Automobiles

What’s Wrong With This Picture: The Full Amanti Edition

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Ever since its interior took TTAC’s Best and Brightest by surprise, we’ve been keeping an eye on Kia’s K7 flagship sedan. Now Autospies has caught one cruising stateside, revealing a design that’s less edgy than some of the other Scheryer-era Kias, but that fits right into the American automotive landscape. And not the way its [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Ray LaHood: America Is Safer Because Nobody Is Having Fun

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Yes, despite the ever-present dangers of distracted driving and demonically-possessed Toyotas, US highways are safer than ever. Overall deaths in 2009 were at their lowest levels since 1950, even as vehicle miles traveled increased. Highway fatalities have been falling for the past four years, and in 2009 even motorcycle fatalities decreased for the first time [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Chrysler: Once Again, Regrets Come Standard

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Gimmicky sales techniques are tough. On the one hand, Hyundai’s 10 year warranty and Assurance buy-back program have helped it become one of the fastest-growing auto brands in the country. On the other, Chrysler’s free gas giveaway, “lifetime guarantee” and its latest, the “regret-free purchase” offer, have all come and gone without materially moving the [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Something Very Fishy At Toyota

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Sometimes we forget that Toyota Motor Corp. is a member of a huge keiretsu (conglomerate). Well, The Nikkei [sub] reminds us that a “Toyota Motor Corp. affiliated trading house will obtain artificially raised juvenile fish about 6cm long from the university’s fishery lab in Wakayama Prefecture.” Juvenile fish? The Toyota Motor Corp. affiliated trading house [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Hammer Time: The Auto Auction Translator

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Today Hammer Time brings you its guide to commonly-used auto auction phrases and their translations. Car Dealer – “You can have it if you want it.” Translation – “I know you’re going to run the bid up anyhow. So go ahead and *%&#$&! take it.” Car Dealer – “This car is a bad boy.” Translation [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Ask the Best And Brightest: Should Evolution be Fat or Skinny?

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

While reading the responses to a recent BMWBLOG posting by Josh Lewis, I noted that one of the posters had put together a very interesting comparison of the BMW M3 and the Porsche 911. To put it mildly, somebody’s gone Kirstie Alley while somebody else has stayed Goldie Hawn: Here’s the comparison, with the data [...]

Categories: Automobiles

The Future Of Car Brands: Scooters

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

If you exist outside the fast-paced world of the automotive branding community, you might believe that the point of car brands is to sell cars. Needless to say, you’d be wrong. The big buzzword around car brands, particularly the more niche and eco-friendly brands is “mobility.” As in “we must leverage our brand values to [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Curbside Classic: Volkswagen’s Deadly Sin #1: 1974 412

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Every good idea has its time in the sun, but the trick is to get out of it before skin cancer appears. The rear engine configuration was once a sensation, especially in the form of the ground-breaking and wind-splitting Tatra 77 in 1934. Ferdinand Porsche adopted it as his own for his various VW prototypes [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Virginia Appeals Court Upholds Warrantless GPS Spying

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Police officers in the commonwealth of Virginia can track the movements of motorists with secretly installed satellite tracking devices on their own authority, the state court of appeals ruled Tuesday. On February 1, 2008, Fairfax County police had attached a GPS tracking device to the work van of David L. Foltz, Jr based on a [...]

Categories: Automobiles

The Sebring Resurrection. In China

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

I had a beer and a pizza yesterday night with Ash Sutcliffe of China Car Times (us expat car bloggers need to stick together) and he swore on a stack of bibles that he had seen the resurrection of the  Chrysler Sebring over at Beijing Auto. But it won’t be a Sebring. It will be [...]

Categories: Automobiles

India In August 2010: Up 33 Percent

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

India’s population is right up there with neighboring China. Only a few hundred million less, nobody really knows. In car sales, India dwarfs against China. In 2009, Indians bought 1.43m units, compared to 13.6m units bought by the Chinese. Nevertheless, the market is growing, the potential is huge, and sales are at a record high. [...]

Categories: Automobiles

What’s Good For Ford Is Good For The UK

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Remember that old saying, “What’s good for GM is good for America”? Well it seems that the UK is developing a similar ethos. “What’s good for Ford is good for the UK”. Now, this isn’t some arrogant Ford executive trying to brainwash the UK public that buying their cars is their public duty. There really [...]

Categories: Automobiles

China, A Land Of Luxury

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Close your eyes and think of China. I bet many of you still see seas of people with straw hats riding bicycles. J.P. Morgan and J.D. Power see a sea of luxury cars. Millions of them. J.P. Morgan and J.D. Power predict that China’s luxury car sales will reach 530,000 units this year. Come 2015, [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Ray LaHood Grinds His Axe … Again

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Ray LaHood is great, isn’t he? When that big nasty corporation, Toyota, was building those awful machines that were murdering people and their children in their sleep in the middle of the night, he urged everyone to “stop driving your Toyotas” (Ford also had a problem with unintended acceleration, but LaHood couldn’t go after them [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Curbside Classic Clue

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Progress! It took all the way to the second guess to reveal the identity of the Mitsubishi van. Congratulations yoribe1. Well, it can’t get much worse than that. And I give a pretty distinctive item to look at. Let’s see what happens.

Categories: Automobiles

Chart Of The Day: The Top 25 Nameplates In August And Year-To-Date

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Categories: Automobiles

Because Polars Bears Are Cuter Than Market Failure…

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

To hype its forthcoming Leaf electric car, Nissan has reached for the most manipulative imagery in the green marketing playbook: the Polar Bear. They’re cute, they’re cuddly, and because their icy habitat is being destroyed by regular cars, they will hug you if you buy an EV. Meanwhile, the causes, trajectory, and impacts of global [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Lessons Learned: Buying from Amazon isn’t always buying from Amazon.

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

I don’t normally do the “consumer awareness” stuff here on TTAC — we have plenty of very competent contributors for that — but I thought I would share a recent experience with all of you and perhaps save one or two of you a few bucks in doing so. In the course of our extremely [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Does GM Have Negative Equity?

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Digging through the finances of a company as large as GM is never an easy task, especially when the balance book in question was recently wiped clean in a bailout-bankruptcy. Luckily, Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil has the chops to do the task justice, and he’s come up with a fascinating insight: through the power of [...]

Categories: Automobiles

Currency, UAW Doom US Production Of Ford’s Kuga

The Truth About Cars - 1 hour 1 min ago

Bloomberg reports that Ford will not build its Kuga compact crossover at its Louisville, KY plant due to the falling Euro and UAW recalcitrance. According to the report The promise of Kuga production in Louisville began to fall apart in November when UAW members rejected Ford’s request to match givebacks it gave General Motors Co. [...]

Categories: Automobiles