Iforce 5.7 V8 Custom 20" Xd Wheels Nitto Tires Nav Gps Call Sam 832-343-7501 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Toyota hangs on to title of world's largest automaker for first half of 2013

General Motors and Ford can have all the success they please, but it doesn't seem like America's two largest manufacturers are going to topple Toyota in the first half of 2013. According to Reuters, Toyota moved 4.91 million vehicles in the first six months of 2013, representing a 1.1-percent drop from the same period in 2012.
GM is on the rise, though, with a four-percent increase in global sales, to 4.85 million. Volkswagen, still sitting in third, saw a 5.5-percent jump to 4.7 million vehicles in the first half of 2013.
If this pace continues for Toyota, it'll finish 2013 in the top sales spot for the second year in a row. The manufacturer fell to third, behind GM and VW, in 2011 after earthquakes and tsunamis ravaged its production capacity.

Toyota launches BMW-powered Verso in Europe

BMW makes some sweet-revving engines, but its own vehicles aren't the only ones running BMW engines. So do the latest from Rolls-Royce and Mini, of course, as well as a handful of Peugeots and Citroëns thanks to its joint engine program with PSA. Wiesmann uses BMW engines, as did the famous McLaren F1. And now we can add one more to the list.
That would be the Toyota Verso, a Corolla-based minivan which Toyota builds in Turkey and sells in Europe and a few other markets overseas. The Verso is also now officially the first beneficiary of the partnership between Toyota and BMW as the Japanese automaker has released the MPV with BMW's 1.6-liter turbodiesel four.
The 111-horsepower engine is coupled to a Toyota transmission and joins the Verso range as the fourth (and least powerful) engine in the lineup, alongside the 122hp 2.0 diesel and the gasoline options with 1.6 liters and 160 hp and 1.8 for 180. Future collaborations between the two automakers will include fuel-cell development, a new joint sportscar platform, lightweight bodywork research and a new generation of lithium-air batteries. See the press release below for further details.

Toyota 86 most likely to get more power through more displacement? [w/poll]

The Sydney Morning Herald has spoken to Tetsuya Tada, chief engineer of the Toyota 86 (our version of it, the Scion FR-S, is pictured above), and they've been promised that more power is on the way. We've heard a lot of speculation about a more powerful Toyobaru since before the standard model was even launched. The only question now is how the power will be delivered, and among the engine concepts we've already heard about - turbo, supercharger, twin-charged, hybrid - is a new one: more displacement.
Tada said that an engine with more displacement than the current coupe's 2.0 liters is being tested alongside a turbocharged and a hybrid-assisted motor. The SMH cites "inside sources" as saying the displacement option is the one likely to get the go-ahead, and suggests increased bore and stroke will see the engine grow to 2.5 liters, horsepower to about 250 - a 50-hp increase over the present car.
While that's apparently the betting man's solution for the long-awaited increase in gumption, what happens with the next generation could be more wide open than we suspected. According to the report, Tada "hinted that [a successor] could be a radically different car, potentially dropping the boxer engine altogether." He said once they've sorted out the concept for the second generation car, then they'll sort out an engine. That's where a turbo option could come to market, perhaps the turbocharged four-cylinder Toyota is developing for the Lexus NX crossover or a hybrid system that uses a capacitor.