In an earlier installment by DriveTribe, James May pulled the covers off his brand new Toyota Mirai, excited to get it out in the open for the very first time. Unfortunately, the busy city streets of London didn't give the team much to work with, with James only able to report that it was "very, very pleasant up to eight miles per hour".
You can't tell by looking at it, but the 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is a thoroughly upgraded version of the plug-in crossover that initially debuted in the United States for the 2018 model year. Yes, despite the fact that there is a completely new, from-the-ground-up version of the gas-only Outlander for 2022, the previous generation soldiers on in its plug-in hybrid form for at least the next couple of model years as the engineering team puts the finishing touches on an edition based on the new platform. Still, there's a lot of new bits and pieces under the skin that make this a better and more useful electrified SUV than before.
A new 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine replaces the previous 2.0-liter, bumping power to 126 horsepower and 148 pound-feet of torque. It join forces with upgraded electric motors to send as much as 221 hp to all four wheels. That's a 31-horsepower increase over the old Outlander PHEV.
If you're a fan of Japanese performance cars, you might be familiar with Yahoo Auctions and all the incredible JDM cars you can bid on. While recently browsing through the classifieds, we recently came across a Nissan S15 Silvia drift car that is looking for a new home.
Throughout its 11 generations, the Honda Civic has generally followed a pattern of a revolutionary redesign followed six years later by a more cautious evolutionary approach. As the all-new, 11th generation model, the 2022 Honda Civic falls into the evolution category. The engine choices and interior dimensions are basically identical, the driving experience isn't terribly different, and the overall shape is similar. It's also every bit the class leader its predecessor was upon its introduction six years ago.
So what's new? Though the Civic sedan's general shape, including that fastback roofline, is maintained, the old car's bulbous fenders, exaggerated lines and extraneous vents have been replaced with a cleaner, simplified look bound to age better over time. It also looks more expensive than it is. The interior is similarly more premium in appearance, if not plastics quality, with a striking new design that manages to simultaneously declutter the cabin and improve the infotainment system with extra physical buttons. And how about those cool retro-inspired air vents?
The 2022 Toyota Land Cruiser, along with the rest of the automotive world it seems, has had to downsize. With no more V8s offered in the range, the option of a pair of twin-turbo V6s may disappoint some. Those who buy it, though, won’t be disappointed by the power they get.
Toyota has been making Corollas since the Bronze Age (actually, since 1966), and every one of those cars had rear-wheel-drive until the debut of the fifth-generation Corolla in 1983. Just to confuse everyone, this series of Corollas included some front-wheel-drive cars and some rear-wheel-drive versions — including the famous AE86 — and thus making the fourth-generation Corolla the last one to be fully in the dorifuto-friendly rear-wheel-drive camp. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those cars, a faded but nicely-optioned TE75 Corolla fastback found in a Silicon Valley self-service yard last month.
Horsepower is one of the key metrics of a car, as well as the subject of discussions regarding how much you actually need or can really use on public roads. No matter where you stand on that matter, it turns out that a fourth-generation Civic needs just two people power (and sometimes just one) to drive around town. Mind you, that would be with speeds of about 2 mph, but it’s still impressive.
Nissan's foothold in the medium pickup truck segment might be well with its Frontier and Navara offerings, but its Titan full-size truck is an entirely different story. Sales of the large truck dropped to a mere 26,441 units in 2020 – a number absolutely hammered by the likes of the Ford F-150 (787,422 deliveries), Ram’s trucks (563,676) and Chevy’s Silverado (594,094).
Back in the 1980 model year, American Motors introduced us to the idea of a four-wheel-drive car that could be driven all the time with power going to all the wheels, no confusing military-truck-style hubs or levers to mess with, and then Audi began selling cars with the Quattro system the very next year. While Toyota spent much of the 1980s selling four-wheel-drive Tercel wagons here, we didn't have the chance to buy Toyotas with what we'd call true all-wheel-drive (using the term as understood today) until the introduction of the All-Trac system for the 1988 model year. 1988 Toyota shoppers could get All-Trac on the Corolla, the Celica… and the Camry. Corolla All-Trac wagons sold very well and I still find plenty of them in junkyards to this day, but very few 1988-1991 Camry shoppers opted for all-wheel-drive. Here's one of those seldom-seen Camry All-Trac sedans, found in a San Francisco Bay Area car graveyard last month.
The Toyota Land Cruiser is known for its legendary indestructibility, and we're all eager to find out how the recently launched, all-new 300-series fares against its ancestors. However, it turns out that they are not invincible, especially when a transporter carrying a fleet of them crashes en route to a dealership
The accident took place in Salalah, Oman, and involved six new 2022 Land Cruisers. According to MSDAR News' Twitter post, the car carrier they were riding on overturned. Photos of the mangled vehicles circulating on social media show that it was no minor incident. Many of the new SUVs have caved-in roofs and sheet metal that's absolutely shredded. A couple of them look like they were flung from the trailer. Fortunately, the same Twitter account reports that there were no casualties.
America's best-selling automaker is no longer based in the United States as Toyota outsold GM in the second quarter.
Good morning and welcome to our daily digest of automotive news from around the globe, starting with…
In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Associate Editor Byron Hurd, who just wrapped a whirlwind week of driving the 2021 Ford Bronco. The two talk 4x4s and address some reader feedback, then pivot to talking about another large truck: the 2022 Nissan Pathfinder. After that, they get into some news, talking about the new V6-powered Ferrari 296 GTB hybrid, and then wrapping up with a rather interesting "Spend my Money" from a listener based in Japan who has access to just about everything.
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Nissan and its partners will invest over $1 billion in England to create a large manufacturing hub specialized in electric vehicles. They will build a gigafactory, and the firm plans to launch a locally-built EV in the coming years.
Called EV36Zero, the project calls for an injection of £1 billion (about $1.38 billion) into the area surrounding Nissan's existing site in Sunderland, England. Part of the money will be used to build a gigafactory with an annual capacity of nine gigawatt hours, and some of that sum will pay for updates needed by the Sunderland factory. China's Envision AESC and the Sunderland City Council are contributing to the project.