Top Gear is Back June 26th

Top Gear will be back to creating awesomness on June 26th, according to finalgear.com. There isn’t much info as to what we can expect other than an adventure with May, Clarkson, the Nissan LEAF and Peugot iOn (that’s Mitsubishi i-Miev in Canadian speak).

I would imagine that the bloakes will take a few shots at Tesla for filing a lawsuit against them, May and Hammond will take a few shots at Clarkson for an alleged affair and a falling out with some locals and everyone will take shots at Hammond for being short. Also expect lots of crazy challenges, reviews of your favourite exotic supercars and of course stars in the reasonably priced car.

The only rumour right now is that the McLaren MP4-12C may have taken the top spot on the leader board for the fastest lap around the Top Gear track.

Can’t wait!

[Final Gear, photo credit: Daily Mail]

Top Gear Tries Electric Cars Again, Fails

I must say, Top Gear might very well be the best show ever made. Seriously. No car show has ever received the viewership or fanbase that they have and no car show has ever been able to lure people otherwise uninterested in cars before. With that said, a good chunk of the reason why Top Gear is able to attract such a wide variety of viewers is because of the dynamic between hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, but also because it’s wildly entertaining.

The latter should be considered when watching the above clip. Clarkson and May decide to have a go at the Peugot iOn and the Nissan LEAF – both full on electric vehicles. However, to ensure that it’s still entertaining they decided to see if they could trek across the country is said vehicles. Since most electric vehicles are designed to be city dwellers, this is obviously an attempt at entertainment. And knowing them, they succeeded.

May and Clarkson found themselves at the University of Lincoln as they stopped to ask where they could charge their cars. Inevitibly no one could point them to a charging station because there weren’t any. So then the duo decided to just drive around looking for a charging station until the cars ran out of juice and had to be towed.

This really seems like more of a middle finger to Tesla, who has filed a lawsuit against Top Gear and the BBC for allegedly rigging the test of their roadster which gave the impression that the car is useless because you have to charge it too often. Even though Tesla wasn’t involved in this video, it’s clear that Top Gear are not fans of the electric car industry in general. However, James May has actually written a column saying that electric cars aren’t all that bad and can work in certain instances. Obviously in this instance, they aren’t ideal.

[The Lincolnite]

Ultimate Comparo: Nissan 370Z vs Mexican Chicken

Ah, where would we be without marketing? Probably way better off, but every now and then those marketing kids come up with something entertaining and funny. Case in point, Nissan decided to pit its 370Z against a Mexican chicken.

Random? Yes. Funny? Yes. Should you try to race a chicken too? No. I know that probably goes without saying but considering I saw a guy on the highway attempting to secure the canoe on his roof using his, wait for it…. arm, I suppose human beings think almost anything is a good idea.

Check out the chicken take on a 3.7 litre V6 in the video above.

Shots Fired: GM Takes Aim at Nissan LEAF

The race for the best selling electric vehicle is starting to get a bit messy as GM is throwing a few shots Nissan’s way.

Mark Reuss recently spoke out on his opinions of the Nissan LEAF.  Says Ruess:

“[The Leaf] has a finite range and requires infrastructure and charging to run it, where the Volt is really an extended-range electric vehicle. The Volt can really be the only car you own. You better be living within a certain range for the Leaf. … It’s a lot different market, a lot different car and a completely different driver.”

Not too bad, right? A well thought out, logical answer. But Reuss unfortunately didn’t stop there when maybe he should have. He continued:

“I’m not sure if I’d put the Leaf in the hands of my three kids. Say, what if they can’t charge it? What if they get to school and can’t charge it? The Leaf is a single-purpose car”.

Not good enough for his family? Ouch. Reuss’ comments come on the heels of the recent sales release stating that the LEAF outsold the Volt in the month of April. Coincidence or carefully timed remarks?

This isn’t the first time GM has stacked the Volt up against another fuel miser. Their CEO recently said he “wouldn’t be caught dead” in a Toyota Prius and that it was a “geek-mobile”.

Sticks and stones, or will this turn people to GM showrooms?

[Nashville Business Journal]

Green Wars: Nissan LEAF Edges Chevy Volt in April

The electric car race is getting tight between the Nissan LEAF and the Chevrolet Volt. The duo have been on sale for a few months now and in March it looked as though the Volt was taking a very early lead with 608 units sold compared to the LEAF’s 298 units sold in North America.

