The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced a safety recall of the , but this campaign comes with a twist. NHTSA announced on its website that Sonata Hybrid models produced between December 2, 2010 and March 7, 2012 are being recalled due to a seatbelt issue. NHTSA announced that the rear center belt, which incorporates a release mechanism that detaches both the lap and shoulder portion at the lower anchor point, doesn’t meet safety standards.
Of the 14,728 units potentially covered under the recall, will repair the 1,633 Sonata Hybrid models currently sitting on dealer lots. But here is where the catch comes into play: The government agency says Hyundai plans to file a petition for a recall exemption for those vehicles already delivered to their owners because it believes the action is “inconsequential as it relates to motor vehicle safety.” Hyundai will not have to send out recall notices to the 13,095 Sonata Hybrid models already on the road until after the petition has been resolved. Hit the jump to read over the NHTSA press release.
Just over one year ago, we heard reports suggesting that Volkswagen would of its concept for limited consumption. And while the skeptics among us were quick to dismiss these reports with a resounding “yeah, right,” this latest set of spy shots show that is indeed making progress on an honest-to-goodness road-going model of its 1.0-liter fuel economy warrior.
It’s still unclear exactly what will power the production XL1, though the concept car featured a two-cylinder TDI diesel paired with an electric motor, lithium-ion battery pack and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. All in, this is said to be good for an astonishing 235 miles per gallon. It might look big and sleek, but the XL1 is about as long and wide as a Volkswagen Polo. It should be ultra-light, too – the concept version tipped the scales at just 1,753 pounds.
The XL1 might look sleek and sporty, but performance will be anything but. The latest reports state that the production car will be limited to a stop speed of about 75 miles per hour, and that it’ll take 32(!) seconds to shoot from a stand-still to 50 mph.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for future XL1 prototypes as development continues, but for now, scroll through our attached high-res image gallery to see the space-age VW for yourself.
Has the Angry Birds franchise jumped the shark and hit those dastardly pigs yet? The ornery feathered videogame stars have seen their mugs plastered across just about every retail good we can think of. We’ve seen everything from mundane merchandise like t-shirts, plush dolls and keychains to inflatable funhouse castles, streaming media players and gummy candies.
Thus, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Rovio Entertainment’s birds have slingshotted into the world of Formula One sponsorship, slathered on the brain bucket of Caterham racer Heikki Kovalainen. The Finn says he’s a big fan of the game – and not just because Rovio is from Finland.
Word has it that Angry Birds will get a racing-themed update sometime this summer (as well as even more branded merchandise), so fans of the flying fowl should keep their eyes peeled.
The inaugural 12 Hours of Sebring was held 60 years ago in 1952. was the first to build a dynasty of overall wins, followed by , then , then , and today we live in the era of . With its main rival, Peugeot, having this year, the only manufacturer that could prevent Audi from claiming its tenth overall victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring was Audi itself.
That was unlikely to happen, especially considering that Audi chose to field three teams, each driving the very capable R18 in the car’s last appearance before being replaced by the R18 Ultra and . Yes, the result in the fastest LMP1 class was a forgone conclusion, and Audi delivered, claiming the first and second steps of the podium. The winning R18 was car #2 driven by Dindo Capello, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish. Kristensen, who holds the record for most overall wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, also now has a record six overall victories at Sebring. It was Capello’s fifth win at Sebring and McNish’s fourth. The team of veterans completed 301 laps of the 5.4-mile track and amazingly finished with no evidence of body contact with another car.
still has to go over the river and through the woods before it can , but this fall it will begin building them. Primary production will commence this summer at Porsche’s factory in Zuffenhausen, where the is also built.
Overflow production will be handled by VW at its Osnabrück plant, which also handles assembly for the and overflow production. The arrangement isn’t unexpected, with plans for the Osnabrück option mentioned .
Today is the day that racing fans have been looking forward to. The cars have been unveiled, the drivers announced, the calendar confirmed and everything is in place. Today is race day.
After an off season that saw two teams resolve their naming-rights dispute, one driver sued by a team owner over a brawl in a Shanghai night-club, and the much-anticipated return of a former world champion, the 2012 Formula One World Championship got underway today in Melbourne with the Australian Grand Prix.
We won’t press it yet, but let’s just say our hand is hovering over the big red “Vaporware!” button we keep armed for just such announcements. DiMora Motorcars still owes us – – the $2-million SLS 2 sedan with its 1,200-horsepower Volcano V16 engine, and .
