A new version of the Toyota Corolla has been poached by photographers in China flaunting more aggressive styling details than the current compact (and which mimic the North American XSE model). At this point, we should note that we’re not aware if these changes will be limited to a specific version or for the entire range.
Need a good dose of 1990s nostalgia? How about this all-wheel drive JDM 1994 Toyota RAV4 listed on Bring a Trailer with no reserve?
The 1990s were the decade of green. Name a car or truck, and it probably came in at least one or two shades. Your author's family had not one, not two, but three different cars painted in various shades of dark green simultaneously: a 1996 Volkswagen Passat VR6, a 1994 Dodge Caravan and a 1996 Dodge Dakota. This RAV4 would have been right at home next to the bright red Toyota Tercel that shared the same driveway.
The 2019 Subaru STI S209 is a celebration of everything that made the STI and Impreza WRX STI line so popular with car enthusiasts. It has extreme body work, a heavily boosted flat-four that slams you in your seat, performance gizmos such as a center differential controller and an intercooler sprayer, as well as impressive handling and grip, in part due to its all-wheel drive. And of course, it has that signature boxer engine rumble, which has been accentuated with this model's exhaust system.
We wanted to share that sound so captured some footage of the car on start-up, gentle acceleration, full throttle acceleration, and some free-revving, in that order. It's a mellow sound, one that occasionally sounds like a motorcycle, but a bit smoother. And while it's noticeable at lower speeds, it's tuned such that it's extremely quiet at cruising speeds, and doesn't become massively louder at full throttle. In fact, you'll notice that the road noise and the wind rushing out of the exhaust ends up overwhelming the rumble at some points. It's something that both Senior Producer Chris McGraw and I noticed in our drives of the super Subaru. If it seems like it's too quiet, we're sure the aftermarket can solve the volume issue for you.
Thai car spotter Passakorn Leelawat caught what is suspected to be a prototype for the coming Toyota Corolla crossover on traffic-clogged roads around Bangkok, posting the photo on the Thai Car Inside Facebook page and catching the attention of Motor1. The angle and the camouflage make it difficult to be certain, but comparing certain details with the Corolla hatchback and Corolla Sport Touring wagon, elements like the side mirror, fuel filler cap, shark fin antenna and rear wiper line up. Even the character line from the lower rear fender into the bumper makes sense as a stylistic cue taken from the Touring. The recent dealer presentation leak said the high-riding compact is on the way next year, apparently planned for production from next September in the new Alabama facility Toyota is building with Mazda, so it's the right time for such a prototype to be out, too. The model's name, if an Australian trademark application is accurate, will be Corolla Cross.
Said to sit on the TNGA-C platform, a Road & Track report from February said the Corolla Cross will compete against vehicles like the Subaru Crosstrek, a category that also includes the Honda HR-V, Nissan Rogue Sport, Hyundai Tucson and Mazda CX-30. That RT piece said the new people mover is "likely to replace the CH-R," where other reports slot it into the lineup between the CH-R and the RAV-4; Motor1 characterized positioning as "a more practical and traditional alternative to the C-HR ... simpler and more affordable than the RAV-4." Our CH-R is 172.6 inches long, the RAV4 180.9 inches; we'd expect the 172-inch Corolla Cross to grow some, placing it in between its stablemates. For a taste of how long the Corolla gets, the Corolla Touring wagon sold in Europe is 183.1 inches long.
The marriage seems so right you wonder what took so long. Honda's hybrid powertrain is excellent and the CR-V is its best-selling model, yet the 2020 Honda CR-V Hybrid is only just arriving in dealers now. That's four years after this current CR-V generation was introduced, three years after the hybrid powertrain debuted in the Accord, two years after it was applied to the Insight (which is basically a Civic Hybrid) and five years since the first-generation Toyota RAV4 Hybrid was introduced.
The current RAV4 Hybrid is now Toyota's best-selling hybrid, and it would be shocking if this new CR-V Hybrid doesn't do the same trick for Honda. The powertrain is available on every trim level, effectively an option commanding a $1,225 premium over a comparable all-wheel-drive CR-V. That's impressively reasonable given its fuel economy advantage, added performance, agreeable drivability and lack of practical drawbacks.
Full disclosure: I'm a longtime Miata fan. And by longtime I mean since mid-1989, the year I obtained, through a series of fortunate connections, one of the three original Chicago auto show display cars. But this was no blatant attempt to butter up a journalist – I barely knew how to spell the word. At the time I worked for the Department of Defense and was racing SCCA showroom stock on the side.
It was destined to be a racecar. I was assured it'd be quick, but doubts surfaced when I arrived at Mazda's dealer training center to pick it up. "Oh, it's that cute Elan-looking thing," I probably said. But my mind was utterly changed when I eyeballed its double-wishbone suspension and other cleverly engineered features hiding beneath its skin. In subsequent years of racing – and eventually restoring – that car, I spent uncountable hours being impressed by it.
