Car News Articles

The employee-pricing program, which ends Tuesday, is a perk offered to employees as part of their benefits package. Any eligible employee, retiree or surviving spouse can use the discount to buy or lease six new or used vehicles each year, or extend the discount to relatives. Almost anyone on the family tree is eligible, from children to same-sex partners, in some cases, but GM is accusing the employees of profiting by giving the discount to people who they knew weren’t qualified and for their own “financial gain.”

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John Fleming has risen through the ranks at Ford to lead what is now the carmaker’s most successful division. The 57-year-old executive started working at the Halewood factory near his hometown of Liverpool, England, as a teenage apprentice in 1967.

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So Mercedes took the old C-class Sport Coupe and grafted on the nose from the new C-class. Who are they trying to kid? The resulting CLC is the newest car on the Mercedes stand at the 2008 London motor show and CAR’s assistant editor Ben Barry ponders its provenance in our new motor show video report.

Click on our video player below to watch our film.

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The tide may be turning against SUVs, but Audi is piling in to the 4×4 market with another new soft-roader: the Q3. The new model is a 4×4 lite – think family hatchback that’s been to Audi’s country retreat and donned wellington boots for that tougher, mud-spattered wannabe look. CAR has the full lowdown on the new Q3 in this exclusive report.

It’s worth casting aside, for a moment, our cynicism about SUVs. In the UK they have become social pariahs, knocked by politicians, abused by cardigan-toting campaigners and increasingly shunned by buyers worried about crippling taxes and fuel bills. But it’s not like that everywhere.

So Audi’s SUVs are selling like hot cakes?

Audi’s Q7 has sold so well that the diesel model has attracted long waiting lists in some territories. So Audi now hopes to repeat this success with the new Q5 (read our review here) and its forthcoming, smaller siblings: the secret new Q1 and Q3.

By the time all four 4×4s are on sale, Audi hopes to sell between 300,000 and 350,000 sport utility vehicles annually. BMW and Mercedes may narrowly top that tally, but the gap is shrinking fast.

Audi Q3: the lowdown

Audi has operated a top-down strategy with its Q-badged SUVs. First we had the Q7, it’s just launched the Q5 and next up is the Q3. It’s a crossover based on the VW Tiguan but with a more stylish, sportier and upmarket positioning (read pricier and posher).

Click ‘Next’ to read more about the Audi Q3

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Jimmie Johnson, above, won his first career Cup pole at Auto Club Speedway on Friday, but his strongest challenge came from the last driver in line to qualify. Johnson, who went out 18th at the 2-mile track in Fontana, Calif., posted a 39.912-second run at 180.397 mph. He then had to wait for more than half the field to cycle through only to see fellow Californian AJ Allmendinger, one of the drivers who had to qualify on time, nearly knock him off the top spot. Allmendinger logged a speed of 179.659 mph (40.076 seconds) for his first career front-row start. Jeff Gordon will start third. Gillett Evernham Motorsports teammates Kasey Kahne and Patrick Carpentier round out the top five. A full lineup can be found here.

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Way back when, my brother and I sat in the backseat during family road trips without the benefit of a DVD player or an iPod. Today, kids have lots of multimedia choices for the car, and one of the largest offerings is kids’ music. As your faithful tester, I subjected myself and my children to BoyintheShade’s new album, “Be the Tree” as our new drive-time soundtrack.

