has dropped the goods on next year’s Tacoma, and it looks like the company will be giving the people what they want by offering more automatic transmissions as standard equipment. For 2011, the Japanese automaker is nixing three manual gearbox models and adding five new slusher versions of the pickup. Prices for the pickups will start at $16,365 for a bare bones, manual-transmission, two-wheel drive regular cab and top out at $27,525 for a V6-equipped four-wheel drive with an automatic gearbox and a double cab long-bed.
Buyers will continue to be able to opt between a 2.7-liter four-cylinder engine with 159 horsepower or a more potent 4.0-liter V6 with 236 horsepower. Those power figures have stayed on from last year, so we’re betting from both will stay on par with 2010 models as well. That means that the base truck will hit close to 20 mpg city and 26 mpg highway while the topped out version will land closer to 16 mpg city and 20 mpg highway. for the full press release.
[Source: Toyota]
prices 2011 Tacoma, deletes some manuals, adds more automatics
All hail the Comanche? Well, not exactly. But the old XJ-based single cab pickup certainly has something of a loyal fan base. The same can be said of every other pickup truck the Toledo-based off-road specialists have ever created, including the classic CJ-8 Scrambler. And the darn-near-perfect-in-every-way from 2005 got nothing but rave reviews from everyone who saw it at the Detroit Auto Show.
So, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our friends at PickupTrucks.com are reporting that Jeep is once again considering entering the pickup truck market. Apparently, newly minted Jeep CEO Mike Manley has his eyes on the segment globally and believes that the concept of a Jeep pick ‘em-up-truck has some profitable legs.
Considering that the Ford Ranger continues to sell in reasonably decent numbers despite not seeing any real updates since the Jurassic period and that the pickup has generated a good bit of interest before even hitting the American scene, we have to wonder if there may be some pent-up demand for a small, capable pickup in America. In any case, don’t expect any sort of official comment from Jeep… but feel free to keep your fingers crossed.
One of the most recognizable movie cars of recent years is being offered up for sale on eBay Motors this week. Austin Powers’ “shagadelic” E-Type roadster first appeared in the original 1997 picture featuring Mike Myers as the thawed-out British secret agent.
This particular machine was actually used as a promotional vehicle for the first film, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. In addition to the custom paint job, a specially-made red top and red, white and blue interior have been fitted. The car still has the original powertrain, but the listing doesn’t include the mileage.If you simply must have the Shaguar, you can make it yours by surrendering the Buy It Now price of $59,900. The current bid of $24,550 sits below the seller’s reserve.
2011 GM HD Trucks – Click above for high-res image gallery
Just weeks after starting production of the new at the Flint, MI assembly plant, General Motors suspended work last Thursday to replace a defective component. Engineers found a problem with the unidentified part during routine testing and immediately found a replacement. Three shifts of and production were canceled on Thursday and Friday, but assembly is scheduled to resume on Monday morning.
Trucks that have already been built and shipped to dealers over the past four weeks will also be retrofitted before customer delivery. In July, GM will also add production of light-duty pickups at Flint.
Gallery:
Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.
Today is Father’s Day, and many of you doubtless have memorable, heartwarming, and amusing stories involving yourselves, your dads, and the various cars and trucks associated with the man of the house over the years. Sometimes, these involved a lot of yelling. These stories usually age well over the years, so let’s hear ‘em in the comments section. Some of the broader categories might include:
Great moments in home auto maintenance. For instance, John Neff’s dad once decided to rebuild the engine in the family’s Pontiac 6000. There were parts left over afterward. “It was never quite right after that,” says Neff.
Road trip memories. Was your dad one to never seek directions? Did this make the annual family vacation more interesting in unexpected ways? Bonus if these stories involve heavily-laden large station wagons from the pre-minivan era.
Driver’s ed. Remember when dad taught you how to drive? A lot of you probably have great memories associated with this. Don’t forget: if no one actually got hurt, near-death experiences are funny in retrospect.
The master negotiator. When it came time to procure a new family car, was your dad the king of turning the tables on the plaid-tied fast-talkers at the dealership? Extra credit if the bounty was the fully-decked-out showroom queen that seemed completely unattainable when you guys walked through the door.
Jedi mind trick. Dad is the wheelman. He just nuked the local speed limit with extreme prejudice. A man in reflective aviator sunglasses with a large hat, a badge, and a gun is leaning into the window. The situation is hopeless. Only… it’s not, and dad sends the lawman walking back to his black-and-white Dodge Polara smiling, no less. From here on out, you believe your dad could talk himself out of a Turkish prison.
Those are just ideas. Your experiences and stories may vary. Regardless, it’s all for fun. Share your favorite tales below, or heck, just feel free to wish your dad, your grandpop, your favorite uncle — whomever — a Happy Father’s Day.
