Takata to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

Japan’s Takata, maker of defective air bags that have been linked to 11 U.S. deaths, could settle criminal charges with the U.S. Department of Justice before the Obama administration leaves office next month. Part of a settlement would include Takata pleading guilty to criminal misconduct. The Justice Department has investigated whether Takata hid information from safety regulators and issued misleading statements about the dangers posed by the air bags. Any deal would likely include a monitor to ensure Takata’s compliance with the agreement.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported earlier on Wednesday that a settlement could require Takata to pay as much as $1 billion and be reached as early as January. The precise amount Takata pays could be considerably less than $1 billion and be paid over several years. Both Takata and the DoJ declined to comment. Takata air bag inflators have been linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide, including the 11 U.S. deaths. The inflators can explode with excessive force and send metal shrapnel inside cars and trucks. There is no guarantee the talks will wrap up by Jan. 20, when Obama leaves office. Read more 

Lamborghini claims Urus SUV will be its only plug-in hybrid

The Italian sports car maker Lamborghini has confirmed that its high-riding SUV – the first off-roader to wear the Raging Bull logo since the LM002 of the 1980s – will be the company’s first foray into electric propulsion with a plug-in hybrid variant as part of the model range. Lamborghini’s research and development chief, Maurizio Regianni, said that the Urus would be the only Lamborghini to feature hybrid technology in the foreseeable future, leaving its Huracan and Aventador sportscars to be powered by naturally-aspirated V10 and V12 engines respectively.

Regianni also claims that the design of the Urus is pure Lamborghini. It has evolved considerably since the 2015 concept and the finished car is much better inside and out. Turbocharging will be “completely mandatory” for the Urus, because as an SUV it needs huge torque. The car be powered by the same twin-turbo 4.0-litre petrol V8 as the Audi RS6/ RS7 which produces up to 445kW and 750Nm. Final details of the hybrid system, its outputs, and electric range are still unknown at this point in time, but a pre-production Urus is expected to be revealed at the 2017 Geneva motor show in March ahead of the new model’s 2018 production debut. Read more

The most disappointing cars in 2016

The most disappointing cars in 2016: This year is almost gone, and we think it's time to make some calculations. First of all, it's not a secret that sedans almost died in 2016, while trucks and SUVs were at the sales peak. Here's a list of the most unlucky cars in 2016.

Acura RLX and ILX- Apparently, Acura is really only good at selling crossovers these days. The Japanese luxury brand will sell around 50,000 units of the MDX and RDX in 2016, which is a decent showing, but sales go south quickly when you look at the rest of the lineup.

Acura’s best-selling sedan is the TLX, which is the brand’s mid-level model. The ILX serves as Acura’s entry point, and that model is on pace to deliver a 19-percent drop versus the previous year. Things are even worse for the flagship RLX. Acura will be lucky to sell 1,500 RLX sedans in 2016, which is a massive 37-percent year-over-year decline.

Read more

Toyota's goal is to sell more hybrid cars by the end of decade

Toyota's goal is to sell more hybrid cars by the end of decade: Not long ago the region which was taken by Toyota Motor Corp. was composed of more than half diesel cars, and now it got changed by the car brand. In more than a year Toyota is ready to report a leap in hybrid vehicle sales for this year.

Toyota's goal right now is to enlarge its hybrid sales, until they reach the half of its worldwide sales, until the end of decade.Toyota had decided a few years ago to avoid taking on diesel cars in Europe. While demand for the Prius was increasing in the U.S. and other markets, it was barely being noticed in Europe. Its strategy was based on avoiding a battle over diesel vehicles versus hybrids, and to not pressure Toyota dealers to sell hybrids.

Ford, FCA, GM close production plants

While U.S. auto sales are likely to set a record before 2016 draws to a close as it beats last year’s mark of 17.5 million new cars and trucks, 2017 probably won’t fare as well. In fact, it may surprise many people as Ford, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and General Motors are already closing production plants. 

Although last year’s record will be broken, there’s already a decrease in sales this December and forecasts say that the trend will continue throughout 2017. Apparently the three largest manufacturers in the country, Ford, General Motors and FCA, are already getting ready for this by closing production plants over recent months. This is also due to excessive inventory. The forecast is not as dramatic as it seems, but the stock of vehicles is starting to accumulate, which is expected to give way to succulent discounts in the market. Continue reading here

The car brands that do not have a crossover

We guess you know that there are car brands that do not have crossovers in their portfolios. Out of 44 major brands sold in the U.S., just some of them lack a crossover or SUV of some kind. Just to make the things clear, we’d like to add that this is the list of car brands that have no current crossover model and no public plans to produce one.

