Displaying Items By Tag: Mitsubishi

This jaw-dropping 1971 Datsun 240Z has just rolled onto the proverbial block at Bring a Trailer, and it's hard to imagine that it won't end up setting a record price for a first-generation Z. First of all, we have to take a moment to appreciate the rare Racing Green over brown color combo. And the factory rocker-panel stripe. Oh, man. The story is that an Indiana Datsun dealer gave this car to his son as a dental-school graduation present. The owner drove it sparingly, and the car was kept at the dealership and later at his home. A mechanic from the dealership continued to maintain the car for the owner until the owner passed away last year. The car has traveled less than 22,000 miles, none of which — it's claimed — were in inclement weather. This 240Z is said to be unrestored, and the condition certainly lends credence to the claim. Commenters are nerding out over details like the original (green) distributor, original radiator cap, and original hoses. Note also the factory AM radio, and the plastic still covering some of the interior bits. One knock against it: The wheel covers are from a later 240Z. Somehow, that seems unlikely to dampen the bidding, which at this writing is at $30k on the car's first day. One suspects it has a long way to go.

Infiniti confirmed it has delayed QX55 production by about five months. The as-yet-unveiled crossover is a swoopier, more stylish evolution of the QX50 with a fastback-like roof line inspired by some of the company's past models. The Nissan-owned company informed its suppliers production will start in November 2020, not in June as previously announced. It explained it needs to "ensure production capability" at the Aguascalientes, Mexico, facility that will manufacture the model. It didn't provide additional details, though a spokesperson confirmed the new timeline to Automotive News. The factory — a joint-venture between Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler and Nissan — also makes the QX50, the A-Class, the Kicks, and the Sentra, among other models. "Production schedules are internal and due to various operation priorities can move — sometimes forward, sometimes backward — as a normal course of business," a spokesperson told Autoblog.  The QX55 is based on the aforementioned QX50, and spy shots confirm the two models share several design cues when viewed from the front. Minor nameplate-specific details will set the 55 apart from the 50. It's a different story out back, where the 55 ditches the 50's family-friendly silhouette for a fast-sloping roofline penned with an eye on the first-generation FX released for the 2003 model year, five years before the original BMW X6.  Infiniti is not yet revealing technical specifications, but we expect the variable-compression VC-Turbo engine will be one of the available powertrains. The turbocharged, 2.0-liter unit makes 268 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque in the QX50. It also returns 26 mpg in combined driving, according to the EPA. What remains to be seen is whether the delay also affects the car's unveiling date, which hasn't been publicly announced yet. An Infiniti spokesperson told Autoblog the QX55 is scheduled to make its debut "in the next few months," and pointed out it's one of five new models due out in the next three years. When it does arrive, the Infiniti QX55 will compete in the same segment as the BMW X4 and the Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupe.

Nipping infinite rumors in the bud, Subaru confirmed the Outback, the Forester, the BRZ, the WRX STI, and every other car it makes will go electric or disappear by the middle of the 2030s. The Japanese automaker announced it plans to kick gasoline-powered cars out of its global portfolio in about 15 years' time. The announcement comes in the wake of ever-stricter emissions regulations around the globe, notably in China and in the European Union. The firm isn't going to turn the tap off overnight, though. Toyota owns an 8.7% stake in Subaru, and the two partners are jointly developing a pair of electric cars due out during the 2020s. Others will inevitably follow. By 2030, hybrid and electric models will represent at least 40% of Subaru's annual global output. In the meantime, Subaru is funneling an immense amount of money into adapting Toyota's hybrid technology to its vehicles. The gasoline-electric variant of the Crosstrek introduced in 2018 a product of this collaboration. Executives outlined plans to release a "strong hybrid" again built with Toyota parts, though they stopped short of providing more details. They also stressed their goal isn't to achieve mere badge-engineering. "Although we're using Toyota technology, we want to make hybrids that are distinctly Subaru. It's not only about reducing CO2 emissions. We need to further improve vehicle safety and the performance of our all-wheel drive," affirmed Tetsuo Onuki, Subaru's chief technology officer, during a briefing Reuters attended. His comments suggest all-wheel drive will continue to define the members of Subaru's range in the electric-only era. The configuration has been one of the brand's strongest selling points for decades, and it helped it grow from a niche brand peddling obscure cars to a major mainstream automaker in the United States, so giving it up would be marketing suicide. The horizontally-opposed engine is Subaru's second signature, it's what the C-shaped daytime running lights seen on its cars are inspired by, but Onuki confirmed its rumbling days will come to an end.

