2012 Toyota has completely redesigned the Camry from the “sporty” SE model to the refrigerator-white base model Michael Karesh took for a spin. The base model’s low price appeals to dealers while the SE allows Toyota to believe the Camry is something other than basic transportation. So what about the hybrid? The gasoline/electric Camry is aimed squarely at shoppers that want more green cred than a regular Camry can deliver and Prius shoppers looking for something more powerful and more traditional. One out of every seven Camrys sold in 2011 was a hybrid, with those numbers expected to grow it is imperative Toyota gets their baby-boomer hybrid just right.
I was in a $50,000 luxury car the other day. Don’t worry about the manufacturer because it seems to be all the same these days. There was cheap plastic chrome that surrounded the air vents, the buttons on the dashboard, the cupholders. Even a smattering on the door panels and steering wheel.
Was it always this way? Of course not! Back in the good old days of the Clinton Era we had plenty of fake wood to choose from as well. Diamantes, Roadmasters, Town & Countrys… even Camrys were sometimes given the drop dead phony wood treatment throughout the interior if the dealer wanted it so.
Some looked nice. Others were cheap enough to flake into a near confetti state as time wore on. Either way, wood was the thing to have back in the day.
So today The Tycho, proprietor of Carnewschina and expert on Mao-era-revival cars, intercepts me at the show and says: “You did it all wrong! You talked about the H7, but showed the L7!”
“I beg your pardon?”
It turns out he was right as usual. In my piece on the Red Flag car, the wrong pictures were added to the wrong text. Corrected. As a make-good, here the ultimate L7/H7 pictorial. Read More >
In the geek world we have “Moore’s law” which states the number of transistors in ICs will double every two years. In the automotive world we have the bloat law. Every generation of a vehicle will get more powerful, heavier and physically larger than its predecessor, ultimately requiring the manufacturer to design an entirely new, smaller car to fill the void left by the original.
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