Car News Articles

Honda’s NSX replacement is here. CAR Online’s spies have snapped the first pictures of the replacement for the legendary mid-engined supercar testing in Germany. Only this time around the engine – a V10 – will be mounted in the nose while drive will go to all four wheels. Gone is the NSX’s mid-engined, rear-drive V6 layout.

Read more

Pardon the tardiness of some of this news. This blogger was at Infineon Raceway last weekend for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race and festivities. Thankfully, Sunday’s temps were somewhat cooler compared to Friday and Saturday in Sonoma, Calif. It didn’t help, however, that the sky was hazy because of wildfire smoke. Kyle Busch, above, won his fifth Cup race of the year, and the second consecutive that I’ve attended. I also saw him win at Talladega in late April. Full results can be found here and, more importantly, updated Cup standings can be found here. Catch up on all the NASCAR rumors, including the newest scoop on Tony Stewart and who might drive the No. 5 car next year at nascar.com. Really geek out at jayski.com.

Read more

A few years ago, before I became a professional automotive journalist (that is a laugh line, in case you were hesitating out of feigned respect), someone rear-ended my car. I took it to an auto shop where I was quoted an absurdly exorbitant price. Lo and behold, my husband went in – same mechanic, same damaged car – and got a much lower quote. How rude!

Read more

Let’s say you’ve mentally prepared yourself to pay full whack– $42,185– for the new Dodge Charger Super Bee. In other words, you’re looking to “invest” an additional $2760 (over the normal SRT/8) version to get some gaudy matte paint, suede seat inserts and “Super Bee” badges. In that case, you’d better hope you don’t live in Oklahoma. Closely examining the window sticker on said Bee, I noticed the presence of an additional half sheet of paper next to the window sticker, crudely copied from a handwritten note used on who knows how many other cars. This “limited availability charge” (a.k.a. “screw you sticker”) detailed a $10,500 hike in the Bee’s MSRP. So, want to drive it? Not a chance. My salesman explains that the Bee’s a “very expensive car” A sizable deposit (10 percent or more) would be required to take it off the lot. To Bee or not to Bee? Not. Unless you’re looking for a garage queen for life, anyone who pays full whack for a new Chrysler– any new Chrysler– is staring down the barrel of epic depreciation. Will “collectible” gas guzzlers escape this curse? We’ll tell you in twenty years. Meanwhile, you might want to consider the fact that base and SXT Chargers get $1,500 rebate or low APR financing. RT models get $2,500 rebate or low APR. Both models qualify for gas plan, as well. (Story Courtesy of Capt Justin Crenshaw)

Read more

In today’s most excellent editorial, Michael Karesh highlighted Toyota and GM’s relative approaches re: creating and selling new automotive technology. Karesh didn’t delve into the cultural differences between the two automakers. For insight into ToMoCo’s slow and steady vs. GM’s ADD, I offer this quote from Jeffrey Kluger’s Simplexity: “Exploitative organisms are creatures with fixed niches and well-established survival strategies. An exploitative organism is unlikely to try something evolutionarily new, preferring instead to stick with what it knows and exploit its environment for familiar resources. This is good for the individual or the next few generations, since playing it safe prevents you from making adaptive mistakes. But it can be bad for the species, which may be slow to adjust to a rapid change in circumstances…. Explorative organisms tend to seek new niches, mutate fast, explore new survival strategies when the opportunities present themselves. This can be costly in the short run, since any evolutionary innovation has a chance of failing, but over the long run it keeps the species flexible.” As mainstream manufacturers, both Toyota and GM are intrinsically exploitative organisms. But GM acts like an explorative. And therein lies its weakness. In case you were wondering. In any case, today’s news…

Read more

I’ve long argued that the UK’s anti-speeding jihad has seriously degraded the relationship between the average British motorist and the police. Despite the public’s underlying laissez-faire attitude towards invasive policing– if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about– it stops being “fair” when it starts being you. By now, millions of otherwise law-abiding motorists have been trained to see the police as “the enemy.” By the same token, the us vs. them gestalt has alienated the police from their so-called employers. The Times reports that the Metropolitan [London] police have been emboldened to the point where they don’t even feel compelled to pretend to give a shit about road safety. How else could you explain a Facebook site created by the police where they boast about accidents and, get this, collisions with pedestrians? Needless to say, the Powers That Be have pulled the “Look I’ve Had a Pocol” (slang for police collision) page, and warned 14 officers to cut that out. But not before we learned that “One picture… showed a police vehicle in an accident with a small white car. The officer who posted it wrote: ‘I did him a favour. At 82 years old you just shouldn’t be on the road and if you are, then most certainly don’t go through a green light into the path of an innocent police car.’ Another member wrote: ‘Ran over a drunk. I believe he has a permanent limp and a hefty payout. I was given a three-month holiday from job driving. Ooh, bummer.’” 

Read more

Bloomberg reports that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is proposing new rules to increase government interven… err… oversight in energy markets. He wants to “require the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate trading in energy futures contracts and direct the commission to investigate ways to lessen speculation, such as increasing margin requirements.” As oil takes an extended sojourn in the neighborhood of $135/barrel, Obama joins the growing chorus blaming high oil prices on greedy speculators. While Sen. Obama rails against the “Enron loophole”– allowing energy speculators to speculate without Uncle Sam riding herd– he’s also busy promoting ethanol. And ethanol is promoting him. According to the New York Times, one of Obama’s advisors, Tom Daschle (yes, that one), identifies himself as a man who spends “a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.” (That’s a lobbyist, to you and me.) Obama’s also traveled on a corporate jet owned by “Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state;” not-so-coincidentally the nation’s second-largest corn producing state. In fairness to Senator Obama… no, that’s all I got. 

Read more

When driving down a country road u know fairly well, kick it into neutral at about 50mph and coast all the way to the next village and try and judge it so your doing 30ish when u get there.

Read more

The latest issue of Lotus Engineering’s e-magazine/newsletter, proActive (we produce it for Lotus), is now available. In it I interview someone with an intriguing business model aimed at a sizeable niche vehicle market in the US. Clue: think Judge Dredd. Download it for yourself via the below link.

Read more

Read more