The Crank: Lexus looking to expand

By John LeBlanc After a 2011 the Toyota luxury brand would like to forget (there was that little issue of giving up its 11-year reign as the best-selling luxury brand in the United States), 2012 and beyond is looking very busy (and important) for Lexus. Share:

The Crank: Toyota’s Prius no longer niche

By John LeBlanc Remember when the original Prius went on sale in the late 1990s? As one of the first, mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid cars, the quirky Toyota was considered a cult car at best. Today, 15 years later, the Prius family—consisting now of four models, the original Prius hatchback, the Prius plug-in hybrid, the larger […]

The Crank: Can the French build a true super car?

By John LeBlanc We’ll be getting more, official details later on today, but earlier this week, images of a new super car from France’s Renault were splashed all over the Interweb. Called the Alpine A110-50, seen above, the mid-engine super car is a 50th-anniversary hommage to the original A110 that first appeared in 1961.

The Crank: Do stripes make BMW’s Minis go faster?

By John LeBlanc Automotive legend has it American road racer Briggs Cunningham put the first ever stripe on a racing car.  After his white 1951 C4-R was seen with the contrasting pair of blue stripes that ran across the car from trunk to hood, a trend was quickly started, one that eventually migrated to production […]

The Crank: Do racing automaker CEOs help or hinder car sales?

By John LeBlanc Standing up in front of government officials or at auto shows is where we usually find the head of car companies. But Toyota and Aston Martin have released a video of Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda and his Aston counterpart Ulrich Bez not in pinstripe suits behind a podium, but wearing Nomex behind […]

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