While we wait for it, DiMora has seen fit to announce not just a new car, but a new division with two new cars said to be “nearing completion.” The Neoclassic Automobiles Subsidiary will, depending on your credulity, be producing the Adina Sportster and Vicci 6.2 Super-Coupe. The Adina is a Morgan-like roadster powered by a General Motors LS3 V8 with 431 horsepower.
The Vicci (pictured) gets either the LS3 or the Corvette ZR1’s LS9 with 638 running through a six-speed manual, six-speed automatic or – prepare to step in your Wayback Machine – a four-speed auto. Its faux Talbot-Lago lines hide a carbon fiber dash, paddle-shifters and a stereo that displays engine diagnostics. Assuming it gets made.
for the press release with info on two possible, but unlikely, limited-edition future cars.
If you happen to have a stale laying around, Reifen Koch may be able to spice it up for you. For €8,000 (a shave over $10,500 at current conversion rates), the company will slap on a Cervini body kit, composed of a revised front fascia, sills and the tail treatment seen above. The “Konquistador” package also includes a side-exit exhaust system, a full KW coilover kit and a hydraulic axle-lift system to help owners overcome pesky speed bumps and other obstacles, though it would seem those bits will cost you extra.
There’s no word on whether the system can help you overcome the crippling knowledge that your pony remains powered by the stock boat-anchor 4.6-liter V8, however. For reasons that remain unclear, Reifen Koch left the lump untouched, meaning the kitted Mustang is still left with a comparatively anemic 315 horsepower. For reference, the 2013 Mustang GT pours 420 ponies to the back tires.
Speaking of rubber, the tuner seems to believe a smart set of wheels and tires are a suitable substitution for performance, saying their Mustang boasts “one of the greatest combinations of wheels and tires.” Behold, the Ford Mustang Hyperbole Edition. Hit the jump for the full press blast.
An automotive enthusiast and a vehicle specialist have endeavored to create a modern interpretation of a storied 1930s sports car. Neil Watson introduced the original Atalanta Sports Tourer 75 years ago, and to mark the occasion, Martyn Corfield and Trevor Farrington crafted a new version of the vehicle that combines modern engineering with the classic lines of the first Sports Tourer.
Details are worryingly scarce about the vehicle’s driveline, but we’re told that 85 percent of the vehicle is unique to the Atalanta brand, including certain castings, the axles, and the steering system, among other components. That also means the revival vehicle is likely to carry a price tag as stunning as the vehicle’s exterior. Unsurprisingly, the company has yet to say a word regarding the MSRP.
Atalanta is now accepting orders for the Sports Tourer, and buyers can custom tailor each car to their tastes. Whether that extends beyond the typical interior appointments wheel-and-color options to include driveline options remains to be seen. Hit the jump for the full press release.
The wowed us at the with its handsome styling and luxe interior fitment, so much so that we wondered aloud if this is the new family of small cars that Daimler has promised the U.S. market for 2013. According to a firsthand tip, the A-Class has already made a trip to Hollywood for a close-up. Taking advantage of the well-established motion picture industry, Mercedes-Benz sent its small wonder to Los Angeles for a 5-day working vacation to shoot a commercial.
Camera department pro Nic Restrepo tells Autoblog:
“This is such an awesome car! WAY nicer and better looking than its competition (A3…). This AMG-badged model had all the big Benz amenities; Self Park assist, lane departure, blind spot warning, Alcantara covered racing seats, dual clutch trans etc. The interior on this thing is head and shoulders above ANY compact I’ve ever worked with. The dash has this beautiful carbon fiber cloth that’s soft to the touch like suede, and it’s layed on like a fabric, feels like a pillow…a carbon fiber pillow.”
It looked great while being chased around by the , and the A-Class made a good impression with the French Rallycross driver hired to fling the car around for the shoot. All who laid eyes upon the car seem to agree with our impression from the show floor, that there’s a lot of big-Benz nice packed into an exciting small package. Disappointingly, though, the little Benz’s corporate minders told the crew that the car is not headed to the U.S. Whether that’s a ruse or the truth, we’ll soon find out as Mercedes still has a couple tricks up its sleeve as the auto show season winds down.
