Automotive News reports may use the company’s new to put some distance between itself and parent company . Buyers have snapped up a total of 4,900 GS models in just two months, breezing by year-long sales estimates in the process. The company attributes much of that success to non-traditional advertising efforts, including the Tori 500 iPhone and iPad app, and says that it could use similar tactics in the future to lure buyers in based on traits like “character and handling.” Traditionally, consumers have turned toward Lexus because of Toyota’s reputation for efficient and reliable machinery.
The GS, with its hour-glass grille and aggressive front fascia, is a first-step in giving the luxury automaker a more distinct brand image. In the past, Lexus has had trouble keeping buyers coming back, and the company believes that’s partly due to the fact that luxury consumers are more interested in owning a brand than a particular vehicle. As such, we can expect to see more corporate design cues across the company’s portfolio in the near future. The move may help set Lexus apart as something other than a slightly nicer Toyota in consumers eyes.
Most General Motors dealers make their living off selling pickup trucks. (That’s why when it came time to trim the brands and reorganize under bankruptcy, survived and didn’t – because dealers needed to have a truck to sell, not a .) That makes this year a tricky one for dealers, according to Automotive News, as they need to have enough or models in stock to get them to the 2013 model year.
What makes this quandary different from most years is that GM is readying all-new pickups, meaning that it will be . The full-size and GMC trucks date to 2006, making them the oldest in the industry that don’t wear a badge on their tailgate. Dealers, of course, don’t want to be caught with many 2012 trucks – vehicles that are already difficult enough to sell – but they don’t want inventories to run completely dry and risk turning away customers.
With a combined 29 weeks of downtime scheduled for three truck plans, according to the report, some dealers are stockpiling pickups to avoid running out if the truck production pipeline dries up before the 2013s start shipping. Other dealers are taking the opposite strategy, turning down 2012s and waiting for next year’s models.
Given all that has happened to GM in recent years, we imagine that most dealers know altogether too well that you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
The M Division of has of sportifying performance parts to the 2012 and 2011-2012 . Among the suite of components are a sport steering wheel, carbon fiber and Alcantara interior trim, carbon fiber splitters and mirror caps and two-toned 20-inch forged wheels hiding a Brembo big-brake kit with painted calipers. Oh, and racing stripes.
Naturally, in addition to making your car look more M-ish, the parts carry a multi-year BMW warranty. for the skinny and get a visual idea of where your paycheck’s about to go in the high-res gallery of photos.
If you’ve been sniffing around the PlayStation Vita debating whether to pull the trigger, has an offer for you: buy an and you’ll get the Vita free. This isn’t the first tie-up with the little car and the little console: the iQ was one of the available vehicles in the MotorStorm RC game.
The offer is good only until June 31, 2012, so you’ve got some time to think about it. Sure, this will add (just) $15,700 to the price of your portable gaming station… but at least you’ll have some way to carry it. And when you’re finished making that deal, can we interest you in a for the ? But first, for a read of the Scion press release with details.
We’re almost ready to record Episode #281 of the Autoblog Podcast, and you can check out the topics below, add your own to the and join us live via , as well, and we’ve embedded our UStream player Thanks for listening!
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We’ve been guilty of putting a vehicle or three on two wheels occasionally, but never on purpose. James “Ski” Smith, on the other hand, has made a habit of standing a car on edge for extended periods of time. That’s impressive enough by our standards, but Smith recently attempted to take his skills to the next level by piloting a fox body all the way around Laguna Seca. Why an old Mustang? Probably because no one would shed a tear if the car wound up on its roof.
Unfortunately, Smith ran into another piece of trouble before he could tackle the track’s more daring corners. The extreme angle caused oiling issues with the V8 engine, flooding one bank with oil while depriving the other. As a result, Smith came to a stop just past Turn Six. Still, he hopes to try again soon. May we suggest he take something a little better suited to the task? A , mayhaps? to check out the clip for yourself.
