1969 Toyota Fj40 Land Cruiser Fully Restored 4x4 V8 Auto on 2040-cars

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2017 Toyota 86: The car so nice it's been rebadged twice

When the dust settles and the Scion brand is no more, the car we currently know as the Scion FR-S will be rebadged. Again. If you remember the excitement that surrounded the Toyobaru/Subota rear-drive sports coupes' introduction, you'll recall that Scion's Subaru BRZ twin landed in here as the FR-S. That car, along with the new iA and iM, will get a stay of execution next year when the brand bids adieu. We know it will wear a Toyota badge in dealers from then on, and there's a good chance it will get the 86 badge European models wear. Toyota's version of the car goes by several different names depending on the market. It's only a Scion in North America, while it's sold as the Toyota 86 (in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa), Toyota GT86 (in Europe and New Zealand again), and Toyota FT86 (in Nicaragua and Jamaica). The 86 part of the name is a nod to the rear-drive AE86 Corollas of the 1980s. That's a history lesson Toyota likely won't have to teach its core demographic. Then again, this car's core demographic probably already bought one. There's also a possibility that this car will get yet another name combination: Toyota FR-S. For the sake of simplicity, let's hope not. View 7 Photos So yes, the rebadged 86 will be re-rebadged back to a Toyota. Functionally this means almost nothing. Buyers who were ordering badge-swap kits from overseas will save some money. Some enthusiast forums might need to change their names. And people visiting from Japan or Europe will feel a little more at home when they see a rear-drive Toyota sports car on the street. Meanwhile, FR-S – a name that may or may not have stood for "front-engine, rear-drive, sport" – will be quickly forgotten. Related Video: Scion Toyota confirmed toyota 86

Ford fights back against patent trolls

Some people are just awful. Some organizations are just as awful. And when those people join those organizations, we get stories like this one, where Ford has spent the past several years combatting so-called patent trolls. According to Automotive News, these malicious organizations have filed over a dozen lawsuits against the company since 2012. They work by purchasing patents, only to later accuse companies of misusing intellectual property, despite the fact that the so-called patent assertion companies never actually, you know, do anything with said intellectual property. AN reports that both Hyundai and Toyota have been victimized by these companies, with the former forced to pay $11.5 million to a company called Clear With Computers. Toyota, meanwhile, settled with Paice LLC, over its hybrid tech. The world's largest automaker agreed to pay $5 million, on top of $98 for every hybrid it sold (if the terms of the deal included each of the roughly 1.5 million hybrids Toyota sold since 2000, the company would have owed $147 million). Including the previous couple of examples, AN reports 107 suits were filed against automakers last year alone. But Ford is taking action to prevent further troubles... kind of. The company has signed on with a firm called RPX, in what sounds strangely like a protection racket. Automakers like Ford pay RPX around $1.5 million each year for access to its catalog of patents, which it spent nearly $1 billion building. "We take the protection and licensing of patented innovations very seriously," Ford told AN via email. "And as many smart businesses are doing, we are taking proactive steps to protect against those seeking patent infringement litigation." What are your thoughts on this? Should this patent business be better managed? Is it reasonable that companies purchase patents only to file suit against the companies that build actual products? Have your say in Comments.

Everybody's doing flying cars, so why aren't we soaring over traffic already?

"Where's my flying car?" has been the meme for impending technology that never materializes since before there were memes. And the trough of disillusionment for vehicles that can take to sky continues to nosedive, despite a nonstop fascination with flying cars and a recent rash of announcements about the technology, particularly from traditional automakers. Earlier this month, Toyota applied for an eye-popping patent for a flying car that has wheels with spring-loaded pop-out helicopter rotors. The patent filing says the wheels/rotors would be electrically powered, while in on-land mode the vehicle would have differential steering like tracked vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers. At an airshow in July, Aston Martin unveiled its Volante Vision Concept, an autonomous hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle it developed with Rolls-Royce. Aston says the Volante can fly at top speeds of around 200 mph and bills it as a luxury car for the skies. Audi used the Geneva Motor Show in March to unveil a flying car concept called the Pop.Up Next it developed with Airbus and Italdesign. If the Pop.Up Next, an electric and autonomous quadcopter/city car combo, gets stuck in traffic, an app can be used to summon an Airbus-developed drone to pick up the passenger compartment pod, leaving the chassis behind. Audi said that the Pop.Up Next is a "flexible on-demand concept that could open up mobility in the third dimension to people in cities." But Audi also acknowledged that at this point it has no plans to develop it. The cash-stoked, skies-the-limit Silicon Valley tech crowd is also bullish on flying cars. The startup Kitty Hawk that's backed by Google co-founder Larry Page announced in June that it's taking pre-orders for its single-seat electric Flyer that's powered by 10 propellers and is capable of vertical takeoffs and landings. The current version can only fly up to 20 mph and 10 feet in the air and has a flight time of just 12 to 20 minutes on a full charge. The Flyer is considered a recreational vehicle, so doesn't require a pilot's license. Uber says it plans to launch its more ambitious Elevate program and UberAIR service in 2023. "Uber customers will be able to push a button and get a flight on-demand with uberAIR in Dallas, Los Angeles and a third international market," Uber Elevate promises on its website.