2005 Toyota Highlander Base Sport Utility 4-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2013 Toyota RAV4 earns 'poor' rating in IIHS small overlap crash test [w/video]

When the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested a batch of SUVs in its small overlap frontal crash test earlier this year, it held off on putting the Toyota RAV4 in the blender because the new, 2013 model was due to arrive shortly after the test. The new crossover might be better than it was before, but it could still only manage a rating of "Poor" in the test that has been a bugbear for a number of manufacturers.
Among other issues, the IIHS noted that the steering column moved seven inches to the right causing the crash test dummy to practically miss the airbag, the dummy's left foot was trapped in deformed sheetmetal and the dummy's head hit the instrument panel.
The 2013 RAV4 earned the Top Safety Pick rating by scoring well in the Institute's four other tests. A good score in this particular test would have earned it the Top Safety Pick+ rating that is so far only claimed by the 2014 Subaru Forester and 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport in the SUV category. There's a press release below with more details and a video of the test.

Mazda-Toyota partnership has us dreaming of a rotary hybrid

As you may have seen, Mazda and Toyota are going to be working a little more closely with each other. In their announcement, the two companies said they'd be building an American assembly plant together, and working on electric vehicle technology. But one of the companies' goals got our mental gears turning: It's listed as "Expand complementary products," and it's left very open-ended. The companies say they "will further explore the possibilities of other complementary products on a global level." These are in addition to Mazda providing the Mazda2 to Toyota as the Yaris iA, and Toyota providing Mazda a commercial van to sell in Japan. So what could these future complementary products be? We have a couple of ideas, one that's ludicrous but awesome (and, sadly, probably won't ever happen), and the other grounded in reality. Let's start with the fun one. What's the one thing Mazda fan has been wanting for years? A rotary sports car, of course! And while Mazda has repeatedly said that it has a small band of engineers plugging away at the spinning triangle problem, the odds of Mazda putting it into production have been slim. The inherent thirst of the rotary would make it tough to introduce when fuel economy regulations have been tightening. Plus, Mazda is a small company that needs to stretch every dollar, and having a one-off engine not based on anything else would be expensive. How could Mazda get around these obstacles? This is where the partnership with Toyota comes in, in our long-shot fantasy. Aside from having deep pockets, Toyota has a wealth of knowledge in the realm of hybrids. Thus, why not a rotary hybrid? Electrifying their oddball motor would fix two issues. One is obviously the fuel economy, since the gas engine wouldn't have to run all the time. The other is in providing torque. Rotaries infamously have little torque, especially down low, so adding an electric motor would allow this hypothetical rotary sports car to have a grunty low end, while still providing the Everest-high redline rotary fans like. The idea would be sweetened with the solid-state batteries that Toyota is developing, which could provide lots of electricity without weighing a ton. The rotary-electric mashup notion isn't totally alien to Mazda, either, since the company created an electric Mazda2 with a rotary engine for a range extender — albeit for different reasons. The company even filed a patent for the rotary range extender recently.

Autoblog fan favorite car ads from Super Bowl XLIX

Super Bowl XLIX is in the books, and the New England Patriots emerged victorious. Of course, if you're like us, the big game wasn't so much about the battle between the east coast and west, so much as a fight between the world's automotive advertisers. We collected and collated all of last night's new ads and put them together for you to vote on. And yes, we're limiting this year's contest to last night's new features. That's why you aren't seeing Dodge's epic Wisdom among our collection of commercials, and it's a similar story with Chevrolet's Truck Guy Focus Group series, which highlights the new Colorado. You can still vote for your favorites. We won't be closing the voting on our Super Bowl page, so while the winners and losers are correct as of this writing, it's entirely possible that there could be some changes in the rankings as time goes on. So, without any further ado, here are the winning ads based on your voting. Nissan: With Dad Fiat: Ready For Action Jeep: Beautiful Lands BMW: Newfangled Idea Mercedes-Benz: Fable NASCAR: America Start Your Engines As for those ads that failed to impact you, loyal readers, Toyota was the absolute, undisputed loser. The Japanese brand ran four ads in total – two for Toyota and two for Lexus – and all of them have negative tallies as of this writing. Lexus' Make Some Noise and Lets Play and Toyota's One Bold Choice and My Bold Dad both had very weak showings among the commercials that aired, although they weren't alone. Neither Mazda nor Kia scored particularly well, despite featuring celebrity magic act Penn and Teller and former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, respectively. Chevrolet was the winner of the losers, as of our writing, recording the fewest downvotes for its audience-punking The Big Game ad. If you want to take a second look at the losing ads, you can head back to our Super Bowl page for the complete collection. But for now, head into Comments and let us know what you think of the results.