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If I had a shotgun, I would be in jail right now. Since Chrysler LLC refuses to acknowledge TTAC’s existence and won’t give us access to their press cars (unlike Audi, Bentley, Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and a lot of others), we have to bug dealers for test drives. Seeing dealerships in the greater Oklahoma City Metro area receiving Dodge Challenger SE’s (the V6 4-speed auto-only versions), I went a-hunting. Fowler Dodge: “you cannot drive a Challenger until you sign the paperwork to buy one, even the $25,000 model, because people want NO miles on them, as they are collectors items.” David Stanley Dodge possessed no less than six Challenger SEs. They flat-out refused a test drive, demanding a sizeable deposit for the “collectible model.” Mark Heitz Dodge scoffed and refused to even open up the their car. Bob Moore Dodge in Edmond roped theirs off (I’m pretty sure I saw an SRT8 in an inflatable bubble). ALL of the Challengers I encountered had at least a $5K markup on the windshield (some disguised as a “chrome” package). Meanwhile, the base $25k model is already finding its way into the rental fleets (check out your local Thrifty– they might have one already). The behavior of dealers like these is a big reason Chrysler finds itself in such trouble. Time after time, they insult the customer with ridiculous markups, patronizing sales tactics and flat-out deceit. Jackie Cooper BMW will let you take out a $75,000 BMW M3, Mercedes of Oklahoma threw me the keys to an SL55 and Porsche of Edmond called me to tell me about their new Boxster S. Dodge dealers, I hate to break it to you, but your $25,000 Challenger SE, while good-looking IS NOT THAT SPECIAL. It’s a $25k Mustang competitor. Let as many people as you can drive them, price them right and maybe, just maybe, you won’t have them stacking up on your lots in three months.

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According to our pals at pistonheads, old people are pissed that the UK's "watch out for old people" traffic signs depicts old people as, uh, old people. You know, hunched over. In pain. Feeble. Defenseless. Slow. (This is, of course, ignoring the fact that it looks like the woman bringing up the rear is giving the old coot a mobile reach-around.) Well, the idea is to get motorists to slow the Hell down. If a sign shows old people as "fitter, healthier senior citizens," then they can get the bloody Hell out of the way, can't they? The fact that the UK  government has already removed the words "elderly people" from the signs reveals that political correctness is becoming/has become more important than anything (save paying your taxes). If it was me– and thank God it isn't– I'd put signs up with a points systems for mowing old people down, sponsored by Death Race, with the attendant fines. And by the way, I can say shit like this because I'm old. Dag nabbit! Well, older than Justin, anyway. But not wiser. Apparently.

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I’ve never understood why Britain became the most virulently anti-speed nation in the world. After all, we’re talking about the island of TVRs, Mad Caterhams and Stirling Moss. Maybe Old Blighty’s regrettable love for the security camera metastasized into speed cameras. In any case, Britons have long taken to venting their surveillance-repressed ids on the French autoroutes. Not that France doesn’t have cameras, they just haven’t applied cross-border enforcement. Yet. And once on French soil, even the 80mph speed limit isn’t enough to satisfy what the Times calls “British speed freaks.” In response to a French request for help with the menace, the UK now sends bobbies to help bust speeders around northern French ports. To some effect. “In a four-hour period last weekend, on the A26 motorway near Saint-Omer , a Franco-British patrol stopped 30 cars for breaking the 130km/h (80mph) limit. All but two were from Britain.” According to at least one gendarme, Brits just tend to go wild whenever they escape their island home. “The mentality of letting go across the Channel seems to be the same one that makes les Anglais get drunk as soon as they leave their country.”

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Despite the headline claims of, um, some Motor Authoritative sources , Peugeot is not coming to the United States any time soon. And Canada would be a real stretch. The basis for the claim is that Peugeot is looking to expand the number of markets in which it sells cars, and the French company brass said “with the American dollar being weak, sure, it’s possible.” But that’s not enough. This story comes out every few years , and it’s no more true this time around. As much as this writer and probably many other European car lovers would be excited at the prospect of another affordable marque in this country, it’s not gonna happen any time soon, or any time not as soon. Americans are still politically not so hot on the French, then there are dealer/service/parts infrastructure issues (namely that there isn’t much of anything left from 20 years ago), the added cost of engineering for our emissions and crash standards, and the inconvenient reality that most Americans still aren’t truly warmed up to small cars. Not to mention, the current Peugeot lineup is seriously strange.

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