I'm no longer going to express any shock that my island city continues to provide a seemingly inexhaustible supply of street-parked vintage cars and trucks; we got to 150 Down On The Street posts late last year, we're up to 200 as of today, and I've got enough photos in the can to get us to 250, no sweat.  read more »

WASHINGTON -- The insurance industry named dozens of new cars and trucks, led by Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo subsidiary, to its annual list of the safest vehicles Tuesday, helped by the increased use of anti-rollover technology.

Ford and Volvo had 16 vehicles in the 2009 model year on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's list of the safest new cars, followed by Honda Motor Co. with 13 vehicles.

Seventy-two cars, trucks and SUVs received the top safety pick designation for 2009, more than double the number of vehicles in the 2008 model year and three times the number in 2007.

"The sheer number of this year's winners indicates that automakers have made huge strides to improve crash protection," said Institute president Adrian Lund.  read more »

You may have already heard this, but BMW's twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter engine took home the International Engine of the Year award for 2008. If you've experienced this powertrain you know that title is well and properly earned, as the 3.0-liter's combination of horsepower, torque and even fuel efficiency make it one of the best engines in history. But that got me thinking: What are the best engines in the history of the automobile?  read more »

In case anyone thought Toyota was taking General Motors frequent proclamations that it will be first to market with a plug-n hybrid vehicle lightly, the automakers CEO, Katsuaki Watanabe, laid down a series of announcements Sunday night at the North American International Auto Show, clean diesels and plug-ins, hybrids and clean diesels that should go a long way toward maintaining its advantage over General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in green image polishing. Watanabe, whose company has been downplaying the significance of plug-ins (which are cars that can riun a distance on electric power alone and then either be recharged by a running gas engine that kicks in or by plugging the car into an household outlet) said Toyota will have an lithium-ion battery powered plug in test fleets by 2010, the same time-frame that GM has said it will deliver its first Chevy Volt plug-in cars to customers. Further, the Toyota CEO said it will have a clean-diesel engine available in the Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV by 2009, and two new hybrid-only modelsone for its Toyota showrooms to sell alongside the Prius and one for Lexus showrooms. Lexus now sells hybrid versions of its RX SUV and LS sedan, but this will be the first hybrid-only model for the luxury brand. Watanabe said Toyota will sell one million gas-electric hybrids by 2011 or 2012, and meet the U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standard of 35 mpg for its fleet in advance of the 2020 deadline. General Motors has tried to seize a PR advantage since last years NAIAS in Detroit when it showed the Volt plug-in concept. The promise of the Volt is that it will get around 40 miles on an electric charge. Toyota, Honda and Ford have all said that the lithium-ion battery technology will not be ready by GMs 2010 time-frame. Few believe GM can deliver the car with a capable battery that will be small enough and cheap enough to meet Lutzs goal of a car that will cost below $30,000. Indeed, Lutz himself recently told BusinesWeek that delivering a car that will cost $30,000 or under without losing money on each one may not happen. Besides adding two more hybrids, Toyota is out to best Detroit in one area thata it has traditionally led: pickup trucks. Ford and GM have also talked about putting clean diesel engines in their half-ton light duty pickups, which will increase fuel economy of the trucks by around 30%. If Toyota delivers in 2009, it will be ahead of all three Detroit carmakers. Talking to both Lutz and GM CEO Rick Wagoner after Toyota's announcement, though, indicates to me, though, that that Toyota in the next few months is going to announce diesel in light-duty Silverados in 2009 as well.  read more »

According to KGP, this is a prototype of the 2010 Toyota Sienna . Were actually really thankful for this information, because we don't know much about the Sienna except that its Toyota's long-running entry in the minivan market and that it's scheduled to be replaced with an equally unexciting but slightly different model. Actually, well just let you read KGPs analysis for the full story on the upcoming people-hauler. Hit the jump for the full story. We caught this disguised Toyota Sienna prototype testing in the desert. The prototype appears to utilize most of the current Sienna's bodywork, so we initially thought it was facelift of the current Sienna. But there are some very rough sections which seems to point to this as a mule for the next-generation Sienna. Judging from the construction and packaging of this prototype, it would appear that Toyota product planners are content to stay with a package similar to the current Sienna, with all of its traditional minivan cues. While many other automakers are bailing from the minivan product segment with line-blurring crossovers, it looks as if Toyota will stand toe-to- toe with Honda and Chrysler to slug it out for the attention of soccer moms everywhere. Given the minimal changes visible to overall architecture of this mule, our best sense is that Toyota may be sticking with the current Sienna's platform, albeit with significant updates, in order to save costs.  read more »

While we saw the Top 50 finishers of the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Thunderhill last month, we didn't get to see the bulk of the photographs I shot, nor did we see a lot of the stuff sent in by members of the various teams. That's because my laptop's hard drive took a dive during the race and I lost the best stuff... but now the sick Maxtor has yielded up its contents and we're ready to take a look at the long-awaited ber Gallery. Many thanks to all the team members who have been so patient about this; you know who you are! We're going to sort the teams by car number; everyone who managed to get a car out on the track should be here. We've tried to provide links to team-supplied images and video whenever possible. Enjoy!  read more »

My parents were in the market for a new minivan to replace their aging Nissan Maxima. One of the models they were considering was a Toyota Sienna. After going through the details on the company Web site, it looked like a Sienna XLE would be perfect. You could add leather, a sunroof, andaccording to the Toyotaa memory driver's seat. That memory seat is important to my parents; my mom is a foot shorter than my dad, and they love having the feature on their 1999 Chrysler Town and Country Limited. Configuring the Sienna in this way works out to be considerably cheaper than buying a $36,000 Sienna Limited. Honda forces you into a $40,000 Odyssey Touring to get the memory seat, and Chrysler requires a Town and Country Limited that stickers at $37,000 (with a sunroof to equal the configuration).  read more »

Detroit's automakers and their top Japanese rivals all suffered March sales declines in a market that sank to its weakest level since 2005 as the dual impact of a slowing economy and a credit crunch kept consumers away from showrooms.

The weaker-than-anticipated sales led some auto executives to caution that demand might fall further before it starts to recover.

"I'd like to be able to tell you that the worst is behind us, but I can't give you that assurance," said Jim Farley, global sales chief at Ford Motor Co. "Our sense is, the second quarter may be the most difficult of the year."  read more »