Tesla’s 10 minute driving time limit at their Model S press events are leading some to cry foul – “how can a journalist reasonably evaluate the new EV without getting an idea of its battery range?”.

The bigger question is “what value do press trips really provide to the reader?”

Jeep is hoping to sell 125,000 vehicles in Europe by 2015, and in addition to new product, the brand is also undertaking a sponsorship deal with one of Italy’s most popular soccer teams.

Today is a Louisville day for me; Georgetown can’t have all the fun, after all. Oh wait: They build Toyotas not named FR-S. Never mind.

A Fast Company article on in-car integration of Siri, Apple’s voice activated Artifical Intelligence system, revealed that despite Apple’s usage of their brands, a few manufacturers aren’t even aware of plans to use it on their vehicles, let alone within the 12 month timeframe that Apple had suggested.

After the positive response to Half-Price Bimmer, I’ve asked another guest columnist, whom we shall call “Bark M.”, to detail his recent attempt to buy a high-power American sporting car, complete with drive notes on both the Mustang and Challenger, and an almost convincing rationale for his decision to let his wife drive a Boss before he did. “Bark” is an SCCA National Tour autocrosser and former professional musician. — JB

“Are you still interested in buying a Boss 302? We just got one in stock today.”

That was the e-mail that popped up on my phone while I was sitting in a meeting last Friday morning. But in order to explain this e-mail, I have to take you back a bit.

Yes, that’s a real race car, and it’s expected to turn an LMP2-prototype-level laptime despite having tires that are just four inches wide and a 300-horsepower, four-cylinder, direct-injection-turbo engine.

Even though the gods of the Ren Cen saw fit to deliver us the Opel Astra, the capricious and jealous Dan Akerson still managed to deny his Chosen Ones the elusive diesel/manual body-on-frame SUV, leaving the faithful to wallow in a sea of front-drive, car-based gasoline powered crossovers that nobody ever buys. Ever.

Even though 85 percent of Hondas sold in North American are built on the continent, the strong yen is hurting the company’s Japanese exports to the point where Honda is losing money on them.

It's a tough job. Our author, working his tail off evaluating product on a press junket to South Africa

If you’ve ever had a friend or relative who was both eager and nervous to show off a painting, piece of music or other creative work (“Tell me what you really think. Don’t sugarcoat it.” Who hasn’t heard that one before), then you’ll understand how PR people must feel when they’re tasked with introducing a new vehicle.

Previous editions of Generation Why have explored one of the last glimmers of automotive affection that the “carless generation” still holds on to- the love of classic cars.

A report in the Nikkei claims that Mazda’s rotary engine will live on as a range extender for electric vehicles using hydrogen power for the Wankel engine.

My biggest fear with the seemingly inevitable departure of Dany Bahar was having to read the contempt and gloating of the automotive media’s self-appointed product and management experts, whereby they claim vindication for shitting on Dany Bahar’s vision to do something about Lotus and their lack of profitability and his desecration of sacred “brand values”.

Dany Bahar has been dismissed effective immediately by Group Lotus following an investigation into Bahar’s spending practices.

Lotus CEO Dany Bahar’s 14 day suspension is set to expire on Monday. We have no idea what will happen next. He may get the boot, taking his ambitious five-year product plan with him. Or he may not. Putting the pieces together since Lotus was taken over by DRB-Hicom has painted an interesting picture, while still leaving the future of Lotus up in the air.

Finally, the real story on the Hyundai Veloster Turbo pricing is here. $22,725 (including the $775 destination fee). A 6-speed automatic is another $1,000.

Pursuant to our recent discussions of Honda’s spiral into the mundane – and the market’s warm reception despite this move, here’s another example of one of the big H’s vehicles picking up steam as it becomes more mainstream.

With a few of our readers providing some particularly good insight into Acura’s ILX campaign based on their work in marketing, I’m submitting an ad for the TSX from 2009 for their consideration, as well as my own commentary.

Yesterday, I learned a very valuable lesson in Journalism 101, having published erroneous information before having it confirmed.

The ad, like all ads today, is aspirational, not reflective. It is showing you something you want to be, not “a person like you would like these products.”

The rest of the article talks about a sort of “aspirational fantasy” (my term, not theirs). JC Penny is trying to do it in their ad (discussed in the article) and Acura is trying to do it here. The problem is they haven’t quite got it.

