The Crank: Can an all-wheel-drive 911 be a real Porsche?

By John LeBlanc Welcome to winter. Like the rest of Ontario, you probably woke up to the inevitable First Big Dump this week. But what if you had a Porsche in your laneway. Specifically, a new-for-2011 911 Turbo S, which, to the layman’s eyes, seems like the most ridiculous winter vehicle you could drive. But […]

The Crank: Mustang vs. Camaro winner depends on which side of the Canada-U.S. border

By John LeBlanc The bleating from General Motors’ U.S. PR flacks about the Camaro beating its archrival Mustang on the sales charts, can be heard all the way north of the 49th parallel. So far in 2010 in the U.S., Chevy has sold 75,685 Oshawa-built Camaros, 7,421 more than its bitter, pony car archrival, Ford’s […]

The Crank: Why Honda’s hybrids are the right cars, but at the wrong time

[svgallery name=”2011_Honda_CRZ_hirez”] By John LeBlanc Here’s one thing you need to know about the car industry: nothing happens too quickly.Unlike a Nike or Apple, car companies can’t whip off all-new designs and products almost seasonally. It takes years to research, develop, and build new cars. So its natural that sometimes a vehicle is released that […]

The Crank: Toyota officially confirms its the luddite of the auto industry

By John LeBlanc I bet Toyota can’t wait for 2010 to end. It started with the ongoing unintended acceleration meltdown that saw over 12 million Toyotas recalled, a crisis that brought back down to Earth the Japanese automaker’s perceived superior reliability and quality image.

The Crank: Is Infiniti der neu BMW?

[svgallery name=”2011_Infiniti_M37_Sport”] By John LeBlanc For Crank readers with any kind of automotive historical context, you probably already know that when Nissan’s Infiniti premium brand launched in the late 1980s, it’s original Q45 sports luxury sedan was seen as a direct shot at Germany’s Ultimate Driving Machine brand, while Toyota’s also-then-new Lexus was left to […]

« go back — keep looking »