Autoblog

Sensing the ripe market opportunity, Nissan will start producing various light-commercial and medium-duty trucks in 2010. The targeted segment is currently dominated by Ford and GM, where the miscellaneous cabs and frames are used to produce such vehicles as dump trucks, tow trucks, and school buses. Now, Nissan wants a piece of the pie. Larry Dominique, Nissan's VP of product planning, wouldn't disclose details right now, but he did say that a handful of new products will be needed to satisfy the new commercial truck dealers – and Nissan is more than willing to oblige. Joe Castelli, the former director of Ford's commercial trucks (and now a VP of commercial trucks at Nissan), said the Japanese automaker will be pulling from their global stable of commercial components (branded Atlas and Atleon in other markets) to quickly adapt them for the U.S. market. Nissan's official commercial truck plans will be announced in January at the Detroit Auto Show, and we'll be there to judge reactions.

[Source: Automotive News, subs. req'd]

It's an epic poem that could have been written by Byron: you suffered a nasty breakup and met a new girl, you dated for a while, things were looking outstanding, you proposed... and then the bottom dropped out of the medium-duty truck business. We've seen it all before. And now that it's happened, Navistar has backed away from it's non-binding commitment to purchase GM's medium-duty truck operations.

GM and Navistar only had a memorandum of understanding, so there appears to be no harm, no foul in Navistar getting icy feet. The brief announcement of the dissolution presents it as a mutual affair: "Due to significant marketplace and economic changes, GM and Navistar have decided not to renew the memorandum of understanding to purchase GM's medium duty truck business," but we imagine GM standing at the altar, watching its Navistar groom bolt from the church and hop in a taxi.>

GM is still talking to Navistar and looking at other ways to dump find a good home for its medium duty truck business. A shame, because they make some fine vehicles.

[Source: GM]

Click on the pic above for our high-res 2009 Ford F-150 gallery

As staggering as it may seem, the 2008 Ford F-150 pickup can be ordered in billions of different combinations. That's all going to change for 2009. In an effort to reduce complexity and cut spiraling costs in the process, Ford will be slashing the number of possible F-150 configurations by 90 percent. The automaker isn't leaving the rest of the lineup alone either. The Ford Expedition goes from 250,000 combos down to fewer than 10,000. The 2009 Lincoln MKS debuts with about 300 combinations, and the 2010 Ford Focus will offer only about 150, which is 95 percent fewer than the current model. Are you in the market for a 2009 Ford F-150 and worried that you won't be able to get it exactly the way you want? Don't fret, Ford will still offer more than 9 million combinations for next year's model, including a brown one we presume.

[Source: Automotive News, subs. req'd]

While General Motors looks over a stack of offers for its HUMMER brand, the fate of AM General hangs in the balance. The military contractor developed and built the original Humvee until the rights to the HUMMER name were bought by GM, who then contracted AM General to continue building the H1 (until it was discontinued) and then the Chevy Tahoe-based H2. (The Chevy Colorado-based H3, meanwhile, is built entirely by GM at its Shreveport, Louisiana plant.) With the future of its General Motors contracts uncertain, AM General has announced a new deal of another kind.

Starting in 2010, the Indiana-based company will begin producing a new series of wheelchair-accessible transit vehicles for the Vehicle Production Group, LLC. Although, as VPG points out, the usual development gestation period for such vehicles is two to three years, VPG and AM General intend to get the ramp-equipped para-transit vehicle to market in less than 24 months. Over 3,500 units have already been ordered, leading VPG to project that annual production will well exceed that number, while AM General intends to use the same workforce it currently employs for the new project. As for what the para-transit vehicle will look like, no one knows, but there was word of AM General developing a new version of the Standard Taxi (see above) with a low ride height and large doors that appears as if it could easily accommodate wheel chairs.

[Source: Detroit News]

Remember in the first Crocodile Dundee movie when he gets mugged in New York City and Sue says "He's got a knife," and Dundee says, "That's not a knife, this is a knife," and then he pulls out a beast-killing monstrosity of a blade? Well, that's what the folks at Titan Tire are saying right now about every other -- smaller -- tire in the world.

Titan has made a 63-inch rubber behemoth for use on trucks in Canada's oil sands. The stats on these rubber donuts is impressive: the 59/80R63 is the biggest production tire in the world, standing over fourteen feet tall and weighing 12,500 pounds with a load rating of 101 metric tons. It makes Titan a very appropriate name for the company, as we learned from another movie, Remember the Titans, that in Greek mythology the Titans were greater even than the gods. Now we can only hope this development will make the price of oil drop another ten dollars...

