Industry

It’s hard to believe but one of Aston Martin’s most popular models, the Rapide luxury four-door coupe, is not actually manufactured by Aston Martin. Instead, production of the Rapide is handled by independent vehicle manufacturer Magna Steyr in Austria. The decision to outsource...

One of the biggest hurdles towards the mainstream acceptance of electric cars is the lengthy period of time, usually around six to eight hours, that it takes to top up their batteries. Compare this to filling up a gasoline or diesel powered car, where topping up a tank takes only a matter of...

Last week we heard talk of the further separation of Ford and Mazda, with the end of Mazda's U.S. production at the forefront. Today, Mazda has announced that the next mid-size sedan for the U.S. will be built in Japan. The car, of course, will be the follow-up to the Mazda6. It will likely...

Over the past couple of years we’ve been reporting about a new engine concept where a small amount of ethanol is injected directly into a cylinder chamber before combustion along with a blast of gasoline. The burning of ethanol has the positive side effect of cooling the combustion chamber...

Saab has a trio of decent products now in showrooms, the latest-generation 9-5, a brand new 9-4X crossover and the recently updated 9-3, although the latter is soon to be replaced by a completely redesigned model next year. But given the brand’s lack of stability over the years, including a...

Infiniti is fully cashing in on its sponsorship deal with the championship-leading Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team and its star driver Sebastian Vettel. Today the automaker announced that 23-year old Vettel will be its first ever Global Brand Ambassador, with the German youngster set to take an...

[Updated information on page 2] There's no denying the Lexus LFA is far and away the greatest combination of engineering feats achieved by Toyota outside of its Formula 1 ventures. In fact, it uses many of the lessons learned in the sport. But for all of its technological prowess, was the LFA a...

Our 2008 prediction for China to overtake the U.S. in overall sales for Bentley by 2012 is shaping up to prove true with news coming out this past week that the British marque has achieved record sales in China, with the country now second on the list for Bentley’s biggest markets behind the...

Let us be the first to say that the results of the latest 2011 Vehicle Satisfaction Awards, conducted by influential auto industry resource AutoPacific, came as a bit of a surprise. Lincoln, arguably the most overlooked of luxury brands, was voted the ‘Top Premium Brand’ in the awards...

Back in March of 2008, a start-up brought a new paradigm to the automotive world. That start-up was Local Motors, a Massachusetts-based venture that believed it could build innovative, environmentally responsible cars by crowd-sourcing design and building cars on demand at a series of "micro"...

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication, V2V for short, is nothing new. In fact, automakers and governments alike have been working on the technology for the past several years. Most V2V systems work by warning drivers about potential danger from other vehicles. They do this by exchanging information...

Just days after it was revealed that negations with Chinese automaker Hawtai over a rescue plan for Saab had broken down, the Swedish automaker’s parent Spyker Cars has now announced that it's reached a new deal with rival Chinese firm Pangda Automobile Trade Co Ltd, one of China’s...

One of the greatest arguments against electric cars is not their limited range, low top speeds or long charge times, but the fact that their electrical power is usually generated by means of heavy polluting coal burning power stations or potentially worse nuclear reactors. Audi acknowledges this...

A few years ago we reported on the trend that many new cars aren’t designed to accommodate America’s seemingly ever-expanding waistline, with even popular models like the Chevrolet Corvette ill-prepared to carry two occupants each with a weight of over 200 pounds. Alarmingly, it's not...

We'll have to wait about two years for Porsche's new U.S. headquarters facility to be completed, but when it arrives it'll include a test track that will be used as part of a buyer experience unlike anything Porsche has previously offered in the U.S. European buyers, plus those buyers that have...

The last we heard, production at Saab’s plants back home in Sweden had come to a halt due to a lack of funds and fears that the automaker’s new parent, Spyker Cars, was also close to being bankrupt. In response, the CEO of Spyker, Victor Muller, set out on a quest to acquire desperately...

In a move that's already prompted superhero-themed exclamations from news desks in the industry, Porsche Cars North America is expected to announce that it will move its North American headquarters out of the Atlanta-area Sandy Springs location to the site of a former Ford Taurus plant near...

It’s not uncommon for buyers of exotic supercars to have to wait up to two years for their new baby to arrive due to the limited production capacity and overwhelming demand the builders of such fine machines are faced with. One of the worst offenders is Ferrari whose latest must-have, the FF...

We first heard rumblings that the commercial rights to the highest echelon of motorsports, Formula 1, might be for sale last month, and within weeks of that original report we received official confirmation that a consortium led by the Exor investment group and Rupert Murdoch’s News...

While in the past we’ve seen Microsoft work closely with Fiat in the auto industry to develop the Blue&Me electronic interface, the software giant is now partnering with Volkswagen to help develop the next-generation of in-car entertainment technology, and possibly do-away with in-car DVD...