From all of us to the dads reading today, have a good one.
One jump to rule them all – Click above for high-res image gallery
Having one cool ride jump an (arguably) even cooler one while the latter is also midair seems like a righteous idea to us. Fortunately, teamed up with a couple of insane to make it happen. FMX rider Alexey Kolesnikov got it into his mind that he wanted to jump a Kamaz Master , but it wasn’t enough to simply hop the thing while it had all four tires planted on terra firma. He wanted the 8.5-ton beast to be doing a jeté of its own at the same time.
That’s when driver Vladimir Chagin stepped in to help out. The two came together to oversee the construction of four ramps built from 500 tons of earth. The Dakar bruiser would hit an eight foot jump and sail through the air for a total of 28 feet, while Kolesnikov would launch from a nine-foot ramp and land 69 feet away. Now, here’s the tricky part. Chagin had to hit his jump at exactly 40 mph so that Kolesnikov would be able to clear the side of the truck. As you can tell from the photos, great things ensued.
1957 BMW 507 – Click above for high-res image gallery
The 507 is arguably the most beautiful and certainly among the rarest production models ever to emerge from Munich, with only 253 produced between 1956 and 1959. The 507 was the first BMW built with a V8 engine and remained the only model to use one until the debuted in 1992. The 3.2-liter pushrod V8 under the 507’s bonnet was rated at either 150 or 160 horsepower.
Unfortunately, as attractive as the 507 was, its $10,000 price tag made it a bigger commercial failure than the more recent Z8. Following the 507’s demise, BMW didn’t build another roadster until the 1989 Z1.
This particular example appears to be in very good condition aside from its slightly foggy rear window. It spent a good part of its life at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas, where it was purported to be one of two owned by Elvis Presley. As this is written, has not cleared the reserve price, so you still have a chance to remortgage the house and get in on this action.
When I bought my first new car, back in 1973, I’d been warned by friends to expect a good half dozen defects that would need to be straightened out by the dealer. It turned out there were only five, I quickly counted, before taking my little sedan back to the shop for repairs. I was lucky. The worst problem I had to deal with was a loose mirror. A college chum, meanwhile, got stuck with a bad transmission on the new he bought about the same time. But he took it in stride, as long as it got fixed right. And so did just about everyone else. Dealing with defects was a part of buying a car back then.
One could argue surveys like IQS made Toyota and Honda by quantifying the quality gap.
But things started to change even before I was ready to trade in. The twin oil shocks of the ’70s initially put the focus on fuel economy – more specifically on high-mileage imports. But as memories of gas lines faded, the emphasis shifted to the unexpectedly high quality the best of the Asians were delivering.
One could argue – as an NPR talk show host did during my appearance this morning – that J.D. Power and Associates, with surveys like the Initial Quality Study, made and by quantifying that quality gap. And it was a big one, domestic makers routinely suffered twice the number of “problems” of the top foreign makers. Of course, even the imports had their issues back then, but as quality became a watchword, even the worst manufacturers suddenly started to make it a top priority, and, year-after-year, the defect count for the typical car rolling off the assembly line has steadily shrunk.
, the average buyer of a 2010 car, truck or crossover is experiencing about 1.08 problems during the first 90 days of ownership. More precisely, in the language of the Initial Quality Survey, there are an average of 1.08 “problems” per 100 vehicles.
The products produced by the worst manufacturer on the list, , suffered 170 problems per 100, or 170 PP100 – less than two glitches for every vehicle. Put another way, that’s less than half what the best makers could deliver in the early years of the IQS. The best individual model, the , racked up just 55 PP100 on the latest study, which translates into just one complaint ticked off on the Power survey form by every other buyer.
Mahindra Pik-Up – Click above for high-res image gallery
According to the Hindustan Times, Global Vehicles, the Atlanta-based company that is slated to be the exclusive U.S. distributor for Mahindra & Mahindra vehicles, alleges that more than $95 million has been spent on getting the country ready to buy the Indian Pik-Ups. The problem is, and has been, that Mahindra still hasn’t provided any vehicles to sell. The Indian company is waiting on to sell the trucks here.
GV is tired of waiting idly, and has brought a lawsuit against Mahindra for having missed two soft deadlines and two hard ones. GV claims the delay has been “inordinate,” Mahindra says the lawsuit is “without merit.” We say that no matter who’s right, this is not the way to bring a truck to market.
Ron Gettelfinger has been in the United Auto Workers for 44 years, the last eight of those years in the role of president. He’s taken his share of lumps from the people he faced across the table and his own constituents, but he’s led the UAW through some of the toughest years its faced in a decades, summed up , “We did what we had to do to get to tomorrow.” And now he’s out, with his chosen successor, Bob King, voted in by a landslide to replace him.
