World's fastest fire engine

If there's one performance metric that's pure marketing hype, it has to be a vehicle's Nürburgring time. Our good pal Jack Baruth brilliantly debunked this ever-growing myth. In case you missed Jack's article, here's the gist: "Sorry. There's no "Nürburgring lap time record" for a simple reason: Real lap time records are set by real race cars, using real timing and scoring equipment, during actual competition or sanctioned practice sessions. They...

Read More

By the Numbers - July 2009

Is the tide turning? Do all those green boxes below indicate that the sweeping current of auto sales ennui has subsided? That's a tough question to answer considering that the government's Cash for Clunkers rebate program began late last month. Normally an incentive program wouldn't have that much effect on monthly auto sales with only a week to work, but C4C was wildly more popular than anyone expected.While Subaru posted a remarkable 34% sales...

Read More

GM starts leasing Cadillac, Buick, GMC and Chevy models again

Understatement of the Year: It's been a rough 2009 for General Motors. The 101 year-old automaker lost billions of dollars in record time, its market share plummeted, and overall sales were down over 30%. Oh, and the General had to ask for billions in loans from the US government before ultimately going through bankruptcy. A bad year indeed.The fact that GM went through these tumultuous times without a leasing program made matters even worse, but...

Read More

Nissan studying turbochargers for future vehicles?

As much as we've grown to love Nissan's award-winning line of VQ six-cylinder powerplants, reality dictates that time marches on and a replacement will soon be needed. According to Tetsuya Takahashi, a manager at Nissan's Powertrain Engineering Division, a switch to smaller displacements may be in the offing along with a return to forced induction – much like what Ford has done with its EcoBoost series of engines.Nissan and Renault have well-known...

Read More

All future Jaguars and Land Rovers to feature aluminum construction

Jaguar has been touting the aluminum-intensive construction of the XJ sedan since the previous-generation model was introduced back in 2003. According to the automaker, the use of aluminum in lieu of steel can lead to an impressive 40 percent reduction in weight. That's bound to have positive effects on driving dynamics, performance and efficiency.With its latest redesign, Jaguar claims to have improved its aluminum architecture even further, so...

Read More

Review: 2010 Mazda3

We can't talk about the new Mazda3 without lovingly gushing over the old Mazda3. Introduced in 2003 and produced until this year, the first generation was a segment buster. For about the same coin as its competitors, the Mazda3 gave you more: More sportiness, more refinement, more space and, being a Mazda, more reliability. The Mazda3 was just a better car. And of course there was the beloved MazdaSpeed3 – aka lightning in a reasonably-priced bottle....

Read More

Ferrari 458 Italia Spyder rendered

Now that the Ferrari 458 Italia has been let loose to glare at the world, it is only a matter of time before it's followed by a 458 Italia Spyder sibling. While we wait for Ferrari to provide us images of that car, computer rendering artist Jon Sibal has gone ahead and created his version of the newest droptop stallion.It will be interesting to see how Ferrari intends to fit all of that roof into the severely tapering rear end. If they can keep it...

Read More