Chevrolet has launched a small car that is expected to have a big impact on the North American compact sedan market. Designed to compete with the likes of the Toyota Corolla, the Ford Focus, and the Honda Civic, the Chevrolet Cruze replaces the Chevrolet Cobalt and offers exceptional safety, quality, and driving dynamics at a starting price of under $15,000.

As soon as the snow melts each spring and the roads are free of salt, Lloyd Veltkamp’s 1973 Dodge Challenger coupe becomes his daily workhorse. Each season, he puts another 5,000 kilometres on the odometer, many of them accumulated between cruise nights and other collector events throughout southern Ontario.

When the first-generation Ford Edge rolled into showrooms, it was a revolutionary experiment for the Blue Oval. The crossover style was a drastic change from Ford's previous SUV offerings, but consumers were ready for it, and the mid-size family hauler became a top seller right off the line. Built in Ford’s Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant, the Edge has rightly become a source of pride for many Canadian buyers.

For most of us, the concept of driving school conjures up images of stern instructors lecturing students about the rules of the road so they don’t flunk their road tests. Rarely do students form any kind of connection with their instructor, whom they usually never see again after getting their licenses. But the same cannot be said of Billal Qazi, owner and founder of Arrowstar Driving School in Scarborough, Ontario.

Outside the automotive industry, the Canadian Automotive Institute (CAI) at Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology in Barrie, Ontario, is a well-kept secret, especially in the field of continuing adult education. But it’s the place to be if you’re serious about a career in the Canadian auto sector.

Sales at Hyundai have been improving in the last year and a half, not only in our country but also worldwide. This past August, Hyundai sold some 11,400 units in Canada alone, an increase of 9.5% over the same month last year, and the 19th consecutive month of year-over-year sales gains. Between January and August 2010, Hyundai sold over 85,000 units, an increase of 16% over the first eight months of 2009.

At 87, after two heart transplants and several wives, Carroll Shelby will tell you: “I’m just happy to still be here.” But the fact is, this former East Texas chicken farmer is not a relic but a legend whose name is immediately recognized by people inside and outside the car business. From very humble roots, Shelby has become an icon, first as a racer, then as a car builder and highly successful entrepreneur whose products are coveted by performance enthusiasts around the world.

DETROIT, MI - A history of Ford could be told with the succession of marketing slogans it has used over the decades -- some remembered within the company as rallying cries, some more as punch lines.

Now, six years into a comeback from near collapse, the automaker has a new slogan that underscores confidence that its recovery is almost complete: "Go Further."

For an automaker with 166,000 workers worldwide and a history of riding boom into bust, the slogan is intended in part as a warning against complacency after three years of profits, executives say.

"Go Further" will be used in marketing campaigns, replacing "Drive One" in North America and "Feel the Difference" in Europe. Those slogans were coined to help overcome wariness on the part of consumers about the quality and performance of Ford cars as the car maker bounced back.

"We are at a different point now in our company's history," Jim Farley, global head of sales and marketing, told Reuters.

Ford is not the only automaker that has relied heavily on a catchy slogan. Rival Chrysler, now under the control of Fiat, has played up both sides of its heritage with the year-old "Imported from Detroit."

At General Motors Co., former CEO Ed Whitacre was amazed in 2009 that the automaker did not have a slogan that reflected a mission statement, so he supplied one: "Design, build and sell the world's best vehicles."

But Ford, founded in 1903, has a particularly long history of using slogans meant to resonate both inside its glass-walled headquarters and outside with customers. Its sloganeering goes back at least as far as 1914's "Ford: The Universal Car."

For the past five years, CEO Alan Mulally, 66, has driven Ford's turnaround under the global slogan "One Ford." The motto underscored the need to unify the automaker's operations and put an end to executive infighting.

In the latest evidence that the plan worked, Ford is due to report its 11th consecutive quarterly net profit on Friday. In December, the automaker announced it would begin paying a dividend for the first time since 2006, after moving within a notch of regaining an investment grade credit rating.

Farley insists the new slogan is not a replacement for "One Ford," which he said is a motto that reflects the automaker's core global strategy. And although Ford plans to use "Go Further" to market new vehicles around the world this year, the phrase is also meant to motivate its employees.

"We really see it as kind of documenting the culture or the DNA of the company," he said.

A 'better idea'

Farley said Ford looked at the success of "Just Do It" for Nike and "I'm Lovin' It" at McDonald's in crafting its new slogan.

One expert said that, while Ford's slogan would resonate for employees who know what the company has been through in recent years, it would not deliver the same kind of message to outsiders.

"I don't think it's that good. It's a little too inside the industry," said Jim Wangers, a marketing analyst in Oceanside, Calif.

In the late 1960s, Ford tried to rally baby boomers around the slogan, "Ford has a better idea," using the image of a lightbulb to signal inspiration instead of the "o" in Ford.

In the 1980s, when Ford was scrambling to counter inroads into the U.S. market by Japanese rivals led by Toyota Motor Corp., the automaker rolled out the slogan, "Quality is Job 1."

In early 2006, Ford dubbed a wrenching restructuring, "The Way Forward." The plan involved closing 14 plants and cutting more than 25,000 jobs. Some workers joked at the time that it looked more like a giant step backward.

One Ford

When Mulally arrived later that year, he tapped into the company's history of sloganeering with "One Ford." Mulally even insisted that all workers be issued laminated cards with the turnaround motto: "One Ford, One Team, One Plan, One Goal."

Mulally introduced the "Go Further" slogan to Ford's employees around the world in a New Year's message. The slogan is already being used in advertisements and on Facebook for Ford in Europe. It will be introduced in markets from India to North America later this year.

Justin Wartell, head of brand strategy for Interbrand of Dayton, Ohio, said the challenge for Ford will be to make the slogan concrete in a way that makes sense to consumers.

"Any automaker can use that," Wartell said of the new slogan. "What makes it Ford? What makes it stand out?"

Elena Ford, Ford's global director of marketing and the great-great granddaughter of founder Henry Ford, said the new slogan was essentially a reminder to employees that they had to set the bar higher after recent gains. Her way of describing that could itself be turned into a slogan.

She said: "We go further so you can."

In many ways, when you’re involved in a team sport like racing, the people you work with become your extended family. The FAZZT team is made up of 19 members who work together every day in the office and race shop, 16 of whom also travel as a group to every IZOD IndyCar Series race.

Several weeks ago, before sunrise on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel just off Highway 400 in Toronto to meet my colleague from The Driver, David Miller.

Our mission? To drive to Motor City and back in one day to take in a Detroit Lions game and to share in the all-American experience of tailgating, that time-honoured tradition of enjoying a pre-event outdoor meal, usually grilled, accompanied by copious amounts of adult beverages.

“How can I become an automobile journalist?” I’ve heard this question many times over the years, especially as a road-test editor. It’s not hard to understand why: a new car to review every week or so, trips to exotic locations around the world, testing at racetracks, hobnobbing with manufacturers, and hanging around with big stars like Jim Kenzie, to name just a few of the automotive writer’s professional perks.