Now Is the Time to Get Yourself a Midsize Sedan on a Dirt Cheap Lease Deal
“Stepping up to a midsize is basically a no-brainer for buyers at this point,” CarsDirect’s senior price analyst Alex Bernstein tells TTAC. With demand for midsize sedans drying up, deals on aging...
View ArticleThe 2018 Toyota Camry Has the Most Standard Horsepower in America’s Midsize...
The all-new 2018 Toyota Camry’s new 2.5-liter four-cylinder base engine generates 203 horsepower in the entry-level model, 206 horsepower in the 2018 Camry XSE. This means the eighth-generation Camry...
View ArticleTemporary Shutdowns Insufficient; GM Eliminates Shift at Chevrolet Malibu’s...
In September 2017, General Motors will be forced to lay off a large number of workers at its Kansas City, Kansas assembly plant where the Chevrolet Malibu is built. Only two days ago we learned General...
View Article2018 Toyota Camry Prices and Fuel Economy Ratings – More Money, More Power,...
The 2018 Toyota Camry will be priced from $24,380, including delivery, when it goes on sale this summer — a $425 increase compared with the base 2017 Camry. Riding on an evolution of the Prius and...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Deathwatch #13: 2017’s Grim First-half 198,000-unit Loss
Midsize car sales volume decreased by nearly 200,000 units in the United States during the first-half of 2017. Year-over-year, that 18-percent decline was caused by virtually every member of America’s...
View ArticleQOTD: Which Honda Accord Is The Best Honda Accord?
Against its normal methodology, Honda is already leaking details regarding the all-new 2018 Accord, the tenth-generation of Honda’s venerable midsize car. With continued manual transmission...
View ArticleWant a Truly Japanese 2018 Toyota Camry? Examine VINs Closely for the Next...
As all-new 2018 Toyota Camrys begin to trickle into Toyota’s U.S. dealers over the coming weeks, take a close look at the VIN. It’s viewable through the windshield on the driver’s side. See that first...
View ArticleWe Know Crossovers Are Killing Midsize Sedans, but Now Compact Cars Are...
Through the first-half of 2017, midsize car sales plunged 18 percent as nearly every nameplate in the category suffered from declining sales. Year-over-year, sales of the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord,...
View ArticleToyota Sees All Upside for 2018 Camry If Rivals Decide to Focus Purely on SUVs
As Toyota watches its RAV4 quickly climb sales charts, the Japanese behemoth estimates it will sell fewer copies of its new-for-2018 eighth-generation Camry than it has in six years. According to...
View ArticleMore Confirmation: The Next Buick Regal GS Has A V6 Engine – You Remember...
Two things leak more than the bathroom faucet at your Great Aunt Martha’s cottage in Saugatuck. The White House. And Buick. It seemed fairly clear three months ago that something was afoot when GM...
View ArticleWhy Did Honda De-tune the Civic Type R’s 2.0T for 2018 Honda Accord Duty?
Launched in mid-June 2017, the 2017 Honda Civic Type R is the first Honda-brand Type R product ever sold in the United States. And after generations of Honda enthusiasts tolerated relatively...
View Article2018 Hyundai Sonata Will Not Kill the Crossover – Hyundai Keeps Its Hopes Humble
Launched for the 2015 model year, the seventh Hyundai Sonata was not the avant-garde successor to the 2011-2014 Sonata for which many hoped. The new Sonata, while objectively better in virtually every...
View ArticleFive Island Beaches, One 2017 Ford Fusion Energi – Can It Be Done on EV Power...
The planning session was brief. At TTAC’s virtual HQ, also known as TTAC Slack, Steph Willems, Corey Lewis, and Adam Tonge were busy formulating an idea. Fascinated by the Cain family’s recent move to...
View Article2018 Honda Accord Interior Designers Believe Proximity Makes The Elbows Grow...
The 2018 Honda Accord is not a refresh. It’s not a refurbished, reconditioned revamp. The 2018 Honda Accord is very much a new car, a 10th-generation follow-up to the five-year, 2013-2017 run of the...
View Article2018 Honda Accord Designer: “Accord Is an American Car”
The 2018 Honda Accord will be assembled in Marysville, Ohio. The overwhelming majority of its sales will occur in the United States of America. Its dimensions, inside and out, suit the U.S. market. In...
View ArticleHyundai Acknowledges Seventh-Generation 2015-2017 Sonata “Didn’t Turn Heads”
After the forgotten third-generation car, the odd and bulbous fourth-generation car, and the dull fifth-generation car, the sixth Hyundai Sonata was unveiled at the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show. It was...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Deathwatch #14: July 2017 Sales Plunge by a Fifth, Everybody...
