Car Throttle

To be totally honest, I'm more interested in Hybrid fuel economy than football.  Maybe there was something weird in the water where I grew up, or maybe I just agree with Ernest Hemmingway: "There are three real sports: mountain climbing, bull fighting, and car racing.  Everything else is just games." Regardless, I hard it find to fake enthusiasm for the Super Bowl.  This year some overpaid athletes in spandex played against some other overpaid athletes in Spandex for the title of something.  Yay.  But I don't need to fake my enthusiasm for the advertisements.  Manufacturers spend vast sums of money to get ads in the superbowl; it's the highest-viewed event every year in the US, but at $3.5M USD per 30-second spot, they try especially hard

Even though the recent recession fatally wounded parts of the industry and fossil fuels running dry will threaten its future, the world of cars is still very much alive and kicking. There is such a variety of new products coming out this year ranging from affordable city cars you'll actually want to own, to ridiculously expensive supercars you'll lust after, old school coupes to revolutionary family cars, petrol engines to plug-in electric motors. The list is almost endless. So to help fellow car lovers and "new kids on the block" out, here's a round-up of 33 cars we can't wait to see in 2012 in order of release date. January 2012 Kia Optima It's been available around the world for a while but the Kia Optima

In Part 1 of this article, I covered 5 recent sales failures of the automotive world.  This time we dive into some more odd, idiotic, or just misjudged cars.  Onto the list... 5) Lincoln Blackwood

Luxury Pickup Truck.  That should be a contradictory term.  Pickup trucks are made to haul things, do work, go off-road: these are not luxurious attributes.  A Luxury Pickup Truck is a fairly stupid idea.  Yet, ask Cadillac: people buy stupid.  In their case, Escalade EXT's: an Escalade with a pickup bed.  Considering this is just a Chevrolet Avalanche (admittedly a pretty clever, if ugly, pickup truck) with some Cadillac trim glued on and a larger price tag, they sell quite a lot of them.  Sales were their highest in

Everyone who loves summer will be miserable just now, me being one of them, because summer is pretty much over and today, up here in Scotland, it is very cold and wet. The weather forecasters are saying that this year winter will probably be as harsh as the last two years which is fantastic news(!) Instead of moaning about it though we should think about the precautions we should take when it comes to driving in the forthcoming harsh conditions. There are the usual ones like make sure you have blankets and flasks full of hot drinks in the car with you as well as taking some extra snacks just in case you get stranded and that you should allow extra time for your journeys

I'm admittedly a little late to the party here.  This is not exactly a new car: the Suzuki Kizashi midsize sedan went on sale in the US market at the beginning of December 2009 as a 2010 model, so it's closing in on two years old.  My question, then - why can I count the number of these cars I've seen on the road since then on my own two hands?  I was curious.  the Kizashi is, in my opinion at least, a pretty good looking midsize sedan with appealing specifications and an almost too-reasonable price.  Why aren't there more of these things buzzing around?  After driving one, I'm even more curious - this is a really nice car. First, some background.  The Kizashi is the

Yes, I know we're a little early, but there's something about hot hatches that makes us pee our pants in excitement. Whilst that may (or may not) be journalistic hyperbole, what is true is that Suzuki's previous model Swift Sport was a crowd favourite, loved the world over thanks to its fun drive, stylish looks and inviting interior. It comes to Car Throttle brethren as no surprise then that we want to report on concept hot hatches and ready-to-be-released ones too. This is even more relevant, as CT HQ England has just taken delivery of a 2011 Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart (a 1.5-litre turbo monster) which promises to make my week less depressing as I watch London turn into a flaming ruin of riots and yob culture. Tear. Promising

Speed, like everything in life, is entirely relative.  You might think you're "only doing 90, gosh!" but the cop writing you a ticket for doing that speed in a 45mph zone probably disagrees.  And when you hit the speed limiter at 155mph in your BMW M3, you might think you're going fast - but the guy in the ZR-1 with his foot planted in 5th shooting for 200mph can't even see your headlights.  And that ZR-1, well, it'd seem pretty mundane from the seat of a Bugatti Veyron. So what makes a Bugatti Veyron seem a little slow?  Considering a current Veyron Super Sport is good for 268mph flat out, it'd have to be something really, really fast. But when your hobby is Land Speed Record racing,

I brushed on this topic in my article yesterday, about the Higgins brothers both breaking track records in two different Subaru STi's on two different continents, but frankly it deserves an article of it's own: this Sunday, Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, a Pikes Peak veteran since the early 90's, finally broke the 10-minute barrier up the world's most famous hillclimb.  And it's an impressive feat in a lot of ways. Competitors have been saying for years that this was the year they were going to break the 10-minute barrier; Rod Millen was saying it back in the 90's with his insane 3S-GTE powered Toyota Celica hillclimb special, but it never happened.  Tajima wheeled his custom-built Monster Sport Suzuki SX4 hill climb special (all 910 horsepower of

Some features that come standard in cars these days we take completely for granted. The type of stuff that if it wasn't there, we'd be very confused.  Power steering, servo-assisted brakes, a rear windscreen defroster, synchromesh in the gearbox, a parking brake - these are all things we take for granted, because cars need them in various ways to be functioning transportation appliances.  And as technology marches on, other stuff is becoming a given - it's pretty hard to find a car, any car, for sale in the US now without power windows, a radio or stereo of some sort, rear infant seat anchors, tire pressure monitors, traction control (still iffy; my 2007 Honda doesn't have it), variable-intermittent windshield wipers - even cool but useless

Continuing along with the rest of the new stuff at NYIAS this year, welcome to Part 2 of our "best of the rest" coverage, a sort of all-at-once splurt of information to keep you up to date on the latest developments, without boring you to death with new paint colors for the Kia Optima.  Here we go. 2012 Subaru Impreza Sedan/Hatchback Subaru has finally come to their senses with the Impreza.  While it's always been a relatively fun-to-drive car even in non-turbocharged form, it hasn't really experienced great sales in the economy-car market compared to more conventional rivals.  The biggest reason would be the big-car fuel economy in a small, unrefined package.  The current Impreza 2.5i makes a fairly impressive 173bhp from it's single-cam 2.5L horizontally