From the Passenger's Seat

I post this blog post as a rant of sort. I feel that Toyota has been on a downward spiral. It all started with the 2011 Sienna, which is a disappointment compared to its predecessor. The new Sienna had a cheaper interior, is louder, and is overall less refined than the previous Sienna. Hence, it finished last in two comparison tests done by cars.com and Car & Driver .  The next disappointing redesign was the 2012 Camry. It wasn't disappointing at first, but the competition raised the bar to another level right after the Camry came out. Toyota didn't mess anything up this time, but the car just seems uncompetitive compared to newer family sedans. Well, it seems uncompetitive even to the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima, both of which were redesigned for the 2011 model year. It has second to last in comparison tests done by Car & Driver as well as Motortrend , and finished midpack in cars.com's latest family sedan shootout. Out in the Lexus department, the 2013...

I've ridden in my friend's mother's Lexus ES300 for a couple of times now, so I thought I might make a review. Granted, I've only ridden in the car for about 30 minutes a trip, and I haven't gotten any chances to poke around, but here's my overall impressions. First of all, the ride is like there are pillows between the wheels and the car. It's very soft and absorbent. Though you can feel bumps in the road, there's little to none high frequency vibrations and harsh bumps are soaked up more than in many vehicles (e.g. my father's Honda Odyssey.), but the Lincoln Town Car I had as a rental most definitely had the softest ride I've ever experienced.  These pictures are not of the actual car, but the wheels and colors are accurate. On the highway, the car is reasonably quiet. It's not super-quiet by today's standards, but it is more hushed than most vehicles, with subdued road noise and muted wind noise. Engine noise is almost nonex...

I noticed recently that Japanese vehicles have been getting increasingly ugly for the past year or so. Here are two examples at the 2012 L.A. Auto Show:  1. 2014 Toyota RAV4 I don't know what the Toyota designers were thinking. From the robotic face to the black plastic fangs in the lower front fascia to the seemingly unfinished rear bumper to the bat-like rear to the blocky interior, the new RAV4 looks like a disaster. And so does all of Toyota's redesigned products from the 2012 Camry and beyond.  2. 2014 Acura RLX First of all, what is with the name? Did the RL really need a X following it? I feel that RL is a perfectly fine name, and adding an X made it seem less unique and harder to distinguish in Acura's lineup. The addition of the X in the name isn't the worst thing though, the RLX also has bug-like LED headlights. Even worse, those atrocious headlights are standard! And the rear looks like it was stolen from the Chevrolet Cruze, which is n...

I was looking through some photos of the new debuts of the Los Angeles Auto Show, and I noticed one thing all of these cars had in common: the center air vents of the interior are all mounted to the side of the center controls! Well, not all of them, of course. Take a look:

Slated to go on sale next spring, the 2014 Impala aims to break its rental car past with its coupe-like profile, expressive styling elements, and a plusher interior. The seemingly improved 2014 Impala's base price is $27535 (including a $810 destination charge). That doesn't look like such a premium over the 2013 Impala's $26685 starting price (including a $825 destination charge), but sneaky Chevrolet put a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine in the base 2014 Impala. The 2013 Impala comes with a standard 3.6-liter V-6.  Nevertheless, you can still get the 3.6-liter V-6 in the 2014 Impala, though the cheapest V-6 Impala is $30760. Trim levels in ascending order are the LS, LT, and LTZ. The base LS can only be equipped with the 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine. The LT with the 2.5-liter engine is $29785, while the LT with the V-6 as mentioned before is $30760. The LTZ with the 2.5-liter is $34555, and the V-6 LTZ is $36580. Technologically advanced featured not offered on the...

This is the 2012 RAV4, not the 2013 If you're just dying for a new RAV4 like the rest of us (the current-generation RAV4 first went on sale in 2005), you won't have to wait much longer. Today, Toyota has released a little teaser video of the 2013 RAV4, and announced that it will debut at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show on November 29.  You only get short little glimpses of the new RAV4 in the video, but it does give you an idea that the RAV4 will wear Toyota's new styling theme as shown in the Camry and 2013 Avalon. Expect the new RAV4 to go on sale shortly after its debut. Here's the link for the video: http://bcove.me/mnoapev1

If you have been following me consistently for a long time, you know that I always post 4 days a week, Monday through Thursday, every week unless I'm on vacation. Well, sadly, that has changed. With me being in school now, it gets hard for me to update consistently. So I apologize, guys. I wanted to post about the new Transit Connect yesterday, but I was caught up cooking for a project and then going to have fun at my friend's house (oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that). Anyways, I didn't have much time to do anything, so I ended up not posting a new post. Thank you to all of anyone who has followed me, but my updates to this blog may be choppy and inconsistent.