I’m not afraid to admit I’m wrong (though I tend to be right nearly every single time without fail. So there.). When I saw that Mazda had asked Jalopnik readers for their thoughts on the next MX-5, I oscillated between sheer terror (at the prospect of reading a bunch of keyboard jockeys telling engineers how to do their jobs, i.e. every press launch) and total Schadenfreude.

The next MX-5 is more than likely “locked in” past the point of no return. Styling, engineering and powertrains are all but locked in, and not a damn thing can be done to change them, even though the next MX-5 will have to be tweaked a bit to become an Alfa Romeo. That’s a shame. Mazda might be wise to listen to some of the suggestions put up by Jalopnik’s readers.

A story on GM Inside News reported on GM’s trademarking of the “GNX” and “Grand National” nameplates. Let’s see how far the blogosphere can spin this one.

And my reviews is unbelivable like flying saucers

/no more iron horses cuz I’m drivin Porsches

With apologies to Lamont “Big L” Coleman, but I’ve been waiting to use the hackneyed version of his famous punchline for some time. The only problem is that TTAC and Porsche are frenemies at best, adversaries at worst, ever since one of our resident Porsche owners said unkind things about the Panamera.

An editorial in Car and Driver given the subtitle “Deep Thoughts” tackles a favorite subject of the peanut gallery; the Decline and Fall of Honda’s Empire. Unfortunately, rather than being a critical analysis of the real problems that Honda is prone to (which author Dave Mable mentions, albeit in passing), it’s simply yet another softball lobbed at the sophists who have opinions on everything and know very little. Like C/D commenter “GolfTDI”, profiled in the above photo.

Italy has some of Europe’s highest gasoline prices, with the liter going for approximately €1.83. This translates, hold on to your wallet, to $8.54 for the gallon. Italy is also the country of steep sales drops. The Italian new car market contracted by 18 percent last April. Fiat is Italy’s biggest carmaker and sustains even bigger losses.

Where others see a disaster, Fiat sees an opportunity. It wants to ignite flagging sales with cheap gas.

It’s the end of an era, as perhaps the best of the remaining American color car rags moves from Newport Beach to Ann Arbor. As the slightly snobby California counterpart to Motor Trend‘s unhappy mediocrity and Car and Driver’s wild swings between brilliance and boorishness, Road & Track has always provided pleasant, well-illustrated automotive content with a motorsports focus. No doubt part of that was due to the magazine’s distance from the Detroit manufacturers and its proximity to West Coast racetracks and the car-club culture.

No longer. Hearst Corporation is choosing to geographically merge R&T with C/D, and just in case there’s someone out there who isn’t getting the memo about what’s expected, they’re changing leadership as well.

“There’s only one word that’s banned in our company: brand,” Mr. Dyson said, speaking at “Disruption By Design,” a conference put on by Wired on Tuesday. “We’re only as good as our latest product. I don’t believe in brand at all.”

I agree with Dyson. Brand is an utterly obnoxious word. Brand really just means “reputation”. As we’ve seen before, “building your brand” without any substance behind it will be immediately exposed as fraudulent. But brands still matter.

We’re often accused of having an anti-GM bias here at TTAC, but this article will reveal another prejudice, considered ugly by some, but one that I firmly believe in.

This to me is a classic case of the corporate world trying to flex its muscle on the “nobodies”. Is the MOCA the appropriate place for this kind of flexing? Of course not …or is it? Giving the power of curation and enforcement of corporate policies on an exhibition and venue like this is not the way it is supposed to go down. Is MOCA a car lot? Is MOCA a venue for advertisements where the interests of the brand comes before the art? Who empowered them to simply go around and pluck whatever art out of the show to throw in the trash? I made this art on my own dime, traveled down there on my own dime, displayed it on my own time.

A credit to my parents (among many); they turned everything into a “teachable moment”. A new addition to my vocabulary came with a lesson on the root word, and whether it came from Latin, or French or Greek. A new song came with a quick history of Manchester 80’s New Wave, or Delta blues. My allowance was paid after chores and before a lesson on budgeting. A new car magazine had to be read and not just scanned through for pretty pictures.