Last month, however, it seems Nissan has gained some sales as the LEAF beat the Volt. Nissan sold 573 versions of the LEAF and GM sold 493 Volts. That brings the total count to 1,044 units sold for Nissan and 2,029 Volts sold for Chevrolet since their respective debuts in 2010.

The Volt and the LEAF aren’t officially on sale yet in Canada, however both have already been taking orders. The Volt’s Canadian pricing was also recently announced at $41,545. If you live in Ontario you’ll qualify for an $8,230 rebate from the provincial government and if you’re in Quebec, the provincial rebate is expected to be $7,769.

[Nissan, General Motors]

Forbes Releases Top 10 Worst Vehicles on the Road

Forbes, the people obsessed with making top 10 lists about, well everything, has just released its list of the worst vehicles on the road. How do you make such a list without accusations of being biased or opinionated? Well with the way Forbes did it, they essentially compiled six studies done by Consumer Reports on the most reliable, best and worst safety, best and worst fuel efficiency, best and worst value, and highest cost of ownership. They then compiled a top 10 list made up of seven American makes, two European makes and one Japanese make.

The Cadillac Escalade embarrassingly took the top score for least value, highest cost of ownership and worst safety scores. I’ll throw in that the Escalade is probably the easiest to steal for good measure.

The Chrysler Town & Country took worst reliability and faired pretty badly for cost of ownership. The Jeep Wrangler and Liberty scored for poor reliability and fuel economy while the Dodge Nitro and Dakota shared in those honours failures as well.

Along with the Escalade, GM took some hits with the Aveo, Colorado and Tahoe Hybrid making the list. All got marks for worst reliability, high cost of ownership and worst safety results.

The two Euros to make the list were both from Mercedes-Benz. The S-class made the list for high cost of ownership and low fuel efficiency scores while the Smart Fortwo was dinged for poor reliability and value.

The lone Japanese vehicle on the list was the Nissan Titan for poor fuel efficiency, reliability and cost of ownership.

With the exception of the three imports which are low volume sellers, people still seem to not get that the above mentioned domestics don’t excel in much. Yet they still sell in large numbers. Are there just that many stupid people out there? But before anyone starts on an anti-domestic vehicle tirade, it should be noted that not a single vehicle from Ford made the list.

[Forbes]

Oh Hi: 2012 Nissan Versa

Nissan shown up to the New York Auto Show with a much needed refresh of the Nissan Versa.

The biggest story with the new Versa is the bump in fuel economy. The Versa is 150 lighter and uses a 1.6 litre DOHC 4 cylinder engine using Pure Drive technology – which is essentially a badge that Nissan will only put on its models that acheive 140 g/CO2 or better. Nissan has been doing this in Europe since 2008 and the North American Versa will be the first to wear the badge on this side of the pond. All this helps the Versa achieve the very marketable “green” status, especially with fuel efficiency ratings of 7.1 l/100 kms. That’s not Toyota Prius numbers by any means but considering this car will start at $10,300 in the States, that’s a sizable deal when figuring the initial cost to gas savings ratio.

With that price point, the Versa’s immediate competition will likely be the Hyundai Accent. The Accent is offered in both hatchback and sedan form. Nissan only showcased the sedan at the auto show, and has yet to confirm the hatch. However, with Canadians’ love affair with small fuel efficient hatchbacks, it’s a good bet that a hatch will find its way over at some point.

No Canadian pricing has been released yet.

[Nissan]

Canada Not Getting Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet

Consider ourselves lucky!

The Globe & Mail is reporting that Nissan Canada has passed on the idea of selling the odd convertible. They probably realized that having a convertible version of the Murano makes as much sense as putting a tootoo on a bulldog.

If you were really looking forward to buying one for some reason, don’t lose all hope just yet. The Murano CrossCabriolet will still be available for sale in the States. And depending how well it does down there, we may very well get it up here in Canada eventually.

The Murano CrossCabriolet, according to Nissan, is designed to be an alternative to upscale convertibles and crossovers, specifically the BMW 3-series cabriolet and the Lexus RX 350 crossover. Um, good luck luring people away from those cars with this thing, Nissan.

