Cars Blog

I got a ton of great comments on the my post about new cars vs. used cars, so I’ll add a little more fuel to the fire. Michelle Krebs over at Auto Observer posits that with used car prices rising fast and many new-car incentives still inflated thanks to the decrepit economy, buying a new

This week Tesla Motors, which produces the all-electric Tesla Roadster and has plans to produce a full line of all-electric cars, raised a cool $226 million through an IPO. There were doubts in the media about whether the IPO, which was the first for a U.S. automaker in 54 years, would actually raise much money,

Apparently women are the more practical sex when it comes to buying cars. This month new car pricing site TrueCar.com released the results of a survey of car registrations broken down by whether the owner was male or female. The brands that had the lowest percentage of female registrants were high-priced, high-performance brands:
There were six

Toyota gave word recently that they’re planning on putting a hydrogen-powered car into production by 2015. The company’s goal is to price the car at $50,000.
That seems like a lot when you look at zero-emissions vehicles like the Nissan LEAF, which is projected to sell for around $25,000 after government rebates. And it’s kind of

The financial regulation bill nearing a final vote contains a big win for auto dealers. Thanks to hard lobbying and powerful friends in Congress, your next auto loan probably won’t be regulated by the soon-to-be-established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Why did they seek the exemption and instead seek to continue being monitored by the Federal Trade

Remember subprime? The billions of dollars worth of credit card, mortgage and auto loan debt that turned out to be completely toxic? Well it looks like General Motors is pushing to get back into subprime and party like it’s 2006.
CBS News has a story this week on how General Motors is negotiating with banks to

Looks like your next auto loan may not be vetted by the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, or CFPA, being cooked up in Washington. The excellent Annie Lowrey over at The Washington Independent reports today that the dealer exemption made it into the conference report, the document created by negotiations between the House and the Senate: 
President

This week Cadillac became the latest luxury automaker to announce plans to offer free scheduled maintenance on 2011 models for the first four years or 50,000 miles of ownership. This idea isn’t new; Audi and Mercedes Benz have offered free maintenance on their cars in past years and BMW, Volvo and Jaguar are currently offering

Last week product research firm J.D. Power released some surprising news: Not only did the initial quality of U.S. cars increase less than the usual 3 percent, but the lackluster performance overall was attributed to Japanese automakers, particularly Toyota.
J.D. Power uses a simple formula to measure a car’s initial quality — it divides the number

Writing about the new Ford Explorer got me wondering about how I became so shamefully biased toward hatchbacks and station wagons over SUVs.
Part of it, I’m sure, is that one side of my family, including my mom, is Swedish. Euros are completely head-over-heals in love with hatchback cars and station wagons. In Europe, “estates,” as