Don’t look now, but while so many manufacturers took significant hits throughout COVID-stained 2020 (DesRosiers Automotive Consultants recently announced a 19.7 per cent decline in total automotive sales in Canada from 2019-2020), Cadillac managed to buck that trend by achieving a 12.2 per cent growth in retail sales over 2019, making 2020 its best retail […]
After spending two full weeks driving one over the holidays, I’ve come to really appreciate the many virtues of the Volkswagen Arteon. But there are two problems with that statement. One, I’m not currently in the market for a new car and, secondly, most Canadians who are don’t have the Arteon on their shopping lists. […]
Very few new automobiles that were released in 2020 have garnered as much controversy as the 2021 BMW 4 Series. If there’s an unwritten rule among the BMW faithful, is that fiddling with the kidney grille is a sacrilegious act; one BMW has taken the liberty of undertaking with little remorse about how its owners […]
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, wide swaths of Canadians still purchase or lease compact sedans. Their numbers are shrinking, to be sure, but there are more than a few automakers willing to re-up their offerings in this important segment. Not the least of which is Hyundai. For the 2021 model year, its compact Elantra […]
Nissan exported its Datsun small cars to become the automaker’s ambassador brand in North America 60 years ago, but not before replacing Joseph “the Prince of Darkness” Lucas’s electrical systems with reliable Japanese components. Innovative engineering helped make the British Austin-inspired Bluebird a minor curiosity when it landed here. By 1971 Datsun was the top-selling […]
Diesel power was dealt a blow by various companies playing fast and loose with emissions regulations. But given that the biggest blow to the environment for any vehicle is the manufacture of it, the most environmentally friendly vehicle is the one that lasts the longest. Diesel engines win easily here, because they typically last twice […]
DETROIT Michigan – Ford was the big winner at the 2021 North American Car of the Year Awards. On the Truck side, the refreshed F-150 pickup easily took the trophy with 340 points over the Ram 1500 TRX (130) and Jeep Gladiator Mojave (30). In Utility Vehicle, the Mustang Mach E won with an astonishing […]
There are two people in the world, and only two, who can talk more than me. The first is my good friend Peter MacLaurin, who owns a tree farm near Morin Heights in the Quebec Laurentians. Peter never stops. One time, years ago, when my mother, the late Grace Dorothy McDonald, fell and broke her wrist […]
We chat with Jeep about its seven-passenger Grand Cherokee strategy. The new year may have brought with it American political uprising and more COVID-19-related lockdowns across Canada, but it also gave us a pleasant surprise from Jeep. It’s called the Grand Cherokee L. Not only does it entirely revamp the Grand Cherokee nameplate after almost […]
It’s a little change, but a big deal. For the first time since the 1960s, General Motors has completely redesigned its logo. Gone are the uppercase and underlined GM letters in a harsh square in favour of lowercase letters where only the m is underlined. The square gets rounded corners, and the blue is brighter […]