Badge engineering is alive and well - in the US at least. Toyota have just released information on a new Yaris hatchback for this market and it is a Toyota by name only! In all other markets it is a Mazda 2. Toyota decided that it would not be building a new Yaris for the US market because it would cost too much to deliver a small city car to a country that loves its big … [Read more...]
FCA Settles Incorrect Sales Numbers Lawsuit
FIAT Chrysler (FCA), who have been in the news quite a lot recently, has recently settled an anti-trust lawsuit that was filed in January 2016. The lawsuit consisted of several parts: racketeering, anti-trust and breach of contract. Initially the racketeering charges were dismissed in October 2016 and then dismissed again in July 2017 when they were rewritten and recharged. … [Read more...]
Waymo to Build Complete Autonomous Vehicles
Back in January it was reported that Waymo was partnering with Magna, the contract vehicle builder, to start assembling full autonomous vehicles in Michigan. Magna, based in Canada now owns Magna Steyr, an Austrian company that used to build their own cars however in the last few decades has been building cars for others including Jaguar. At the time, the Michigan Economic … [Read more...]
Ford’s Emissions Problem
The issue of emissions from vehicles is still an interesting topic. In a recent article Motoring Weekly described how FIAT Chrysler were buying credits from Tesla to offset the emissions coming from their fleet in advance of a change in regulation by the EU. We have seen further investigations into VW, BMW and Daimler Benz for their emission test results and now we have Ford in … [Read more...]
Ford Considering New Sedan
Ford has announced that they will create a new “affordable” nameplate in a couple of years. It seems that many owners of Ford’s passenger cars are unhappy that they have dropped the Fiesta, Focus, Fusion and Taurus plates from their home market. The only real car that they now sell in the US is the Mustang with other Cross-Over Utility (CUV) and Sports Utility (SUV) … [Read more...]
