The U.S National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating hundreds of reports that the 2004-2005 Ford Freestar and rebadged Mercury Monterey minivans have defective automatic transmissions that could fail without warning. The uproar is over the fact that many of the transmissions reportedly failed at highway speeds.
Shanghai GM has unveiled the new 2010 Cadillac SLS for the Chinese market at the 2009 Guangzhou Auto Show. More importantly, the Chinese-built SLS is a part of Cadillac’s GCC line-up.
Chrysler is recalling 84,680 examples of the 2007 Dodge Nitro in the United States. The windshield wiper system may experience a condition over time where high usage of the variable pause wiper function, or “delay” mode, may eventually affect wiper functionality, rendering the wiper system inoperable.
The all-new 2011 Kia Cadenza luxury sedan, revealed in Korea recently as the Kia K7, will have its overseas world premiere at the 2009 Riyadh Motor Show in Saudi Arabia on 12 December, followed immediately by an appearance at the 2009 Dubai Motor Show on 15 December. Unfortunately, after much speculation that the Cadenza is a large rear-wheel-drive sedan based on the Hyundai Genesis, it turns out that the Cadenza is really a front-wheel-drive sedan, likely derived from the Hyundai Sonata platform.
Chrysler is recalling 161,500 Jeep Wrangler models of years 2007 through to 2008, manufactured between June 2006 and July 2008, specifically those equipped with the automatic transmission. These vehicles were not equipped with a transmission fluid temperature warning system.
The outgoing BMW 5-Series has been out of production for several months now, so it comes as no surprise that the all-new BMW 5-Series is ready to hit the roads as a 2010 model, or 2011 as some may call it. Based on a shortened version of the new 7-Series platform, the 5-Series is longer than before, and comes with more space than the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class, mated with engines that debuted in the hideous 5-Series Gran Turismo wagon earlier this year.
European niche manufacturer Fornasari has debuted their latest oddball creation. The all-new Fornasari RR99 is supposed to be a 5-door performance 4×4, built in Italy and powered by an American V8.
The U.S. market gets an extensive line of Toyota 4×4 models, including the 4Runner and Highlander to fill up the midsize segment. That left no room for the Prado, which is what the rest of the world gets. However, Toyota has been selling a slightly-altered version of the Prado in the United States, calling it the Lexus GX470. That model has now been replaced by a new 2010 GX460 model, based on the all-new 2010 Prado.
The Cadillac CTS Coupe was first shown as a concept at an auto show some time ago. The production version of the 2-door CTS has now been unveiled, and it looks pretty much the same as the big-butted show car.
As far as we know, we are the first people to review the 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in the desert. Everyone else drove it “off-road” at the launch event, to which we were not invited, but that was a carefully-planned event with easy gravel jaunts anyway. We took our Prado VX-L tester on the same dunes used by desert safari outfits in Dubai.