It’s 1992 and Pontiac is the division of driving excitement. A power hungry driver with leather gloves and an intense maniacal stare takes on the ‘call of the road’ in between TV football games. His beautiful black Bonneville, 200+ horsepower, screeches from a stand still and thrusts right to the edge of the posted speed limit… and not a single mph more. No Cadillac zags through double yellow lines. No country clubber saying, “You bet your Ascot!” This is GM in the heart of the Stempel era. Another frigging rental car marketed as sporty.

Fast forward 18 years later and I have the 1996 version of the exact same car. 3800 V6. 102,000 original miles. I bought it for $1500 and threw in a new water pump and tune-up. Overall I have about $1800 in this plasticized, full-sized Pontiac. Not a bad amount given the mileage and the good paint. The question now is what to do?
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The designer of Cadillac’s recent ULC city car concept seems to think so. Niki Smart tells Autocar

The time is ripe for Cadillac to make this car. We need a bigger spread of models, particularly for Europe. The Mini’s success is proof of people’s open-mindedness.

Whether or not Cadillac needs a subcompact car in its lineup, Smart’s point that the MINI is proof of consumers’ “open-mindedness” is worth examining. Specifically because MINI was launched as a unique brand, its success is more of a testament to the brand’s slick marketing than any consumer “open-mindedness.” After all, BMW made certain to launch the MINI as a MINI before bringing out a BMW version of its front-drive chassis… and when it does bring out a BMW-branded version, it can probably expect a certain amount of pushback from hard-core fans of the brand.

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A federal lawsuit seeks damages against a rental car company for allowing the photo enforcement firm American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to place charges on the credit cars of customers without their consent. North Carolina resident Dwight Simonson filed the case in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey earlier this year and hopes it will be certified as a class action. Simonson had rented a Hertz automobile in Orlando, Florida on June 23, 2009 and was outraged to find himself being billed $10.75 by ATS for a 75 cent toll. Since 2005, the New Jersey-based Hertz Corporation has worked with ATS through a program known as PlatePass through which renters can use toll roads with a built-in payment system. Frequent travelers have expressed outrage over the automatic billing for various forms of traffic fines they consider excessive. Simonson argues that the program is intended to defraud renters.

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The year is slowly coming to an end. Only one month to go. China’s industry association CAAM is no doubt looking at early reports of the November sales (official numbers will be released in a week or so.) That look emboldened the CAAM to come to a semi-official prediction: “China is expected to record auto sales volume of more than 17 million units this year” said the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), according to Gasgoo. (Read More…)

Mazda has barely thrown off the shackles of Ford, but the Japanese already make their new freedom felt. In a way that won’t make Ford happy.

Mazda and their new largest shareholder Sumitomo will spend anywhere between $350m and $475m, and will open a plant in Mexico that will start making lots of little Mazdas as early as 2013. According to The Nikkei [sub], Mazda will build its bread & butter Mazda2 and Mazda3 models in Mexico. They will not be shipped north. The cars are destined for the Mexican, Brazilian, and other Central and South American markets. Mazda will initially make some 100,000 units there, later more. An engine plant is also in the cards.

This marks a series of firsts for Mazda. (Read More…)

We had an ultra-impressive win with the Ultra Van; congratulations Joe McKinney! Send me your snail mail address if you want to claim the promised gold star. On with the next victim of our restless feet and camera. Good luck!

AutoWeek reports:

When Porsche introduced the world to its first production SUV in 2003, it set off an intense, polarized debate that continues to this day. For some, the Cayenne was a crossing of the Rubicon (no pun intended) leading to the dumbing-down of a proud marque… for others, it was a new, more accessible way to experience the brand. Sure enough, sales of the Cayenne have been good (significantly better than the Cayman and Boxster combined), but Porsche seems to have let passion for its brand run out of control.

Since the Cayenne controversy, every V6 Panamera and Cayman S has given the anti-Cayenne faction evidence of the slippery slope of brand destruction they saw coming with Porsche’s first SUV (and which Jack Baruth traces back as far as the 914). And now, as if to confirm the worst fears of even some of its own executives, Porsche is throwing rocket fuel on the fire in the form of a new, smaller SUV. The question this time: after the Cayenne, Pana V6, and various sins against the fanbase (some more deadly than others), are the purists still fired up enough to rage against the Cajun?

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Jack Baruth’s prescient preemptive strike against the American incarnation of everyone’s favorite car show leaves little room for more full-length opinion on the new Top Gear USA. Which is a good thing considering I’ve only watched the first installment online (why get cable when you have the internet?)… and as far as this anglophile originalist is concerned, once was enough. But it’s certainly possible that I’ve missed signs of improvement. So now that we’re two episodes deep, let’s hear it from you: is Top Gear USA irredeemably mediocre, or is there reason top look forward to future episodes? And if your opinion leans towards the former choice, how the hell do we as Americans successfully combine our two great cultural loves, cars and TV? Because, as a nation, it’s hard to deny that our TV-shows-about-cars track record thus far is just plain embarrassing.

Styling changes at GM seem to either come either in questionable radical leaps like the Pontiac Aztec, or creep glacially by, and GM’s 2500HD trucks definitely fit into the latter category. Despite being fully redesigned in 2007 as a 2008 model year truck and gaining a “full mid-cycle refresh” for the 2010 model year, the [...]