1 best of : June 2016

2006-2009 Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Prius Brake Fluid Issue

The problem: The brake, antilock braking system and/or TRAC warning lights may illuminate on the dash. This may be due to a small internal brake fluid leak in the brake actuator.

Vehicles affected by service bulletin:

2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid
2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid
2004 Toyota Prius
2005 Toyota Prius
2006 Toyota Prius
2007 Toyota Prius
2008 Toyota Prius
2009 Toyota Prius

See More Service Bulletins

Corrective action: Dealers will replace the brake actuator assembly.

Warranty info: This service is being performed free of charge under Toyota's new-car or extended warranty, whichever applies.

What owners should do: Call your local dealer with your vehicle's identification number to determine if it's involved in this service bulletin. You can call Toyota at 800-331-4331 or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at 888-327-4236. Reference TSB No. SB0032-16.

Need to find a dealer for service? Go to Cars.com Service & Repair to find a local dealer.

Editor's note: This is only one of dozens of service bulletins issued each month by automakers. Please check your automaker's website to see if your vehicle has any service bulletins pending.

Check for recalls here on Cars.com.

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Parallel Parking Solved: Inventor Shows off Omni-Directional Wheels

If you’ve ever wanted to move sideways into and out of a parking spot or have a much smaller turning radius, Liddiard Wheels may soon have your answer. Inventor William Liddiard posted a video of what he claims is the first set of “bolt-on” omni-directional wheels for any wheeled vehicle.

In order to showcase his new invention, Liddiard bolted his prototype omni-directional wheels onto his personal Toyota Echo coupe. Liddiard says that “unlike other omni capable wheels, my wheels do not require the vehicle to be built around them. This is a world first bolt-on application for anything with wheels.” He even asserts that the wheels can be used in any weather or road conditions.

Advantages of the omni-directional wheels include the ability to drive in all directions or rotate the vehicle 360 degrees. The tires can be had with various tread patterns and with different siping and grooves.

While Liddiard says his design produces 24,000 pounds of torque, he says the production versions would likely be offered with a taller gear specific to the application.

Check out the video below to see what is claimed to be the first universal set of bolt-on omni-directional wheels.

The post Parallel Parking Solved: Inventor Shows off Omni-Directional Wheels appeared first on Motor Trend.

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Tesla Model S Crash is First Known Fatality Involving Autopilot

A Florida driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in a crash while using the car’s Autopilot feature. The incident is the first self-driving car death on record, the Associated Press reports.

The accident happened when a tractor trailer made a left turn at an intersection with no traffic light in front of the Tesla. The crash occurred on May 7 in Williston, Fla., and the driver died of injuries he sustained in the wreck.

Tesla said in a blog post that the Model S was traveling on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when the big rig crossed its path.

“Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied,” the post reads. “The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.”

The automaker said it is saddened by the death of the driver, who was a “friend to Tesla and the broader EV community.” Tesla went on to say that the death is the first in 130 million miles of Autopilot operation, and that the risk of injury will decrease as Autopilot gets better over time. Whenever Autopilot is engaged, a warning is displayed reminding the user that the technology is in public beta and they need to maintain control at all times.

Per its procedure, Tesla notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when it learned of the accident. The AP says the government is investigating Tesla’s Autopilot system.

Source: AP

The post Tesla Model S Crash is First Known Fatality Involving Autopilot appeared first on Motor Trend.

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The First Shelby Cobra Ever Heads to Monterey Auction

In the absolute truest sense of the word, Carroll Shelby was a legend. Sure, toward the end, some of the cars carrying his name were little more than appearance packages with a shouty exhaust, but in the 1960s, he was a performance powerhouse. Of course, we can’t talk about the glory days of Shelby without first paying reverence to the immortal Shelby AC Cobra. Many of these original roadster commanded top-dollar at auctions in the past few years, with prices reaching well into to the seven-figure range. Now, for the first time in history, the original Shelby Cobra heads to auction, and there is a very strong chance Cobra CSX2000 will breach the eight-figure mark.

RM Sotheby’s, the auction house overseeing this sale, bills this as the “most important American sports car to ever be offered for sale.” That very well might not be an overstatement, as this car represents a catalyst that sent shockwaves through not only the American performance car market, but the world of motorsports as a whole.

Cobra CSX2000 was created in 1962 by Carroll Shelby and a “handful of hot-rodders.” With backing from AC themselves, Shelby shoehorned a 4.2-liter (260 ci) Ford V-8 under the hood of the voluptuous roadster, mated to a rough-and-tumble Borg-Warner T-10 transmission. The Cobra was a revelation; its extremely low-weight construction and the American-bred horsepower rampaging under the hood created something of a giant-slayer. Contemporary road tests pegged a 0-60 time of 4.2 seconds, with a quarter-mile time of 13.8 seconds, and given enough room, the little Cobra would rush up to a top speed of 153 mph. The production-spec Cobra thundered onto the sports car market later that same year, butting heads with the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Thunderbird, and the Jaguar E-Type.

