The U.S. NHTSA safety agency is looking into complaints that the floor mats on the 2010 Ford Fusion, and its deadbeat Mercury Milan twin, are jamming the accelerator pedal. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is the same paranoid issue as the Toyota floor-mat recall that blew up into a worldwide fiasco.
Ford’s overcrowded stable of brands just got smaller, with an announcement that the Mercury brand will be killed off by the end of 2010. The signs were already there, considering how there is almost zero advertising for Mercury in this region, and that we’ve never driven one.
New test results show that some automakers are doing a good job of designing vehicle roofs that perform much better than current U.S. federal rollover standards require. But the roofs on some other vehicles need improvement. In the first U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) roof strength tests of so-called midsize SUVs, six earn the top rating of ‘good’ for rollover protection, one is ‘acceptable’ and five others earn the second lowest rating of ‘marginal.’
You know that all those years of being a good boy is paying off when people suddenly call up to offer you a black 2010 Chevy Camaro SS for the weekend. With an LS3 V8. And a manual transmission. For a second round. The manual SS is initially hard to drive, but having just about mastered the clutch-gearbox combo the last time, we figured we’d do something different this time around. We’ll do the first-ever fuel economy test for this car, while still driving in regular traffic at regular speeds.
As part of the “Tahoe Adventure Weekend,” where we hung out at the Le Meridien Al Aqah till last Sunday morning, we were each sent home to Dubai with a 2010 Chevrolet Tahoe to try out. I had picked the LTZ 4×4 model, and ended up keeping it right till this Thursday.
The General organised a little two-day trip for journalists to the Le Meridien Al Aqah, with some scuba diving, private rooms and Chevy Tahoes thrown in for good measure. I was a bit perplexed as to why they were promoting the unchanged-for-2010 Tahoe, but heck, who are we to argue.
An Associated Press news report states that Nissan will recall 48,700 truck-based SUV models for a suspension problem that could lead to a harsh ride. The recall, which is slated to begin by next week, includes the 2010 model-years of the Nissan Titan pickup, Pathfinder, Armada and Xterra, as well as the Armada-based Infiniti QX56.
Ford has just released a video purportedly showing their upgraded 2011 Shelby GT500 doing a lap of some 4.1-mile (6.56 km) Grand West portion of the Virginia International Speedway racetrack. It achieved a lap time of 2:58.5, which in itself wouldn’t mean much, except that the Audi R8 V10 did it in 2:59.5 during another test. If there ever was proof that the Audi R8 is an overrated beluga whale, this is it.
The Chrysler 300 is a remnant of the firm’s brief glory days, just half a decade ago, when the first real fruit of the DaimlerChrysler merger allowed the American company to create a balanced rear-wheel-drive exotic sedan using Mercedes-Benz underpinnings. It sold well, right up till the recession, at which point the focus shifted to fuel-efficient cars and suddenly Chrysler was considered a dinosaur by the fickle public. But the 300 remains an awesome car, even if going by looks alone.
Chrysler has issued a recall for six different 2010 models in the United States. More than 40,000 Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles are affected by a problem where drivers might be able to remove the key from the ignition before the vehicle is shifted into ‘Park,’ which could cause the vehicle to run away on its own.