Post by Kasey Kagawa

In 2003, MG Rover debuted the Rover Streetwise, basically a Rover 25 on stilts with a set of big, ugly black plastic bumpers that seem to be inspired by the Pontiac Aztek. They marketed it as an “urban on-roader,” which is a market segment that one would hope all cars would aspire to be in, as there isn’t much of a market for cars whose wheels fall off and suspension disintegrates the instant you take it onto a road or into town. It didn’t sell, and was relegated to being another footnote in the slow meltdown of the MG Rover Group.

In between now and then, MG Rover has been bought by Nanjing Automotive in China, and MG was split from Rover due to Ford stealing the Rover name from Nanjing through an option established with BMW. They’ve reopened the old Rover plant at Longbridge and are making the MG TF, with plans for plants in China and Oklahoma and production of the MG ZT.

And apparently, the Rover Streetwise. Rebadged as an MG, it looks largely the same as it did when it was launched. Now, this might fly in the People’s Republic, since as far as I can see, Chinese automotive technology is stuck in the late 1990’s, which would make this four-year-old car something that stepped out of a time machine. The same thing is true in the rest of the world, but only in the opposite direction. The Streetwise was out of date when it was introduced, and it’s still out of date today. If this is the game that Nanjing’s bringing to the table, they’re in for a big disappointment.

MG Streetwise scooped [Car Magazine]

Article and Photographs by Kasey Kagawa

Unless your name is commonly found on a nationally-distributed brand of toilet paper or you just finished conning your venture capital partners with your latest video game startup, the only opportunity you would have to drive a car with three-digit production numbers would be if you were to hold a Ferrari dealer at gunpoint. Not only that, but you will most certainly kill yourself in your attempts to evade the police, as the multitude of Enzo crashes as of late have proven. Fortunately, in 2006, Hertz, Ford, and Shelby American came together to produce a limited-production car that’s available to everyone.

Continue reading Road Test by Proxy: Riding Shotgun on Ortega Highway in the Shelby GT-H

Post by Kasey Kagawa

If you read the forums of any given import tuner website, you’d think that the Nissan Skyline GT-R series is better than Porsche, Ferrari, Lotus, and girls, all bunched together. To be fair, any car that can crank out such high horsepower numbers with even the most simplistic of tunes is definitely something to be appreciated, but there is more to life than peak horsepower, like interior luxuries and not being pulled over by the police every other day.

However, even if you ignore the collective hard-on that twenty-something car enthusiasts get when they think about the Skyline GT-R series, there’s certainly enough history behind the series to earn it a place in the stars. From the 1970’s roots of the badge and its 50 wins in only three years of racing, to the constant destruction of Nordschleife lap records, to causing the downfall of FIA Group A and JTCC touring car racing through its sheer dominance of the entire race series, despite heavy-handed attempts at handicapping the car, the Skyline GT-R is a car that’s always stood for taking down the giants of the automotive performance world, and now they’re at it again. Inside Line’s team of intrepid spies followed a Nissan GT-R undergoing performance testing in New Mexico to Los Angeles, and now to Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California (I know that it’s Infineon Raceway now, but I still call “Edison International Field” by Angels Stadium), just north of San Francisco, where it’s been doing some spirited laps with the new Porsche 911 Turbo. According to the stopwatches of the crack team of ex-CIA spooks that Edmunds employs, the GT-R lapped the track only a few tenths of a second off the pace of the 911, which is all the more amazing if you consider that the GT-R is projected to cost about half as much. If that pace turns out to be right, BMW, Audi, and Porsche should start watching their backs.

2009 Nissan Skyline GT-R at Sears Point: Video & Spy Photos [Edmunds Inside Line]

Post by Kasey Kagawa

When you think of the great small two-seater convertibles of history, a few names come to mind. MG, Austin-Healy, Triumph, Lotus, and more recently, Mazda. Dodge isn’t on that list, mostly because the only two-seater droptop they’ve ever built is the Viper, which is not exactly in the same league as a TR6. They’re hoping to make their way onto that list, however, with the new Dodge Demon. It’s just a concept, but this one’s already got enough technical specs listed to see that it might be a pretty damn good car if they decide to build it. Dodge says that they’ve got their sights on the Mazda MX-5, and I think that there’s a good chance that they could find a place in the market for the Demon.

Press release and more of my nonsense after the jump.

Continue reading Honey, I Shrunk the Viper: Dodge Demon Concept to Debut at Geneva

Post by Kasey Kagawa

Now, this might be a bit garbled, as I’m getting this second-hand from Autoblog because $155 a year is simply usurious for a fancy auto news website (unless Zerin’s got an account with Automotive News already, and if so, hook a brother up), but it looks like somewhat conditionally good news has come out of the US division of Smart. For a mere $99, you can put your name down for a Smart Fortwo city car sometime in the near future at their website, www.smartusa.com. Now, this doesn’t guarantee you a spot in any sort of line, as this is simply to gauge market interest and determine how many pocket-sized perambulators per person should be given out to each region, but it does put you on the list to get one when they come out about a year from now. So basically, you put a Benjamin down now for the chance to get a Smart Fortwo at some point in the future, when they actually release them, depending on how the demand is throughout the nation. Hell, with odds like that, I might put my name down for three.

(Edit: USA Today reports that the program opens up in about two months. Thanks, johnnyo911!)

SmartUSA offering $99 reservations to gauge interest in the ForTwo [Autoblog]