Hey, you. Yeah, you with the landfill masquerading as a car. It’s time to clean it up and get organized. Having a spot in which to store all the detritus of daily life is important. It’s even more important to keep it in reach of the ankle biters unless you really like stopping every five minutes to find the juice boxes. Heck, even those of us who travel solo can use a bit of help keeping things in the car at bay.
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee conducted a hearing to discuss surging traffic deaths on Wednesday. In 2021, traffic deaths surged by over 10 percent over the previous year for a grand total of 42,915 roadway fatalities. But 2020 also represented a sizable 7 percent increase over 2019, despite there being overwhelming evidence that substantially less driving was done during nationwide COVID lockdowns.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee chair holding the hearing, stated that now was the time to hold a meeting on the issue — as last year represented the single highest increase in traffic deaths since the NHTSA started keeping track in 1975. Read More >
The 2023 Toyota Sequoia is going to remain atop the brand’s SUV ladder, with a planned sticker price based at $58,300.
The TRD Pro version, which is top-of-the-line and off-road-oriented, will start at $76,900.
The United States has requested that Mexico investigate worker rights violations that were alleged to have taken place at one of the parts factories owned by Stellantis. Officials are curious about what’s been happening at Teksid Hierro de Mexico, a facility located in the border state of Coahuila that’s responsible for manufacturing iron casings, in regard to unionization. According to U.S. officials, this is the fourth such complaint under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Having supplanted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed into law by the Clinton administration in 1993, USMCA sought to rebalance trade laws the Trump administration believed had disadvantaged the United States. However, it also sought to advance worker protections in Mexico and give employees an easier pathway toward unionization. Read More >
We pick up the Stutz story once again today after we reached the conclusion of the neoclassical Blackhawk coupe’s life in 1985. The coupe that sold so well in the Seventies with its exaggerated Exner styling was watered down considerably in the Eighties when it switched from its original 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix roots to those of a 1980 two-door Pontiac Bonneville.
However, even though the Blackhawk was the headline and best-known product from the Stutz neoclassical company, it was not the only car in the portfolio. First up: the Bearcat.
If you’re like the vast majority of Americans, you have a smartphone in your pocket. And while the original purpose of these mobile devices was ostensibly for talking to other people, the truth is most of us use them for anything but talking to people.
Including interfacing with the system of modern cars. Android and Apple have been refining the abilities of Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively, for the last few years. Now, Cupertino wants to take that relationship further – a lot further.
Goodyear has agreed to recall more than 173,000 intended for commercial delivery vehicles and RVs nearly two decades after the last one was manufactured. The company’s G159 tires have been under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since December of 2017 and the recall comes in the wake of years of lawsuits alleging the rubber contributed to a series of fatal accidents dating back to 1998.
Despite no new claims having launched in years, court orders and settlement agreements delayed an order to make corporate data pertaining to the tire-buying public for five full years. The NHTSA didn’t even launch a formal investigation until late in 2017, followed by the recent announcement that the agency has pushed Goodyear into a recall for a tire that ended production during the Bush administration. Read More >
Complaints of “catastrophic engine failure” involving the 2021 Ford Bronco have led to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) initiating a Federal Safety Investigation.
It’s a new week, and I’m back with another German car Rental Review for your enjoyment! Today’s rental is one of two American market entrants into the premium compact five-door liftback segment, and not a car one expects to find in an Enterprise lot. Presenting a 2020 Audi A5 Sportback, two years and 50,000 rental miles later.
Over the weekend, Mercedes-Benz announced a global recall campaign encompassing nearly a million vehicles it believes could be afflicted with faulty brake boosters.
“We have found that in some of those vehicles, the function of the brake booster could be affected by advanced corrosion in the joint area of the housing,” the automaker explained in a statement.
While the issue is global, the United States is believed to account for roughly 300,000 units, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) advising against driving any vehicle involved in the recall. Affected units will undoubtedly offer lowered braking performance and can even cause total brake failure in some instances. Rare or not, the NHTSA feels this one is simply too risky to chance. Read More >
Toyota plans on having seven models in its bZ family of EVs by 2025, according to Motor1. Scheduled to arrive in the late spring, the bZ4X crossover will be the first of those models, as you likely know. And there are more on the way.
Researchers with the University of California, Berkeley, are pouring cold water of the premise that electric vehicle charging stations will require less maintenance than traditional fueling solutions. The study, which examined 657 individual connectors between 181 public fast-charging stations in the San Francisco Bay area found that about 23 percent were nonfunctional.
That seems quite a bit higher than the number of fuel pumps that might be down at any given station, though the pertinent question is why those EV charging points were inoperable. Read More >
Fans of vaguely crossover-ish subcompact vehicles from South Korea’s best-known automaker will be happy to learn the little Hyundai Venue is apparently receiving mid-cycle styling tweaks. Popping up on the company’s official website for its market in India and first noted this morning by the sleuths at CarScoops, the next Venue appears to be taking a few cues from its big brother, the Palisade.
As I and others on these virtual pages have noted time and again, electric vehicles are Not Quite Ready For Primetime in much of the country for most people. We don’t have a charging infrastructure ready to support the types of driving most do on a regular basis, nor do we have the collective will to change our driving habits to suit an all-electric lifestyle.
And yet gasoline prices continue to climb. I spotted regular unleaded at $4.99 per gallon this weekend – if that number seems quaintly laughable by the time this hits the presses, my apologies. I’m taking a hard look at the driving my family needs to do, and strongly reconsidering what best fits my driveway and my budget.
Some sort of electrification is coming sooner rather than later to each of us if we aren’t there already. Two-plus decades of hybrids have proven the reliabilities of the technologies involved. A roomy family-sized vehicle, much like this 2022 Kia Sorento Hybrid, should take the sting out of what had once been a realm reserved for Spartan subcompacts.
Ford sold Escorts in North America from the 1981 through 2003 model years, with the ’91 and later cars based on Mazda designs. I’ve never been much interested in the 323/Protegé-derived Escorts, instead keeping a junkyard lookout for the increasingly rare Dearborn–designed 1981–1990 machines and especially the hot–hatch Escort GTs. Here’s a once-mean-looking black ’86 Escort GT in a Colorado Springs self-service yard. Read More >
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