French Revellers Torch 372 Cars
French vandals celebrate New Year by setting cars on fire. What's THAT all about?
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Pininfarina Sings the Body Electric
Pininfarina will build an electric car for the American, European and Japanese markets.
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Daimler: Once Bitten, Twice Hungry
Daimler buys up its own stock and small technology companies to protect itself against takeover.
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Galileo Figaro-Magnifico: Euro GPS System Sucks-Up More Cash
Hey Eurocrats, what's the matter? Don't your guys trust the U.S. to continue supplying Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data for your military and civilian…
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German Carmakers Uber Alles?
Automobilwoche reports that November was an automotive watershed. For the first time in history, European car sales eclipsed American. From January to Novem…
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CAR Sold to the Germans, After One Careless Owner
Throughout the 1990s, the UK's CAR Magazine was known for its breathtaking photography, incisive analysis, pithy prose and independent spirit. Readers devour…
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German Lottery Winner Buys…
Last week, Petra L. won the German national lottery. Her jackpot: €15.28m ($22,461,600). Needless to say, the Divinely Chosen Ms. L ran right out and bo…
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GM's Indian Spark a Damp Squib
India's new car market is red hot. GM's Spark is not. As the Business Standard reports, "In the seven months between April and October this year, the Chevy S…
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GM and Chrysler To Russia, With Love
Or it could be a heady combination of desperation and lust. Now that common wisdom holds that the Russian carmarket is The Next Big Thing, all the major play…
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Chinese Automaker Prepares to Dump Its Japanese Dance Partners
As we've been saying for years, China is only going to allow foreign automakers to do biz in The People's Republic as long as it takes them to figure out how…
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GM Opens the Russian Front
Fresh off the financial success of, well, nothing, really, The General has laid down a bid of an undisclosed amount for Russian carmaker OVO AvtoVaz. Bloombe…
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Big Brother Starts Here: Netherlands to Monitor Motorists' Movements
Dutch Transport Minister Camiel Urlings has announced his government's intention to introduce satellite-based road pricing for all vehicles plying the Nether…
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"If You Think About It, We Refer to the Right Hand as the Smart Hand, and the Left as the Stupid One, Currently Samoans Are Changing Gears With the Smart Hand, the Right, and Driving With Their Stupid Hand, the Left."
And there you have it: Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi's rationale for switching Samoa's cars from left to right hand drive. The Prime Minister's unilateral dec…
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RCube: It Ain't Easy Being Green
BusinessGreen reports that Ricardo, Land Rover, mapmaker Ordnance Survey, mobile giant Orange and the UK's Transport Research Laboratory have banded togethe…
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South Korean Automakers Feeling the Heat
As Canada struggles to hammer out a trade agreement with South Korea, the automotive trade imbalance has taken center stage. And no wonder. According to the…
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BMW's New Slushbox: Eight is Enough
Rumors of BMW's Lexus-rivaling eight-speed automatic transmission surfaced over a year ago. Since then, the electronic grapevines have been quiet, leading so…
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GM to Outsource Hybrid Powertrains to China
That's not exactly how Reuters spins the news that GM and its mandatory Chinese partner (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp) have announced plans to build a…
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Brazil: Ford's Recovery Template?
Reuters seems to think so. "Seven years ago, Ford in Brazil looked a lot like it does today in the United States. It was losing so much money and market sha…
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"Porsche is Not Like Other Automakers"
As it currently stands, automakers selling fewer than 10k cars in the U.S. hold a "get out of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards" free card. As…
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Hue Knew? Aussies' Black Cars Most Likely to Crash
According to a study by Monash University Accident Research Centre, silver vehicles are 10 percent more likely to crash than their white counterparts. While…
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BMW's Quandt Family: Still No Apology for Slave Labor
Last September, German public TV aired a documentary about the Quandt family, the secretive clan that owns 46.6 percent of BMW. The film revealed that Gü…
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Clocking Carnage, South Africa Cracks Down on… Fines
Responding to mounting calls for action to stem South Africa's horrific road carnage, the government has decided to crack down on motorists who fail to pay t…
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Ultra-Low-Cost Cars Set for World Domination
Speaking to Automobilwoche, consultants A.T. Kearney predict that Ultra-Low-Cost cars (ULCC) will be the industry's next Next Big Thing. We're talking simple…
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Ford Gets All Emotional
Just in time for Thanksgiving, Ford invited its forgotten domestic offerings for a feast of promises and not much else. Car and Driver reports that Ford's M…
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GM Outsources $1b Parts To India
GM's new contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW) was sold to all and sundry as a necessary step to protect U.S. jobs. Meanwhile, GM continues to send job…
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UN Sets ESC Policy for EU
The United Nannies Nations has decided that all new European trucks and "tourist coaches" must be fitted with electronic stability control (ESC) to reduce…
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Hell Gets Chilly; Ferrari Goes Green