NASA is working to put human back on the moon by 2024, the idea being to use it as a way station for the eventual colonization of Mars. Since those humans won't want to moonwalk everywhere, they'll need new transportation — the battery-electric Lunar Rover the Apollo astronauts left up there probably won't start. Designers at the European Advanced Design Studio for Toyota and Lexus created a few potential, and yes, fanciful, craft for getting around our satellite for Document Journal magazine's The Lunar Design Portfolio. The artwork joins a collection of articles by culture critics, philosophers, architects, and more about the issues confronting humanity's return to the mistress of tides. Out of the seven concepts, the Lexus creation chosen to appear in the issue is Karl Dujardin's Zero Gravity, which turns the automaker's spindle grille into a single-seater moto-like hovercraft capable of doing 310 mph. The Bouncing Moon Roller by Julien Marie attaches a wheel-like stabilizer to a gyroscope cell protected by a flexible graphene nanotube bubble meant for hopping over the terrain, whereas the Lexus Lunar Cruiser by Keisuke Matsuno serves land and sky by having wheels that can flip out 90 degrees to serve as ducted fans powering a drone capsule. Jean-Baptiste Henry's Lexus Cosmos isn't for the surface at all, with a Lexus mothership and Moon Explorator capable of solar system travel. The glass construction of the observatory in the Moon Explorator allows "group experience contemplation [of] Zero G," and there's even a "space swimming pool." The Mothership awaits a role in the next installment of A Space Odyssey, a glossy habitat for whatever life forms succeed humans. Astronauts might be able to launch from the mothership in the Lexus Lunar Mission craft designed by Yung Presciutti, using wings shaped like spindle grilles. Because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy even in space, the Lexus Lunar is a 6x6 "massive transport vehicle designed to explore and discover the moon safely," meaning it can haul a few Moon Racers — both of which are also Presciutti's work —  a different kind of single-seater craft made to "jump, climb, race, and discover" the light and dark sides of the moon.

Nissan had a couple of smash enthusiast hits in the 1990s with the S13 and S14 Silvia, known as the 200SX and 240SX on these shores. Before those cars came here, though, the groundwork for affordable, sporty rear-wheel-drive Nissan coupes was laid by the S10 Silvia, sold with 200SX badging here from the 1977 through 1979 model years. These cars didn't sell in huge quantities in North America, and the handful that did sell tended to rust in a hurry, so you won't see many today. I keep my eyes open for such historic machines while making my appointed junkyard rounds, though, and so this well-worn '78 200SX appeared before my camera lens in a Denver-area self-service yard a few months back. It's rusty, oh yes, and it's crusty as well; the combination of harsh sun and snowy winter here in Colorado has been rough for this corrosion-susceptible little Datsun. I think this car has been sitting for quite a while, but the United Airlines bumper sticker and Denver International Airport parking pass indicate that it was running as recently as 1995, when the Home of Blucifier opened for business. Before that, this car's owner may have used it to commute to the old Stapleton Airport. In Japan, this car got the 1.8-liter L18 engine, but the North American 200SX received the 2.0-liter L20 engine made famous by the Datsun 510 on these shores. In 1978, this engine was rated at 97 horsepower, which was pretty good for a 2,323-pound car in the darkest years of the Malaise Era. For comparison's sake, know that the 1978 Chevy Camaro Z28 had a 20.5:1 lbs/hp ratio, while the 200SX had a not-so-far-off 24:1 ratio. The 1978 BMW 320i, meanwhile, had a 24.1:1 lbs/hp ratio... and it cost $9,315, while the 200SX sold for just $4,399 (or $18,100 in 2020 dollars). The body on this car has been corroded well past usefulness, and S10 200SXs really aren't worth any serious restoration investment nowadays. Junkyard shoppers stripped most of the dash and interior components before I got here. Still, an interesting piece of Nissan history, and it's sad to see another S10 headed to the crusher. With a standard 5-speed manual transmission (reasonably exotic in 1978) and AM/FM stereo radio (a pricey option in most cars in 1978), the 200SX was a steal.

Production of the outgoing Toyota Land Cruiser kicked off in 2007, which makes the J200 one of the oldest SUVs in the market.