Aston Martin doesn’t have a crossover – yet. The low-volume automaker has shown a crossover-y concept – the lifted, all-wheel-drive DBX coupe – and rumor has it something similar will see production. But it isn’t confirmed and therefore doesn’t count for our purposes. The related Lagonda brand has also shown a concept SUV, so it’s probably only a matter of time.

Bugatti only makes one model at a time, and it’s supposed to go really fast. Bugatti’s sister brand Bentley has the fastest SUV right now, but it’s nowhere near Bugatti speeds. Those are tough to accomplish with the less-than-ideal aerodynamics and packaging of a crossover. So don’t hold your breath. Continue reading here

Santa switched to Ferrari Enzo

Santa switched to Ferrari Enzo: When you imagine Santa Klaus what first comes in your mind? Isn't it an old fat man in red that visits every house, brings presents to children, and then leaves in a sleigh with flying reindeer?

I guess we all have formed in our minds a common look of Santa, but what it things stay a bit different? Just imagine for a while that Santa is man just like us, but a lot more richer, and drives around in a Ferrari Enzo.

Read more

After all, a record year for the car market is still possible

After all, a record year for the car market is still possible: It looks like 2016 U.S. auto sales may set a new record after all, by the thinnest of margins. On Wednesday, Jan 4. automakers will finally reveal their December auto sales and the sales for the full year.

Specialists predicted 2016 sales would fall short of last year’s record by about 0.1 percent. Either way, call it flat, statistically. Still, that’s better than forecasters expected a few months ago. Analysts began 2016 with high hopes for another record, but toned down their expectations halfway into the year, because of cooler consumer demand and rising sticker prices.

Read more

Researchers map rough road to reducing vehicle weight

Plastics have seen increased opportunities to get onto North American-made cars and trucks as automakers work to improve their fleets’ fuel economy. But the real growth lies ahead, when the need to reduce mass from today’s cars climbs to 15 percent and higher.

In a new study, the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor surveyed exactly what went into 44 different 2015 model year cars, then asked what materials carmakers would turn to if they need to cut 5 percent, 10 percent and finally 15 percent of the weight out of key parts. Jay Baron, CEO of the research group, claims that they cannot get to a 15 percent lighter weight car without getting very aggressive with composites. The study, conducted with support from nine automakers, was intended to get deep inside individual parts on real cars currently on the road. The automakers, who provided detailed information on their parts on the condition that CAR not disclose the vehicles used in the study, is intended to show what the industry must do to improve vehicle weight without reducing safety or performance. Read more

The Ford Bronco is coming back!

The hotly anticipated return of Ford’s bush-whacking throwback Bronco off-roader is on, according to the chairman of the union local that will build it at Ford’s Wayne, Michigan assembly plant. The Bronco started life in 1966 as a Jeep-like compact 4×4, but bloated in 1978 into the fat, soft boulevard cruiser made infamous in O.J. Simpson’s televised highway pursuit by police. 

Now, Ford looks poised to return Bronco to its roots with a machine more aligned with the truck’s roots. Consider Bronco an automotive rock star who has gotten clean, lost the weight and is preparing to tour with fresh material that harkens back to that breakthrough first album. Outing the facts about Bronco is a silver lining to the black cloud of this year’s presidential election, in which Republican candidate Donald Trump criticized Ford for its plans to shift production of its Focus compact car to Mexico. Read more

Top 10 most popular carmakers on Google in 2016

Top 10 most popular carmakers on Google in 2016: Google has become as common to us as Xerox, we are used to look through google for everything, movies, TV shows, dictionaries, explanations to different things and even look for answers on the hardest questions we have. Here are the top 10 most popular automakers on Google.

Honda

Honda beat out every other automaker to claim the Google crown in 2016. The Civic was all-new for 2016 and was the most popular model on Google.

Sedan sales are slowly dying

Sedan sales are slowly dying: Compact SUVs this year were able to outsold the sedans in US, which might be a big step for them, but for sedans it means they are not popular anymore, and the sedans sales decreased a lot.

In 2015, for the first time ever, compact SUVs outsold sedans in the U.S. Consumers continued to ditch sedans for SUVs this year. For example, while still the best-selling sedan in the U.S., sales of the Toyota Camry dropped ten percent in 2016. Sales of other formerly popular sedans plummeted even further. Gas prices remain low, and SUVs are a lot more fuel efficient than they used to be

Read more

2016 – another big year for the U.S. auto industry?

Yes, this year will go down as another big year for the U.S. auto industry. The question is whether it will go down as another record year. Following a strong November showing, total U.S. sales through 11 months this year have surpassed those through the same point in 2015, which went down as the strongest sales year on record. But the difference is razor-thin – just 6,418 units. 

