Good news for safety-conscious car-buyers: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is about to launch an overhauled crash-test program that makes it tougher for any car to earn five stars in crash worthiness.
For 30 years, NHTSA’s 5-Star program has been a valuable resource for consumers looking to buy the safest vehicle. The tougher [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 31st, 2010 | No Comments »
The X Prize Foundation has inspired innovation through a series of contests to further space exploration, human genome study, and automotive energy efficiency. Now the group is turning its sites to oil cleanup, a need that has become all too apparent since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy flooded the Texas and Louisiana coast line with crude [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 31st, 2010 | No Comments »
Filed under: Autoline on Autoblog
Car Prices Will Climb For Years
Have you’ve been watching car prices lately? They seem to go up every month. Forget everything you’ve been reading about sales incentives, bargain leases or low-cost financing. They just mask the fact that automakers are quietly bumping up MSRP’s every chance they get.
In other words, [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
The dog days of summer can be a great time to get a good deal on a new vehicle. Dealerships are making room for the next model year, and they are looking to move metal with attractive discounts and incentives. If you’re in the market for a new car, take a look at the deals [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
Results are in for Tuesday's final race for the Automotive X Prize, the $10 million competition to create a viable automobile that can deliver 100 MPGe, or miles per gallon equivalent. The Li-ion Wave, a bright-green tadpole of a car run by a team of friendly, down-home North Carolina guys, is the race winner, putting [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
Inspired by a Car and Driver campaign called “Save the Manuals,” we recently espoused the virtues of operating a manual transmission. As car enthusiasts, our Cars staff appreciates having more direct control over the car and the entertainment that provides.
Consumer Reports tests have shown that manual transmissions typically use about 10-percent less fuel than [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
Even though most car dealer-assisted financing escaped regulation by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), it could face additional oversight by federal authorities.
As a result of intense dealer lobbying, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed by President Obama on July 21, gives the CFPB authority to regulate only direct dealer [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
The redesigned BMW 5 Series is the first BMW to earn the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Top Safety Pick award since the organization added a rollover test to its scoring criteria. The Top Safety Pick award recognizes vehicles for earning the highest score of Good on the front, side, rollover, and rear crash protection. [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
Toyota is voluntarily recalling 373,000 2000-2004 Toyota Avalon sedans and 39,000 2003-2007 Lexus LX 470 SUVs for steering problems.
The Avalon recall is to address the possibility that the steering lock bar could break due to improper casting. A crack may develop on the surface and expand after repeated lock and unlock operations. This could [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 29th, 2010 | No Comments »
Car and Driver has started a campaign to protect the manual transmission from extinction called, not surprisingly, “Save the Manuals!”
I couldn’t agree more.
We’ve found in our testing that manual transmissions typically use about 10-percent less fuel than their automatic counterparts and allow cars to accelerate quicker, as well. Plus, the best manual transmissions [...]
Filed under: Cars on July 29th, 2010 | No Comments »