And so came one of the lessons that ended up changing how I viewed the world. I was in my early teens, and had just discovered Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, when my father suggested I read Paul Fussell’s Class. “It’s even got some car stuff in there; he talks about how people buy SUVs to look like they’re rich enough to have a country home. Just read it. You’ll like it.”

Reports of a next-generation Cadillac Escalade, due in 2014 after a brush with the Grim Reaper, have us asking the all-important question; what was GM thinking in trying to kill the car off in the first place?

Back when I was searching for my first car, I briefly found an Alfa Romeo Spider that looked like it would be in passable condition. Before I could even call the number from the classified ad, my father chimed in with his usual wisdom. “Oh, you don’t want to start with those. They were crap! Just get a Miata and finish!”.

Optimism sure ain’t what it used to be. Introducing its latest survey of auto industry executives [ PDF], Booz & Co. proclaims that “optimism is skyrocketing,” and that “a new wave of optimism is overtaking the U.S. auto industry.” They’re not wrong, but for those used to the pre-bailout days of unabashed optimism dressed up as analysis, the “new optimism” is remarkably guarded. And it’s all relative to the pessimism that was beginning to set in when the industry began to realize that the “old optimism” was wildly at odds with the slow-motion market recovery.

So, just how optimistic is the “new optimism”? Which companies have the most reason for optimism? What do industry executives worry about most? When do they expect a Chinese invasion? The answers to these questions and more after the jump.

If you’re depressed about the current state of your Laguna Seca laptimes, don’t read any further: Marc Gene has set a new “unofficial” record for the iconic hillside track. How does his time compare to that of mere mortals and/or members of the TTAC crew?

Five years ago, car dealers throughout the country were hit hard by carmageddon. Now, they are about to get hit again where it really hurts: In the workshop, where the real money is being made. The auto sales collapse of 2008 winds its way through the years like a diet through an anaconda. While showrooms were empty five years ago, now it’s the service bays that are deserted.

With GM now dropping out of Super Bowl advertising, what’s next for the marketing bigwigs at the Ren Cen? And yes, I’ll take the Storm, thank you very much.

Automotive News posted a picture of a Kia K9 luxury sedan wearing manufacturer plates on the road near Orange County, California. Does that mean we’re due to get the K9 any time soon?

Well, it was bound to happen. The ugly step-child of the Lexus lineup, the HS250h, is dead. And the too-tall corpse has been decomposing for quite some time.

Holden is expected to make an announcement regarding the export of its Commodore vehicles to North America – essentially confirming the existence of the forthcoming 2013 Chevrolet SS Performance – and apparently it may not be limited to sedans. Utes and wagons could be arriving at some point as well.

Ford has priced their C-Max MPV with a base sticker of $25,995, or $555 less than its main rival, the Toyota Prius V.

Our own Michael Karesh will be testing out Nissan’s new Altima this week. This is the car that Nissan is hoping will take the Altima from its current second place slot in the mid-size segment and up to the top of the pile. In lieu of Michael’s take, there are a few factors that are worth looking at.

Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.

Even though the BMW 1 Series M Coupe is gone forever, performance-minded 1-Series customers must have a high-end performance model, even if a lot of them don’t even know if the car is front-drive or rear-drive.

As TTAC’s official reviewer of all things “emerging market cast-offs sent to Canada”, I’ll be busy again in Q4 2012, when I get my hands on a Chevrolet Trax.

“On a clear day,” John Z once famously wrote, “you can see General Motors.” The day has yet to come, however, when the works of GM will be made plain to the mortal man. Consider, if you will, the bizarre story of the “Theta” platform in the United States. It’s a huge success; the Equinox and Cadillac SRX (which, we are assumed, is totes different from the Equinox, but we will will discuss that contention below) combined for about a quarter-million sales in 2011. It’s a perfect example of the way GM is supposed to work nowadays: there are two platform variants with very little visual similarity combining to provide high volume in one model and high profit in another. Theta is NAFTA-friendly, with the cheapie being made in Ontario and the luxury model in Mexico. The two models are generally well-reviewed. The obscurity, stupidity, and thrown-darts decision-making which used to characterize the General are nowhere to be seen. What’s to criticize, even here at TTAC, where we typically cast a jaundiced eye on the RenCen fire drill?

Well, there is the minor issue of a third Theta, which is as perfect an example of GM’s undiminished ability to screw things up as the other Thetas are of the company’s ability to get things right.

