First Drive: 2011 Aston Martin Rapide

[svgallery name=”2011_Aston_Rapide_hirez”] By John LeBlanc VALENCIA, Spain – Blasphemy is running rampant in the auto industry. BMW is building mid-size hatchbacks. Porsche is making sedans from SUVs. Heck, even Mini is going to try to sell you a crossover. So when we got wind that Aston Martin — longtime maker of British sports cars and […]

Top 6 Used wagons

[svgallery name=”Used_Wagons”] By John LeBlanc Maybe you didn’t get the memo – the one announcing that the station wagon is dead. Well, in name only, at least. Wagons still exist. They’re now called crossovers, tall station wagons without the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies’ less-than-fashionable image. Or, if they do exist, wagons are given fancy names […]

First Drive: 2010 BMW 5 Gran Turismo

[svgallery name=”535i_GT_pics”] Story and photos by John LeBlanc LISBON–BMW’s been kicking around the idea of a “tall sedan” for some time. Industry types first labelled spy photos of the shorter-than-an-SUV, taller-than-a-wagon new Bimmer as a future V-series – “V” as in versatile. Perhaps “versatile” was too plebian for BMW’s marketing team, a bit too populist […]

Will small car buyers find Ford?

By John LeBlanc Two thousand and nine was a very good year for Ford in Canada. In an industry down 12 per cent, sales were up 7, resulting in a 15 per cent marketshare—the automaker’s best here in seven years. Ford even beat out General Motors in truck sales for the first time in a […]

2010 Montréal: Volkswagen Golf wins new Canadian annual car award

By John LeBlanc MONTREAL – It’s not only the fine people of Detroit that put on an auto show this time of the year. Just down the St. Lawrence River, a couple of hours on the 401, our neighbors in la belle province put on quite a car show of their own. This year, along […]

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