#Bmw3Series

After taking a sales hit due to tsunami-related production woes, Lexus has been trying to regain their mojo with a new product offensive. Things started out with the new Lexus GS sedan that Jack Baruth and I loved on and off the track, followed by a revised RX. With the redesigned IS, the bulk of their lineup has been overhauled. Initially, I was a little concerned that the Lexus IS sedan would receive nothing more than a new nose and some LED lights for 2014 but the Japanese 3-Series fighter came out swinging when we were invited to the launch event earlier in the year. I came away impressed with the IS 350’s road manners, but most buyers will be shopping for the less powerful IS 250 and it’s taken us this long to get our hands on one.

Jaguar has a core competency in aluminum architecture that will be applied to their new sedan and crossover. Pictured, XJ bodies being assembled.

The mid-sized mass-market luxury car segment is defined by the BMW 3 Series. Jaguar once tried to enter that segment with the X Type, but the “mini XJ” never caught on, in part because it was derided as a badge engineered Ford Mondeo. According to Automotive News The C-X17 crossover concept revealed in Frankfurt this week is based on a new all-aluminum platform that will underpin a “range of future Jaguars”, the most important of which will be a mid-sized sedan to again take on the BMW 3 and its competitors. Jaguar has a core competency in aluminum construction and having the first all-aluminum car in the C and D segments will be a selling point for the new models. While Jaguar Land Rover’s current sales are the strongest the British car maker has had, JLR’s owners, Tata, are hoping that JLR will reach three quarters of a million units by 2020 and ultimately joining the ranks of automakers selling a million or more cars a year. To do that Jaguar needs a volume product, the most logical being a mid-sizer. With CUVs sales booming, a crossover based on the C-X17 will also help reach that volume. While differentiating between a Jaguar crossover and the Land Rover lineup will be an issue, Jaguar does say that the CUV will have some off-road capabilities.

Back in April, we reported on relatively high incentives for the Cadillac ATS, which were discovered in the midst of some fact-checking on a blatant puff piece on the brand by Bloomberg. Months later, none other than Automotive News has caught on, with their own story about the baby Cadillac’s high pricing and the resulting incentives being offered.

230 horsepower and 3362 lbs doesn’t sound very impressive on paper. But that’s the last reason anyone buys a BMW 328i. I admit that in my numbers-obsessed adolescence, I was skeptical of the promise of a silky-smooth I6 and the intangible promise of perfect poise and balance. Why not just go straight for the 335i? And then I drove one.

The next-generation Mercedes-Benz C-Class, due in 2015, will be getting a full lineup of variants to help it better compete against the BMW 3-Series.

TTAC readers looking for a more pro-GM news source may want to check out Bloomberg for their next dose of pro-GM news. A story on Cadillac’s revived fortunes contains all kinds of enthusiastic copy and positive quotes, but still manages to bury the lede way down at the bottom of the story.

Want a BMW manual diesel wagon for under $10k? You can buy one right now, on Ebay (via Bring A Trailer), and if you live in Canada, you can legally register it.

Fans of the old BMW 335d won’t have to wait much longer for an all-new 3-Series diesel. On the other hand, Audi lovers will have to sit tight for an A4 diesel.

BMW’s 3-Series is always the benchmark, always the target, and always on a pedestal. So when GM announced Cadillac would once again “complete head-on” with BMW’s money-maker, the world yawned. Then an interesting thing happened, publications started fawning over the ATS, proclaiming the 3-Series has met its match. Could such a thing be true? Even our own Michael Karesh was smitten by the ATS at a launch event. To find out how the ATS matches up with its German rival, Cadillac tossed us the keys to a loaded ATS 3.6 AWD. Can Cadillac beat BMW at their own game? Let’s find out.

Despite the failure of the BMW 5-Series GT, BMW is determined to capture the economies of scale of its rear-drive platform and shoot for unprecedented volume by cranking out even more ugly variants of its core models. Case in point, the 3-Series GT.

Europe’s auto market implosion has led BMW to shift units earmarked for the continent over to the United States and China, where demand remains strong.

What’s a Mustang? We know, but it’s not an easy question to answer. A Mustang is…a Mustang. It’s so thoroughly itself that there’s no need to define it as a variant of someone else’s car. All truly great cars are like this. Competitors might meet and even beat them in this or that regard, but until they develop identities of their own they’ll never possess the same allure. The Europeans practically have such cars in their DNA. The Americans and Japanese have stumbled over the goal line from time to time. The Koreans…well, the Koreans are still new. So what’s a Genesis Coupe?

For one Canadian auto writer, an emissions test turned out to be a giant time-and-money-suck that should have never happened in the first place, all thanks to an unscrupulous mechanic. Is anyone surprised?

The 335d may not have done so well in the United States, but BMW seems undeterred, and is set to launch yet another oil-burning 3er shortly.