Year-end reflections from Pittsburgh
Don Hammonds, one of my favorite newspaper auto writers, sums up 2004 in two words: Hybrids and Sedans. What does he mean? Well the sedan is back, even for American companies and hybrids will surely make their way to more models over the next few years. I think the hybrid in the Honda Accord is the most telling application. In a few years technology will lower the price enough that the hybrid powertrain will just be an option like diesels are for VW etc. They won't be a novelty by 2007. Sedans on the other hand are more popular than ever not just because of hits like the 300C but because there aren't many truly great coupes out there to compete for our affections. I'd like 2005 to be the year of the coupe. That's my hope.
- Ford gets more Sirius Really, I'm ashamed I use the same puns for any Sirius story but what can you do? It's easy and I'm lazy. As for the story itself, Ford is planning to beef up its commitment to Sirius satellite radio ...
- 2005 Tacoma Reviewed: USA Today takes on the X-Runner James R. Healey always gives it to us straight. In his round-up of the new line of Toyota's compact, now mid-size, Tacoma he starts things off with a long list of things he doesn't like. It's almost l ...
- New Ford slogan: Built For The Road Ahead As Toyota retools its image with a rolling tire, Ford is hoping to reshape its own identity with a new slogan "Built for the road ahead." Supposedly this line was focus grouped and said a lot about th ...
- Dodge offers options at low cost It what is billed in Dodge's press release as an extreme value to customers, looks more to me like a way to repackage slow sellers. A "Limited Edition" of the company's aging models, and low powered p ...
- More Mitsubishi Hating It seems BusinessWeek's Kathleen Kerwin (a news analyst) doesn't think Finnbarr O'Neill can pull off a Mitsubishi turn around. She states that other analysts don't believe new models like the Eclipse ...
- BMW 5-series flailing As sales everywhere seemed to cool this summer one new model expected to take-off hasn't. The all-new BMW 5-series isn't selling as well as the previous model did just one year ago. This is completely ...
- Future Collectibles Here's an interesting piece about which of today's cars could one day become future collectibles. But even though some of the vehicles make sense I don't think any of today's cars have those limited r ...
- Worst car slideshow on the web Here I am minding my own business and perusing the internet for car news for you the fine Autoblog reader. I came across a review for the new GMC Yukon Denali. Besides it being a review of a marginall ...
- Jaguar realizes that selling lots of cars is like pimpin': it ain't easy And as such they're scrapping their plan to move 200,000 vehicles a year, which has been a target since 1997. They currently top out at 125,000 annually. The head of Ford's Premier Auto Group said Jag ...
- Next-gen Dodge Neon abused in Spain The new 2006 Dodge Neon will be one of the first Dodges sold in Europe, riding on the platform shared with the '06 Mitsubishi Lancer. Chrysler's executive vice prez of product development says, "Dodge ...
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