We’ve been expecting for some time that would choose to grace its stand with a variant on its new A-Class family as part of a push to bring a new range of small cars to North America. However, it now seems more likely that Los Angeles audiences will get a vision of Mercedes’ entry-level future, not New York. That’s because Mercedes has officially confirmed that it will show something called the “Concept Style Coupe” at an art, music, film and food festival in LA curated by none other than Mike D of the Beastie Boys.
Transmission LA: AV Club, a “multi-disciplinary festival,” runs from April 20 to May 6, and sponsor Mercedes promises an “artistic staging” of the concept car (expected to be a sedan), the production version of which is rumored to be dubbed CLC. The 17-day festival will be held at the Geffen Contemporary at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
All of which begs the question: With the New York Auto Show staged earlier (press days are April 4 and 5), what will Mercedes show in the Empire State? It’s too significant of a market to the Three-Pointed Star to let the show pass without debuting something significant. See the complete press release for more.
is pretty sure that its expanded family will drive up sales of the world’s best-selling hybrid, and the early sales returns indicate that the company is right, right, right.
After the sold , the smaller, and more efficient is also getting a lot of attention. Toyota announced today that the C sold 1,201 units in just the first three days it was on sale. That’s enough to make it “one of Toyota’s fastest-selling vehicles,” according to the automaker, which also pointed out that those three days of sales is more than either the or sold all last month.
If anything, those 1,201 sales are not as impressive as the C managed in Japan (where it is badged ‘Aqua’) – Toyota obtained , though it isn’t immediately clear how many units have actually been sold. So far, the newly expanded Prius family has sold almost 10,000 units in the U.S. through the first half of March. This certainly points to the Prius franchise doing well in 2012. Last year in the U.S., Toyota sold 136,463 examples of its (it sold 140,928 in 2010) and expects to sell 220,000 Prius models of all types here this year.
With every new set of spy shots, we become increasingly more excited for the launch of the (or is that ?). This tapered wagon version of the shapely is certainly a looker, even in pre-production, camo-clad protype form, and after giving its shockingly quick sedan counterpart high marks for its driving dynamics, we can only assume that the complete Shooting Brake package will be really, really sweet.
Oh yeah, there’s an AMG version, too.
Seen here for the first time, the CLS63 AMG Shooting Brake takes the same sleek long-roof shape of the CLS550 Shooting Brake prototypes we’ve seen, but adds all of the bulgy bits fitting of any high-performance Merc. All we can say is, it looks absolutely stunning, and we can’t wait to see the finished product.
Power is expected to come from the same twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter V8 found in the sedan, sending 518 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque to the rear wheels via Mercedes’ seven-cog Speedshift transmission. Like the sedan, we expect that will offer an AMG Performance Pack, which boosts power to 550 hp and 590 lb-ft in the sedan. Holy moly.
Wipe the drool from your keyboards and click through our attached high-res image gallery to see the CLS63 Shooting Brake prototype for yourself.
Finally. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for ever since and jointly announced their compact rear-wheel-drive sports car: production is now underway.
With an official ceremony at Subaru’s Gunma Main Plant, attended by Toyota president Akio Toyoda, Subaru pushed the Big Red Button (quite literally, in case you were wondering) that sent and Toyota GT 86 coupes down the assembly line. And the event was captured in both still images and video for our viewing pleasure.
Check out our high-res image gallery above, and for the video and official press release. Oh, and if you’re one of the lucky ones with a deposit down for either the Subaru or the Toyota’s twin (America won’t get one with an interlocking rings badge), it’s officially time to consider making room in your garage.
There was a point in time where if we read one more lede that started with “ sure is on a roll these days,” we would have clawed our eyes out. Fact of the matter, though, is that those words were absolutely true. Hyundai has really come a long way here in the United States, especially in the past couple of years. And the only reason people have stopped writing about Hyundai’s forward momentum is because, frankly, we expect nothing less now. Every new product blows the doors off of the one that came before it, and brand-new ventures like the line or funky-fresh are nothing short of impressive.
But every family has its black sheep, and unfortunately for Hyundai, that might be the largest one in its herd. You see, while Hyundai has worked hard to create a unique brand identity here in the United States by offering cars that are designed specifically with our market in mind, the was simply a vehicle hauled over from Korea with a few minor Americanized tweaks. Don’t get us wrong, the Equus is a plenty good car, and through its faults, we praised it in both our and as being a tremendous value that’s pretty darn up to snuff with its competitive set. But over time, can something that’s simply a good value work in the highly competitive full-size luxury set?
