TOKYO — Toyota plans to slash production in North America by nearly a third through October due to the coronavirus crisis and expects it will take some time for output to return to normal, a person familiar with the matter said.

Toyota will build about 800,000 vehicles, including its RAV4 SUV crossovers and Camry sedans, at plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico from April through to the end of October, the person told Reuters.

A report in the Japanese business daily Nikkei, picked up by Automotive News, said Mitsubishi anticipates using a Nissan engine in the next-generation Outlander headed our way later this year. If the report comes true, the engine swap would be a first for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance partners outside of Japanese kei cars. Mitsubishi engineers will have an easier time slotting in a Nissan engine as the next-gen Outlander gives up its GS platform — an architecture Mitsubishi co-developed with Daimler Chrysler almost 20 years ago — to move to a modified version of the CMF platform that supports the Nissan Rogue and Qashqai, our Rogue Sport.   

Last December, Auto Express spoke to Ponz Pandikuthira, Nissan's European vice president of product planning. The exec said Nissan had two hybrid powertrains under consideration for the next-generation Qashqai, the first being Nissan's serial hybrid ePower system that's fared well in Japan where overall speeds are low, but that might not be suited to Europe's higher average speeds. As for a PHEV, Pandikuthira said, "We're not pursuing a big plug-in hybrid strategy. On some car lines we'll try it out, but the business case for plug-in hybrids is not very good."

Subaru quietly confirmed the Crosstrek will receive a bigger, more powerful 2.5-liter flat-four engine for the 2021 model year. It hasn't released technical details yet, and it kept its silence when Autoblog reached out for more information, but fuel economy figures reveal buyers who order the new four won't spend more time at the pump.

Searching for the 2021 Crosstrek on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website shows two engine choices: a 2.0-liter, which has been available since the model went on sale, and a 2.5-liter, which is new for 2021. The latter's fuel economy checks in at 27 mpg in the city, 34 mpg on the highway, and 29 mpg on a combined cycle. For context, the 2.0 posts 28, 33, and 30, respectively. These are tiny differences that most motorists won't notice in real-world conditions, because fuel economy also depends on a variety of factors (like driving style).

Toyota's largest hybrid SUV, the Highlander, will go on sale in Western Europe next year, marking the first time the nameplate becomes available in the region.

Before you point out that the car industry doesn’t see the Toyota Avalon and the VW Arteon as direct rivals, just ask yourself this: Are they really all that different?

When Honda began making zooted-up Civics with big engines and different bodywork in the late 1980s, selling them as Acura Integras in North America and raking in many dollars, Nissan took note. For the 1990 model year and the launch of the Infiniti brand, the luxed-out version of the Euro-market Nissan Primera sedan got Infiniti G20 badging and went on sale over here. After a two-year hiatus in 1997 and 1998, the all-new G20 made its debut for the 1999 model year, and that's what we've got here: a fully equipped Touring version with 5-speed manual transmission, spotted in a Denver boneyard.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a sub-culture of car modifying that typically saw owners of cheap Japanese cars outfit them with outlandish bodykits, wacky paint jobs, and bespoke interiors.

TOKYO — Mazda has sought loans totaling about 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) from Japan's three megabanks and other lenders to ride out the coronavirus epidemic, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Saturday.

The megabanks — Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group — along with the Development Bank of Japan, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings and others are set to agree, with some already having extended the loans, the person said, declining to be identified because the information is not public.

Dashcam footage from a truck has captured the moment that a Subaru Impreza crashed into a Hyundai Sonata in Oakland, California before the driver of the Sonata fled the scene.

Datsun's Z-Car turned 10 years old in 1980 (in North America), and so Nissan decided to celebrate by selling a small run of limited-edition 280ZXs commemorating that anniversary. 2,500 Black Gold 10th Anniversary cars were made, plus another 500 Black Red cars. I managed to find a discarded Black Gold 280ZX in California, way back in 2009, and I ran across this Black Red 280ZX last fall in Colorado.

Toyota alchemized the newest Yaris into a street-legal, 268-horsepower pocket rocket in order to homologate it in the World Rally Championship (WRC). It's not going to sell the model here, partly because our Yaris is completely different from the one sold abroad, but it hinted there's a second, America-bound hot hatch in the pipeline.

"While the GR Yaris isn't coming to the United States, perhaps it's time the United States got a Toyota hot hatch to call its own. One that continues to push the boundaries of performance. And one that can only come from Toyota Gazoo Racing," the company wrote on a page of its American website dedicated to the rally-bred Yaris. It also posted the same message — and a photo of the GR Yaris going sideways — on its official Twitter account.

The compact coupe is nearly extinct, and one has to assume that the Honda Civic Coupe is just clawing for its future life somewhere in the depths of product planning. For now though, the 2020 Civic Si Coupe still exists, it's still a barrel of laughs to drive, and after a few choice tweaks for 2020 it even manages to look pretty good. 

Now, the interior is starting to show its age a bit as various new compacts have managed to up the wow factor for the segment — Mazda3, Nissan Sentra and 2021 Hyundai Elantra, just to name a few. Of course, none of those is available as a coupe and when putting aesthetic aside, the Civic still impresses with its quality and versatility. Let's take a closer look.

Late last year, BMW announced they were finally going to add Android Auto to their vehicles starting in mid-2020.