While Cobras were dominant during competition, the CSX2000 abstained from the motorsports circuit. Don’t think it lived a charmed and pampered life, however, as the CSX2000 remained active and regularly-driven up to Carroll Shelby’s death in 2012. Initially, the Cobra was used on the show circuit, stirring up interest around the country. Each time the Cobra appeared at a show, Shelby had it repainted to create the illusion of multiple Cobras, despite only one in existence at that time. The car eventually settled down, and was prominently displayed at Shelby Heritage Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Finally, after 54 years, the car will arrive in a new garage. If this has you digging for change in your couch, you’d better be prepared to write quite the hefty check. No sale estimate is provided, but it won’t come cheap. Typically, a run-of-the-mill early 1960s Cobra will see a hammer fall of right around $850,000-$1,000,000, according to Hagerty. Of course, this isn’t a regular Cobra, and taking into account the incredible history and significance, it wouldn’t surprise us in the least if it took home $15-$20 million.

Look for our report on the Monterey auction later on this summer after the sale occurs mid-August.

The post The First Shelby Cobra Ever Heads to Monterey Auction appeared first on Motor Trend.

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Watch the McLaren P1 LM Set the Production Car Record at Goodwood

It comes as no surprise that one of the most successful racing teams turned automaker would break several production car performance records. A new video shows a McLaren P1 LM shatter the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb record for street-legal cars.

Retired Swedish racer Kenny Bräck completed the course in 47.07 seconds in the hybrid hypercar during the 2016 Festival of Speed Supercar Shootout.

McLaren P1 LM Front three quarters in motion

McLaren P1 LM front three quarters in motion 2

The McLaren P1 LM is based on the track-only McLaren P1 GTR and modified by Lanzante Motorsports for street-legal status (in markets outside the U.S.). Power for the McLaren P1 GTR comes from the automaker’s 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 and an electric motor. In the P1 GTR, the combo makes 986 hp or 82 hp more than in the standard P1. Other performance enhancing bits include a wider track with racing slicks as well as revised aerodynamics and more downforce.

While no details have been revealed in the transformation from the track-only P1 GTR to the street-legal P1 LM, Lanzante Motorsports will only convert five examples. The P1 GTR and P1 LM suffixes are throwbacks to the legendary McLaren F1 GTR and McLaren F1 LM cars.

Check out the video below to see Bräck set the new street car record at the 2016 Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb.

Source: Goodwood via YouTube

The post Watch the McLaren P1 LM Set the Production Car Record at Goodwood appeared first on Motor Trend.

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Control, Commute Could Unlock American Acceptance of Self-Driving Cars

CARS.COM — Could allowing motorists to seize control of autonomous vehicles be the key concession needed to drive Americans toward acceptance of the technology? According to a new survey by New York-based consulting firm AlixPartners, three-quarters of U.S. drivers said they would let a self-driving car assume all driving functions — while 80 percent would even pay extra to relinquish the wheel.

Those results fly right in the face of many, if not most, other studies on the matter. In May, a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute survey reported that just less than half of Americans prefer no self-driving capability in cars, while only 16 percent prefer fully autonomous vehicles.

Speaking to AlixPartners' automotive practice chief Mark Wakefield, Bloomberg reported that the consulting firm's survey offered a "sweet spot" to respondents: the option of taking the wheel in an otherwise fully autonomous vehicle. Wakefield said automakers testing autonomous vehicles found that passengers took to self-driving cars surprisingly quickly and that previous surveys may have biased responses by emphasizing worst-case scenarios.

But it seems that the misery of Americans' daily commute could trump their mistrust of ceding control to an earthbound HAL 9000. Urban-mobility data specialists at INRIX reported recently that U.S. commuters in 2015 on average burned 50 hours each sitting in traffic for a total of more than 8 billion hours — the most of any nation in the world. Los Angeles commuters had the most miserable commute, with each motorist wasting 81 hours in traffic last year.

The AlixPartners survey showed that a whopping 90 percent of respondents would let a driverless car pilot their commute so long as they could take over if they wanted.

"It's worth remembering that commuting sucks and it has gotten worse every decade," Wakefield told Bloomberg. "Autonomous driving increases the economic utility of the commuter and it makes their life better. When you describe what it can do, they like that."

