Top 10: New cars that should be canned

By John LeBlanc Instead of throwing good money after bad, tablet-maker Hewlett Packard made headlines recently when it canceled its TouchPad only a few weeks after launch due to poor sales in a segment dominated by Apple’s iPad. Analysts saw the news as a surprise. Most companies are afraid to admit mistakes. And the same […]

Top 10: Future Collectibles

[svgallery name=”Top_10_Future_Collectibles”] By John LeBlanc A new vehicle — no matter how rare, technically exotic, historically significant, or blindingly quick — is an investment. In the short term at least. Who would have thought, however, back in 1953 that those first 300 hand-made polo white six-cylinder Chevrolet Corvettes would become one of the most collectible […]

Crystal Ball: The Future is Small

By John LeBlanc Eventually, historians will write that the past decade was one of the most tumultuous and significant eras in the auto industry—the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; the roller-coaster of fuel prices; the public’s growing environmental and road safety awareness; the rise of the Chinese automakers; the fall of the Detroit Big […]

Top 10: Canned Cars for 2010

[svgallery name=”Top_10_canned_cars”] Story by John LeBlanc In one of the most tumultuous years ever in the auto industry, slow sales and bankruptcies have forced automakers to not only pare back on specific models for the upcoming 2010 model year, but also shed whole brands (i.e. General Motors’ Pontiac and Saturn). Some cars, like the Dodge […]

Comparo: Five frugal sports cars

Story and photos by John LeBlanc If you think about it, the first sports cars – the iconic post-World War II cars from MG, Triumph or Alfa Romeo, powered by small displacement four-cylinder engines – were relatively green for their time. Then a certain chicken farmer named Carroll Shelby from Texas came along and stuffed […]