J.D. Power and LMC Automotive, in a forecast released Thursday, said 2016 should reach 17.5 million vehicles sold, breaking 2015’s annual sales record by only about 26,000 units. That would mark a seventh straight year of increases. The last time that happened was more than a century ago, in a streak spurred by Ford’s Model T. Elevated inventories, a slow model-year transition and record incentive levels point to the challenges the industry will face in 2017. Going forward, automakers must maintain production and pricing discipline to achieve profitability, which is easier said than done. Read more

The ultra-rare Lamborghini Veneno arrives in London for Christmas!

Central London is a hot spot with all sorts of super and hyper cars. So it takes something truly special to cause a commotion. The cause of this peaceful unrest was the imposing presence of a Lamborghini Veneno, brought to London for the first time by luxury dealer group H.R. Owen for displaying in its Lamborghini London showroom.

Originally launched in 2013, the Lamborghini Veneno Coupe was created as a tribute to the brand’s 50th anniversary, with the company only producing three customer cars, priced at £3.6 million each. It was offered in a choice of green, white and red body finishes, the colours of the Italian flag. The impressive supercar is based on the Aventador but the bodywork is all bespoke, featuring one of the most extreme aero agendas ever to be seen on a road-legal car. The car was previously been on public display at the Lamborghini Museum in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy. Read more

Picanto is the first Kia city car to debut in 2017

Picanto is the first Kia city car to debut in 2017:
Kia Motors promised us the automaker will reveal new cool models in the next year, and as December ends 2017 gets closer and closer, which means it's a perfect time to unveal at least a teaser, which will help us realize what to expect for.

Kia GT sports car will be the first one to be revealed in 2017, but the sports car won't be the only one because after this one will come the new city car – the 2018 Kia Picanto. The Picanto was Korean's car maker best-seller around the world, that is why we have big expectations.

Read more

Green car sales pass half a million in U.S.

Green car sales pass half a million in U.S.: According to the new electric vehicle charger operator report, more than 500,000 electric cars have been sold in the United States. Between November 2015 and November 2016 were sold 30,000 plug-in hybrid or battery-powered electric vehicles.

California, home of Silicon Valley and Tesla, has the highest number of electric vehicles in operation, ahead of Georgia, Washington, Florida and Texas. Tesla received 276,000 pre-orders for the “mass-market” Model 3 within two days of it going on sale in April, making it the most popular electric car ever produced

Read more

Autoliv claims seat belt, airbags may lead to 400,000 vehicle recalls

Automakers may recall as many as 400,000 vehicles that have Autoliv Inc. seat belt and airbag parts worldwide, the Swedish auto safety parts maker said on Friday. No crashes or injuries have been reported in the two separate issues Autoliv reported to U.S. safety regulators and the costs of the potential recalls will not be material to Autoliv earnings, company spokesman Thomas Jonsson said.

Autoliv said there are possible glitches in its widely used seat belt pretensioners, which work to tighten seat belts to better secure a driver or passenger, and a product that initiates the process of inflating an airbag. One of the two Autoliv filings with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is for seat belt parts in about 267,000 vehicles. In the event of a crash, a small part called a micro gas generator used in seat belts pretensioners could detach and “may be a projectile within the vehicle cabin,” the NHTSA filing shows. Read more

The worst cars you drove in 2016

Some people say that most cars have their merits. You may agree or disagree, but there is a certain number of cars we are not sure about. The statement “there are no bad cars anymore,” is largely true, but that doesn’t mean we love everything we get behind the wheel of. 

The 2017 Nissan Sentra SR Turbo encapsulates all the things that used to make compact segment unappealing. Every aspect of the car seems adequate at best, and phoned-in at worst. The interior brings back “economy” as an adjective for cheap, emphasized by a chintzy handbrake lever and an adjustable steering wheel that wants to drop into your lap whenever you try to adjust it. The second car we dislike is the 2016 Buick Cascada. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the car – and we’ve pointed out, few vehicles today are truly and intrinsically flawed. This one just commits the sin of being boring. Read more

5 Cars Santa Klaus Could Switch To

5 Cars Santa Klaus Could Switch To: What if Santa would choose something modern to drive around our houses, and bring our children the presents they dreamed about the whole year? Well, in case he's bored of his flying reindeers, and would switch to cars what would he choose? We've got a few options for you here.

DeLorean DMC-12- The advantages of the DeLorean are obvious if we take it in Back to the Future II spec, complete with garbage-fuelled flux capacitor and the ability to fly. Santa might not be able to take many presents in any one trip, but with the benefit of time travel and anti-gravity technology he’ll be able to get the job done in literally no time. Or so it would seem to the rest of us. He’d just better hope that his elves have been building up plenty of waste, because to make that many temporal jumps he’s going to need a lot of power.

