Archive for the ‘North America’ Category

Buyers of Big Three cars will soon be constrained to mainly trim packages (I.e. Honda's DX, LX, and EX) as opposed to picking and choosing from a litany of individual options. A part of the domestic automakers' desperate scramble to build vehicles in more efficient ways, it's surprising they've waited until 2009 to make a big change in this realm.

Let's compare a domestic with an import. The 2008 Ford Fusion could be optioned 2,600 different ways. The 2010 version: only 104. But that's still a labyrinthine options list compared to either the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, which combined offered buyers a total of only 15 unique versions but...

Sister site GreenCarReports claims that showgoers at the barely-noticed Toronto Auto Show got a sneak preview of the 2010 Volkswagen Golf TDI. Yup, you read that right; in Canada, anyway, the sixth-gen vehicle goes from Rabbit nomenclature (introduced in the 5th-gen in 2006) back to Golf.

Further, they claim that visits to the VW Canada Web site list the car as a 2010 Golf, so there you have it. Apparently, gas costs a bit more in Canada, and average take-home salaries are lower (and taxes are higher). What all of this has to do with automotive nomenclature we're not certain; we missed that marketing study (as well as its conclusion as to...

Sources close to TheCarConnection.com report that a new Toyota Venza-fighter, a mid-sized crossover, will soon be coming from Honda. They say the vehicle is proposed for manufacture at Honda's Lincoln, Ala. plant that current employs over 4,000 Americans. Hmm...more jobs for Americans from a foreign automaker. Definitely sounds like an Obama Accord to us.

Rumors claim the vehicle will be loosely based on the European Honda Accord Tourer, itself a version of Acura's TSX. So we're talking a U.S. Accord with perhaps a shortened wheelbase (TSX) or a wheelbase identical to our Accord. Look at Brendy Priddy's spy shots of the vehicle (by way of...