2010 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Sportback Rare Loaded Free Shipping on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Nissan slashes profit forecast as Ghosn arrest hurts brand appeal

TOKYO — Nissan cut its profit forecast for the fiscal year through March on Wednesday to reflect slowing sales, higher costs and the fallout from a criminal investigation of its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn. Nissan Motor Co. expects to post a 319 billion yen ($2.9 billion) profit for the fiscal year, marking a 22% drop from its earlier 410 billion yen ($3.7 billion) forecast. Nissan said the downgrade reflects higher costs in the U.S. from a warranty extension campaign for some vehicles and falling sales due to "corporate issues," alluding to the Ghosn scandal. Ghosn was arrested in November and is facing charges of underreporting his income and breach of trust. He says he is innocent. He was released on bail in March and is awaiting another court decision on bail after his re-arrest on April 4. Nissan, which is allied with Renault SA of France, has seen sales lag in France and Japan, where Ghosn is widely known. In the U.S. and China, buyers aren't as affected by the scandal, but the markets there overall have slowed. Other factors contributed to the revision, such as production not keeping up with demand for the Note, an extremely popular model in Japan. But the high-profile scandal has weakened the brand appeal of the maker of the Leaf electric car, Infiniti luxury model and X-trail sports utility vehicle. Nissan said it expects to sell 5.5 million vehicles in this fiscal year. Earlier it predicted it would sell 5.6 million. The company sold nearly 5.8 million vehicles in the fiscal year that ended in March 2018. The automaker reduced its sales outlook by 0.2% for the fiscal year through March 2019 to 11.5 trillion yen ($103 billion), compared to its previous forecast. It was Nissan's second downgrade for its outlook following one in February that cited faltering sales in China and the U.S. At that time, Nissan also logged costs about 9.2 billion yen ($83 million) related to the alleged underreporting of Ghosn's compensation. Nissan has promised to strengthen its corporate governance to prevent a recurrence of what it says is serious wrongdoing by Ghosn. Ghosn was sent by Nissan's French alliance partner, Renault SA, to help turn the Japanese automaker around when it was near bankruptcy 20 years ago. The future of the alliance is one of many questions clouding Nissan's future following Ghosn's ouster since he was the main liaison for the alliance, which includes smaller Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors.

Weekly Recap: Toyota wants cars to be your 'close friends' around 2020

Toyota confirmed plans this week to launch autonomous technology in its production cars around 2020. The automaker's version is called Highway Teammate, and it's one element of a broader mobility strategy that includes vehicles communicating with each other and the grid. "Toyota believes that interactions between drivers and cars should mirror those between close friends who share a common purpose, sometimes watching over each other and sometimes helping each other out," the company said in a statement. That sounds utopian, and perhaps a bit cheesy, but it's an acknowledgment that autonomous driving requires more than technology developed in a vacuum. Toyota is looking at its research in a broader context, and dubs its overall strategy the Mobility Teammate Concept. Highway Teammate is the first step. Its test vehicle is a modified Lexus GS, which uses road-mapping data and external sensors to merge or exit highways, change lanes, and maintain safe distances during driving. It's operated on the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. Toyota has been working on autonomous tech since the 1990s, with the goal of providing mobility for older people and the disabled, as well as lowering the frequency of traffic accidents. Toyota's push comes as an early adopter, Nissan, is hedging on its own deadline to implement the autonomous tech by 2020 due to a lack of firm laws governing self-driving cars around the world. Conversely, Volvo took the landmark step of being the first automaker to accept liability for when its cars will operate in autonomous mode, and urged the US government to set federal guidelines to regulate the technology. OTHER NEWS & NOTES 2016 BMW M4 GTS: Your water-injected, turbo-boosted demon BMW is unleashing its most powerful M4 ever, a 493-horsepower special edition that's road legal yet bred for the track. The company is making 700 copies for sale around the world, and 300 of them will come to the United States. The twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder revs to 7,600 rpm and uses a water-injection technology to cool the intake air and lower the compression temperature. BMW says this allows it to wring more power out of the inline six. The car also uses carbon-fiber reinforced plastic for the roof, hood, engine compartment strut brace, drive shaft, and rear spoiler to reduce weight. The M4 features BMW's organic light-emitting diode taillights, which are said to be an industry first.

New, never-sold 2006 Mitsubishi Evo draws $100K bid on eBay

Today, in the "OK, guess it must be worth that to somebody" department, we note that a California car dealer has an eBay listing for a 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, still brand new and never titled, with nine miles on the odometer. Just another day on eBay, right, and just another car that didn't sell, was hoarded, or somehow forgotten in a barn? Not exactly. The top bid as of Wednesday morning was $100,100. The Evo was a popular car (for a Mitsubishi) in its day, in a cult-of-personality way. And though its run ended with the 2015 model year, a quick inventory search shows there are still around 30 of them sitting brand-new on dealer lots, including the #0001-of-1,600 Lancer Evolution Final Edition, a $70,000 MSRP limited-edition car in Rally Red that a Brooklyn dealer is trying to move for $87,888. Most of the remainders are listed in the $30,000s, however. The 2006 eBay car is listed by South Coast Mitsubishi in Orange County, a dealer who by one Redditer's account laid up a bunch of Evos like bottles of fine wine and sold them off at higher prices. If so, is this the last one in the cellar? And why did the dealership set a car aside in 2006, when they were plentiful and long before the model's demise? For whatever reason, this 2006 car has time-traveled to 2017, with seats still wrapped in plastic and an engine bay you could perform surgery in. It's an Evo IX MR in Graphite Gray with black trim. Base MSRP was a bit more than $35K. It's optioned with the MR package that includes some aluminum and carbon-fiber bits and boost-gauge kit, the Zero Lift aero kit, and it has a six-speed manual. Bottom line on the sticker was $37,094. Specs for that year: The Evo had a 2.0-liter, 16-value inline four making 286 horsepower with 289 pound-feet of torque. The car's curb weight was 3,300 pounds, and its 0-to-60 time was a highly impressive 4.4 seconds. Yet, for $100K or a little more or a lot less, think of all the amazing 2017 new cars, equipped with the latest technology, that would dominate it - Tesla Model S, Lexus LC 500, BMW M2, Mercedes C63 AMG, Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio, Camaro ZL1, Porsche 911 Carrera S, Dodge Demon, Dodge Hellcat, Corvette ZL1. Even a Mustang GT350 could edge it out, and if you drove a hard bargain you might be able to afford two. So, can a Mitsubishi triple its value by sitting around for a decade undriven? Is this in any way a collectible, to keep undriven as an investment?