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Mazda considers expanding Takata recall nationwide

Vehicle recalls have come in force recently. Honda expanded its front driver's side Takata airbag inflator recall nationwide to cover an estimated 5.4-million vehicles, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration added 19 notices to its database covering safety campaigns dating back to October. It looks like there could be one more to add to the list soon because Mazda is considering a possible nationwide expansion of its own inflator repairs. A company spokesperson tells Reuters that there is no decision yet when to actually make this nationwide expansion of the driver's side inflator recall official, and the company isn't sure how many vehicles may be affected. Mazda just expanded the scope of its Takata inflator recalls to additional regions earlier in December. The move took its total number of units in need of repair from around 65,000 under the earlier NHTSA estimate to 86,773, according to the company. So far, the automaker's US campaign has included the 2003-2007 Mazda6, 2006-2007 MazdaSpeed6, 2004-2008 Mazda RX-8, 2004-2005 MPV and 2004 B-Series pickup.

2017 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Quick Spin | Elevate yourself

It's unusually hot in Western Washington; the early August sun beams through skies rendered hazy by fires a few hundred miles to the north. If you're not moving, it gets a bit oppressive, since there's just enough humidity to feel it and not enough wind to relieve it. Instead of huddling inside, window shades drawn, fan blowing hot air around impotently – this is how most Washingtonians, 75 percent of whom don't have A/C, handle the heat – we're taking our fan on the road. The best way to beat the heat, it turns out, is to climb into the forests. For this adventure in body temperature regulation, we've got a Mazda MX-5 RF, the Miata's semi-targa-topped variant, and a few hours of time. And the Cascade Mountain's foothills, thickly coated with Douglas firs and, higher up, subalpine firs soaking up as much sun as they can in the short growing season. I've lived near the foothills nearly all my life, but there's a lot of the Cascades I haven't explored. One area is Chinook Pass, a mountain road that crests at 5,430 feet. Looming almost 9,000 feet above it is Mount Rainier, so close you can almost touch it. Just about 100 feet below the summit is Tipsoo Lake, startlingly clear and sporting enough wildflowers to make The Sound of Music look like a movie about Rommel's North Africa campaign. But that's jumping ahead a bit. Between me and the summit is about 90 minutes of driving, through the suburbs and into the Enumclaw Plateau, and then along the chalky White River and up into the mountains. Plenty of time to focus on nothing but the surroundings, and the quality of the cooling action provided by the little Mazda. A quick word about the car, and my own biases – I love Miatas, but I have a complicated relationship with the latest MX-5, having owned a much more visceral (and much slower) first-gen car for about six years. On paper, it's this perfect modern interpretation of the original. It's light, it's a momentum machine, the steering's just a tad overboosted, and it has a playful amount of body roll while maintaining a healthy amount of mechanical grip. It looks aggressive enough, too, a major complaint of many folks about the last-gen car's Joker smile. The interior is largely brilliant, amazingly simple and interesting for such a lithe car. And yet, I have never found the new car to be as charismatic as my old Miata, with all its flaws. This puts me in the minority; most MX-5 fanatics find the ND to be a great compromise.

VW Q3 Financial Woes, 2015 Tokyo Motor Show | Autoblog Minute

Consumer Reports pulls its Tesla recommendation, the U.S. Copyright Office offers a ruling affecting car owners, VW gets hit hard with third quarter losses, and lots of exciting news from Tokyo. Autoblog's Senior editor Greg Migliore reports on this Autoblog Minute Weekly Recap. Tokyo Motor Show Mazda Subaru Suzuki Tesla Toyota Concept Cars Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video Tokyo 2015