That in mind, we ordered a White Satin Pearl for our in order to see if after one year of day-to-day use, the big flagship would be able to stand tall with the rest of its Modern Hyundai kin, or simply be another budget-minded also-ran from the days of Old Hyundai. 52 weeks and 22,638 miles later, all we can say is, man, what a difference a year makes.
Heather Peters really, really doesn’t . Peters is the woman who went her own way earlier this year, suing in small claims court in Torrance, CA instead of joining a class-action lawsuit against the automaker over allegations that the company promoted misleading fuel economy numbers for the , model years 2003 to 2009. She was recently , significantly more than the $100-$200 the 200,000 Civic Hybrid owners involved in the class action suit are expected to net (their lawyers stand to make $8.5 million). Because of that perceived unfairness, Peters is going in front of Superior Judge Timothy Taylor in San Diego today to ask that the class-action settlement be cancelled.
According to the Associated Press, Peters is using her small claims winnings – which Honda said it will appeal – to prove that the settlement is unfair to the Civic Hybrid owners that had thus far agreed to the deal. Around 1,700 owners decided not to take part in the settlement and there is reason to believe Taylor is at least slightly sympathetic to their cause. He recently for state attorneys general – who – to respond to Peters’ winnings.
The original Civic Hybrid class action case arose out of the claims of , who sued Honda in 2007 because, he said, the automaker misled him about the car’s fuel economy. When , who knew the turns this story would take?
The 2013 has an appointment for some cosmetic surgery, according to a report in Car & Driver. The restyle will be minimal, with detail changes around the fascia going just far enough to let other 7 Series owners know that you have the latest model.
A more substantive change could occur under the skin of the ActiveHybrid 7, however. It’s nearly $13,000 more expensive than it’s non-hybrid counterparts but doesn’t make an equally hard-to-ignore case for efficiency: the ActiveHybrid 750i has 55 more horsepower than the standard car, but is rated at 17 city / 26 highway versus 15 city / 22 highway. Speculation is that the ActiveHybrid 7 could get the six-cylinder powertrain from the to improve its green credentials.
As we said when we first drove the Blue-e-motion, is . Given the tremendous ups and downs that electric vehicles and EV start-up companies are going through, maybe making sure you have a car where everything is working smoothly – to say nothing about - isn’t such a bad idea. And it now seems like VW is confident enough in its Golf EV, which is , to push up its estimated release date from 2014 to late 2013.
Sure, technically, that could be a difference of just one day, but we don’t think that’s what VW of America president Jonathan Browning meant when he confirmed next year’s U.S. release date with Automotive News. Late 2013 is also when the car will go on sale in Europe. A .
Even though VW is getting ready to move into electric vehicle territory, it is well behind other automakers. Perhaps that’s why it is also a bit less optimistic about the potential success of plug-ins. The automaker expects just three percent of its new vehicles to be EVs or hybrids by 2018. You can .
So where are we at with the 2013 ? We’ve seen , along with . We’ve seen a shot of the car , and of course, in a conventional disguise, but got a good look at its interior in the process.
Now comes with this, a brief video that shows off the Altima’s new hind end. Like most every sedan on the market these days, it looks like the will be getting a bit of a Bangle butt. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) We do get the first really good view of the Altima’s taillights, which have a bit of spindle thing going on.
We’ll have to wait until the on April 4-5 to see the full reveal, though we wouldn’t put it past Nissan to eke out another shot or two of the car before then.
Click on the image above to enlarge, then feel free to see the very brief video yourself .
By all accounts, vehicle theft is down to some of the lowest levels in over 25 years. Even so, cars are still getting pilfered every day, and LoJack has gone through the trouble of crafting a detailed infographic displaying some of the more interesting information associated with the 10,251 LoJack-equipped vehicles that were stolen and then recovered last year. The company says that, of all vehicles equipped with the theft recovery system, 92 percent are brought back to their rightful owners. Last year, the most stolen and recovered 2011 model was the ubiquitous , while the took the top slot overall.
The oldest model saved from the clutches of thieves in 2011 was a 1948 Fleetline, while the priciest of them all was a worth $116,825. Not too shabby.
Not surprisingly, California led the list of states with the most stolen and recovered vehicles, with Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey fleshing out the top five. The full, expanded infographic can be seen .