Every midsize car on sale in the United States reported declining year-over-year volume in July 2017. Every car except the Dodge Avenger, which came back from the dead with 10 reported sales after a...
View ArticleAll of the New 2018 Toyota Camrys Sold in America in July Were Japan Imports
We learned early in July that many of the early 2018 Toyota Camrys available in Toyota’s U.S. showrooms wouldn’t be built in Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, assembly plant. Through June, not a single...
View ArticleQOTD: Does Any Car Do a Better (or Worse) Job of Looking Good and Bad Than...
Sometimes the little things make a big difference. Body color door handles, for example, can take a simple compact car from appearing fit for penalty box duty to appearing worthy of driveway placement....
View ArticleDon’t Be so Quick to Pull the Trigger on That 2018 Toyota Camry – 2017s Are...
The 2018 Toyota Camry is the first truly, completely, all-new Toyota Camry since 2002. Built on Toyota’s New Global Architecture, it’s stiffer, safer, and by all accounts, substantially better to drive...
View ArticleQOTD: Camry, Camry, on the Wall, Which Is the Greatest Toyota Camry of Them All?
The launch of the 2018 Toyota Camry in July 2017 marked the arrival of America’s eighth Camry. Near the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term, the first Camry — not the first Camry, but the first Camry...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Deathwatch #15: Toyota Camry Proves to Be a Killer In August 2017
The launch of the all-new 2018 Toyota Camry began in July 2017 and delivered a big boost to America’s best-selling midsize car in August 2017. As its competitors combined for a 12-percent loss valued...
View ArticleThat Powerful New Four-Cylinder 2018 Toyota Camry? It’s Not That Quick
Your excitement knows just cause. Upon reporting that the 2018 Toyota Camry would feature the American midsize segment’s most powerful base engine, the masses descended. We could see the hair standing...
View Article2018 Nissan Altima Prices Rise Slightly as Nissan Adds Equipment, Prepares a...
Bolstered in its fight against all-new editions of key rivals from Toyota and Honda with the standard fitment of automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning, the 2018 Nissan Altima’s...
View ArticleHonda Wanted 2018 Accord to Top Midsize Class in Fuel Economy – It Does No...
From a historical midsize perspective, the all-new 2018 Honda Accord is rather thrifty with the Earth’s decreasing supply of oil. It’s fuel efficient, in other words. Over the span of 10,000 highway...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Deathwatch #16: The Decline of the Midsize Class’s Middle Class
Ever more minor midsize players continued to see their share of America’s midsize sedan segment dwindle in September 2017. The cause: domination on the part of America’s two major midsize cars. The...
View ArticleIIHS Throws Another Hurdle at Automakers: The Passenger-side Small Overlap...
First, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety bagan irking the automotive industry by performing crash tests. Then it devised more. Eventually, the IIHS ratcheted the bar up to a previously unseen...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Deathwatch #17: Trouble In October 2017, Unless Your Name’s...
U.S. sales of midsize cars plunged 16 percent to fewer than 130,000 units in October 2017, the lowest-volume month for the midsize sedan category since the winter doldrums of January. For almost every...
View ArticleAAA Study: Depreciation Costs Rising Among Smaller Vehicles; Your Beautiful...
Not to hammer too obvious a point here, but the decreasing popularity of a certain car model, combined with increasing incentivization, can seriously influence that model’s depreciation. Ask Cadillac...
View ArticleVolkswagen’s Not Wasting Many Resources on the Next Passat
Maybe the writing’s on the wall for the midsize car; many would agree it is. And, perhaps Volkswagen feels this will be the last Passat. Whatever the motivation, the German automaker isn’t putting...
View ArticleBuy/Drive/Burn: Mediocrity Personified in Sedans of 1996
You’ve seen all of today’s contenders before on the roads, likely more times than you can count. Forgettable because of how middling they were, hundreds of thousands were sold. Which one would you...
View ArticleNothing Can Stop the Midsize Sedan Segment From Collapsing, Not Even a New...
“Can we stop the shrinking of the segment?” American Honda boss Jeff Conrad said when launching the 10th-gen Accord. “We think we can at least slow it down.” “When you get into next year and you look...
View ArticleMidsize Sedan Demand Is Falling Fast, so What Are Midsize Sedan Prices Doing?...
America’s appetite for intermediate sedans is disappearing, as the queasiness consumers feel when faced with the prospect of buying a family sedan seems to be settled only by the consumption of...
