The Acura NSX has been a special car as long as I've been in the business. The first one came out in 1990, the same year I started my career in automotive engineering. I vividly remember driving one briefly back then when we brought one in for benchmarking. I'd drive it again 22 years later when my previous employer bought a used 1991 example for a long-term test. Reader interest was sky-high and the car was still gorgeous, but the march of time and automotive engineering had clearly left it behind.

Then, in 2016, a second-generation NSX emerged, and it was packed with bleeding-edge thinking. It has a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, but this new NSX is a hybrid with an electric motor-generator sandwiched between the engine and its nine-speed DCT transmission. Two more electric motors – one for each wheel – power the front axle. There they can add traction, regenerate electricity under braking and dole out hyper-accurate levels of torque vectoring.

The 2020 Nissan Frontier marks the last in a particularly lengthy pickup truck generation that dates all the way back to the 2005 model year. Next year we'll get a completely redesigned model, but before that happens, Nissan is giving the old truck one last "hurrah" with a taste of the new one in the form of a fresh V6 engine and nine-speed automatic transmission, the only choices for this year. And the new combo is a mighty good sign of things to come.

Just on paper, the engine and transmission make strong cases for themselves. The 3.8-liter V8 makes 310 horsepower, which is 49 more than the old 4.0-liter and 158 more than the discontinued four-cylinder base engine. Its 310 horses also make it the most powerful midsize truck in the segment. Its 281 pound-feet of torque is unchanged, but that's still more than what you get from the V6s in the Chevy Colorado or Toyota Tacoma. Only the diesel Colorado and the Ford Ranger's turbo four-cylinder top the Nissan's torque rating. Combined fuel economy of 20 mpg with RWD and 19 mpg with 4WD improves upon its 4.0-liter predecessor by 1 and 2 mpg, respectively. Credit goes to the lighter more efficient engine and the additional gear ratios, however, fuel economy is still dead last in the segment among similar automatic V6 RWD trucks. The 4WD ties the V6 Gladiator and Colorado, and tops the Colorado ZR2 with a V6. Odds are the next-generation truck will improve this further.

TOKYO — Nissan Motor Co plans to cut $2.8 billion in annual fixed costs as part of its restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, as it braces for a drop in sales that could complicate its recovery from years of poor profitability.

Following a three-year spell of tumbling profits, Nissan will announce its restructuring plan on May 28, its latest attempt to slash costs after a strategy of aggressive selling to chase market share has pummeled its bottom line.

Welcome to 2020, where once again, the Toyota Supra is back. We hailed its return last year when we slid behind the wheel of the first new Supra sold here in the 21st century, and Toyota has gone and changed things up just one year later. Now, there are two Supras: a new, less powerful four-cylinder Supra that'll serve as a base model, and a more powerful version of the previous solo entry that showcases the type of incremental improvements Toyota says we should expect every model year. So, although owners of the 2020 Supra might be miffed by this news, there's a good chance 2021 owners will feel the same way in 12 months. 

For now, though, the 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six produces 382 horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque, increases of 47 and 3, respectively, from the 2020 version. We weren't exactly begging for more power, but aren't going to complain, either. This is the same engine spec that's found in the M40i version of the Supra's sister car, the BMW Z4, which shares a common block and crank as the "lesser" version found in the 2020 Supra. However, it features a totally new head and exhaust manifold design along with new pistons and a reduced compression ratio from 11:1 to 10.2:1 to better handle the boost. Peak horsepower is made at 5,800 rpm now (it was previously 5,000), and carried on to the same 6,500 rpm — redline is 7,000 rpm. The torque band also shifts slightly higher in the rev range, as all 368 pound-feet are available from 1,800-5,000 rpm — in 2020 that range was 1,600-4,500 rpm. Theoretically, this should make the car happier in its mid- and upper-rpm ranges.

Lexus is working on a new IS, but it might not be a completely redesigned model.

If you want a cheap, rock-and-stick-simple, gas-sipping car that can handle mud and snow without flinching, you'd have a tough time surpassing the 1983-1988 Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon. Known as the Sprinter Carib in Japan, these cartoonish-looking little wagons proved quite popular in North America, despite their tippy handling and patience-building double-digit horsepower, and I still find plenty of them in junkyards to this day. Here's a first-model-year example with the luxurious (by early-1980s Tercel standards) SR5 top trim level, found in a Denver yard last winter.

Toyota announced it's expecting an 80 percent profit drop this year, the company's lowest in nine years, after estimating the impact from the coronavirus pandemic in its business.

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp said on Tuesday it expects profit to drop by 80% to its lowest in nine years, as Japan's biggest automaker grapples with the impact of the novel coronavirus which has sapped global demand for vehicles.

Honda Motor Co on Tuesday posted its lowest operating profit in four years and refrained from releasing an earnings outlook for the current year because of uncertainty about the longer-term impact of the coronavirus on global car demand.

The Lexus ES is a comfy cruiser, but it's no off-roader. One woman found that out the hard way as she managed to get her car stuck on a median.

The 2020 Infiniti QX50 is a comfortable five-seat luxury crossover that competes with the Audi Q5, Acura RDX, Volvo XC60, Lexus NX and others. If you're interested in a QX50, it's probably got something to do with its impressive, technologically advanced VC-Turbo variable compression engine.

It also has sumptuous swales of bodywork, a long list of driver-assist and safety features, and a solidly luxurious interior with a two-screen infotainment setup. The window sticker for the QX50 we drove recently in Essential trim says the seats were leatherette; if true, it's the most buttery fake leather out there.

Toyota is marking the 20th anniversary of its groundbreaking Prius hybrid by officially announcing a sportier-looking commemorative edition of the car called the Prius 2020 Edition. It'll be a 2021 model, and Toyota will limit production to 2,020 units.

Also, Toyota divulged that it plans to introduce a pair of all-new hybrid models via a livestream unveiling from its North American headquarters near Dallas on May 18. More on that in a moment.

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).