Star of the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show: Barbie

Your humble author is about to put Los Angeles in the rearview mirror, but before I do, I wanted to leave you with one last news nugget.

It involves … Barbie.

Read more
VinFast Says It's Ready to Sell In America, Despite Skepticism

A foreign automaker that’s not well known in America comes to a major auto show and announces plans to sell cars in the States, showing off a couple of models and promising on-sale dates that seem both ambitious and yet not unreasonable.

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before.

Read more
Subaru Solterra In the Flesh

We’ve already covered the Subaru Solterra EV, so I don’t have much to add.

Instead, you can enjoy two poorly-lit pics from the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show.

Read more
Fisker Still Very Much Alive, Shows Ocean SUV in L.A.

Fisker seems to have many lives, and the small brand led off the L.A. Auto Show’s main media day with the debut of its Ocean SUV.

Read more
Seven of Mine: Hyundai Assimilates Electric Power

Appearing on the same day as certain other vehicles under which one will find the E-GMP architecture, the annoyingly capitalized Hyundai SEVEN was introduced today at the L.A. Auto Show. Billed as a preview of a future sport utility electric vehicle, it’s meant to further the burgeoning all-electric IONIQ sub-brand while also being one of the building clocks for Hyundai’s kick at reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.

Why they didn’t have Jeri Ryan drive the thing on stage is beyond this author’s comprehension.

Read more
JLR CEO Takes a Tumble In L.A.

Auto-show parties sometimes get out of hand. Most of the shenanigans don’t reach you, the car-buying public, for one reason or another. One major reason is lack of newsworthiness: It’s one thing if a lubricated PR rep confirms some new product that’s supposed to be secret. It’s another if a PR rep sings karaoke poorly.

One thing would make it to the pages of TTAC and maybe a rival site like Jalopnik. The other would not. No matter how bad some PR chief is at warbling “Sweet Caroline.”

Then again, if TMZ is in the house, all bets are off.

Read more
2023 Nissan Ariya Reservations Now Open

The Los Angeles Auto Show is upon us once again, and once again automakers hosted events the night before the media day. Some things don’t change, even if this time we had to wear masks indoors and fill out a form saying we didn’t have COVID, as far as we knew.

This is how I found myself standing in a rented mansion in the Hollywood Hills — one that had a stunning view of L.A. — clutching a plastic glass of wine and listening to actor Jay Ellis extol the virtues of the Nissan Ariya EV. All because reservations for the Ariya opened up officially on Tuesday night.

Read more
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.