Latest news with #pickup
CTV News
7 hours ago
- General
- CTV News
North Bay suspect threw drink at man's truck, ran a knife along driver's side
Police in North Bay are looking for a suspect following an incident May 29 involving a pedestrian and a pickup at the corner of Trout Lake Road and Laurentian Avenue. Police in North Bay are looking for a suspect following an incident May 29 involving a pedestrian and a pickup at the corner of Trout Lake Road and Laurentian Avenue. The incident took place around 4:40 when the driver of the 2021 Dodge Ram orange truck was waiting at the light to turn right. 'He observed a male walk into the side of his truck near the rear passenger wheel area,' police said in a news release Tuesday. 'After hitting the truck, the male then threw his drink at the truck. When the victim got out to check on the male, the male approached him with a knife in his hand advising he was going to stab the victim.' The driver then stepped back as the suspect ran his knife 'along the entire driver's side of the vehicle, causing damage,' police said. 'The suspect then left the area on foot, eastbound on Trout Lake Road.' Police are hoping to speak with anyone who witnessed the incident or who has security cam footage from the area around the time it took place. If you can help with the investigation, you are asked to call 705-497-5555 and ask to speak to Const. Brodie Beard. To remain anonymous, contact Near North Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online.
Car and Driver
26-05-2025
- Automotive
- Car and Driver
Mid-Size Monster: 1990 Shelby Dakota Tested
From the July 1989 issue of Car and Driver. Just when we thought ex-racer and specialty-car builder Carroll Shelby had completed his ideological conversion to the Church of Four Cylinders, having built and sold a long string of potent little front-drivers like the Dodge Shadow-based CSX (C/D, April), we find he's switched back to V-8 power. "I guess I'm going to have to give up on my four-cylinder crusade," Shelby explained to us. "And on my affordable sports car. Everything is so expensive these days." There is a bleak tone to those words from the Cobra creator and Le Mans winner. But we suspect it's a cover. It's as if Shelby were saying, "Nope, can't make another economy sports car with good gas mileage. Shucks. Guess I got to start building V-8 hot rods again." View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver The new Shelby V-8 on these pages is most certainly a hot rod, but it's no sports car. It's a truck—Shelby's first-ever production truck. And it goes. Shelby's latest creation is based on Dodge's steady-selling Dakota pickup. Introduced in the 1986 model year, the Dakota is the Mama Bear of the pickup world. It's bigger than Baby Bear mini-trucks, smaller than Papa Bear farm haulers. Its mid-size configuration is important: most mini-trucks—including Dodge's Mitsubishi-built Ram 50—hold only as many passengers as a Toyota MR2. In designing the Dakota, therefore, Dodge specified room for three and a bed big enough (on long-wheelbase versions) for a four-by-eight-foot sheet of drywall. The perfect pickup, in other words, for disciples of Bob Vila and Norm the carpenter. The regular Dakota is available with a choice of two powerplants: Chrysler's 100-hp 2.5-liter four-cylinder car engine or a 125-hp 3.9-liter V-6. The six is actually a pared-down version of Chrysler's 5.2-liter V-8, which is used in several Dodge pickups and in the Dodge Diplomat and Plymouth Grand Fury sedans—the same big sedans you so often see lurking in highway medians with radar guns pointing through their windshields. View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver To turn the V-8 into the Dakota's V-6, Chrysler had to offset the crankshaft throws—a move that's at best a compromise between strength and firing balance. The result: a relatively buzzy V-6. You-know-who wasn't about to settle for a buzzy, anemic V-6 in his latest concoction. Shelby never forgot about those two cast-off cylinders, so when he designed his Shelby Dakota he specified nothing less than the full V-8 for the engine bay. The throttle-body fuel-injected Shelby Dakota V-8 produces 175 hp at 4000 rpm—5 hp more than it develops in regular-size Dodge pickups and 35 hp more than in Officer Mike Rowave's Grand Fury. Space limitations, says Shelby Dakota project manager Joel Grewett, meant removing the 5.2-liter's cooling fan and mounting electric blowers on the Shelby's radiator. That single modification provides the extra 5 hp, Grewett says. Shelby Automobiles leaves the 5.2-liter engine otherwise stock, so no costly EPA-emissions certification work was required. Fitted with the V-8, this pickup suddenly has pickup. The Shelby Dakota hustles from 0 to 60 mph in 8.7 seconds, half a second quicker than the 4.3-liter V-6-equipped Chevy S-10 pickup. And if you really want to blow the grass clippings out of the load bed, the Shelby can punch a 113-mph hole in the air. That's only 4 mph slower than the nearly four-inchnarrower Chevy S-10 with the optional Cameo aero bodywork. View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver The Dakota V-8 sends its power through a four-speed automatic transmission (also available on V-6 Dakotas this year) to a leaf-sprung live axle in back. No manual transmission is offered with the V-8, nor is the Shelby Dakota available with four-wheel drive. What you do get for the $15,813 base price is a choice of colors—white or red—a Shelby-ized exterior and interior, and the same heavy-duty suspension found on the V-6-powered Dakota Sport. In fact, the Shelby Dakota is based on the two-wheel-drive, short-wheelbase Sport. A stock Dakota Sport equipped similarly to the Shelby costs $12,237. What the Dakota Sport doesn't offer is the Shelby's thrill ride. Response to the right pedal is instantaneous: the meek should wear a neck brace until they get used to this pickup's off-the-line punch. Project manager Grewett claims this spunky truck will keep up with a Corvette for the first hundred feet of a match race. We doubt that, but we agree that the Shelby Dakota might surprise Chevy's sports car for about the first five feet. View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver With all 270 pound-feet of torque on tap at just 2000 rpm, the Shelby creates quite a spectacle off the line: the two seemingly weightless rear tires spin into clouds of smoke at anything more than a slight jab on the throttle. Tromp on the gas at anything under 20 mph, in fact, and the Shelby will leave two black stripes as long as the Texas Panhandle. Once moving, though, the 3626-pound Shelby put the power down and accelerates cleanly. Happily, all Shelby Dakotas are fitted with a standard limited-slip differential—a mandatory traction aid in such a high-powered pickup. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to drive with a full-time bed load of peat moss. The Shelby handles reasonably well for a pickup truck. We measured 0.75 g of grip on the skidpad, which compare favorably with the 0.76-g figure turned in by the Chevy S-10 we tested last September. We noticed one peculiarity during our skidpad tests, however: the column-mounted automatic shifter moved itself from second gear to drive, and we couldn't shift it back while cornering. The standard heavy-duty suspension is not a kidney jiggler on the highway, but the ride is noticeably bouncier than a car's. The steering uses a rack-and-pinion mechanism—unusual for a truck. Coupled to a Shelby leather-wrapped wheel, the steering system is light, quick, and as stable and direct as you'll feel on most cars. View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver Inside, two dash plaques (one with a serial number) fly the Shelby flag. There are also Shelby logos on the horn button, the floor mats, the seat upholstery, and the door panels. The three-person bench seat was obviously designed so passengers can ride with their tool belts on: it's flat, wide, and about as supportive as a scaffold plank. The Shelby Automobiles assembly center in California plans to turn out 1500 V-8 Dakotas annually; the first production models began rolling off the line early this year. That's the biggest yearly production run for the Shelby outfit since it built the GT350 in the 1960s. Why the sudden interest in pickups? When the Dakota was introduced in 1986, pickups sold at a rate of about one for every five passenger cars. Now that rate is one for every two cars. "I can't tell ya why they're so popular," Shelby admits with a puzzled tone. "I belong to the Bel-Air Country Club. About twenty of us play golf every month. Of that group there are three with daughters that have pickups. Not sports cars. It seems to be the in thing. Personally, I