[The Globe & Mail]

Here We Go Again…

A while back Hennessey decided to take a stock Cadillac CTS-V wagon and tuned it to make it even faster – nothing wrong with that at all. However I was unimpressed because they took it to a drag strip to take on a previous generation Porsche 911 Turbo. Again, nothing wrong with that, but there was a real sense of bragging and I didn’t understand why anyone would pit a tuned car against a previous generation stock car. What exactly does that prove?

Well apparently Hennessey didn’t read my rant because they went and did the same thing again. They pitted their hotted up Caddy wagon against a previous generation Nissan GT-R. That’s right, the 485 (give or take) horsepower version. Why didn’t they try to take on the 2012 GT-R which has 530 horsepower? Considering their CTS-V wagon churns out 650 horsepower, that would’ve seemed like a bit more of a fair fight.

But apparently that didn’t matter much since Hennessey only beat the previous gen GT-R by a hair. 0.1 seconds to be exact. And to me that’s more embarrassing. Their car can barely beat an older GT-R? Well done.

[Youtube]

Nissan Targets Porsche in New Ad Campaign

Nissan is starting to become the Japanese Audi when it comes to attacking other car brands. You may remember a while back when they took on the three biggest performance brands from Germany: Audi, BMW and Porsche. They also threw in an extra jab at Audi for good measure.

Now it seems Porsche is the next one to be singled out of the three in a new ad campaign promoting the GT-R. For the campaign, Nissan got two fairly attractive women to drive around in a GT-R looking for Porsche’s in Porsche saturated Germany. They then got out and put a picture of the GT-R’s tail lights right on the windshield, insinuating that their car is slower than the GT-R.

According to Nissan, the campaign worked as they received an uptake of 23% for requests of a test drive of the GT-R.

But if it were me, that would make me want to buy a GT-R less. Firstly, I don’t care how good the GT-R is, don’t touch my car! I don’t know what Nissan used to put the ad on the windshield and I don’t know how careful they were in putting it on. Surely the risk of scrapes dents and dings is a factor when doing that, and if I came back top find that on my Porsche because Nissan was trying to be cheeky I’d be livid.

[Youtube]

The Nissan Quest Has A Dirty Mind

Just because you need to drive a minivan, that doesn’t mean your life is over, according to Nissan.

Nissan just released images of its new Quest minivan and more details have arised including the addition of adult entertainment in the GPS system.

That’s right, after dropping the kids off at school you can program the Quest to take you to the nearest strip club. And since the Quest is now an 8 seater you can pick up seven of your male friends to bring along for the ride (excuse the pun).

And now for the first time ever, 18 year old boys will actually ask to take the minivan instead of the regular family sedan when they’re out on a Friday night.

I can’t wait to see strip clubs with Nissan Quests minivans filling up the parking lots. Hilarious.

[Family Car Review]

Ward’s 2011 Engines of the Year Announced

This year’s engine of the year award winners are full of repeat winners and a few surprises.

The first big surprise is the Nissan LEAF winning this award. Mostly because it doesn’t even have an engine, it’s has an electric motor only. What was Ward’s reasoning? Apparently since the LEAF feels like a regular car (i.e four doors, five seats, an accelerator and brake) it deserves this award. That’s like saying since Stephen Harper has arms, legs and a face he should win a beauty contest.

Another big surprise is the engine/electric motor set up in the Chevy Volt. With the electric motor primarily propelling the car, it’s a wonder why it’s on the list. Ward’s sites reasons similar to the LEAF for its choice.

But despite those odd choices, the one that shocked me the most was Chrysler’s 3.6 litre Pentastar V6 making the list. This has been a traditionally awful engine. Just terrible. However since Fiat has taken the reigns, it appears they have put some work into this engine making it much better. It can be found in the 2011 Dodge Avenger and Chrysler 200.

Volvo also picked up an award for the 3.0 litre inline six that it uses in the redesigned S60. Ward’s says this engine almost rivals BMW’s 3.0 I-6 as it is buttery smooth, has great mid-range pick up and has virtually no turbo lag. Quite the statement, I’ll have to try it out to see if it stacks up.

Speaking of BMW, they unsurpsingly won once again for their N55 3.0 litre twin scrolled turbo engine for the 5th year in a row. I can wholeheartedly agree with this decision after experiencing the 135i (read my test drive in the post below).

BMW also won a second award for the 1.6 litre turbocharged inline 4 that it uses in the Mini Cooper S. With more power, more efficiency and little turbo lag, it helps make the Cooper S quite the little performance machine.

