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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Consumer Reports: Toyota expected to announce fix for emergency trunk releases

According to Consumer Reports, Toyota is set to release a fix for trunk release pulls on certain Lexus vehicles that could snap off in an emergency. As you may recall, CR found the federally-mandated emergency releases could break if pulled toward the user. As it turned out, the trunk surround behaved like a fulcrum, putting more force against the center of the release than toward the trunk mechanism itself. While the organization found the problem to exist on 2013 Lexus ES and GS, Toyota was able to replicate the flaw on the IS as well.
Toyota will alert 700,000 owners of 2007-2013 Lexus ES models, 2006-2012 IS vehicles and 2013 GS cars and replace the old ABS plastic release with a sturdier polypropylene part free of charge once the components are available to dealers. The service campaign is expected to begin in January.

Earthquake causes most of Toyota's Japan operations to shut down

Toyota is idling a large portion of its Japanese assembly plants as a result of the devastating earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan. The earthquake had such a big effect on the carmaker's supply chain that a number of its plants will have to be shut down for an undisclosed period, starting on Saturday. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake occurred early on September 6 th, resulting in more than dozen casualties and hundreds of injuries, cutting power to the entire island; the powerplant supplying half of the island's power was located so close to the earthquake's epicenter that it shut down automatically, bringing down the rest of the island's grid with it. Tens of people were also reported missing, as reported by Reuters. The affected factories are the Kyushu, Tahara and Toyota Auto Body plants, according to Automotive News, and they manufacture vehicles such as different Lexus models and the Toyota Land Cruiser. Some of the models produced in these factories are exported to the United States, but a Toyota spokesman said that North American operations are not likely to be significantly affected by the plant closures. As well as the automobile assembly plants in Hokkaido, Toyota also has a facility there that manufactures transmissions and transfer cases. As it was also without power, Toyota could not confirm when the plant would be back online. Out of Hokkaido's 2.95 million households, 1.54 million had regained power by Friday afternoon. All in all, Toyota has 18 manufacturing facilities in Japan; spokeswoman Akito Kita said that from Monday on, the shutdown will affect all Japanese Toyota and Lexus lines — not including two Daihatsu facilities that are also used for Toyota products. The shutdowns come directly after Toyota also announced a recall for Japanese-built hybrid models, mainly Prius. Related Video: