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 […]

The Crank: Is Scion becoming Toyota’s Saturn?

By John LeBlanc Pop quiz time: Did you know that it’s been one year since Toyota Canada introduced its so-called “youth” Scion brand to this country? No? Well, you’re forgiven if you forgot to get an anniversary gift or send a card. With sales a mere fraction of the automaker’s original estimates, it’s not like […]

The Crank: Why a Kia will be the “hit” of this year’s Frankfurt show

By John LeBlanc If you’ve been following the teasers, leaks and previews of the auto show season’s kick-off event planned for Frankfurt next week, you know there’ll be a fleet of new and exciting concepts and coming-to-a-showroom-near-you production cars ready to be unvieled.

From the Fleet: 2011 Ford Edge Sport

FROM THE FLEET are brief synopses of manufacturer-supplied rides that happen to end up in my laneway – John LeBlanc The clothes make the man, but wheels make the car. And in the case of the new-this-year Sport version of Ford’s Edge, it’s all about the 22-inch rims on this car. Lay one of these […]

Top 10s: New Retro-mobiles

By John LeBlanc You can’t bring back the past. But with some new cars these days, you can certainly try and buy it. Volkswagen’s 1999 New Beetle started the modern retro-mobile (old-fashioned clothes over modern mechanicals) trend. Using an existing front-engine Golf chassis, it was styled to look like the rear-engine “Bug” that became a […]

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