We have long ears and they hear many things. One of them is that Lexus will be revealing their luxury line of RX. These new babies will come in 2 flavors: one will be the RX350 with a 3.5L V6 and the other flavor will be a hybrid RX450h.
Seems that this new RX450h will use some pretty sweet wheel rolling tech from the 2010 Toyota Prius. We will not get something that will blow us all out of our shoes, but it will definitely capture our attention.
In LA we will also get to feast on the North American debut of the LS460 and the IS 250C Convertible. See you at the show!
Rumor is that Toyota has a new $5,000 car up its sleeve especially to be released on the emerging markets.
Even if it’s hard to compete with the $2,000 Nano, the Japanese car manufacturer promises that this new car will win the battle. A journalist from Asahi wrote that Toyota will work with Daihatsu for this project and that they will use the new plant from Bangalore, India that will be opened in 2010. Unfortunately this means that the production for this car will start sometimes around 2015.
Considering that the Renault-Nissan group is already setting an agreement with Bajaj Auto, India for a $2,500 car in 2011, I think that Toyota should speed the things up a little bit and change that 2015 time limit.
BMW has just organized a live webcast to announce pricing for the whole range of 2009 models. The base MSRP for the BMW 335d is $44,725 and $52,025 for the X5 xDrive 35d.
The 335d and X5 xDrive35d will come running on a 3.0-liter twin-turbo diesel rated at 265 hp and 425 lb-ft of torque thanks to a 6-speed Steptronic automatic. Now, the sedan will reach 60 mph in only 6 seconds while the SAV will go there only in 7.
Even if the details were not established, the manufacturer said that both cars will qualify for the IRS Alternative Motor Vehicle Tax Credit. Until then you should know that the shipment of vehicles will be on the roll before January.
The car building business is not always glamorous and it seemed fair for me to tell it in an article. It sometimes implies people losing their jobs and car builders losing money and cars not getting sold in as many units as they were planned to. This is the case for GM.
Even though a couple of months ago GM was adding a third shift to meet demands for the Chevy Cobalt, it seems that on Friday, GM gave 1,100 employees at the OH assembly plant layoff notices. This doesn’t mean that the third shift will be eliminated, it’s actually slowing down the build rate to be on the same page with the demand.
The reason for car sales to drop this fast is the difficulty in getting a credit these days, as most people that want to buy cars don’t have enough cash money to buy one. It was a matter of time before the world crisis to take its toll on the car building segment.
A couple of birdies whispered into my ears that the new Ford Focus will be very different from what we know. That can be only good news as the birdies dropped a picture of the new car.
A makeover is not the only thing that Ford will be giving the new Focus. The engines will be made with the new EcoBoost technology. The smallest engine will be a 1.0 liter turbo four-cylinder that will pull 89 or 108 hp and for bigger engines Ford will throw a new 1.6 liter turbo with 148 and 178 hp of power. There will be also diesel flavored engines, a new 1.6 liter TDCi with 89, 108 or 128 of horsies under the hood, and a 2.0 liter 168 hp or 197 hp.
Ford is planning for the Focus to be a coupe also, but until the launch in 2010, all we are telling you is hear-say.
For those sitting at home and wondering what will is Mercedes up to these days, have no fear, ‘for I am here. It seems that they will be hooking up the new SLK with a diesel engine. The German car maker won’t make a special-designed engine, instead they will use the 2.2-liter "BlueEfficiency" 4-cylinder twin-turbo diesel that is currently under the hood of the C250 sedan.
A few tweaks will be made to make the car more environmental friendly, like particulate filter and rail injection. We will see if these modifications will make the new diesel SLK fit for the United States’ market, where all the hypocrites and trend-goers think that a car killed the ozone layer.
Not everyone is given the task to make a hotrod fit for a gentleman and even less rise up to the challenge. But it seems that George Hurst is not anyone so he made from the body of an already impressive Challenger an even better car.
It seems that the new Challenger will be available in 4 flavors, starting from a 5.7-liter HEMI Challenger to a faster-than-light 6.1-liter supercharged HEMI which can bring on the road 530 hp. Being a fan of muscle and less subtle cars, I can only have wet dreams of riding one of these babies someday.
Dodge has a nice slogan to back them up which sounds something like this "if you can dream it, you can build it with Mopar". When you have a motto like this, you almost believe that the new 2009 Mopar Dodge Drift Challenger is a hit. Mopar team owner, Shaun Carlson and driiver Samuel Hübinette pointed out some of the specs that this baby will have.
Like any man, they first pointed out the horsies that ride under the hood, a total of 850. Another interesting thing is that the car will have on the rear fender, a buil-in line of roller blade wheels to make the car roll along the wall on contact, instead of slowing down and damaging the vehicle. It sounds interesting on paper, but we will have to wait and see how the car will do in real life racing.
We all know that Porsche doesn’t have anything on the menu with less than six cylinders, but we also know that the German car maker stole our hearts with four cylinder engines, and the first to be mentioned here is the 356. But recently we heard a few birdies whispering something about the new Boxter to be having four cylinders.
The reason behind this seems to be the lowering of the emissions and fuel consumption, which is not a bad reason. But all this must be done without losing its customers. We will see how Porsche will balance all of these when the car will be out on the streets.
We all know about Pontiac’s Solstice previous models that walked the car-catwalk at SEMA: the Solstice Weekend Club Racer in 2005, the Solstice GXP-R in 2006, and Solstice SD-290 Concept that was paraded last year. This year the Solstice will take the shape of a coupe and will feature under the hood GM’s Performance Parts Stage 2 performance kit , intake kit, and cat-back exhaust system, all of which will raise the number of horsies from 260 to 290.
But that is not all. The new Solstice will also receive a new and sportier suspension system, custom seats, race-style pedals and a whole lot of stuff I don’t care for when buying a car like and iPod interface and exterior graphics kit.
Let’s wait and see what impression this baby will make when it will be unveiled in bolts and screws.