King’s candidacy was challenged by Gary Walkowicz, a bargaining committee member from Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant, and it’s the first time someone has run against an endorsed candidate in 18 years. But that’s part of Gettelfinger’s legacy and a sign of the times – there are still strong and various currents of opinion about which way the UAW needs to go. However, with former lead Ford negotiatior King winning 2,115 votes to Walkowicz’s 74 when the ballot counting was stopped, the front is still unified enough.
In addition to crowning King err.. king, General Holiefield, James Settles, Joseph Ashton and Cynthia Estrada were elected vice presidents and Dennis Williams was voted in as secretary-treasurer.
2010 Chevrolet Sail – Click above for high-res image gallery
In 2007 broke Chinese sales records with over one million vehicles sold. That sounded pretty impressive at the time, but just three years later GM’s sales have come so far so fast that the General is now officially selling more vehicles in the Land of the Great Wall than it is in the States.
The Detroit Bureau reports that GM’s China sales are up 54 percent in 2010 versus the first five months of 2009, with 1,032,665 cars and trucks sold so far this year. The General isn’t doing nearly that well here in the U.S, with 882,277 units sold during the same period.
The biggest reason GM’s sales continue to outpace the growth of its competition is the shot in the arm provided by the brand. The Bow Tie brand’s sales are up 104 percent on the year, led by a 113 percent increase in sales of the . GM sold 14,524 copies of the Cruze in May alone, while the new-for-2010 Sail already hit 7,616 sales. While Chevy is quickly growing in the Chinese market, the still hot brand is starting to show some signs of leveling off. Sales of the Tri-shield are up a mere 22 percent so far this year. appears to be stealing a bit of Buick’s thunder as well, as the Wreath and Crest is up 98 percent on the year.
There are an endless amount of interesting tidbits to be found when browsing satellite images in and . Unfortunately, we have to keep in mind that the images are not in real-time, or even close too it. Most are 2-3 years old or more. That means whatever you see today is likely long gone by the time you’re looking at it.
Such is the case for the imagery of a sad little industrial park in Green Cove Springs, Florida, just south of Jacksonville. The Reynolds Industrial Park was once an airport where the U.S. stored mothballed aircraft. Recently, some people with stumbled across this image and came to the erroneous conclusion that the thousands of white vehicles parked on the airport’s abandoned runways were UN trucks, possibly being readied for an invasion of Disney World (our guess, not theirs).
In fact, the truth is nothing quite so insidious. The two airstrips full of cars were a surplus of unsold Kias that had been shipped in from Korea and were being stored. Their white color is simply the shrink-wrap that’s applied to almost all new cars during shipping to protect their finish. Prior to becoming a Kia storage lot, the same facility was used by Kelsey-Hayes/TRW Automotive as a test track for anti-lock brake systems for some 20 years (this writer formerly worked as an engineer for TRW and spent time at this facility). The white ceramic tile pad formerly used for simulated ice testing is still visible on the upper part of the runway as are the circle tracks.
The airstrips weren’t the only automotive use of Reynolds Industrial Park. One of the buildings to the right of the strip was home to for a time in the mid-1990s before it went belly up. Rusting frames of the M12 supercar could be seen stacked outside for several years after.
The KSU Gazal 1 – Click above for high-res image gallery
The very first car designed and built in is officially a reality. King Abdullah unveiled the production Gazal 1 at a special ceremony yesterday and congratulated everyone who participated in the vehicle’s development on a job well done. As you may recall, the Gazal 1 was a special project created by the students at King Saud University. Though built off the bones of a , the KSU kids penned the exterior and reworked the interior to accommodate Saudi Arabia’s notoriously brutal climate and demanding terrain.
When we saw the at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, we thought the vehicle looked pretty good, especially considering how little experience the SUV’s designers had in bringing a full-scale vehicle to life. From what we can tell, it looks like the production version has stuck fairly close to the big green model we saw back in March. That means the Toyota FJ Cruiser-style roof has made its way into reality along with the very International grille.
It works for us, especially considering the go-anywhere components bolted underneath. No one’s said what’s under the hood of the Gazal 1, but we’re guessing the same 382-horsepower 5.5-liter V8 from the standard G550 is a good bet.
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This week,Chris joins Sam, Dan and Alex on a phone line from 1922. News topics we cover are a short chat about the exciting action at Le Mans, the Chevrolet/Chevy memo flap, Mini’s nipping at Porsche’s heels, GM’s HD pickups, and the new Volkswagen Jetta. It’s a short, sweet sub-one-hour podcast this week. See you soon!
