As far as car maker errors go, Nissan made one of their biggest when they launched the 2009 Versa. The Nissan Versa (Tiida in some markets) in itself was never a bad car, it was pretty good actually but, sadly, no one “got it” and sales were subsequently low.
The people of Germany can fall into so many categories it’s really not worth going there, the automakers there however tend to generally fall into a few select ones. Capable, robust and discrete. Opel is one of the well known German manufacturers so you know they have all the basis boxes ticked, especially when you
Opel’s OPC version of the Insignia isn’t just your average sedan but with the Germans launching the Unlimited Edition the naughty meter is clearly off the charts now. This is because the special edition drops the whole electronic top speed limiter idea and goes all Autobahn street racer on us.
The Shanghai Motor Show is still a new event but it seems to have picked up the insanely fast accelerating rhythm that seems to be going around China and it seems to keep amazing us. A special treat that’s come from this event is the Peugeot SXC Concept, especially since this French lion was styled
Since the UK market is a pretty important one, manufacturers tend to offer special versions of their cars just for it. It’s not that I don’t like the British, but sometimes you do want the cars they get, and this special version of the Subaru WRX STI is one of them.
Due to the updates within the 2011 BTCC regulations every single of the teams running in this competition have had to make significant changes to their cars. Toyota’s efforts at the competition are handled by the privateer teams Dynojet Racing and Hughes Motorsport/Speedworks.
Chevrolet’s Cruze is a pretty fascinating vehicle, but since Holden is going to sell it in Australia it does need something specific of a selling point. That’ll be the reason behind Holden currently developing a performance variant of the Cruze as they’ve just announced and showed us a few pictures.
Those of us who really do have a long memory still know about a sporting company called Alpine that worked under Renault’s wing. Spin the clock forward several decades and Renault is looking to create a new sport brand and you’d imagine that would be the name they pick.
The 2011 Geneva Motor Show has barely been open for a few hours and yet we already have so much to “show and tell”. One of my favorite entires from this year’s presentation is the Saab PhoeniX Concept. It’s this new Swedish concept car that attracted my attention the most from this event so far.
No matter how many Aston Martin Cygnet style workarounds you come up with, being an independent car maker which makes no engine that’s smaller than 4.3 liters does tend to catch up with you at one point or another. The British at Aston Martin seem to have realized that and there’s now a rumor going
BMW’s leadership may have decided not to take part in the World Touring Car Championship any more but that hasn’t put off private teams from running their products in this competition. One of the most interesting teams to run in the 2011 WTCC is going to run a BMW 320 tc and they aim high.
The Bavarians aren’t kidding around with turbocharging. Even though BWM refused to have anything to do with it for a very long time, they’ve recently gotten into quite a stride with it. It has gotten to the point where BMW has reported that all of their future inline four cylinder engines will benefit from this
Having been launched at the Detroit Motor Show, the Mini Paceman got quite a dollop of attention. Just like any concept, the Mini Paceman is excellent at attracting attention but when the British announced that it would get to the production state it became a bit of a star.
BMW must be pretty proud of their latest 2.0 liter turbocharged engine because they’ve decided to send it to the United States of America this year. That’s right, even the Americans are now going to get to go through an engine downsizing process as they’ll also have to say goodbye to the 3 liter straight
A recent rumor had a few Honda CRX fans more than interested. There’s more than enough consumer interest for what this rumor brings around. Britain’s Autocar has quite the bit of information to deliver underneath your door. It seems that the Japanese at Honda are preparing themselves for a Honda CR-Z that’s got all of
Let’s be honest about this, even though we’ve just started a new year, the economic crisis is still shadowing us. With times like these on hand it’s inevitable that GM can’t afford to waste money. The Cadillac SRX Turbo never really sold enough cars to make it worth while so it’s now being killed off.
Ok, it’s just me who considers this sort of car as ready for a pension plan but it did get a 2012 face along some other things. Among the “other things” you’ll find a new engine, one of the small 4 cylinder sort.
I guess the holiday season is really gentle on the Germans at BMW and their workload. With the winter break coming in like a hurricane the Bavarians are taking stuff slow. After slightly updating the 1 Series and the X5 for the U.S. they chose to slightly update the BMW X3.
I couldn’t have spoken yesterday about the Ariel Atom without at least mentioning one of its biggest enemies; the Radical SR3. Speaking of which, the SR3 is due for an update which will be called the SR3 SL, an outright no nonsense speed machine.
2010 brought us the Honda CR-Z which came with a bit of a disappointment to driving purists. Everybody wanted a successor to the CRX, a true pocket rocket.