View ArticleQOTD: Best All-round Midsize Sedans in 2019?
Many sedans are due to fade away at the end of this year, replaced via a cadre of crossovers (as preferred by Middle America). To that end, we began a trio of sedan-focused QOTDs last week. First up...
View ArticleQOTD: Best All-round Midsize Luxury Sedans in 2020?
We continued the QOTD sedan series last week, with 2020’s best all-round small luxury sedans. Today we head up a size class and focus on luxurious midsizers. As you might expect, the field of...
View Article2020 Volkswagen Passat S Rental Review – Big and Basic
When your author’s 2019 Golf SportWagen (to be revealed soon) went into the shop for warranty work after just two weeks of ownership, the dealer provided a service loaner for a couple days (or four)....
View ArticleRare Rides: The Luxurious 1993 Mitsubishi Diamante Wagon
We featured the predecessor to Mitsubishi’s American flagship last year — a little Sigma sedan that happened to one of the cheapest Rare Rides ever shown. Today we take a look at the car that came...
View ArticleRare Rides: A 1979 Volvo 242 GT, Ready for Sports Driving
Today’s Rare Ride is from a time when a few of the sensible people at the Volvo Boxy Car Company created a special, sporty version of their mainstream model. From long ago and now largely forgotten,...
View ArticleRare Rides: A 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport Cabriolet – Ultimate Rarity...
Today’s Rare Ride is quite possibly the rarest Chevrolet Celebrity ever made. And it’s also, possibly, one of those cases where rare does not equal desirable. First things first: the car you see here...
View ArticleRare Rides: The 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2, Not Actually Named Aerocoupe
Rare Rides previously examined a rare Grand Prix. It was from a Pepsi contest and separated from the coupe you see here by only three years. Today we consider the end of an era for Grand Prix, with the...
View ArticleRare Rides: A Stylish and Tasteful Isuzu 117 Coupé From 1975
Rare Rides has already featured Isuzu’s mass-market successor to the 117, in the boxy and thoroughly Eighties Impulse. Let’s check out what Isuzu offered to its coupe customers a decade prior, when it...
View ArticleRare Rides: A 1989 Acura Legend Coupe, Luxury With Five Speeds
The Rare Rides series has touched on Acura only once before, in the only Rare Rides Review (to date) of a Honda-owned 2003 Acura CL Type-S. Today marks the second edition of Acura Time, and we step...
View ArticleRare Rides: The 1986 Toyota Camry Five-door Liftback, Brown Plus Brown
Rare Rides has never featured a Camry previously, and that’s mostly down to the model’s general abundance in salt-free locations. However, a fine liftback like today’s example in brown, brown, and tan...
View ArticleRare Rides: The Spectacular Original Ford Taurus From 1987
Rare Rides has covered earlier variants of the Taurus twice in prior entries, with a sparkling SHO from 1990 and the one-off Sable cabriolet from 1989. Today we go further back in history, and look at...
View ArticleRare Rides: Basic Brown Buick, a 1973 Century Coupe
Though its nameplate dated back to the Thirties, the Century was an all-new model for Buick in 1973. The Century promised exciting value and (optional) power and luxury in the mid-size segment. Let’s...
View ArticleRare Rides: The 1984 Ford LTD LX, a Mustang Sedan
Though most of the Ford LTDs produced during its Fox-Body years were of the ho-hum middling variety, a few escaped the factory with extra zest and performance, and a Mustang V8. Come along as we learn...
View ArticleRare Rides: The 1991 Chevrolet Lumina Z34, a Practical High-performance Coupe
In 1991, consumers could purchase one of several affordable midsize coupes of low-medium equipment, low-medium quality, and upper-middle levels of style. Let’s talk Lumina Z34. The Lumina was a new...
View ArticleRare Rides: A Pristine Chevrolet Monte Carlo From 1987, Mid-market Personal...
Rare Rides has touched on Monte Carlo once before, in a well-past-its-prime NASCAR / Jeff Gordon edition from 2000. Monte Carlo surfaced again more recently, as its Nineties iteration was effectively a...
View ArticleRare Rides: The Six-speed Acura TL, From 2005
On yesterday’s lovely Camaro-cum-Trans Am article, commenter dal20402 presented a very tidy Acura TL located in the gentle climate of Washington state. Said TL happened to be a pretty desirable...
View ArticleBuy/Drive/Burn: V6 Midsize American Sedans of 2007
In our last edition of Buy/Drive/Burn, we looked at some midsize V6 sedans of Japanese origin from 2007. In the comments most of you decided the Accord was worth a Buy, but complained that you’d rather...
View Article
