In a bid to try and salvage some sales from the rapidly deflating full size truck market, General Motors has decided to add XFE models to its big pickups and SUVs. As with the Cobalt XFE the new label is short for Xtra Fuel Economy. While the new XFE…
Category: Autoblog
The Top 10-ish Orphan Car Brands
In this era of automakers on the brink of extinction, it's worth recalling that car companies going belly up is not a new phenomenon. Henry Ford himself started up two other brands that failed before Ford Motor Co. finally caught on. Start-up…
Why gasoline turbocharged direct injected engines?
Hybrid and battery electric cars get most of the attention from drivers looking for more efficient transportation. Toyota has done a masterful job of marketing the benefits of hybrids and, for a great many people, hybrids are an excellent means of…
Embargo leakage: First images of the Ford Fiesta for Frankfurt
As Frankfurt is the biggest auto show in the world, it seems only fitting that with only three weeks to go before show time the press embargoes should start breaking. Actual photographs of the new Ford Fiesta concept scanned from a German magazine…
ADM corn processing profits spike 42%
The Archer Daniels Midland company is one of the biggest recipients of farm subsidies in America, and interestingly enough they are also a huge proponent of corn ethanol. They are among the world's largest processors of soy, corn, and other crops.…
2009 Lincoln MKS to get first application of GDI V-6
Ford product development VP Derrick Kuzak informed the world during the 2008 model preview recently that the twin-force technology that was shown on this year's MKR concept would go into production in the next two to three years on a variety of four-…
Chevy Volt batteries won't be in production in 2009, 2010 still the target
A few days a potentially big story broke as a result of an interview that BusinessWeek did with Continental North America CEO Bill Kozyra. In that interview, Kozyra is quoted as saying that the battery packs for the Chevy Volt would be production by…
Will Europe get a diesel Two-Mode hybrid Opel Antara? Not anytime soon!
The current-generation Saturn Vue is also sold in Europe as the Opel Antara, and in the right hand drive UK market as the Vauxhall Antara. Since it's introduction in 2007, the Euro editions have been available with an Opel 1.9 turbodiesel engine.…
VW Piech era could be drawing to close, family planning coup
For the past 15 years Ferdinand Piech has been the guiding force behind Volkswagen, first as CEO and Chairman, and since his mandatory retirement in 2002, as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Before that he headed Audi and helped to cultivate the…
Flint, MI to produce bus fuel from sewage biogas
Ever since General Motors began gradually phasing out production facilities in the Flint, MI area in the early 1980s, the city that gave birth to the ailing automaker 100 years ago has been struggling to remake itself. Most of those efforts have been…