Junkyard Find: 1988 Chevrolet Cavalier Coupe

GM may have produced the W-Body for a few more years than the J-Body (W-based Impala Limited production continued until 2016), but Chevy Cavalier sales continued like money-printing clockwork via the increasingly antiquated J platform from 1981 all the way through 2005.

More than five million Cavaliers rolled off assembly lines in the United States and Mexico, so we still see the later ones on the street. 1980s Cavaliers — particularly Cavalier coupes — have all but disappeared from the street, so I keep my eyes open for interesting examples as I tread the oil-saturated soil of American junkyards. Here’s an ’88 coupe still showing the personality of its final owner, found in the shadow of Pikes Peak a few months ago.

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Junkyard Find: 1978 Mercury Zephyr Z-7
In between the homely Ford Maverick/Mercury Comet and the punitively sensible Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz, the folks at Dearborn provided North Americans with the Ford Fairmont and its Mercury sibling, the Zephyr, as reasonably modern rear-wheel-drive compact commuter machines. For those car shoppers wanting to get a bit devilish with their selections, Ford dealers offered the Fairmont Futura coupe, while your local Mercury store had the Zephyr Z-7 coupe.Here’s a tan-beige-brown Zephyr Z-7 in a Northern California self-service wrecking yard.
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Ace of Base: 2020 Toyota Supra

This one is sure to set tongues wagging and keyboards clacking. The return of the mighty Supra nameplate is — depending to whom you speak — either an abomination the likes of which the motoring world has never seen, or a wonderful harbinger of all things fun and sporty.

For the record, your author is in the latter camp. Don’t @ me.

Three trims of the are new Supra available at launch: Base 3.0, Premium 3.0, and a Launch Edition. Is the entry-level model worth a mention? Or should one proceed directly to one of the more expensive options?

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2019 Honda Civic: Dig Deeper If You Want a Two-door Stick

The Big H rolled out additional details for its 2019 lineup today, including trims and pricing for the Civic and Civic Coupe. As Steph detailed last month, the Sport trim will be added to the coupe and sedan, giving buyers who don’t want the hunchback hatchback an extra model in which they can get the 158-horsepower 2.0-liter engine.

Buried in the details is a rejiggering of transmission availability. With the six-speed manual no longer available on the base coupe, shoppers who want a two-door Civic with a stick shift will be paying more in 2019.

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VW Reveals the Last Beetle - And This Time, It's Final. Maybe.

The Volkswagen Beetle, a machine that has a grand total of three (count ’em) generations since its introduction, will be ushered out the factory door in Puebla next July. The modern Bug, as we know it today, showed up as a concept car in 1997 and entered production a couple of years later as the New Beetle. In 2011, the car found itself restyled and rechristened as simply the Beetle, just like the old Beetle. But not the New Beetle, even though most people continued to call the New New Beetle the New Beetle, despite its official name being simply Beetle.

Achtung! No one ever said naming conventions had to make sense.

Whatever you want to call it, production of the car will wrap up in mid-2019. As a send off, VW has crafted a special model option called the Final Edition.

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Ace of Base: 2018 Toyota 86

You bunch of ungrateful whelps. “Give us affordable rear-drive performance!” cried all hands, weeping at the thought of departed rear-drive funbags such as the MR2 and Corolla GT-S. Toyota, ever the dutiful servant, shacked up with Subaru to create the chuckable 2,700 lb sprite you see above.

And how’d you repay ‘em? By waiting for the things to show up on BHPH lots, that’s how! Ingrates. This is the car everyone wanted and then promptly forgot, as illustrated by the fact it is outsold more than 2:1 by the antiquated Sequoia.

My rage is manufactured and over the top, of course, as everyone’s seems to be these days. Still, the 86 is a great car, especially in base trim.

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BMW Begins Production on $112,895 M850i

BMW’s new flagship model, the returning 8 Series, has officially entered production in Dingolfing, Germany. However, if you’re interested in one, you’d better check your business card for the applicable tags — words like chairman, president, or doctor. The model starts at a sizable $111,900, plus a $995 delivery fee.

If you find yourself lacking those credentials or the necessary income, we can recommend the slightly less ostentatious 6 Series and a helping of shame, as you’re clearly not the kind of earner you’ve aspired to be.

Of course, if you purchase the 6 Series Coupe you’ll be stuck buying last year’s leftovers and missing out on prestige and power — and we don’t mean symbolically. The base M850i comes with BMW’s 4.4-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 and 523 horsepower with 553 pound-feet of torque. Meanwhile, the base 640i comes with an inline 3.0-liter powerplant. While you can upgrade to the 650i and its 4.4-liter V8, the unit will still be almost 100 ponies shy of what the 8 Series brings to the table.

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Coupe-tastic: BMW Brings Back the 8 Series

Fair warning: this post will include more photos than a normal news item. Why? Because BMW is once again applying an 8 Series badge to the trunklid of a slinky two-door.

I like big coupés, and I cannot lie.