Read more

2017 Is gonna be the year of challenges for US automakers

2017 Is gonna be the year of challenges for US automakers: Automakers are on pace to build more new cars and light trucks in 2016 than in any other year, but efforts to reduce bloated inventories next year could lead to North America's first production decline since the Great Recession.

Record car sales paces in the U.S., Canada and Mexico have kept plants busy. About 15 North American plants reportedly were running overtime through last week, nearly four times as many as the same period a year ago. Most of those plants build trucks. But automakers are already preparing for a production reckoning in 2017. Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Fiat Chrysler last week announced downtime beyond the traditional year-end break at multiple plants. GM also said it plans to lay off nearly 3,300 workers in January and March as it eliminates production shifts at three car factories in Michigan and Ohio.

Read more

EPA denies automakers' request for more time on fuel economy review

The EPA yesterday told an automaker lobbyist group that it will not extend the deadline for a review of strict fuel economy standards through the 2025 vehicle model year, indicating the agency will push ahead with a plan to make the rules final before the Obama administration leaves office Jan. 20.

Acting EPA Assistant Administrator Janet McCabe informed the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes most major automakers in the U.S. market. The auto manufacturers group had also requested that the EPA withdraw its plans to finalize the new standards. The denial of the auto group’s requests had been expected. Extending the deadline could have allowed President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, to weigh in on the rule for 2022-25 vehicles. Pruitt is an avowed critic of President Barack Obama’s efforts to curb climate change by regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Read more

EPA denies automakers' request for more time on fuel economy review

EPA denies automakers' request for more time on fuel economy review: The auto manufacturers group had also requested that the EPA withdraw its plans to finalize the new standards.

The luxurious-sporty Audi Q8 to debut at Detroit Auto Show

The luxurious-sporty Audi Q8 to debut at Detroit Auto Show: The rumors about the new Audi Q8 were flying around since May, and we were expecting for it since then, but there was no more information about it. And now, finally at Detroit Auto Show the luxurious sporty will get revealed.

To be clear, we must expect the standard treatment for thinly-disguised production cars like giant wheels and impossibly-small side mirrors. According to a leaked document from earlier this year, the production Q8 comes sometime in 2018. Like most teasers for auto-show reveals, this one only gives us a rough idea of what the car will look like. In this case, that's big, bold, and imposing. Or, as the press release states: The octagonal Singleframe is considerably wider than that in Audi's current production Q models. Enhancing the forward positioned stance, is dynamic three-dimensional sculpting. We put the quote there to prove you can't make this stuff up.

Read more

5 rules for those who want to stay safe in winter driving

It’s not a secret that each and every winter, people are injured or killed because they are unprepared or overconfident on snowy, icy roads. With a winter storm blanketing the Midwest, drivers could use some reminders on how to drive properly in the snow. These rules for driving safely in winter weather are not particularly difficult to follow but some drivers do not pay attention to them. May be you are not a novice driver but keeping some safety tips fresh in your mind can keep you on the road and in control.

One of the most important things to remember is making sure you and your vehicle are properly equipped before you leave. If you own a new BMW, Mercedes-Benz or Audi, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a quick check of your vehicle before you hit the road. Make sure that your car has ample antifreeze, the windshield is clean and you have plenty of windshield washer fluid, the headlights are clean and in working order and the tires have tread and are properly inflated. We are always in a hurry but driving too quickly is the main cause of accidents in winter conditions. Read more 

U.S. auto sales will probably decline slightly for December

U.S. auto sales will probably decline slightly for December:
As consumers keep snubbing sedans despite record consumer discounts, the U.S. auto sales will probably decline slightly for December. Specialists forecast manufacturers' discounts offered to close sales would hit a record high of more than $4,000 per vehicle in December. 

The consultancies estimated sales at 17.5 million vehicles on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis this month, flat with a year ago. Detroit automakers are moving to cut production of certain vehicles, particularly small and mid-sized sedans, as they concede that the market is hitting a plateau where the cost of pushing additional sales in of certain cars outweighs the potential profit.General Motors Co. plans to lay off 3,300 workers indefinitely at three U.S. car factories.

Read more

Win a vacation with Repokar

Eye Candy: the new Lamborghini Aventador Miura Homage

From the eye-popping, magnificent, utterly gorgeous Southern France comes to this eye-candylicious gallery featuring one of the sexiest and rarest new Lambos. The subject of this superb photoshoot is the special and limited edition Lamborghini Aventador Miura Homage,built as a tribute to the legendary 60’s and 70’s super car.

Only 50 units will be produced, marking the 50th anniversary of the production of the Miura,Lamborghini Aventador Miura Homage is a very rare sight. The show piece Lamborghinirevealed when introducing the limited edition featured the black and gold paint Miura paintscheme, and while that was cool, it was nowhere near as cool as the one featured here with a rich black paint job complementing the vintage-inspired golden accents. Read more