Volkswagen picked up two awards as well. One for the supercharged V6 found in the Audi S4 and one for new Clean Diesel 2.0 litre TDI found in the Golf, Jetta and Audi A3. The former delivers all encompassing performance while the latter does exceptionally well at combining efficiency with performance.

Rounding up the list is the Ford and Hyundai. After reintroducing the 5.0 litre V8 found in the Mustang they were actually able to make a car that could keep up with the BMW M3. Enough said.

Hyundai on the other hand won for its 5.0 V8 as well found in the base Genesis sedan and the upcoming Equus flagship sedan. It won for keeping power plentiful while being even more efficient than the previous engine.

Congrats to all the winners!

[Ward's]

Oh Hi: 2011 Nissan Quest

Oh, Nissan. Who the hell is their Chief designer?

Nissan seems quite content to keep chugging out controversial designs including the Juke, the Cube, the Murano and the Murano CrossCabriolet. Add the Quest to the list too.

After a long hiatus, the Quest minivan is back. The previous generation Quest was controversial in style as well so it seems fitting that this generation is uniquely designed too. Quite boxy in the back, the new Quest almost pays homage to original minivan designs. Very, um, interesting. I don’t know if I can quite call it ugly, but I definitely can’t call it attractive.

Anyway, I barely decided to blog about this since it is still a minivan and as such, it’s pretty boring, but I couldn’t ingore this new styling direction that Nissan seems to be taking.

If, for whatever reason, you wanna know more details regarding the powertrain and other minivan specs, hit Autoblog for more details. They’ll have more pics to peruse too.

[Autoblog]

Oh Hi: 2012 Nissan GT-R

Say hello to the 2012 Nissan GT-R.

Probably about the only noticeable difference in appearance is the addition of LED running lights that remarkably copy the LED light scheme of the Porsche 911 and new Cayenne. It also dons a larger front facia and grille and a redesigned rear facia that supposedly lowers the centre of gravity.

But the big news is the power. The 2012 GT-R will get 45 more horsepower. Since Nissan doesn’t actually know the horsepower rating of each GT-R (because each engine is hand built, and therefore different from the first) it’s hard to say how much horsepower in total is actually underneath the hood. However, it’s widely believed that most GT-R’s have around 480 horses give or take a few. That brings its horsepower total to around 525 while the torque comes in at 488 pound feet.

More horses along with 0.26 less drag coefficient thanks to the redesigned front and rear, means this new GT-R can get from 0-100 in at……wait for it….. UNDER 3 seconds! That’s stupidly fast! Faster than a Ferrari 458 Italia, faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo S and faster than a Lamborghini Gallardo Superlegera!

And get this, pricing will be $89,950 US. That’s a steal of a deal! Sure, it’s likely to hit 100 G’s when you convert to Canadian dollars, but still, that’s tremendous value. In fact, I’d wager to say, dollar for dollar, it’s the best valued car in the market today.

Very impressive!

[Nissan]

Renault Allowed to Use Zoe Name

Remember that French woman named Zoe Renault who decided to sue Renault for using her name for an upcoming model? Well the matter has finally reached the courts and Renault can chalk one up in the victory column. They are now free to use the name Zoe for the upcoming electric car.

Zoe Renault (the human) wrote to Nissan CEO Charles Goshn about her concerns, saying “For my clients, it would be intolerable to hear ‘the Zoe has broken down’ or indeed ‘he or she killed herself in a Zoe’.”

Zoe Renault’s lawyer also added in court:

There’s a line between living things and inanimate objects, and that line is defined by the first name. We’re telling Renault one very simple thing: First names are for humans. Can you imagine what little Zoes would have to endure on the playground, and even worse, when they get a little bit older and someone comes up to them in a bar and says, ‘Can I see your airbags?’ or ‘Can I shine your bumper?’

The judge rightfully dismissed the case. I mean, really, I’m still shocked that any lawyer decided to take this case in the first place. No one ‘owns’ the name Zoe and therefore it can be used by anyone for any purpose.

Besides, Renault isn’t the first automaker to use a human name for one of its vehicles. Remember the GMC Jimmy? To my knowledge, people named Jimmy had no problem with GMC using their names, probably because they’re not psychos that are only out for money.

[Reuters]