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Nissan Updates the 370Z in Lieu of Delivering a Successor

Less than a year away from its 10th birthday, Nissan’s 370Z is getting a modest refresh in the hopes of maintaining some kind of relevance. Despite being the better car, the present model failed to outsell the 350Z in the United States in all but its introductory year, and annual deliveries have continue to tumble ever since. Nissan only managed to move 4,614 examples in 2017, which is less than half the volume seen in 2010.

The Z car represents the last gasp of Japanese muscle and it’s been gradually wheezing its way out of prominence. Most of the famous alphanumeric nameplates from the island nation were buried over a decade ago. But the Nissan lived on, almost as if it was saving a seat for the Toyota Supra’s return.

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Junkyard Find: 1976 Plymouth Volare Coupe

The A-Body Plymouth Valiant (and its Dodge sibling, the Dart), stayed in American production from the 1960 model year all the way through 1976. Legendary for its sturdiness, the Valiant was sure to be a tough act to follow. The Plymouth Volarés and Dodge Aspens appeared in 1976, never gained the affection given to their predecessors, and were facelifted and renamed the Gran Fury and Diplomat in 1981. Here’s a luxed-up first-year Volaré I spotted in a Northern California self-service yard.

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PredictionZ: Nissan Could Be Working on a New Z

Taking all of this with a huge grain of salt, as future plans at many manufacturers are often more fluid than the salty Atlantic Ocean, reports are surfacing of Nissan forging ahead with a new Z. And it’s not a crossover.

According to the UK outlet Autocar, Nissan will display a concept Z at this year’s Tokyo show in October*, with a production version showing up a year later in L.A.

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We Take One Final Drive in the Honda Accord Coupe Before It Dies (One Final Accord V6 Drive, Too)

At The Truth About Cars, we’ve paid a lot of attention to the demise of the Honda Accord coupe. And for numerous good reasons.

In TTAC’s long-term fleet, for instance, there’s Jack Baruth’s own 2014 Accord Coupe V6 6MT. In the TTAC audience’s fleet, there are more Honda Accords than any other car. Furthermore, Honda revealed earlier this month the all-new, 10th-generation 2018 Honda Accord.

First we learned the naturally aspirated V6 engine would no longer be part of the Accord’s lineup. Then we discovered that the Accord coupe, responsible for only around 5 percent of total Accord sales, would be the last player to leave the mainstream two-door midsize car category.

On Friday, as we reported the enticing deals American Honda is offering on 5,000 remaining Accord coupes, a discussion ensued at TTAC’s digital HQ. It was decided that — as a memorial, as a final send-off, as a fond farewell — we should drive one of these final ninth-generation Accord coupes.

So I made a call.

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Behold, the Honda Accord Coupe Liveth - Briefly, and Cheaply

Although it seemed hard to believe, we were under the impression up until a few weeks before the 10th-generation Honda Accord’s launch, that the 2018 Honda Accord would spawn yet another Honda Accord coupe.

On July 14, 2017, we learned the Honda Accord coupe would die an honorable death. The 10th-generation Accord sedan, according to Honda, will hold sufficient appeal for those former Accord coupe buyers — Accordians, who made up roughly 5 percent of Honda’s midsize clientele.

But the Honda Accord coupe, while futureless, isn’t dead yet. There are more than 5,000 on dealer lots across the United States right now. And according to CarsDirect, they’re pretty cheap.

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Picture Time: 2018 Infiniti Q60 Red Sport 400

At the 2018 Infiniti Q50 First Drive event in Nashville (expect a full review Friday), I was able to spend a few moments with the top-of-the-line Q60 for 2018 — the Red Sport 400. While I didn’t get enough time behind the wheel to provide you with the sort of detailed and meaningful review you’d like to see, the pictures turned out alright. It’s nice to see a luxury coupe with a (mostly) white interior.

Holy Eldorado!

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Honda Accord Coupe Is Dead, but Honda Believes Accord Coupe Buyers Will Become Accord Sedan Buyers

Honda’s probably right.

The coupe, long a staple of the American auto industry, is fading fast. Between automakers who insist on using phrases such as “four-door coupe” and “ SUV coupe” and automakers that are just plain killing off coupes and consumers who favor more practical bodystyles, one wonders how rare the bodystyle will be in 10, or even five years.

Now, the tenth-generation 2018 Honda Accord has appeared and the coupe variation we’ve known for decades is off the table. No coupe. Coupe be gone. Coupe discontinued. Coupe defunct. Coupe dead. Coupé de grâce, to thoroughly muddle the French.

Yet it’s Honda’s belief that the new sedan is enough to keep Accord Coupe buyers from straying from the fold.

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  • Ronin It's one thing to stay tried and true to loyal past customers; you'll ensure a stream of revenue from your installed base- maybe every several years or so.It's another to attract net-new customers, who are dazzled by so many other attractive offerings that have more cargo capacity than that high-floored 4-Runner bed, and are not so scrunched in scrunchy front seats.Like with the FJ Cruiser: don't bother to update it, thereby saving money while explaining customers like it that way, all the way into oblivion. Not recognizing some customers like to actually have right rear visibility in their SUVs.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.