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How the demise of Lincoln's Town Car has kick-started a limo revolution

The deaths of the Ford Crown Victoria and the Lincoln Town Car have meant overhauls of three high-profile American fleets: police, taxi and livery car. Just as police fleets are more open to considering other options and a Nissan van is the new face of the NYC taxi, livery car companies are looking at replacements for the Town Car beyond The Blue Oval. Ford, via Lincoln, has made an MKT Town Car (pictured), but an article in the Detroit News claims "it has failed to win over most of the big limousine companies." The upstarts trying to move in include livery and limo editions of the Cadillac XTS, and livery specifications of the Toyota Avalon and Chrysler 300.
Each of those challengers, however, faces challenges. The Town Car was a workhorse, American, rear-wheel-drive sedan with plenty of rear legroom. Cadillac has been in the livery space before but with decontented models that were about selling the brand, not its luxury. It is taking the opposite approach with the XTS, pointing out that its livery edition is "contented in the upper half of the XTS range." Still, the CEO of Michigan's largest livery company says "it's quite a bit smaller than what we're used to," and he also prefers rear-wheel drive.
The Chrysler 300 is rear-wheel drive, and American, which matters to some companies, but Chrysler hasn't yet revealed the livery package for it. The livery Avalon marks Toyota's first time getting into that business in the US, a natural step after having done so well with taxi clients and with the Town Car out of the way. Still, the livery client is a different to taxi buyers, so the Avalon could face other soft-touch hurdles.

255-hp Toyota GR86 and other big news leaks in dealer presentation

Last month, Motor1 said it received information on Toyota and Lexus product plans for the next few years from an inside source who attended a dealer presentation. To protect the source, Motor1 didn't publish any slides or proof from that presentation. A snippet of what happened behind closed doors has found its way online, Allcarnews posting one of the slides yesterday, as well as its own recap of the Japanese automaker's plans that mirrors the Motor1 report. If all of this is true, not only is there a ton of product in the works, but Toyota and Lexus lineups will get more interesting while answering the requests of several enthusiast groups. We'll start with the 86, then go by model year after that. The next-gen coupe developed with Subaru should sit on Toyota's TNGA platform and get a rebrand to wear the GR86 name, for Toyota's Gazoo Racing division. The real hallelulah happens under the hood, where a turbocharged four-cylinder is expected to produce 255 hp, a 50-hp jump over the present model. Look for an upgraded interior, too. The debut is slated for summer 2021, possibly July.    This year: The fall season should introduce a new crossover and a new Sienna with hybrid powertrains only. The current minivan has been on sale since 2010, getting a minor refresh in front in 2018. The crossover will be a five-seat midsizer that brings back the Venza name, this model already rumored here and abroad. It, too, will only get hybrid powertrains. Both planned as 2021-model-year products, it's possible their motivations will be based on the 2.5-liter four-cylinder in both the RAV4 and Highlander hybrids. And a refreshed Camry might come later this year as a 2021MY sedan.  2021: Next year will be a busy one. ... On the Toyota side, and as TFL has reported, the all-new Tundra that's first to sit on the TNGA-F truck platform will show in December 2021 as a 2022MY pickup. Rumor has the top model powered by a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 hybrid with around 455 hp and 500 pound-feet of torque, perhaps distinguished by the i-Force Max name that Toyota recently applied to trademark. A few months before that, Toyota will roll out a Corolla-based crossover maybe called the Corolla Cross, and potentially built in the U.S. at the Alabama facility being constructed with Mazda. And remember, a Toyota exec teased a small hot hatch for this market as well, "an answer" to the GR Yaris sold in Europe, which Car and Driver figures will be based on the Corolla.

First Toyota unintended acceleration case headed for trial

Toyota is going to be back in the spotlight, as the first of its unintended acceleration lawsuits is headed for trial. This case covers a Los Angeles sushi shop owner, Noriko Uno. According to the what the family told The Detroit News, Uno only put about 10,000 miles on her 2006 Toyota Camry in four years. Uno was apparently afraid of high speeds, avoiding the freeway and taking a route home along LA's surface streets to avoid them.
On August 28, 2009, Uno's Camry suddenly accelerated to 100 miles per hour, eventually striking a telephone poll and a tree and killing her. The family contends that Uno attempted to step on the brakes and pull the emergency brake, neither of which brought her speed under control, while Toyota maintains that improperly installed floormats and driver error have been behind the majority of the 80 cases expected to be heard in court.
In Uno's case, The Detroit News is expecting the trial to focus on the lack of an override if the gas and brake pedals were pressed at the same time. Brake overrides were installed on Toyota's European fleet. The Uno family attorney will need to prove to the jury that it wasn't driver error that killed Noriko Uno.