Toyota announced Friday it will move production of its mid-size Tacoma pickup from the United States to Mexico as it adjusts production strategies around North America to better consolidate vehicles built on shared architecture. This move will make room for more production of full-size trucks and SUVs in its San Antonio, Texas, facility, which will absorb production of the Sequoia SUV from its current Princeton, Indiana facility.  Toyota said it has completed a $1.3 billion modernization investment in its Indiana operations to add 550 jobs. Toyota said there would be no reduction to direct jobs at any of Toyota's facilities across North America as a result of the vehicle moves. The new North American trade agreement approved by the U.S. Senate on Thursday ensures that automakers will still be able to build pickup trucks in Mexico without facing new punitive tariffs. Here's how all of the changes break down:

Toyota Texas (San Antonio)

Toyota will shift production of the Sequoia in 2022 to Texas and that plant will end production of the Tacoma by late 2021. Tacoma production will be shunted to Toyota's Guanajuato plant in Mexico. Capacity at this facility will remain above 200,000 units per year.  While we learned last April that Toyota plans to build future Tundra and Tacoma models on the same architecture, this choice seems to indicate that Toyota's strategy relies just as much on size similarity as platform commonalities. 

Toyota Guanajuanto (Guanajuanto, Mexico)

Toyota has been building Tacoma trucks at its Baja California plant in Mexico since 2004. Last month, Toyota's newer facility in Guanajuato began assembly of the Tacoma. Its production capacity for the Tacoma in Mexico will be about 266,000 per year. Last year, the automaker sold nearly 249,000 Tacoma pickup trucks in the United States, up 1.3%. The company said the product moves were to "improve the operational speed, competitiveness and transformation at its North American vehicle assembly plants based on platforms and common architectures." Guanajuato will contribute an additional 100,000 units to pickup production once it is brought online. 

Toyota Indiana (Princeton)

The largest Japanese automaker also said it will end production of the Toyota Sequoia in Indiana by 2022 as that facility focuses on mid-size SUVs and minivans. The refurbished TMMI plant, which has added 550 new jobs so far, will help Toyota meet strong demand for the Highlander, its new mid-size SUV. It has more than 7,000 employees and has the capacity to assemble more than 420,000 vehicles annually, the company said.    

Toyota has been tight-lipped about the next-generation Sequoia, but that silence has been broken today as the company announced plans to "align North American production based on platforms and common architectures."

If you think about it, it's not that surprising that a Nissan 370Z that was previously owned by Paul Walker and made an appearance in the fifth installment of the Fast and Furious movies became the most expensive 370Z sold ever in an auction.

When Mazda positioned its long-awaited and oft-delayed CX-5 diesel crossover as the "premium" option in the CX-5 trim structure, we were skeptical. After driving one last fall with a $42,045 sticker price, our eyebrows furrowed even deeper. Today, to nobody's surprise, Mazda dealers are slapping massive discounts on the Skyactiv-D. CarsDirect initially reported on the discounts, pointing out that some dealers are slashing prices by $10,000. We took a spin through Autotrader to see what was out there, and the results were shocking. There were pages of CX-5 diesels with prices in the low-to-mid $30,000 range. We asked Mazda what kind of incentives it was currently offering on the 2019 CX-5 diesel. Since December, Mazda has offered a $5,000 cash rebate, alongside a 2.9 percent APR for 60 months. However, the other several thousand dollars worth of discounts we're seeing listed — as much as $5,000 more — are not being accounted for by Mazda.  Just as CarsDirect found, the largest discounts we could find on the web are for a cool $10,000, bringing the price down to $32,045. At that price, you're looking at a 23.8 percent discount. That's a discount of nearly a quarter(!) of the car's original asking price. We thought the Skyactiv-D was overpriced originally, but at this price, we'd strongly consider it as the CX-5 to buy. Since the diesel is only offered in the top-of-the-line Signature trim, it has every gizmo and gadget Mazda offers in addition to the most premium interior materials. It's also offered in all-wheel drive only, leaving every box with a checkmark in it.  Compared to the gas-engined CX-5 Signature that starts at $38,100 for the 2020 model year, these diesels are a steal. In fact, this price hierarchy makes a lot more sense than the way Mazda had it organized in the first place. The more powerful 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder in the gas-engined Signature can easily be marketed as the most "premium" option in the CX-5 lineup since it's the fastest and most enjoyable to drive. Moving the slower diesel with the same equipment below it on the food chain sounds like the right move to us. At around $33,000-$35,000, the diesel isn't such a bad buy anymore. Fuel economy still isn't where we'd like it to be, but as we opined in our First Drive review, it's still a wonderfully pleasant car to drive.

