Just a few weeks after Toyota officially announced that it would build a hybrid version of the Corolla-based Auris in the U.K., new reports suggest a similar (but smaller) model is being prepared for Japan and Europe. The car would be built in Japan for the Japanese market and Toyota has plans to build a...
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According to the U.K.’s Autocar, Honda is fast-tracking a list of updates for the Insight originally scheduled for a mid-cycle makeover that’s still several years off. The focus of the changes will be to further improve fuel-economy, which while impressive at 40/43 mpg (city/highway), lags significantly behind the 2010 Prius and its 51/48 mpg rating....
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The latest bit of Acura NSX gossip points to a return of the luxury Japanese automaker’s flagship sports car, but as an all-wheel drive hybrid. 7Tune is reporting from their sources that when the next generation NSX (known as the Advanced Sports Car Concept) was canned, it was actually more of a temporary matter as...
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Mazda is reportedly in talks with Toyota over the prospect of licensing hybrid technology from Japan’s largest automaker for use in future green cars. Currently Nissan has a similar arrangement with Toyota for the Altima Hybrid. Mazda currently has one hybrid model, the Tribute HEV (pictured above), which is based on the Escape Hybrid and...
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With the ongoing recession every automaker has suffered a slide in sales, but the decline for Lexus has been more significant than at its German rivals with sales down 34.1 percent for the year so far. Lexus believes part of the reason is due to a reliance on up-market SUVs and the fact that the...
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Yesterday Toyota announced that due to financial reasons it will not be able to host the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix, a move which could jeopardize a visit by Formula 1 to Japan next year. The race was scheduled to be run at Fuji Speedway, which is owned by Toyota but given the current economic climate...
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According to a report in Japan’s Nikkei business paper, Toyota expects to sell as many as 30,000 plug-in Prius models annually once production begins in 2012. This would put the PHEV Prius on the market almost two years after General Motors has said its plug-in hybrid, the Volt, will be launched. The paper is also...
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Toyota will bring its iQ city car to North America by 2012, badged as a Scion model. Scion debuted a concept of the iQ (shown above) at the New York Auto Show this year. When it does launch, however, expect it to look significantly more tame. Currently the mini car (about the size of a...
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Toyota may share a version of its Prius hybrid with General Motors according to a recent report by Bloomberg. Sources say Toyota President Akio Toyoda and GM CEO Fritz Henderson will meet in August in Michigan to discuss the possibility of selling a version GM-badged Prius – or possibly using Toyota hybrid technology to build...
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Aston Martin has just released details of an upcoming concept car the luxury British automaker is working on… and it’s not at all what you might expect. Rather than a high-powered exotic, this new machine, called the Cygnet, is a tiny commuter car. The Cygnet is based on the Toyota iQ and while it sounds...
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Thanks to Lequios, you can do more for the environment once you’re dead than just become fertilizer for pushing up daisies. The Japanese hearse manufacturer is designing a hearse based on the 2010 Toyota Prius, meaning your last trip in a car can be an environmentally-responsible one. And you thought saving the planet for future...
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One of the last things Shoichiro Toyoda did as honorary chairman at Toyota Motor Corp., was to assemble all of the company’s executives and give them a tongue lashing. Toyoda even called out president Katsuaki Watanabe and blamed him, as well as those other executives in charge of the Japanese automaker, for leaving behind the...
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The Toyobaru, in case you haven’t heard, is a secret car that, as the name would suggest, is being built as a joint project by Toyota and Subaru. Code named the 086A, the possibility that the two Japanese automakers might actually build the thing sounds like a dream – and yet the rumors about it...
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Forget the Fusion and Avenger, the 2010 Ford and Dodge NASCAR racers will be mean street machines and real pony cars. That’s right, the Mustang and Challenger. Both cars are expected to be closer to stock than any car in recent history, but that’ s not saying much. The move was made by the NASCAR...
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While Toyota’s sales may be suffering as a whole, sales of the all-new 2010 Prius are well above expectations. In fact, the Japanese automaker is having trouble keeping up with demand – something which may result in lengthy waiting lists for the third-generation of Toyota’s successful hybrid. At the two facilities where the Prius is...
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Toyota has finally made the decision to stop producing the Solara Convertible. It’s not likely to be missed. The Coupe model was discontinued last summer (in case you hadn’t noticed), but Toyota decided to keep up convertible production as there were no other drop-top models in the entire company’s vehicle lineup. A few months later...
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The 2010 model lineup for the soon-to-be-terminated Pontiac brand will consist of just one model – the Vibe. Recently GM interim CEO Fritz Henderson reiterated the company’s position that the G8 would not carry on as either a Buick, Chevy or Cadillac. The G3 and G5 will also cease production this year, while the G6...
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Toyota appears to be readying a convertible version of the iQ minicar that is currently on sale in Japan and Europe. The report comes from Japan’s Best Car magazine, which suggests much of the basics will be kept including a 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine that makes 99hp and 92 ft-lbs of torque. Fuel-economy for this engine...
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Toyota has announced that it will lease 500 plug-in hybrid-electric Prius models starting this year. These will be the first plug-in version of the Prius on the road and will feature new lithium-ion battery packs, which hold more energy than the conventional nickel-metal hydride batteries used in other hybrid systems. Of the 500 vehicles, 200...
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The all-new Toyota Prius was the most popular selling car in Japan for the month of May, according to numbers just released by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association. In total, Toyota sold 10,915 Prius models to take the top sales spot, which was held last month by rival Honda Motor Co. and its new Insight...
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Car sales for the month of May appear to show a certain level of recovery – at least for U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors. Ford posted a loss of 28.5 percent, its best result since July of 2008. As for GM, it declined “just” 29 percent marking its best monthly performance since September. In...
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Just days after President Obama proposed new legislation that would see fleet fuel-economy standards rise considerably in the U.S., Subaru has said it will explore the possibility of bringing a hybrid to market in order to reduce its fleet average. Ikuo Mori, the CEO of Subaru’s parent company Fuji Heavy Industries told a group of...
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The new 2010 Toyota Prius isn’t about to let the Honda Insight take over in the hybrid segment and strong initial sales show the Toyota model will be another big success for Japan’s largest automaker. Japanese business magazine Nikkei is reporting that Toyota has already accepted 75,000 orders for the new Prius. This news comes...
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A day after GM posted yet another staggering quarterly loss, Toyota has released that it expects to lose $8.6 billion during this fiscal year. The loss was mostly driven by Toyota’s Q4 results, which just came in at negative $6.9 billion. This is the first annual operating loss Toyota has ever posted and even more...
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