It's not unprecedented for conventional wisdom on drivers' aversion to autonomous technologies to be contradicted when respondents are shown what's in it for them. Another recent study by insurance provider The Hartford and the MIT AgeLab demonstrated that when drivers aged 50 or older considered that advanced safety features — the building blocks of fully autonomous cars — could prolong their years behind the wheel, three-quarters were amenable to them. That's in stark contrast to other studies illustrating a large majority of older drivers' aversion to autonomous technologies.

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NHTSA Warns of Honda, Acura Vehicles With Extremely High-Risk Takata Airbag Inflators

CARS.COM — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced today that it has identified a subset of older cars from Honda and its Acura luxury division that have driver-side Takata airbag inflators that could rupture during an airbag deployment as often as half the time.

They include:

2001-02 Honda Civic
2001-02 Honda Accord
2002-03 Acura TL
2002 Honda CR-V
2002 Honda Odyssey
2003 Acura CL
2003 Honda Pilot

Honda recalled the cars above between 2008 and 2011, and more than 70 percent of them have replacement inflators, but NHTSA says some 313,000 remain unrepaired. If you own one, enter your vehicle identification number in the agency's online search tool to see if your car has been fixed. If it hasn't, visit your dealer immediately. (If you don't know how to find your VIN, watch our short video here.)

The agency says eight of the 10 confirmed U.S. deaths from ruptured Takata airbag inflators are in this pool of cars. The risk was alarming enough for U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to advise that owners stop driving the cars "unless they are going straight to a dealer to have them repaired immediately."

NHTSA says the inflators in these cars contain a manufacturing defect that exposes them to a particularly high risk of potentially deadly ruptures. Incidents are far likelier in cars that have spent significant time in areas with high absolute humidity such as the Gulf Coast, Florida and Southern California. Laboratory tests from cars exposed to these climates showed a rupture rate as high as 50 percent, the agency said today.

Regulators expanded Takata recalls in May by as many as 40 million new airbag inflators — over an existing pool of nearly 30 million inflators — potentially doubling what was already the largest safety recall in U.S. automotive history. Honda has the largest number of recalls, but more than 10 automakers are involved.

Honda implored affected owners to take their vehicle to the dealership as soon as possible and said it will continue to aggressively explore and implement new methods to reach owners of these vehicles. Honda said it has ample replacement parts inventory from alternative suppliers to immediately repair all of the recalled vehicles from the 2001-03 model years. The automaker also encouraged all affected owners to call automobile customer service at 888-234-2138 for more information.

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Volkswagen Says Eventual Diesel V-6 Fix Won't Hurt Performance

CARS.COM — The Volkswagen Group said today that it thinks it can fix the diesel V-6 engines involved in its ongoing emissions scandal without a drop in performance. Robert Giuffra, an attorney who represents the automaker, told a California judge overseeing the case that VW is "working expeditiously" to resolve excess emissions from its 3.0-liter diesel V-6. The engine is in some 85,000 U.S. sedans, hatchbacks and SUVs from the 2013 to 2016 model years.

The news comes two days after Volkswagen, regulators and a plaintiffs group announced a historic settlement that affects more than 550,000 diesel vehicles (including affected four-cylinder models) in the U.S. from the 2009 to 2016 model years. The settlement, which could cost VW up to $14.7 billion, proposes a buyback offer and other options for owners of some 475,000 diesel four-cylinder vehicles from the 2009 to 2015 model years. But it doesn't resolve anything for owners of VW's diesel V-6 cars, which the EPA also has found employ "defeat devices" that thwart emissions tests.

Those cars are the 2013-16 Porsche Cayenne Diesel plus TDI versions of the 2013-16 Volkswagen Touareg, 2013-15 Audi Q7 and 2014-16 Audi A6, A7, A8 and Q5. (The automaker markets its diesel engines as TDI for Volkswagen and Audi but not Porsche. All three brands are under the Volkswagen Group.)

"It's a bigger engine," Giuffra told U.S. Senior District Judge Charles Breyer, the judge overseeing the case, in court today. "There's testing that's going on. The company believes it can fix the 3-liter to the standard with which the cars were originally certified ... [and] it will not be one that will have an adverse effect on performance."

Breyer set Aug. 25 for the next status update regarding the V-6 cars. That's nearly a month after the next milestone in VW's ongoing diesel scandal: July 26, when the court will hold a hearing on the approval of Tuesday's proposed settlement.

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Where Do the Best, Worst Drivers Live?

CARS.COM — The average American motorist is involved in an auto collision once every decade, according to a study by insurance company Allstate. Depending on where you live, though, that frequency can be a lot less — or a whole lot more.

A border town at the southernmost tip of Texas took the safest-city title for the first time in the 2016 edition of Allstate's annual America's Best Drivers Report. Motorists in Brownsville, Texas, on average are involved in a collision once every 14.6 years and are 31.4 percent less likely to crash relative to the national average. The agency's study measures vehicle collision frequency in the nation's 200 largest cities to determine where the safest drivers reside.

