forbidden fruit

A British car magazine reviews the updated Renault Zoe electric car.

How would you like an all-electric wagon with five seats, a rear liftgate, and 187 miles of EPA-rated range? Sounds pretty good, right? You'd think such a vehicle might sell well, since it would have more rated range than any other electric cars on the market except the Chevy Bolt EV and anything...

The BMW X1 xDrive25Le i Performance will be sold in China only.

Volvo owner Geely wants to sell cars in Europe under its own brand name.

A Honda Odyssey Hybrid minivan goes on sale in Japan this week.

The Honda BR-V small crossover will go on sale in Indonesia next year.

Toyota redesigns a minivan oddity for its home market.

More than four years after launching its Leaf electric car, Nissan is by far the leading maker of electric vehicles globally. In hybrids, however, it was late to the game and has struggled to package products that will prove compelling to North American buyers. Its announcement this week that it...

Canada is bigger than the U.S.; the distances are equally vast; and there’s way more land area per person. And yet Canadians tend to buy smaller cars. Why is this? The simple answer, at least from the south side of the border, is that Canadians are less ostentatious. They typically spend...

The 2016 Mazda CX-3 will be be diesel only in Japan.

The Japanese-market Toyota Esquire combines a luxurious interior with an optional hybrid powertrain.

Toyota might not be planning to invest in a mainstream electric vehicle for the U.S. anytime soon, but now, globally, it has this oddity: the i-Road. As we caught last month in this demonstration at the Paris Auto Show, the i-Road is driven at the front wheels by twin 2-kW electric motors, and...

The Nissan Pulsar is a compact five-door hatchback designed for the European market.

At 123 horsepower, Ford's 1.0-liter Ecoboost Fiesta already develops an impressive output for its diminutive size. That it does so while delivering entertaining handling and perhaps most importantly, a 36 mpg combined rating (31 mpg city, 43 mpg highway) is even better. But Ford's powertrain...

The Scion iQ has not been a success story for Toyota's youth-orientated brand. In 2013, just 4,406 iQs found homes in the U.S. That's half as many as were sold in 2012, hardly a stellar year itself. By contrast, Toyota's other small car had a bumper year in 2013. The Aygo minicar moved nearly...

Compared to Europe and Asia, the U.S. market for subcompacts and minicars is tiny, with dozens of models available elsewhere that will never hit U.S. shores. One of those is the Nissan Micra, slotting below the Versa Note in Nissan's range. Versions of the Micra have sold for decades in other...

It seems to be the season for diesel compact crossovers. Since September, we've driven the 2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK 250 BlueTEC and the new 2014 Audi Q5 TDI. Now we've added some forbidden fruit to that list: the European-market diesel version of the Volkswagen Tiguan, sold in North America only with...

We didn't expect the Volkswagen XL1 to be as much fun to drive as it is. Which makes it doubly a shame that Volkswagen won't be selling its radically efficient, two-seat, plug-in diesel hybrid XL1 model in North America. At a price of € 111,000 (roughly $153,000), the 250 XL1 cars that...

VW has hinted for some time that the diesel-electric drivetrain from its XL1 eco-supercar would appear in something a little more humble and affordable. Now, writes Autocar, it's revealed the result of such a concoction, in the shape of the Twin-Up. As the name suggests, it's based on the...

As the U.S. still eagerly awaits the introduction of the 3-cylinder EcoBoost Ford Fiesta, European drivers are buying Ford's tiny-engined cars in their droves. Various versions off the 1.0-liter, three-cylinder, turbocharged gasoline unit are available in both the Fiesta and larger Focus--and when...