think it has a ton more character than driving around in a BMW." View Photos Dick Kelley | Car and Driver The trendy have discovered pickup trucks. It's new territory for enthusiasts too. The big-engine-in-a-small-car concept gave us the GTO, the Road Runner, the 442, and other factory hot rods of the sixties. And now we have the new Shelby Dakota, a truck born in exactly the same tradition. Because pickups by nature are limited in handling prowess, many makers are looking to improved engines for additional performance. Power is everything. The heavy-duty, full-size Dodge Ram pickup, for instance, is available with a 185-hp 5.9-liter V-8. And so we have the new Shelby Dakota: more food for the power hungry. Indeed, that hunger seems to be insatiable. We parked the Shelby Dakota at a large building-supply store, and the first comments we heard were: "What's it got? A 318? That's nothin'. Bet it'd run better with a 360 or a 440." Now that he's taken to V-8 worship again, we wouldn't be surprised if Carroll Shelby is experiencing exactly the same revelation. Specifications Specifications 1990 Shelby Dakota Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 3-passenger, 2-door pickup PRICE Base/As Tested: $16,498/$16,498 ENGINE pushrod V-8, iron block and heads, port fuel injection Displacement: 318 in3, 5210 cm3 Power: 175 hp @ 4000 rpm Torque: 270 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm TRANSMISSION 4-speed automatic CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: control arms/live axle Brakes, F/R: 11.4-in vented disc/10.0-in drum Tires: Goodyear Eagle GT+4 M+S P225/70HR-15 DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 112.0 in Length: 189.9 in Width: 68.4 in Height: 64.2 in Curb Weight: 3626 lb C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 8.7 sec 1/4-Mile: 16.5 sec @ 82 mph 100 mph: 32.8 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 3.9 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 6.3 sec Top Speed: 113 mph Braking, 70–0 mph: 213 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.75 g C/D FUEL ECONOMY Observed: 13 mpg EPA FUEL ECONOMY City/Highway: 15/20 mpg C/D TESTING EXPLAINED
Car and Driver
26-05-2025
- Automotive
- Car and Driver
View Photos of the 1990 Shelby Dakota
Read the full review The Shelby Dakota marks ol' Carroll's return to the land of V-8s. Using a pickup truck as the base for a hot rod is an interesting decision, but it may eventually prove quite prescient.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Toyota Reveals Plans for Brand New Truck - Here's the Latest
Small utility pickups are making a big comeback, and with the demand for inexpensive compact trucks surging, Toyota decided it was time to launch its own line of pickups to rival the wildly popular Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz. According to a report from Automotive News, Toyota is working on plans for a line of back-to-the-basics compact pickup trucks to slot below the bestselling Toyota Tacoma. 'Decisions have been made," Cooper Ericksen, head of planning and strategy for Toyota Motor North America said in an interview with MotorTrend. "The question is when we can slot it in. It's not a matter of 'if,' at this point. We've studied it a lot. We're dedicated to it. We're going to figure out how to make it work.' When asked about Toyota's plans, Mark Templin, Toyota's chief operating officer in the United States, told Bloomberg that they were "looking into it," and that the company would be gearing the line of trucks toward buyers looking for an affordable entry-level pickup, but little else is known about the automaker's plan for the vehicle. Although Toyota has yet to release details about pricing, specs or a launch date, it's safe to assume the company will be competing with Ford on price. According to Motor1, Ford sold 131,142 Mavericks in 2024, an increase of nearly 40 percent over the year prior. So the demand is definitely there, and with the price of vehicles skyrocketing over the last few years, Toyota should have no problem appealing to customers looking for an affordable option on a new truck. Toyota Reveals Plans for Brand New Truck - Here's the Latest first appeared on Men's Journal on May 23, 2025
The Verge
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Verge
What if Tesla made a Slate-like EV instead of the Cybertruck?