Spaniard Carlos Sainz became a triple Dakar Rally champion with the Mini X-Raid team at the age of 57 on Friday, while American Ricky Brabec took the motorcycle crown for Honda and ended KTM's 18-year dominance. Brabec is the first American to win the Dakar on two wheels since the grueling endurance event started from Paris through the Sahara desert to the Senegalese capital in West Africa in 1979. Both were also the first winners in Saudi Arabia, a country making its debut as host of an event staged in South America for the past decade. Two times world rally champion Sainz, whose son and namesake races in Formula One for McLaren, ended the final timed stage with a 6 minutes and 21 seconds advantage over Qatar's defending champion Nasser Al Attiyah. Sainz also won Dakar in 2010 and 2018. His three victories have been with different car manufacturers, the first coming with Volkswagen and the second in a Peugeot. "We started winning this Dakar on day one, and we have gone flat out from the beginning," said Sainz, hailed by his son on Twitter as a legend. Brabec had started four previous Dakars, but Friday was only his second finish. "At the end, we put the pieces to the puzzle together," said the American after an event marred by the death of Portuguese rider Paulo Goncalves in a fall last Sunday. "I woke up this morning just happy to ride the last day. And we're here. We won. We had to be smart and focused every day. There's no top guy on the team, we all work together, we're a family. We all won." Triple champion Al Attiyah won the final stage to finish as overall runner-up for Toyota with Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, a 13 times winner on two and four wheels and Sainz's team mate, completing the top three in his 31st Dakar. "I'm coming back to win next year. I just needed a bit more luck," said the Qatari, who applauded and embraced Sainz at the finish. Two times Formula One champion Fernando Alonso, a Dakar rookie, was fourth in the final stage and finished 13th overall for Toyota. Australian Toby Price, the 2019 motorcycle winner and leading KTM rider, finished third overall behind Chilean Pablo Quintanilla. "It's not the result we came for, but I'm quite glad. Every time that I've lined up and I've made the finish line, I've been on a podium step," said Price. "This, for me, is a big achievement, especially after these two weeks being tough. We just regroup and get ready for the Dakar 2021 and we come back here to try and get that number one plate back." In the truck category, Russian Andrey Karginov took his second Dakar crown in a Kamaz one-two with compatriot and team mate Anton Shibalov. Chile's Ignacio Casale was the quad champion for a third time while American Casey Currie won the lightweight side-by-side (SSV) category introduced in 2017.

The London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) has launched its TX plug-in hybrid taxi in Japan.

Nissan Europe has released more details about the new Qashqai N-Tec Edition that combines enhanced styling with more standard tech for the popular crossover.

Nissan is reportedly hard at work on the next-generation of its legendary Z car (although the company won't explicitly confirm), and we're hearing it will have a familiar look. Sources who have seen the upcoming sports car at dealer meetings told us it will feature heritage-inspired design. "They're going back to the roots of the car," one source told us.  The silhouette and general shape is similar to the current Z, but the design is all new. The front end mimics that of a 240Z with a square mouth and near-round headlights. Its rear taillights are meant to follow that of the 300ZX from the 1990s. On the inside, Nissan is finally going to move the Z into the new age. The 370Z doesn't even have a modern infotainment system today — where one might expect a screen, Nissan instead has a storage cubby. The next-gen Z will get an interior design similar to other new Nissans like the redesigned Altima and Sentra. Finally, it will get a real infotainment system. From a powertrain perspective, we're told that a version of the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 from the Infiniti Q50/Q60 400 Red Sport will be pulled for duty. That engine is paired with a nine-speed automatic transmission only right now, but we're told a manual transmission will be offered alongside the automatic. As a reminder, Nissan did pair the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 with a manual in a 370Z SEMA show car previously, but it still hasn't seen a production application. As for a possible Nismo variant in the future, one of our sources also tells us it's likely that we'll see this version join the next-generation Z car eventually. Close to 500 horsepower is rumored for this specific flavor of Z. The 370Z, which is still a wonderfully fun car to drive, is fairly long in the tooth at this point. It's been on sale since 2009, and it's hard to tell the difference between one of those first models and a brand-new 2020 370Z. That's when you know it's time for a change. Stephanie Brinley, IHS Markit principal automotive analyst thinks Nissan needs to move along, too. "It's getting old. I think that some direction in the next couple years would be good. I think it'll get to the point that safety compliance issues will need to be addressed," Brinley told us. Nissan seems to want a change, too. We've seen spy shots of what could be a mule on the Nurburgring, and a previous Motor Trend report has essentially confirmed that the car is in the works and on the way. There's no hard date for a reveal at this point, but it's rumored to be a year and a half to two years out still. Nissan has given us a steadfast no comment on everything, but that's the usual for matters like this. We were told that Nissan has plans to introduce 12 new products in the next 20 months. There's a chance this is one of them, but we wouldn't doubt it if a low-profit sports car were delayed. As it gets closer to a final reveal, we'll be on the hunt for spy photos and every scrap of detail we can find on the next-gen Z. It'll be an exciting road, as this sports car is essential to the automaker's lineup. "It's part of Nissan's reputation. It's part of what makes Nissan, Nissan," Brinley says. We agree.