Crapwagon Outtake: Bentley Already Made An SUV

Our friends at AutoGuide.com have spyshots of the new Bentley SUV running around rather inconspicuously – a rather poetic notion, given that this thing is sure to be the face of vulgarity for the next decade. But contrary to many breathless reports on other sites, this is not Bentley’s first SUV.

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Dispatches Do Brasil: Ford Trollers Bronco Fans With New BOF SUV

The accepted hagiography of the Ford empire involves the firesale of all of Ford’s various brands in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with only the Blue Oval and the Lincoln Motor Company sticking around for the ride. But that’s not quite accurate.

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Piston Slap: The Luxury Sedan Fanboi Fallacy

Earl writes:

Hi Sajeev,

My wife wants me to sell our pristine, time-capsule 90 Cressida for a 4Runner (or similar) because we live in winter-world. I am looking at used 4Runners and the prices are crazy. Typically a rusted 1996-98 with 350-390,000KM will be asking $5,000 – $6,000CDN. I have seen Lexus LS with half the mileage, far better condition and all services done for that price.

What gives? Are 4Runners that good?

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BOF, IRS, CKD, SUV… Automotive TLAs, What Are Your Most (and Least) Favorite Acronyms?
TTAC’s post by J. Emerson on how so-called Millennials’ automotive tastes have been shaped by their coming of automotive age in an era when their parents embraced body on frame sport utility vehicles brought forth a lot of thoughtful comment. One comment that caught my eye, though, had little to do with the topic of the post but rather was a complaint about the use of the acronym BOF. To most of us that means “body on frame” but to manga or Korean sitcom fans it might mean Boys Over Flowers and when you’re using abbreviations you have to be sure your audience recognizes them. In an earlier life I did IT support and we would make a recursive joke about the proliferation of TLA’s, three letter acronyms. Such acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon serve a useful purpose to those in the know, but can also function as a mark of group identification, a shibboleth, if you will. Sometimes the use of jargon can function as a barrier to others, which can be contrary to how inclusive we want TTAC to be.
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Coming of Age in the BOF Era

Standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, a young boy watches his neighbor across the street back out of her driveway. Her moss green Expedition starts to roll backwards. Suddenly, a blue beach ball blows into the SUV’s path. She hits it with one of her rear tires, and the truck rises up on top of it for just a moment. The ball bursts with an enormous bang, and the truck crashes back to the pavement with an equally loud noise. The top-heavy rig sways back and forth as the boy laughs.

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Editorial: Confronting the BOF Massacre, Part One

In the oil-stained industrial district of a hardscrabble Georgia town, the sun beats down on a graveyard of wretched excess. Row after row of partially-stripped hulks drip planet-poisoning fluids on the orange clay, their remains picked over by a motley crew of opportunists. Scores of full-sized sport utility vehicles are ripe for scavengers, their bloated corpses dismembered for whatever might still be of use. What’s killing off the full-framed SUVs?

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Look What We're Missing: Suzuki Launches New Crossover For Europe

The compact crossover market is so hot that even a moribund auto maker like Suzuki is getting into it – and what you’re looking at could very well be the next Vitara.

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VW Confirms American Crossover, No Manufacturing Site Announced

Volkswagen partially answered one of its biggest questions today, with an announcement that a new mid-size SUV for the American market is in the pipeline.

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New York 2014: Disco Inferno
This is the Land Rover Discovery concept, which will preview the replacement for both the LR2 and LR4. Back in the early 2000’s, our EIC bought a 5-spe…
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Ford, King Ranch "Brownout" the Houston Rodeo

Perhaps you haven’t lived in a flyover state where brown leather gear dominates your town during Rodeo season. While the Ford+King Ranch press release celebrating the 15th Anniversary of those famous brown leather pickups reached the autoblogosphere, only a local writer with an internationally known knack for automotive snark both finds the sweet mochalicious lede and refuses to bury it in the dirt.

And what does that mean? You gotta click to find out.

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America's Best Selling Police Car Is Now A Crossover

When Ford killed off the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, the police car market was left wide open. But the Blue Oval appears to have managed to brought a suitable replacement to market, though it’s not the traditional three-box police sedan.

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Junkyard Find: 1990 Daihatsu Rocky

Remember the Daihatsu Rocky? No? That’s OK, several vehicles of this type sank without a trace during the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., the Dodge Raider), and Daihatsu itself fled the United States in 1992. I see Daihatsu Charades in self-serve wrecking yards about every six months these days— including this ’89 and this ’90— and I don’t bother photographing most of them. A Rocky, on the other hand… well, let’s just say that this is the first Rocky I’ve seen anywhere in at least five years. How many are left on the street in North America? Hundreds? Dozens?

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Piston Slap: "Spare" Me From Dry Rot!

TTAC Commentator sastexan writes:

With the extreme cold throughout the US and seeing a few shredded tires on the highway this week (in fact, I had a flat myself – not sure what caused it but possibly doing donuts in the FR-S on a parking lot last week with lots of broken up ice on the edges), I got to thinking about spare tires.

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2015 Jeep Renegade: 9-Speeds And A Manual-Only Powertrain

Our friends at Jalopnik published the first decent photo of the new Jeep Renegade – which shares a platform with the Fiat 500X and replaces the Jeep Patroit/Compass – but kudos to Autoblog for publishing tiny thumbnails of the Trailhawk’s rear end (above is the Trailhawk) and the standard model’s front end. Both are in the gallery below. UPDATE: Two more photos added.

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Ur-Turn: Shopping For A Family Hauler

Reader Daniel Latini is a car guy and has a baby on the way. He’s looking for your advice on a new ride that can carry around his family.

My wife is one of those generally temperate souls who has a few firecrackers strewn about her personality. New challenges can spark a little friction in any couple, and something popped when we saw the ultrasound pictures of our still-developing first child.

Her current steed, a middle-aged Korean compact hatch, lost a lot of luster that day. I’m sure the B&B will pelt me with shop manuals for trading a car with less than 100,000 miles, but I think there are some sound reasons to consider an upgrade.

We’re young, clueless and enthusiastic – click the jump and join us as we begin the misadventure of finding our first family hauler!

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  • Ted “the model is going to be almost 4 inches longer and 2 inches wider than its predecessor”Size matters. In this case there is 6” too much.
  • JMII Despite our past experience with Volvo my wife wants an EX30 badly. Small, upscale, minimalist EV hatch is basically her perfect vehicle.
  • Dukeisduke Is the Volvo EX30 even on sale yet? It was pulled from the NACTOY awards because they were having software problems with the vehicle.
  • Wjtinfwb If you've only got 5k to spend on transportation, I cannot imagine a worse way to spend it than on a GM orphan from Sweden that's 15 years old with 150k on the clock and limited plus expensive parts availability and dwindling techs who'd even want to work on it. Go find a similar vintage Camry or Accord with 150k miles or even a Ford or a Chevy, whatever. Hell, even an old Jaguar is less of a crapshoot than a Saab. At least you can still get parts.
  • Kwik_Shift Brands that were considered from China include BYD, Dayun, Great Wall Motors, Maxus, Nio, Omoda/Chery, Seres, XPeng, and Zeekr. KG Mobility from South Korea also made the list of candidates.That's a lot of car companies from there ready to head here.