[Source: Titan via Gizmag]

Click above for 16 high-res images of the 9.150 ECE.

Volkswagen Brasil's commercial arm released the 9.150 ECE armored truck back in February of this year, but it's been off of everyone's radar until today, when photos began making the internet rounds. Looking like a giant, wheeled metallic bulldog that could transform into a giant talking robot at any moment, the 9.150 ECE is powered by a 4750cc inline four-cylinder turbodiesel mated to a five-speed transmission. Power is a modest 150 horses, but peak torque is a stout 405 lb.-ft., delivered between 1,600 and 2,000 rpm. It clearly needs that low-end grunt to haul a full payload of duckets. We call for VW to import a civilian version to North America posthaste. After all, the civilian-trim Chevy Kodiak, International CXT, GMC TopKick and Ford F-650 could use a little competition. How do you say "Das Auto" in Portuguese?


[Source: VW Brasil]

What do Porsche and Lamborghini have in common? Well, a lot. To begin with, both make highly desirable sports cars, and after the former bought up a serious stake in Volkswagen, which in turn had bought the latter, both are now under common ownership. Both have produced insanely powerful sport-utilities and both have built tractors. Lamborghini started out making tractors before Ferruccio's infamous run-in with Enzo Ferrari, after which he started making sportscars. The rest, as they say, is history. Porsche, on the other hand, started out in the opposite direction, producing sportscars before eventually moving on to sport-utes. But back in the 1950's, Porsche made a series of tractors as well. Now one enthusiast has brought it around full swing with this unique Porsche tractor.

The machine started out as a 14.5hp Partner lawn mower before its owner went to town, taking apart the engine and painting it yellow, fitting a custom stainless-steel exhaust, a fire extinguisher and a tachometer crafted from a 911 oil filter, then painting the body "Grand Prix Weiss" with "Idischrot" red accents. The result? Well, it won't be setting any Nürburgring lap records, but we'd be happy to see it face off against an old Porsche Diesel Super tractor to see which could mow The Green Hell fastest.

[Source: The Car Connection]

We've seen our fair share of gasoline thefts as of late, and it seems that more are to be expected as the price for a gallon of gas continues its upwards trajectory. The latest scam affects moving companies such as U-Haul, which is now reporting that some renters of its trucks are using up the fuel in the tank and refilling them with water. Other less ingenious criminal minds are simply resorting to the age-old tactic of siphoning gas from the delivery vehicle's tanks.

One U-Haul employee in Olympia, Washington reports that she has seen "five or six [instances of] water in fuel [tanks] last week." Because water does not readily mix with gasoline, some renters have been able to go uncaught as the deed isn't found out until the next user gets the truck. In that case, major repair bills starting around $2,000 are necessary. Let's just hope that thieves looking to score some free gas at U-Haul's expense don't begin using the drill method.

[Source: KATU.com]

Click on the above image for a Zetros photo gallery

Mercedes-Benz chose the International Defense Exhibition Eurosatory 2008 in Paris, a show we don't normally attend, to introduce their new Zetros truck. The model pictured above is the Zetros 2733 A 6x6, offering permanent all-wheel-drive to all three axles and the ability to haul nearly 10 tons of equipment and supplies. If you just don't have that much stuff, Mercedes also offers the Zetros 1833 A 4x4, a two-axle derivative with a reduced load capacity. Both versions offer go-anywhere capabilities with exemplary off-road manners and the ability to be upgraded with state-of-the art armor for protection against mine and ballistic attack. While you'd expect the Zetros to handle like a wet noodle, the German automaker insists the Zetros has been designed with the driver in mind, adding "...the ideal seating position behind the front axle delivers intuitive car-like handling." Since we don't have a Zetros planned for an "In the Autoblog Garage" review, we'll just have to take their word on that.

[Source: eMercedesBenz]

Londoners could be swapping out black cabs for black vans pretty soon. EcoCity vehicles, through its subsidiary KPM-UK, has worked with LTI, the maker of the famous black cab, for almost 20 years. Now EcoCity has signed an agreement with Mercedes-Benz to produce cabs out of Vito Traveliner vans, which produce lower emissions than the LTI offering.

With 93-percent of the London taxi market owned by black cabs, we wouldn't expect to see Traveliners dominating The City any time soon. For EcoCity, it was more about offering a more environmental choice for drivers and customers. Former mayor Ken Livingstone was a big proponent of that, if you'll remember. And for the city of London, it could mean less of the brown stuff in the air. The Traveliner taxi will be launched next week, and go on sale shortly after.

[Source: The Telegraph via Carscoop]