Although rumors of late have gone back and forth about whether Mercedes-Benz and BMW would collaborate on a platform for the next generation A/B class and MINI, the latest report has a new direction. AutoBild is now reporting that Mercedes will…
Category: Autoblog
Cummins not ready to give up on light duty diesel regardless of Chrysler's fate
2009 Dodge Ram – Click above for high-res image gallery
A short while ago, every manufacturer building and selling light duty full-size trucks for the US market was preparing to add diesel engines to those vehicles. Over the course of the past 12…
Honda commits to remaining motorsport programs after F1 pull out
Click on the Highcroft Acura for a high res gallery from the Detroit Sports Car Challenge
The current economic climate has only just started to wreak havoc in the motorsports world, with last week's announcements that Honda is pulling out of F1 and…
Lightning Hybrid to go for X-prize with 100 mpg biodiesel hydraulic hybrid
A small startup company in Loveland, Colorado is working on what it hopes will be the keys to the Automotive X-Prize. Lightning Hybrids is building a pair of vehicles, one with three wheels and the other with four, that use a biodiesel-fueled…
DaimlerChrysler VP calls on congress for more tax breaks for fuel efficient cars
At a Senate Finance subcommittee hearing earlier this week DaimlerChrysler Vice-President Mark Chernoby urged Congress to extend tax credits for diesel vehicles to include all diesels. Expanded credits would help offset some of the increased cost of…
France introduces CO2 tax and rebate system for new cars
France and FInland have just introduced new systems of taxes and rebates for consumers that are based upon the CO 2 emissions of the new cars that they buy. The systems will be similar to the ecoAuto program the Canadian government introduced earlier…
Mercedes thinking small for US, B-Class may be coming
A big part of the failure of the DaimlerChrysler experiment was the resistance of people on the Mercedes-Benz side of the house to share their technology or platforms with the Chrysler side for fear it would dilute Mercedes' brand image. The irony is…
Next-next-gen Acura RL may finally get a V8 … or not
Honda has always been a company run by engineers who like to do more with less. In the 1970s, the Civic got a CVCC system that allowed it to meet emissions standards for many years without using a catalytic converter. Today the company's top of the…
A123 Systems goes public, stock jumps 50% on first day to $20.29
Massachusetts-based battery maker A123 Systems finally completed its initial public offering on Thursday. The lithium ion start-up offered 28,180,501 shares of its common stock at an opening price of $13.50 a share. Apparently, traders on the Nasdaq…
Officially Official: Panoz reveals the Abruzzi Spirit of Le Mans
Panoz Abruzzi Spirit of Le Mans – Click above for high-res image gallery
As Le Mans week has begun in France, ALMS founder Don Panoz has revealed the new limited production Abruzzi Spirit of Le Mans road car. From a design perspective, the Abruzzi…