Autoblog Podcast #182 – Le Mans, Chevrolet, GM HD Trucks, Mini’s aggression and the new Jetta
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2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Edition – Click above for high-res image gallery
Station attendant: “You sure you wanna put diesel in that?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Attendant: “It doesn’t look like a diesel.”
Me: “That’s kinda the point.”
And so it goes. That wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last that we got quizzical looks when grabbing a plastic glove and topping up the 14.5-gallon tank on our Salsa Red 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Edition tester. After all, when you think diesel, a body-kitted sports sedan doesn’t spring to mind. Particularly in the U.S., where (Cliche Alert!) old-school oilburners conjure the soot-covered nostalgia of smoke-belching Benzes, dirty shoes, smelly hands and searching for the appropriate pump at truck stops.
But in the 21st century – and throughout Europe for the last several decades – the modern diesel is a mainstay. Nearly half of all new cars sold across the pond swill ultra-low sulfur diesel, and after years of being hamstrung by California bureaucrats and the Feds, the high-mileage misers have finally returned to our shores.
But can a diesel really be sporty?
Volkswagen obviously thinks so, and after fielding “numerous inquiries” about offering a replica of its TDI Cup cars for the road, V-Dub has begun offering a kitted-out version of its diesel-powered Jetta to the fraction (of a fraction) of enthusiasts who want a more entertaining way to burn through a tank of ULSD.
So the Cup Edition certainly looks the part, but how’s it get on? Let’s .
Gallery:
Photos by Damon Lavrinc / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.
: 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Edition juggles fun and frugality
2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD – Click above for high-res image gallery
As you may have noticed, automobile sales are picking back up after their seemingly perpetual nosedive of the last two years or so. The same holds true for fullsize pickup trucks, and we’re hoping that this resurgence will bring back some of the more interesting developments that had to be shelved due to monetary constraints. Chief amongst these wishes are the unfortunately abandoned light-duty diesel engines from , and .
With that in mind, our interest is piqued by a report from our friends at PickupTrucks.com suggesting that the previously shelved 4.5-liter Duramax diesel V8 engine from GM may be back on the table, except with an interesting twist. While the oil-burning powerplant was originally intended just for half ton trucks, GM is reportedly now considering offering the mill in all of its fullsize trucks, including the Heavy Duty models.
General Motors indicates that its 4.5-liter diesel V8 engine is “fully developed and ready” to launch with power ratings of over 310 horsepower and 520 pound-feet of torque. Those figures would just about match what the larger Duramax diesels were putting out about a decade ago and seemingly be plenty for the 2500 class of trucks. What’s more, The General told our own Sam Abuelsamid that the still-running fleet of 4.5 diesels is .
After putting some miles on the new Heavy Duty trucks from GM, we found they offer superior ride quality, engine refinement and features like smart exhaust braking over its rivals.
If there’s one thing the auto world loves, it’s a good tease. BMW has been happy to oblige this afternoon by dropping three photos of a new model fit just for U.S. consumption.
Thanks to a leak from the boys at Auto Express in the UK, we can show you these few shots of the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta, along with a couple of salient details.
As investigations into how handled in the company’s pickup trucks and SUVs continue, critics suggest that it’s quickly becoming clear that the company has mishandled repair and recall efforts. According to a USA Today article, Toyota had repaired vehicles with the defect for over 11 years in the U.S. before deciding to initiate a in Japan, and a recall for the 977,000 affected American vehicles didn’t occur until one year later.
To compound the issue, not all owners were contacted about the recall once it went into effect, leaving plenty of potentialy defective vehicles in the hands of the public. Some owners were even made to pay for the repair out of their own pockets without reimbursement from the automaker, especially after the vehicle was out of warranty. In some cases, Toyota made what it calls goodwill repairs for free.
The investigation into the defective steering relay rods comes after the federal government fined Toyota the maximum allowable earlier this year for failing to notify the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration of unintended acceleration issues in a timely manner. The automaker is currently the plaintiff in a class action lawsuit in California concerning the faulty steering relay rods.
Autoblog reader Geo happened to be cruising on I-275 in Detroit last week when he was passed by a convoy of pickups. Snugged smack dab in the middle was none other than the upcoming SuperCrew without a stitch of camouflage to cover those two extra doors. Geo did what any good enterprising AB reader would do and clicked a couple of photos as the desert-crushing truck blew by.
The prototype in the photos has ditched the outlandish graphics of its shorter brother, but it still looks just as mean, and it’s even slathered in silver paint, a color that isn’t currently available. If the badge on the fender is any indication, this particular example packs the same 411-horsepower6.2-liter V8 mill we were not too long ago, which means it should have no problem jumping over hill and dale. If ever there was a backyard party on four wheels, this is it.
