I attended my first lunch today as a member of the Detroit-based Automotive Press Association. Saad Chehab, CEO of the Chrysler and Lancia brands, presented a new Chrysler 200 S Special Edition, a collaboration between Mopar and Carhartt. Then $28,870 car has been modified with a clean air intake, performance exhaust, sport suspension, black grille, black wheels, and black Carhartt… More →

For a compact sedan, the 2013 Dodge Dart is very heavy. One of the reasons it’s very heavy is that it isn’t very compact. Fifteen years ago it would have been considered a midsize car. Compare the Dart’s size and weight with the 1998 Dodge Neon and 1998 Dodge Stratus: Dimension Dart Neon Stratus Wheelbase 106.4 104.0 108.0 Length 183.9… More →

Auto makers must constantly play a high-risk guessing game. Car buyers’ priorities vary, and change over time. It takes a few years to develop a new car, so auto makers must try to figure out what people will want in the future. A few years ago different companies placed very different bets. Chevrolet and Ford kept hearing that their cars… More →

Competing cars are often priced very similarly once feature differences are accounted for. But not always. Some cars are simply better values than others. Have you found a new car that seems very attractively priced? If so, which one? I’d like to run it through TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool to see how it measures up.

When Chevrolet announced a few months ago that its new Cruze compact sedan would start at $16,995, more than a few people (who likely had not had a chance to personally experience the new car) were shocked. The Cobalt, which the Cruze replaced, had been priced nearly $1,300 lower—and had required incentives to sell at that price. Now Ford has… More →

TrueDelta received a record number of responses to October’s Car Reliability Survey—nearly 19,000. Updated car reliability stats have been posted to the site for 488 cars, up from 459 three month ago. There are partial results for another 370. These stats cover through the end of September 2010. Other sources of car reliability information will not cover the third quarter… More →

For unknown reasons, a pigtail of my Mazda Protege5’s wiring harness that connects to one of the two ignition coils (which in turn connects to two of the four spark plugs) had been so badly damaged that only a single strand of wire remained connected. Surprisingly the engine performed much as before, feeling just a bit more rough at idle.… More →

Well, Henderson it out as CEO of GM, and they’re hunting for a replacement. Who should it be? The auto industry includes a number of high-profile CEOs who get a lot of press for their big personalities and willingness to make the big decisions. Then there is Alan Mulally, who has gotten credit for sound financial planning and team building… More →