With Opel’s fortunes in the toilet and Chevrolet vehilces gaining ground in Europe, Opel brass are looking at an obvious solution – stop building Chevrolet products in South Korea and start building them in Europe.

An article in Automotive News lavishing praise on the Chrysler/Fiat merger of equals marriage inadvertently spilled the beans on a couple upcoming products from Marchionne’s minions.

Tesla Motors has almost used up funds from a Department of Energy loan program – but the startup car maker also says that they’ll start paying back the money at the end of 2012.

Has Mini’s over-propagation of vehicles gotten so bad that we’re actually cheering when a new special isn’t a silly two-seater or pseudo-crossover? The Mini John Cooper Works GP may be overpriced, but at least it’s got its heart in the right place.

Even as the wagon Gods smile down upon on this Mother’s Day, BMW’s announcement of an all-new 2013 3-Series Wagon still has us waiting with bated breath with the announcement of not one but two diesel powertrains.

Nissan isn’t the only company to get an outrageously priced performance SUV this month – Infiniti will be pricing its FX Sebastian Vettel Edition at $120,000 euro, or about $160,000.

Toyota’s sales forecast of 220,000 Prius models forecast looks like a lowball number now that Toyota has moved 86,000 examples of the hybrid from January to the end of April. Sales of the Prius V and Prius c have helped the nameplate see a 56 percent rise year over year, and now Toyota is clamoring for more units – but it may not get them.

Shortly after our man Clemens Gleich tested out the Citroen DS5, the diesel-hybrid from PSA is getting another nod of approval from a jovial European – France’s new President, Francois Hollande.

A leaked spec sheet ( from Temple of VTEC) for the 2013 Honda Accord shows that manuals aren’t dead yet, but CVTs are also in – at least for 4 cylinder models.

No, TTAC hasn’t been hijacked by car dealers other than Mr. Lang. Scouring the local newspapers, TTAC’s Great White North contingent found brand new Fiat 500s being sold for the incredible price of $12,995 for the base “Pop” model.

Toyota is only planning to sell 2,300 RAV4 EVs over the next three years! Can anyone say “compliance car”?

An Open Letter To The People Who Make Decisions At Cadillac

Dear Cadillac Decision-Making People,

I hate you. Yes, you. You’ve stolen something from me. More specifically, you’ve stolen Cadillac from me. As a child, I was driven around in perhaps the last unapologetically great Caddy — the 1979 Eldorado — and I dreamed of the day when I would be able to buy a Cadillac of my own. While I was dreaming, and working, and anticipating that day, you, and people like you, shit all over the greatest brand in America in every way possible. You built and sold cars that were too poorly conceived and built to even earn the title of “garbage”. Every few years you would bring out some deformed-looking crapwagon, your bought-and-paid for press lackeys would drool all over it, and the name “Cadillac” would be further degraded in public like a heroin-addicted actress caught turning a trick outside a K-Mart by a giant movie-premiere spotlight.

Since the last real Eldorado died in 1985, you’ve built spacious cars, fast cars, plastichrome Tahoes, economical cars, and even somewhat reliable cars. You just haven’t bothered to build any Cadillacs. What is a Cadillac? It is, simply, a vehicle that is exemplary and desirable.

Now we have the ATS. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Do you really think anybody wants this car? Do you really think anybody is willing to pay more for it than they would for an equivalently-powered BMW? Is this vehicle exemplary and desirable? The answer to these questions: Of course not. This car, along with every other vehicle you sell, should be summarily discontinued and replaced with actual Cadillacs. You’d be better off buying the tooling for the 2003 LS430, welding fins on said LS430, and selling that. It would be closer to the idea of “Cadillac” than anything you have now.

It’s too late to fix all your mistakes, but I can fix this ATS thing right now, at minimal cost, and it will save the car from the sales scrapheap of history. It is not too late to save Cadillac. I’m not doing it for you, or for GM, or even for the poor American taxpayer who financed this whole boondoggle. I’m doing it for me, because I want my Cadillacs back.

The Cadillac ATS will have a starting price of $33,990 for the base version equipped with a 2.5L 4-cylinder engine. The ATS will undercut the 4-cylinder turbocharged BMW 328i by $910.