At last month's rapturously received Slate debut, it took an executive's quip that 'Slate' and 'Tesla' use the same 5 letters to shift my brain into high gear. I've covered the EV world for 15-plus years, and I virtually never spend time on counterfactuals. There's quite enough to cover in the real world. But … I'm of the opinion Tesla could, and should, have launched a small, simple, cheap compact pickup truck—in other words, what Slate debuted—rather than the pickup it did produce, the Cybertruck. That expensive and polarizing vehicle has been, to put it bluntly, a sales disaster. Over 18 months, Tesla has sold only about 50,000, versus projections of many times that volume. Worse, while EV crossover utilities sell tens of thousands a month, the more expensive EV pickup trucks to date have not. The path not taken The company that led the world in EV production for more than a decade could have launched an inexpensive small pickup that would have democratized EVs to a whole new class of buyers. Tesla likely could have offered more range at the same price due to its in-house battery cell production. And it would have been a global product, likely to be sold in Europe and China from launch. Most important, it would have given Tesla the $25,000 EV that CEO Elon Musk had promised since 2020—and simultaneously pioneered a new vehicle in a 'white space' in the market where no other entry existed. Now, Tesla is no longer targeting a $25,000 EV: Musk abruptly said in October 2024 the company had walked away from the '$25,000 Tesla ' idea entirely. He went on to suggest the idea of selling any $25,000 Tesla that wasn't a robotaxi was both 'pointless' and 'silly.' Why exactly should Tesla have done a Slate? I see four factors: first and foremost, the hugely appealing idea of a truly affordable EV. Tesla could well have made a small, cheap EV pickup a huge hit, given its existing assembly plants, lower-cost batteries, plus the chance to sell globally right out of the box. A '$25,000 EV' to catapult Tesla into the major leagues The excitement over an unexpected product from an unknown maker likely reflects intense market desire for truly affordable EVs. That was historically what Tesla intended to do, over time: grow its volume by producing higher numbers of less costly EVs via economies of scale. In 2024, Tesla delivered roughly 1.789 million cars globally—20,000 fewer than its 2023 total of 1.808 million. That makes the company larger than Mitsubishi (945,000) Subaru (976,000), and Mazda (1.170 million), but smaller than BMW (2.45 million) and BYD (4 million-plus). Tesla likely could have offered more range at the same price due to its in-house battery cell production. With Musk's hopes to sell hundreds of thousands of Cybertruck a year dashed for good, Tesla's volume mainstays are now in their sixth and ninth model years (the Model Y and Model 3 respectively). Those vehicles now face competitors in all their main markets, which certainly wasn't the case in 2020 or 2017 when those cars launched. More than 20 new EVs, both from existing automakers and startups like Lucid and Rivian, have hit the market since those years The classic way to boost volume is to offer new products in new segments—and from 2020, the long-promised '$25,000 Tesla' was to be that product. Even before tariffs, the U.S. vehicle market suffered from an affordability crisis: the sales-weighted average transaction price of a new vehicle has stayed at $47,000 to $48,000 since the pandemic. If EVs are to take off, their prices have to be equal to—or cheaper than—their nearest gasoline counterparts. A truly affordable EV could sell like gangbusters. And if any company were well-placed to deliver it, it would be Tesla. Instead, Musk has doubled down on his vision of Tesla becoming a company whose products are robotaxis and humanoid robots. Soon we'll know more about the substitutes for that $25,000 model, the promised 'lower-cost Teslas.' They're widely expected to be 'decontented' (stripped-down) versions of today's compact Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover. They probably won't start at $25,000, but we'll find out soon enough. And, to be honest, they hardly seem likely to generate the same excitement and buzz as the Slate unveiling produced. Existing assembly plants Slate is now where Tesla was in 2011 and 2012, as it struggled to get the Model S into production in its newly-acquired former GM-Toyota plant in Fremont, California. More than a decade later, Tesla has learned a great deal about building vehicles in volume. The company now has four plants: Fremont; Austin; Shanghai, China; and outside Berlin in Germany. That experience is something Slate's production execs, with experience all over the auto industry, will have to impart to the new employees they hire to build cars in its own factory, a 1.4-million-square-foot former printing plant in Warsaw, Indiana. A truly affordable EV could sell like gangbusters. And if any company were well-placed to deliver it, it would be Tesla. With that experience, a Tesla Slate might have used conventional stamped-steel construction. Slate chose a nonstandard construction technique: molded grey polypropylene panels bolted onto a metal substructure. That saves Slate several hundred million dollars on the steel-stamping presses and paint shop it doesn't have to build. Want a Slate in a different color? Simply wrap it—just as Tesla used to