Cars Blog

Coming to the end of your car lease? Ann Carrns of the Bucks blog at the New York Times has an idea:
The recent rise in used-car prices may provide a lucrative opportunity for those with leases to come out ahead of the game.
That’s because dealers set a so-called residual price when they lease a car –

This week J.D. Power today released the 2011 edition of its annual Initial Quality Study, and the results look good for the auto industry as a whole. The main metric the study tracks, problems per 100 vehicles after 90 days of ownership, improved industry-wide, falling from an average of 109 to 107 (lower is better).
Japanese

It looks like Toyota’s rollout of a wagon version of its popular Prius hybrid car could be accompanied by some buyer confusion, thanks to a naming snafu. From James Healey at USA Today:
Toyota is expanding its Prius hybrid brand into a family, and the first addition is the Prius v, essentially a Prius wagon. That’s

At some point in nearly every conversation I’ve had about the bailout of the American auto industry, someone brings up the idea that many American cars “are made in Mexico anyway.”  While that’s an exaggeration, there’s a perception — well-founded in some cases — that U.S. car companies appeal to the patriotism of Americans to

Sometimes in the car-buying process, you have to decide whether to keep looking for the perfect car, or go ahead and settle down with the best option available. If you’re having a particularly tough time finding that ideal auto right now, you’re not alone. Conditions on both the supply and demand ends of the auto market

It’s long been an article of faith among SUV haters that any safety advantage they had over cars was canceled out by their tendency to flip over at the drop of a hat. That may once have been true, but a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that electronic stability control,

A couple of troubling stories about traffic fatalities involving police officers illustrate how much more police departments could be doing to protect officers and set a better example on safety for U.S. drivers.
The first one is a story from Pat Beall of the Palm Beach Post regarding the venerable Ford Crown Victoria cars that many

It’s not your imagination; a lot of your fellow drivers are dangerously unqualified to drive their cars.
This year’s edition of the National Drivers Test sponsored by auto insurance provider GMAC Insurance shows a lot of U.S. drivers lack the basic knowledge needed to operate a car safely. From the press release:
Results revealed that 1 in

Last week the EPA released the next version of the gas mileage label displayed in the window of every new car. The new label will feature more detailed information on fuel costs, emissions and other factors that drivers often take into account when making car-buying decisions, including:

Fuel savings or additional fuel cost over five years

I guess buying a car with a built-in doctor is one way to control health care costs.
Eric Taub of the New York Times writes Ford is working on a health care add-on for its Sync in-car electronics system:
Working with WellDoc, a startup developer of software-based health management tools, Ford has created a prototype system that