Forty years ago, with the addition of three little letters to the compact Golf, Volkswagen established a market segment that persists to this day. The quick and sustained success of the GTI has since inspired virtually every automaker to create their own interpretation on the “hot hatch” idea. Over the years hot hatches have waxed and waned in popularity but they have never completely gone away and in recent years they have had something of a resurgence with cars like Ford’s Focus ST, Fiesta ST and my most recent ride, the Kia Forte5 SX.
Compared to the rest of the world, the American automotive market is an anomaly in ways. No where else will you find fullsize pickup trucks selling in such enormous numbers with the big trucks from Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler being the perennial best-sellers for years on end. Move beyond our borders however, and so-called C-segment or compact cars dominate the market. For nearly five decades one of the continuous top-sellers in that space has been the Toyota Corolla in all its different flavors. While Corolla buyers elsewhere get to choose from a variety of body styles, Americans are limited to a four-door sedan unless they opt for the related Scion iM hatchback.
The American light vehicle market is a unique beast in the world. Nowhere else on the planet will you find so many full-size pickup trucks in use and representing such a large proportion of total vehicle sales. Through October, 2015, Americans bought 1.78 million fullsize trucks, 12.3 percent of the year-to-date total. It’s also the only market segment where the three Detroit based automakers have remained utterly dominant despite challenges from Japan. As the world’s largest automaker, Toyota looked at the profit margins that Ford, GM and Chrysler were pulling in on those trucks and it’s been trying to capture a piece of that pie for more than two decades with surprisingly limited success. In 2013, Toyota gave the Tundra pickup a major makeover and it’s better than ever – but is it good enough?
The new era of Volvo picked up some steam today with the reveal of the all-new S90 sedan which finally replaces the long-in-the-tooth S80. Based on the same scalable platform architecture as the big XC90 crossover that debuted earlier this year, the S90 adopts a similar design language with a broad-shouldered look and the “Thor’s Hammer” signature lighting in the headlamp clusters.
Of course the S90 wouldn’t be a real Volvo without lots of safety technology and the sedan builds on what already debuted in the XC90 including Pilot Assist. The first version of the semi-autonomous Pilot Assist combined lane centering functionality with automatic speed control for driving in stop and go traffic at speeds up to 30 mph. The XC90 would automatically track the vehicle ahead using the same radar sensor used for adaptive cruise control while a camera monitored the lane markings.
Pilot Assist
For the second-generation Pilot Assist, the maximum speed has been increased to about 80 mph and there no longer needs to be another vehicle to follow. That means the S90 can more or less drive itself on the highway although the driver must keep a hand on the wheel or the system will disengage. Hopefully, the camera system for detecting lane markings is more robust now, because it definitely had a hard time with detection on the XC90.
Another new feature to the S90 is large animal detection which uses the combination of radar and camera to detect creatures like moose and deer crossing in front of the car. If an animal is detected, the driver is alerted and brake pressure is boosted when the driver applies the pedal.
Interior Large Animal Detection 2
Under the hood, the S90 will offer three powertrain options all based around the company’s new 2.0-liter four cylinder engine that debuted in the XC90. The base T5 engine gets a turbocharger while the T6 uses an exhaust-driven turbo plus a mechanically driven supercharger to generate 316-horsepower. The top-end T8 Twin Engine adds electric drive and a lithium ion battery for a plug-in hybrid powertrain with more than 400 hp.
The new Volvo S90 will get its first public showing next month at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Don’t get me wrong, the Scion FR-S is by no means slow, but in comparison to a Mustang GT, Camaro SS, Challenger Hellcat or Tesla Model S, it has no hope of keeping up. But I have absolutely no issue with that. In fact, that is precisely what makes this car so damn appealing. At 200 hp, the FR-S has more than enough grunt to get around and have tons of fun without resorting to the type of antisocial behavior that’s likely to get you thrown behind behind bars or worse.
Cars hold a strange place in our lives. For most people, they are the second most expensive purchase they will make after a house. Many of us depend on them for personal mobility in modern life. But in many ways, cars are frequently the least rational big-ticket purchase we’ll make. If we were at all rational in choosing cars, we’d all be driving either a Prius or a minivan. There would be no SUVs or sports cars and only contractors would drive pickup trucks. But we are irrational creatures that buy cars for emotional reasons; the way they appeal to our eyes when we see them, the thrill we get from the roar of the engine, the rush we get from the acceleration.
