Mopar 5th Ram 20 Fifth Wheel Tow Hitch on 2040-parts.com

Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

VW Up SUV & Cross Coupe SUV to go in to production

VW Up SUV planned based on Buggy Up Concept Volkswagen are to add two new compact SUVs to their range below the Tiguan, expected to be the VW Up SUV and Cross Coupe. There’s no question that one of the biggest new markets for cars is the compact SUV. From the Nissan Juke to the Vauxhall Mokka to the Ford EcoSport there seems to be an endless appetite for butch little urban warriors.

Toyota proposing $1.1 billion unintended acceleration settlement in US

Toyota are setting aside an additional $1.1 billion to settle claims in the US of unintended acceleration in their cars. In the ongoing saga of unintended acceleration in the US caused by floor mats, Toyota has revealed it is to set aside an additional $1.1 billion to settle claims and fit new equipment to cars affected by the floor mat problem. Toyota are going to install a brake override system in 3.25 million vehicles, set aside $250 million to compensate owners who have already sold their cars, another $250 million for affected owners whose cars can’t get the brake override system, throw in a care plan  for parts related to unintended acceleration and throw $30 million at research in to car safety.