Brownsville displaces last year's safest city, Kansas City, Kan., bumped down to No. 2 this year with a crash every 13.6 years and a 26.3-percent reduced likelihood of an accident. Boston, on the other hand, has a collision frequency of one every 3.7 years and a 167.6 percent greater likelihood of a crash (nearly 10 percent worse than in 2015).

Among the nation's three largest cities, Chicago lays claim to the best drivers, who go an average of 8.5 years between accidents and have only an 18.2 percent heightened likelihood of being in one. New York is close behind the Windy City with 8.3 years and 20.3 percent greater likelihood. The nation's capital of car culture, meanwhile, also happens to be home to some of the worst drivers, according to Allstate: Los Angeles ranks in the top 10 most dangerous driving cities with an average of 6.3 years between crashes and a 58.8 percent greater chance.

Here are the top 10 safest cities in America for drivers, followed by the number of years drivers in each city go on average between crashes and the percentage they are less likely to be in an accident:

10. Reno, Nev.; 12.2 years between crashes; 18.3 percent less likely

9. Olathe, Kan.; 12.4 years; 19.6 percent

8. Wichita, Kan.; 12.5 years; 19.7 percent

7. Port St. Lucie, Fla.; 12.5 years; 20.1 percent

6. Huntsville, Ala.; 12.7 years; 21.4 percent

5. Boise, Idaho; 12.8 years; 22.1 percent

4. Cape Coral, Fla.; 12.9 years; 22.3 percent

3. Madison, Wis.; 13.3 years; 24.7 percent

2. Kansas City, Kan.; 13.6 years; 26.3 percent

1. Brownsville, Texas; 14.6 years; 31.4 percent

Conversely, below are the most dangerous cities in the U.S. for drivers, followed by the number of years drivers in each city go on average between crashes and the percentage they are more likely to be in an accident:

10. San Francisco; 6.6 years; 51.7 percent

9. Philadelphia; 6.3 years; 57.8 percent

8. Los Angeles; 6.3 years; 58.8 percent

7. Providence, R.I.; 5.9 years; 69.1 percent

6. Glendale, Calif.; 5.8 years; 71.3 percent

5. Springfield, Mass.; 5.7 years; 76.7 percent

4. Washington, D.C.; 4.9 years; 106.2 percent

3. Baltimore, Md.; 4.7 years; 113.7 percent

2. Worcester, Mass.; 4.5 years; 124.4 percent

1. Boston; 3.7 years; 167.6 percent

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2016 Maserati Quattroporte Review

CARS.COM — The 2016 Maserati Quattroporte is a fast, stylish, rare executive luxury car that banks on styling and brand cachet to overcome its lack of the latest technology.

Find out more in my review.

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Honda Accord Celebrates 40th Birthday

It’s hard to believe the Honda Accord is only 40 years old, given it’s such a staple among mainstream car buyers in the U.S. Over the past 40 years, Honda has sold over 12.7 million copies of the Accord here.

The Accord first arrived in June 1976 as a three-door hatchback (pictured above), which incidentally, had a smaller wheelbase than today’s subcompact Honda Fit. It wasn’t until 1979 that the Accord sedan came to market. Three years later, the Accord began rolling off the production line at Honda’s first U.S. plant. The new facility in Marysville, Ohio, made Honda the first Japanese automaker to build cars in the U.S.

Soon after, the Accord would also become the first U.S.-made car from a Japanese automaker to be exported overseas. In 1987, Honda shipped Ohio-made Accords to Taiwan. The next year, Honda began producing the Accord Coupe exclusively at the Ohio factory, exporting copies to Japan.

Other milestones followed in the coming years, including the addition of a V-6 Accord in 1994 and a new hybrid model in 2005. By 2014, Honda marked the 10-millionth Accord built at its Ohio facility. Today, Honda has produced more than 10.5 million Accords in the U.S. The model is now in its ninth generation.

The Accord was Honda’s first step toward become a major full-line automaker and establishing a presence in the U.S., the automaker says. Although eclipsed by sales of the smaller Civic here, the Accord remains a top-seller. Through May, Honda sold 140,548 copies of the sedan, up significantly from last year. It’s the fifth best-selling car so far this year (excluding trucks), with the top being the Toyota Camry with 167,199 units sold.

Honda says the Accord has remained the top-selling car in the U.S. for the past three years in terms of retail sales. It also says the Accord is the top-selling midsize car for buyers under 35 years old. Currently, more than 99 percent of all Honda vehicles sold in the U.S. are made in North America.

Check out the video and gallery below for more about the evolution of the Honda Accord.