offer to do for the Cybertruck. To be fair, the Cybertruck too uses nonstandard materials, which contributed to some of the significant production delays before deliveries started in late November 2023. They were due not only to its brand-new assembly plant in Austin, Texas, but also the special tooling for its flat, angular stainless-steel design and the extraordinary challenges of reaching acceptable levels of quality in a vehicle built in that metal. We'll see how Slate does in turn. Lower-cost batteries Elon Musk identified the need for what he dubbed a 'gigafactory' to produce huge volumes of battery cells as early as 2013. Tesla brought its cell partner, Panasonic, into the Reno gigafactory while every other automaker was still buying cells shipped from battery suppliers. Reno started supplying 2170 cells for Model 3 production in January 2017. Tesla is now rumored to have the lowest battery cost per kilowatt-hour of any non-Chinese maker. Globally, it produces cells for roughly 1.8 million EVs a year as well as more for its growing energy-storage business. (Though it's worth noting that last year, GM produced cells with higher total energy through its Ultium Cells joint venture than Tesla did— at least in North America.) Slate, on the other hand, will buy assembled battery modules from Korean maker SK-On, which also supplies batteries to Ford for its F-150 Lightning electric pickup, and assemble them into battery packs in its factory. Are they the same module? A spokesperson for Slate did not respond to a request for comment. We'd bet Slate's cost-per-kWh is higher than Tesla's. So Tesla could have done a Slate-style pickup with either more range (from more battery capacity at the same price) or an even lower price if it stuck with Slate's projected ranges. Tesla may have offered only the higher-range (240-mile) model, of course; from the start it has said its EVs had to have 200 miles. Global sales potential One of the biggest drawbacks of the Tesla Cybertruck is that, at least for the moment, it remains a North America-only vehicle. It is a few inches short of 19 feet long—more than 2 feet longer than a Model S—and weighs 6,600 pounds. That's just too large to use comfortably on many European and U.K. roads. Analysts express doubts over the stainless-steel truck's ability to comply with European Union pedestrian-protection impact and crush standards. As for China, Tesla said in December it had no plans to sell the truck there 'for now'. So the Cybertruck now appears limited to North America. For a much-touted new product that supposedly received 1 million or more reservations from across the globe, that can only be a missed opportunity. A Slate-alike compact or C-segment two-door pickup from Tesla, on the other hand, could be designed from scratch to sell in all three major markets — just like every Tesla model was before the Cybertruck. Small pickups are a known and accepted quantity there, and the news that Slate has a cargo-box accessory kit under development for use as a small van would put such a vehicle directly into competition with the European makers now launching electric compact vans. Except this one would have had the cachet Tesla enjoyed until quite recently. There are, of course, lots of reasons why a Slate-like vehicle might have been exactly the wrong thing for Tesla to launch instead of the Cybertruck. The first and most important is that, in the words of the old industry saying, 'Low price equals low profits.' After 2020, when the company became profitable for the first time, its margins on Model 3 and Model Y sales grew to impressive percentages. Even at high volumes, a lower-priced vehicle with a battery of 80 kWh is likely to have slim margins despite Tesla's low cell costs. The Cybertruck, sold in the volumes claimed, may not have posed that challenge. Second, any Tesla virtually has to have a central touchscreen and advanced telematics. It's part of the brand DNA. That clearly adds cost, as would a camera suite to let Tesla continue to aggregate visual data for its hopes of a self-driving future. There are, of course, lots of reasons why a Slate-like vehicle might have been exactly the wrong thing for Tesla. Third, again to the brand image, a small, cheap, square, very basic pickup is hardly what we would envision as a 'Tesla.' It would require expanding the concept of what a Tesla is—though so did the Cybertruck. Side note: a Slate-like pickup might not do well in China, where a small pickup is viewed as a commercial vehicle for low-wage laborers. Finally, a Slatelike truck–or any two-door vehicle–is an impractical vehicle to turn into a robotaxi, even assuming it were fitted with the appropriate camera and sensor suite. As long as five years ago, that was clearly the direction in which Musk was driving the company. As noted, I almost never deal in counterfactuals. I made an exception here, considering the road not taken, because it seems to me more in line with what the world expected of Tesla from 2012 to 2020. Not to mention a lot more aligned with The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan of 2006, specifically its third point: 'Use that money [from building affordable cars] to build an even more affordable car.'Still, affordable cars have to be desirable to make a difference; the Cybertruck is neither, as the market has shown. But a Slate-like Tesla small pickup could have been. Sic transit gloria mundi.