Of course, they kinda have to, as the Maranello Mob don't have "get out of global warming free" card to hand the European Union when new CO2 regs come into f…
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South African Made C-Class Heads Stateside
iAfrica reports that DaimlerChrysler has sent its first shipment of South Africa-made Mercedes C-Class sedans to the U.S. Some 380 left-hand drive Mercs l…
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South African Vehicle Safety Debate Rages On
A recent study by South Africa's National Vehicle Testing Association (NVTA) concluded that 80 percent of the country's 8,544,902 registered vehicles are un…
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EU MPG Stats Off By Up To 53%
In the real world, cars hardly ever deliver their official government fuel economy ratings. This is still the case in the U.S., where testing procedures were…
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Autocar Gongs Jag, Ford, Maximum Bob
Britain's Autocar has bestowed its annual awards on its patrons. This year's winners include the Jaguar XF, which received the Design Award for "leap-froggin…
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Post-Elk Test, Toyota Halts Sales of Big-Wheeled Hilux
Last month. we broke the news (to the English-speaking world) that Toyota's Hilux pickup truck failed Sweden's now infamous Älgtest (Elk test). News fla…
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Proton to Build "Islamic Cars"
The New Anatolian (Turkey's Only Independent English-language daily) reports that Proton plans to team-up with Iran and Turkey to adapt their products for t…
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80% of South African Cars Are Death Traps
iAfrica reports on CARS' (Committee for Active Road Safety) on-going campaign to raise South Africa's automotive safety standards. The association claims th…
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And Now for Some Good News…
Ford is kicking ass in the UK. Just-auto reports that private sales of the recently redesigned Ford Mondeo are up by over 20 percent year-on-year. Even bet…
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Japan to China: Don't Bogart That Dysprosium
Ironically enough, the name of the rare earth element "dysprosium" is derived from the Greek δυσπροσιτ&omic…
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Volvo to Unleash the Aesthetically-Challenged V30
Now that BMW and Audi are creating more than line extensions than dueling cocaine dealers, Volvo seems ready to follow suit. Their answer to BMW's MINI Clubm…
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NZ Gov's Visible Hand on Automotive Free Market
Let's say you're an American car buyer looking for the cleanest, safest and most fuel efficient vehicle money can buy. You can pop on over to www.fueleconomy…
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Friedman to India: Tax Your Cars to Death
Thomas L. Freidman is at it again. After earning the American auto industry's ire by portraying Detroit automakers as lazy, greedy, foot-dragging Luddites, t…
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A Scrote Stole My Plate!
London's infamous congestion charge is having an unintended if not unpredictable consequence: a rise in the number of stolen or counterfeit license plates. T…
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Chinese Government: No Half-Assed Hybrids Here
Chinaview reports that China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has issued regulations for manufacturers of alt. fuel vehicles. From now on…
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G-Wiz! UK Electric Cars Recalled for Fire Hazard
The London Evening Standard reports that GoinGreen, the UK distributor of the G-Wiz battery-powered car, is recalling the machine amid fears that an overhea…
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GM Sends Chinese Caddy to the UAE
GM has announced that it will begin exporting its Chinese-made Cadillac SLS (a.k.a. STS stretch) to the Middle East in the first quarter of 2008. Huliq repo…
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GM Ups Its Losses on the Saturn Astra
Can someone please explain this to me? To field a credible small car stateside, GM has decided to import the relatively diminutive Opel Astra from Europe int…
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VW Workers "Strike" Over Porsche Takeover
Now that the European courts have finally struck down the so-called "VW Law" preventing Porsche from taking control of the German automaker, VW's labor union…
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Mercedes To Build New Luxury Bread Van
Sweden's Teknikens Varld reports that Mercedes is upgrading its delivery van Viano to create a newish MPV: the X-Clusive. After failing with their hearse-t…
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Australian Automaking: The Free Market Be Damned
Struth! It's a pretty bizarre state of affairs for automakers down under. Despite Toyota's status as Australia's largest vehicle importer (138,640 vehicles y…
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Israel Cuts Gas Supplies to the Gaza Strip
In the face of daily rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel– 13 Kassam rockets and 12 mortar shells were reported fired on Tuesday– the J…
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London Olympics Organizers "Discourage" Car Travel
We've reported on calls from environmentally-minded academics and academically-minded environmentalists to ban cars completely from England's capital city. U…
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Ethiopia Builds Its First Car– And It's Chinese
The whole cheap Chinese cars are coming to America story has died down– at least until Chrysler pops its Chery. (Look for a resumption of hypestilities…
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Hindustan Avigo: Mamby Pamby Amby?
Talk about keepin' it real. The badge-engineered Morris Oxford built India's automotive economy from scratch, but a new era of econoboxes chipped away at the…
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UK Smokers Set to Ignore Changes to Highway Code
OK, so the UK hasn't banned smoking in cars– with or without kids in situ. But changes to the Highway Code– the rules and regulations governing a…
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VW To Build "Super Economy" Cars
Auto Industry reports that Volkswagen is set to roll out a new line of small cars, codenamed “New Small Family" (NSF). VW expects sales of the first g…
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