Archive for the ‘Paris’ Category

Proving once again that juvenile governmental feuds aren't solely the province of the New York state legislature or the South Korean parliament, the mayors of two Parisian suburbs have installed contradictory street signage just make a point -- and to make drivers furious.

In a nutshell: the conservative mayor of Levallois-Perret was tired of traffic clogging up his boulevards, so he converted one of the area's primary thoroughfares into a one-way street, with traffic pointed directly into the adjacent neighborhood of Clichy-la-Garenne. This didn't sit well with the mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne, who is, as it turns out, a socialist; he...

TDI, we hardly knew ye. Dispensed before birth, now merely a dream of the clean, high-mileage supercar, how should we mourn the death of the Audi R8 V12 TDI diesel--which Audi now says it won't build after all?

First revealed at the 2008 Detroit auto show as the Audi R8 TDI Concept, then updated as the 2009 Audi R8 Le Mans Concept at last fall's Paris Motor Show, the oil-burning R8 rocked a 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V12 diesel.

What's that? A diesel supercar? Yep. Just check the stats: 500 horsepower is impressive in anyone's book. But the torque--at a stunning 738 pound-feet--was jaw-dropping. It translated to a top speed (in European...

Sometimes just when you think the industry can't get any weirder...it does. Take, for instance, two news items that crossed our desk in sequence today.

First, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal area reporting French carmaker Renault and its partner Nissan have apparently joined former race driver and current car dealer Roger Penske in bidding for the network of about 400 Saturn dealers that General Motors will sell or close by the end of the year.

Second, at its annual shareholder meeting in Paris this morning, Renault unveiled a close-to-production model of its small electric delivery van, called the Kangoo be bop Z.E. (Yes, really.)

So...