This week, Toyota celebrated selling more than 15 million hybrids worldwide since 1997, 5 million of them in the past three years. It really began in 1993, when Toyota decided to develop a car that would be kinder on the environment. The car those engineers created, codenamed 890T, debuted at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, an event bearing the theme, "Dream the Dream, a Car with That Feel." That car was called the Prius. Who could have known the homely yellow wonder, looking like it had been pulled straight from a Japanese anime of the time, would reshape the automotive industry. The Wikipedia entry for the 1995 show doesn't mention the Prius, although it does mention the Honda S2000 concept and the Subaru Streega concept, which became the Forester. The New York Times wrote, "The concept cars shown this year will probably not make Detroit quake with fear. But they show some flair nonetheless," one of two sentences covering the Prius stating simply, "Toyota is showing a sedan of the future called Prius that should be able to get 70 miles per gallon."
Toyota has made hybrid technology a key component of its business plan and company personality since it first launched the Prius back in 1997. The Prius was the first mass-produced gas-electric hybrid vehicle on the road, and it has been at the forefront of hybrid culture ever since. Nearly a quarter-century later, Toyota continues to be one of the leaders in the green space, a fact backed up by a recently reached milestone. Toyota, including Lexus, has now sold more than 15 million hybrids worldwide.
Although hybrids initially earned a reputation as quirky vehicles lacking, er, enthusiasm, the word is no longer a harsh restrictor. Today, Toyota has a fairly big lineup of vehicles with varying levels of hybridization and diverse purposes. In total, Toyota of America offers eight different hybrids, including the fuel cell Mirai. The bunch includes a small sedan, a large sedan, a premium large sedan, a two-row crossover, a three-row crossover, and two flavors of Prius hatchback. Plus, Tundra and Tacoma hybrid pickup trucks are also expected in the not-so-distant future.
North American sales of small Japanese pickups got stronger with each passing year of the 1970s, helped along by ridiculous gasoline prices. The Toyota Hilux of that era (which became, simply, the Toyota Truck over here) gets most of the attention now, but the rugged Nissan 620 (known as the Datsun Pickup in North America) sold as well as or better than the Hilux for much of the decade. Here's a '76 Datsun Pickup, retired in Colorado after 44 years of hard work.
In Japan, the Toyota GR Supra is split into SZ, SZ-R, and RZ trims. The SZ and SZ-R trims use a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, while the RZ trim uses a 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six. For 2021, Toyota upgraded the RZ with more power and announced two special-edition models, one in Horizon Blue and the other in Matte Storm Gray Metallic. The Horizon Blue Edition also features new wheels and matching interior accents and is limited to 100 units.
The 3.0-liter engine in the Japanese GR Supra RZ is getting an update for the new model year. The outgoing model produced a claimed 335 horsepower, as does the current U.S. Supra, at 5,000 rpm, and 369 lb-ft of torque at 1,600-4,500 rpm. Weighing in at 3,351 pounds, it could race from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds (American market figure). The new Supra RZ will make a claimed 382 horsepower at 5,800 rpm and keeps the same torque number of 369 lb-ft but at at 1,800-5,000 rpm. It adds 22 pounds for a total weight of 3,373 pounds and can sprint from 0-60 mph in a slightly improved 3.9 seconds.
To the list of things car enthusiasts can do to combat coronavirus quarantine boredom, or keep their restless kids diverted, Inifiniti is serving up what it's calling "Carigami." It's exactly what it sounds like: origami for cars, more or less.
Three models are offered — the Q50 sedan, QX80 SUV and the now-discontinued FX crossover — all in 1:27 scale. All you need is a printer and paper, a craft knife and some glue.
Valencia Red Pearl. That's the story with the 2020 Acura TLX PMC Edition. We got to see this limited edition TLX sedan at the New York Auto Show last year, but now it's in my driveway. The show lights don't do this paint justice. The setting sun reflecting off the deep and vibrant red ... now that's how this car is meant to be gazed upon.
Like I mentioned in the video walkaround above, the TLX PMC Edition is hand-assembled at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio. The body-in-white is trundled across town to the NSX supercar factory where those technicians do the rest to make it road-worthy. All 360 of them are being wrapped in their own special car covers and delivered to dealers on an enclosed truck to make sure it arrives without a single exterior flaw.
The current generation Honda Civic Type R isn't a slow car by any means with 306 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque. But there are always people who want to go faster, and Hondata's new fuel system upgrade can help Type R owners go faster, or even way faster.
The kit includes new injectors, fuel tank pump, direct injection pump and lines, all rated for higher fuel flow, as well as a Hondata FlashPro unit with several ECU tunes. Because Hondata is marketing this toward Type R owners who will likely be further modifying their cars, the most basic Type R they've tested with is one with an upgraded intercooler and high-flow catalytic converter. On that car, running on 91-octane fuel, the fuel system and tune increased power by 57 ponies and torque by a major 90 pound-feet. Totals were 375 horsepower and 424 pound-feet.
The 2019 Subaru STI S209 is peak Subaru for America. It's the most powerful and most expensive vehicle with the Subaru badge on it, and there will only ever be 209 of them sold. It's put together in STI's small shop in Kiryu, Japan, where workers put together approximately 2-3 cars per day.
Subaru's long-used 2.5-liter EJ25 turbocharged flat-four is back for another round, but it's been modified to make more power than a regular WRX STI. The redesigned intake, larger HKS turbocharger and better-flowing exhaust system ramp output up to 341 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque, gains of 31 and 40 respectively over a regular STI. It can hit 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and tops out at 162 mph. A huge number of changes were made to the suspension, steering, aero and brakes to make the S209 drive better and produce quicker lap times on track.