Russell Sutton is a man after our own heart. The craftsman has spent the building a nine-cylinder radial engine using a smattering of XR600 singles for his airboat. After a little trial and error, Sutton discovered his creation is happier running off of liquid propane gas instead of gasoline. Years of hard work finally paid off when he recently started his monster creation for the first time. The elegant radial fires with a puff of smoke before before settling into a perfect hum. Unfortunately, the success is quickly marred by the sound of mechanical failure.
As it turns out, the cast piston sleeves Sutton used in his creation can’t withstand the abuse of the radial. In addition, some of the pistons required shaving in order to work with the different stroke. Unfortunately, the shaving caused the pistons to delaminate their crown, causing further trouble. Despite the issues, Sutton seems to take the failure in stride and plans to correct the issues before firing up the engine one more time. We could all learn a thing or two from his resilience. to check out a few videos of the engine. If you want to skip ahead, check out the second video around the 2:30 mark.
The minivan segment has grown from fiercely competitive to downright cut-throat. With fairly new iterations of vehicles like the , , and , formerly acceptable entries like the have fallen straight off the map. This isn’t news to the Korean automaker, either. spokesman James Hope has confirmed there will be no 2013 Sedona.
But that doesn’t mean the company will stay away from the segment for too long. Hope made it clear Kia will be back with a new family hauler, though declined to share any details on the vehicle.
Odds are that means a new Sedona will come along in 2014 or so, though that’s just speculation on our part. While Kia refreshed the minivan in 2011, the changes didn’t cover much beyond a mildly reworked front fascia. The vehicle was still saddled with an embarrassing “Poor” rating in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety roof-crush test.
is crying foul over Japan’s desire to join a proposed free trade agreement among Asia-Pacific countries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership aims to reduce regulatory hurdles among its participants, but Steve Beigun, Ford vice president for international government affairs, claims the Japanese auto market is “the most protected automotive market in the developed world,” and that the industry is unnecessarily dependent on exports to survive. Beigun’s solution? Force the Japanese auto industry to restructure before allowing Japan in on the TPP. In industry speak, that means closing down factories.
That’s an odd claim given that Japan can’t possibly have a lower tariff on imported cars: zero percent. For comparison’s sake, importers looking to bring vehicles into the U.S. face a 2.5 percent tariff. But Beigun says Japan uses non-tariff barriers and currency manipulation to discourage imports. Beigun declined to elaborate on what those “non-tariff barriers” are. William Duncan, the director of the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association, has been quoted as saying Beigun’s assertions are “rather bizarre.”
If Japan is guilty of currency manipulation, it’s doing a poor job. The yen is currently at a near all-time high against the U.S. dollar, and Japanese manufacturers have steadily worked to move production out of their home country over the past two decades. All told, 70 percent of the machines Japanese automakers sell in the U.S. are built on American soil. So, why is Ford up in arms over Japan? It could be the manufacturer wants to put the country, and its manufacturers at a disadvantage in the markets covered by the TPP.
Announced , finally gave us some more details about the was the all-electric EV will be sold to the general public during the 26th Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles today. The important number? The MSRP for what Toyota calls a “fully equipped” RAV4 EV is $49,800 and will be available before the end of the year.
Toyota says the RAV4 EV’s range is 100 miles and that the car will charge from empty in approximately six hours on a 240V/40A charger. The new RAV4 EV has LED and halogen headlights and it has special “environmental blue” color emblems on the outside. The vehicle will be made at the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, Inc., plant in Woodstock, Ontario. The first generation of the new RAV4 EV was . Our First Drive report is .
With a battery and powertrain designed by , the new RAV4 EV certainly appears to be one of the new breed of . We had heard that the RAV4 EV will be lease only, but the official press release says the car “will go on sale in late summer 2012 through select dealers, initially in four major California metropolitan markets.” Those markets are Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles/Orange County and San Diego and the news matches the rumor we heard last year, that sales about be In all, Toyota hopes to sell just 2,600 units in the next three years. , you’ve got nothing to worry about.