In my recent review of the Pioneer AVH-4100NEX car audio receiver with Apple Carplay and Android Auto, I lamented the fact that Pioneer was only offer the smartphone interfaces in its more high-end receivers. At $700, the 4100NEX is the most affordable receiver with this capability and includes a DVD drive and motorized face plate. It also has a tiny row of controls along the bottom edge for volume and mode selection.
I suggested that for people that want to use a smartphone interface, they are less likely to actually use disks or other media and Pioneer should offer a more basic unit with a fixed screen (not to mention a better display than the 4100NEX) and no disk drive.
It turns out they make just such a receiver. It even has a rotary volume knob! The problem is that consumers can’t actually buy this receiver. It’s found in the Scion FR-S that I’m driving this week. Of course Toyota isn’t yet supporting Android or Carplay so this unit doesn’t have that capability. However, if Pioneer would sell this head unit as a standalone with Android and Carplay for $200-250 I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it and I’d even buy one myself.
While auto industry observers seem to be fixated on the idea that crossover utility vehicles are taking over the entire market, the reality is that in America, the midsize sedan segment is still huge and vitally important to mainstream brands. For Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Kia and Hyundai, midsize sedans are their top sellers and even at Ford and Fiat Chrysler, they trail only full-size pickup trucks. With so many sales on the line, no one can afford to stand still and Nissan is launching a major refresh of the Altima for 2016 that brings new style, technology and efficiency.
When Alan Mulally took the reins as CEO of Ford Motor Company in 2006, a key element of his strategy to revive the struggling century-old automaker was to dispense with any brands under the corporate umbrella that didn’t carry the founder’s name. During his tenure he found buyers for all of the European luxury brands that his predecessors had acquired including Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo. Volvo was the last to go, with China’s Geely Group finally closing the deal in August 2010. While production was never interrupted, the brand’s rebirth really only began this year with the launch of its first all-new product, the second-generation XC90.
The week of January 7, 2007 was a hugely important preview of the future of cars and how we would interact them. In the span of three days, there were three major product announcements in three cities that all seemed distinct at the time but the convergence is now becoming clearer every day. The week kicked off with General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz revealing the original Chevrolet Volt concept at the Detroit Auto Show. Later that same day, then future Ford CEO Mark Fields joined Microsoft CEO Bill Gates on stage at CES in Las Vegas to announce the SYNC connectivity system. Finally, two days later Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed the world the iPhone at Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
Each of those three products has evolved significantly in the last eight years and with each passing day we get closer to the fusion of them all, potentially in an Apple car. While that latter product is still likely years away from being announced, touchscreen smartphones are now ubiquitous with more than two billion in use around the world. They are so prevalent that we now expect to be able to use them anywhere and everywhere including behind the wheel. While plug-in vehicles currently represent only a tiny fraction of the world’s vehicle parc, they too will likely one day dominate and with the addition of autonomous capability our vehicles may well become nothing more than a place to consume content while being moved around.
In recent years, many critics have accused Honda of losing its way. The lightweight, fun-to-drive cars that helped build the Honda reputation from the 1970s through the early 1990s had given way to increasingly bland cars devoid of character. Chief of among the models that seemed to suffer was the Civic. First launched in 1973, the Civic wasn’t Honda’s first American model, but it really gave the brand momentum that picked up significantly a few years later with the debut of the Accord. The most recent Civic which debuted in 2011 seemed to epitomize everything wrong with the brand. Honda heard the complaints and tried to address them for generation 10 that goes on sale in November. However, hearing complaints and adequately resolving them are two different things and only time behind the wheel would tell us if Honda has been successful.
Forty years ago, with the addition of three little letters to the compact Golf, Volkswagen established a market segment that persists to this day. The quick and sustained success of the GTI has since inspired virtually every automaker to create their own interpretation on the “hot hatch” idea. Over the years hot hatches have waxed and waned in popularity but they have never completely gone away and in recent years they have had something of a resurgence with cars like Ford’s Focus ST, Fiesta ST and my most recent ride, the Kia Forte5 SX. 
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