Be Car Chic

BY Liza Colby Smith | Homadge.com Oh, Toyota. You made an excellent choice with Kaley Cuoco, but this ad… not feeling it. I’ll take Miss Cuoco as my BFF personal genie (and listen to “I Wish” on repeat) any day, but the choices for each scene feel so done before. “I wish” they would just [...]

BY Liza Colby Smith | Homadge.com You know the jam… “I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller, I wish I had a girl who looked good I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat…” (Now, wait – isn’t the next line, [...]

Imagine driving through the desert on a solitary dirt road with your favorite 90′s music blaring through the speakers and a fun friend in the passenger seat. It’s not your typical scenario, but that was the scene in and around Scottsdale, Arizona as Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds.com and I put Toyota’s brand-new RAV4 through the [...]

Ryan Diviney has been in a coma since 2009 after suffering a severe beating while attending West Virginia University. A former athlete, Ryan now remains in a vegetative state in his home in Ashburn, Va. His father Ken tirelessly looks after him. The family began the website RyansRally.org to share their challenging journey and to collect donations [...]

Not every day does one have the opportunity to whisk along the beautiful countryside of Napa, Calif. in a brand-new car before it hits dealership showrooms. But that’s exactly what Toyota recently asked a group of auto journalists, including yours truly, to do. So, I obligingly packed my bags and traveled to wine country to [...]

BY Liza Colby | HomADge.com Editor’s note: This is the first installment of guest blog posts by Liza Colby, a copywriter who has a passion for advertising. She often shares interesting automotive ads on her blog HomADge.com. And she’ll be sharing them from time-to-time with us here as well. Enjoy! Last time I saw Melanie, I [...]

Editor’s Note: Shortly after the disaster in Japan, Be Car Chic heard from Subaru dealer, Jeff Morrill, about how the events were starting to impact the auto retail business. The conversation with Morrill launched an ongoing monthly piece called “Industry Pulse.” I’d encourage you to read what Morrill had to say in March of 2011 before continuing [...]

Consumers and dealers can expect to hear a lot from Toyota in 2012. The Japanese automaker will launch 19 new models this year alone – that’s a new or updated car every 19 days. For January, it was the Prius c, a subcompact hybrid that is sure to make waves in the entry-level car market [...]

Today, Toyota announced that it has officially sold one million Prii (yes, that’s the plural of Prius) in the United States. The eleven-year-old has gone through three makeovers and remains the top selling hybrid in the world. This is wonderful news for Toyota and its dealers, especially in the wake of the tsunami last month. [...]

After a six-week campaign and more than 1.8 million votes, the public has chosen to pluralize the Prius by calling two or more of Toyota’s hybrid vehicles “Prii.” This version of the word earned 25 percent of the vote, shutting out other variations like Prium, Priuses, Prien, and Prius. Toyota made the announcement earlier today [...]

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post asking you to help Toyota solve the plural Prius puzzle.  Voting ends tomorrow, February 17. That means there’s only ONE day left to vote for what Toyota should name its line of Prius vehicles. I’m opting for just calling them all “Prius” because it’s become synonymous with “hybrid” [...]

The first press day at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Mich., was packed with news from automakers. Included in the flurry of announcements was a juicy projection from Toyota. The manufacturer plans to expand the Prius…into an entire brand. What we know as “a” Prius will become a whole line of [...]