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Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #281
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The folks at Motor Authority snagged some spy video of the new hitting the Nürburgring. Unfortunately, rain hit the ‘Ring first, so while there are still some potent exhaust noises emanating from the 662-horsepower ‘Stang, there isn’t a lot of tearing it up on the slick surface.
Let’s talk nemesis, namely the 580-horsepower Camaro ZL1. The battleground established, the folks turned their verbal turrets on the Shelby and fired high-impact rounds – see Exhibits and – on their way to setting an time and a “Holy smokes!” . Since there’s no reason to dawdle round the ‘Ring, we have to expect that Ford’s fly-by has some sort of recon purpose.
As many will bring up once the time is set, the Shelby has a mess of advantages on paper: more horsepower, more torque, less weight. No matter, for as Cormac McCarthy wrote, there will be blood. We still don’t know whose blood it will be, but oh yes, one of these cars is going to bleed. Embedding of this video has been disabled, so follow the link to watch the Shelby in action.
Even though Toyota’s unintended acceleration debacle is as ancient as Jurassic fleas for most of us, the California Distric Court of Judge James Selna is still chainsawing through a massive docket of claims. Judge Selna had been considering whether plaintiffs in California, New York and Florida could sue for economic loss related to the claims of unintended accleraton – the plaintiffs wanted Toyota to reimburse them for the alleged decline in value of their cars.
According to a report in Bloomberg, Selna issued a final ruling that the New York and Florida plaintiffs can’t sue for economic loss if they didn’t experience unintended acceleration, or if they didn’t experience “a measurable loss” when selling their cars. California plaintiffs, on the other hand, can sue even if there was no unintended acceleration event or perceived depreciation.
The ruling could remove millions of owners from of plaintiffs and make an economic-loss class action lawsuit more difficult, but plaintiffs attorneys have said they’ll try to get the cases tried in New York and Florida courts. However, the ruling doesn’t affect other plaintiffs suing over the same issue in other states. This doesn’t affect the unintended accleration cases, though; three litmus-test trials are scheduled for next year.
The estimates that 32,310 people died last year in traffic accidents, the lowest number since 1949.
NHTSA obtained that number though a statistical projection, which shows that traffic fatalities dropped 1.7 percent compared to 2010 numbers. The announcement, released today, also shows Americans collectively drove 1.2 percent less in 2011 – dropping 35.7 billion vehicle miles traveled. (NHTSA expects the fatality rate to drop in 2011 as well, predicting 1.09 American deaths for every 100 million miles driven.)
U.S. traffic fatalities have dropped seven years in a row, with the 43,510 people dying in traffic accidents in 2005. NHTSA attributes a number of factors to the continued decrease in fatalities including increased seat belt use and more safety devices inside vehicles.
By region, NHTSA noted that accidents in New England dropped the most, 7.2 percent, while accidents in California and Hawaii increased the most, 3.3 percent, compared to the year before.
April was a busy month for the , with over 2,500 miles added to the odometer and a heaping helping of people and things passing through its doors. When I picked up the Countryman, I was impressed by the fact that were neatly stowed behind the front seats. However, the biggest of models didn’t fare so well when the rear seats were occupied.
On a shopping day with the kids, a relatively small amount of goods proved to be far too much for the Countryman’s diminutive trunk. As a result, I had no choice but to disperse boxes at the feet of my wife and kids, which was a decidedly unpopular move (don’t let the smiles fool you). The kids didn’t love the lack of roominess, but I can assure you that my 2,500 miles were mostly enjoyable.
I got a huge kick out of the Countryman’s spirited handling, even though I didn’t find our long-termer to have the same go-kart-like demeanor of its smaller siblings. The good news, however, was that I was able to average 26 miles per gallon during my month with the Mini, with a high of 30 mpg and a very entertaining low of just over 20 mpg. But don’t blame the Countryman for that 20 mpg number – that tank of gas was all about exploring the performance limits of our smallest long-term loaner. And even so, my own average fuel economy is higher than the dismal numbers that Editor Ewing brought up in .
One thing I didn’t like about the Countryman was a sometimes jarring ride, which we’ve attributed, in part, to the dreaded run-flat tires. The throttle was also a bit odd, as the first few degrees of pedal travel felt a bit dead. It took a few days to get used to it, and it helps to always drive in Sport mode.
The Countryman did require a non-scheduled trip to the dealership during its month in my hands. After just a few days with the car, I noticed that the fan kicked on at full blast every time I turned on the car. I didn’t think much of it at first, until I came back outside one day and discovered that the fan was still on after about 10 minutes of the vehicle being turned off. The ‘check engine’ light illuminated the very next day, so off to Motor City Mini we went. As it turned out, the engine’s thermometer was on the fritz, and the dealer replaced the part under warranty. That one issue aside, we’ve enjoyed nearly 15,000 miles of carefree Mini motoring.
Our Mini will spend the month of May shuffling between a number of staffers, with a few road trips planned as warmer weather starts to grace southeast Michigan. Stay tuned to see how the Countryman fares.
Keep your eyes locked on the official for the majority of our updates, as well as the official Autoblog Twitter account (, look for the hashtag).
wants to take another look at over 24,000 vehicles it’s sold in the United States. No, this isn’t just to check out how they’re holding up in the real world, it’s to make sure the smoke coming out of the tailpipe is clean enough.
BMW is recalling a total of 24,340 vehicles from the 2009-2011 model years – roughly 2,740 2011 or 2012 xDrive50i and xDrive50i vehicles as well as 21,600 models – because some parts of the emissions system (the DEF mixer, EGR valve and SCR catalyst) can incorrectly calculate the vehicle mileage. This can cause too many emissions to come out of the tailpipe, according to the California emission control rules. The recall will start May 9. Drivers should be on the lookout for letters after that date, a spokesman told Automotive News.
Just two months ago, BMW 1.3 million and vehicles from the 2003 to 2010 model years, 368,000 of them in the U.S.
Forget cloth, the upcoming Lamborghini Aventador Roadster will use a removable two-piece carbon fiber hardtop, according to the Italian magazine .
The weight-cutting measure means the convertible won’t have to stack on the pounds just to include al fresco driving. The carbon fiber roof will weigh less than a cloth top and its underlying metal frame. It also means that the entire rear section of the car won’t change from the hardtop model, Quattroroute reports.
We first saw the hardtop in spy photos , though we weren’t sure of Lamborghini’s plans for the 700-horsepower V12 racer at the time. Lamborghini is expected to debut the roadster at the this fall.
Ah yes, the Nürburgring. Where else would you expect to find the forthcoming Gran Coupe? Well, other than on the stand the in September or .
While of the big 560-plus-horsepower sedan, 6post.com has snagged footage of the M6 Gran Coupe squealing tires and clipping apexes with some of its siblings on everyone’s favorite German road.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. The sentiment certainly applies to cars as well, but doubly so. Years of driving and photographing new vehicles have taught us that you can’t evaluate a new model – or even judge its styling – based on photos alone, no matter how good or bad the images or the sheetmetal might seem. And you can’t really know anything until you get that car off the auto show stand and out in the wild, driving it on the street in its natural habitat.
We explain this because when we first spied the new , we didn’t think much of it: Mostly carryover front fascia, grafted-on taillights, Bangle butt. Move along, nothing to see here. But a funny thing happened when we got behind the wheel of the Malibu Eco for a week. We warmed up to it. We actually liked it.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a recall concerning 2011-2012 and models. A fuse controlling the power distribution unit for the ABS and ESC system can overheat, causing both features to fail.
Charger Pursuit vehicles were recalled a couple of months ago over the same issue and it was thought that severe usage was the culprit. However, a number of civilian reports convinced to recall all of the vehicles in question.
Chrysler will begin notifying the 119,072 owners this month. Affected vehicles can be taken to the dealer to have the fuse in question relocated, free of charge. for the official NHTSA bulletin.
