The good oil: Focusing on taxis

Land Transport inspectors swooped on taxis in Auckland the other day looking for unlicensed operators and unroadworthy cars. A long-time cabbie and critic of the unregulated industry says some cars shouldn't be on the road. He says unlicensed drivers are muscling in on taxi ranks in the city. "You often can't get near a rank," he said. "It took me many months to learn my way around Auckland. These days you can arrive in the country one week and drive a cab the next. One driver at Auckland airport picked up a fare, then jumped out of his cab to ask me how to get to Hillsborough."

Hot rod disappears

The hot-rod styled Chrysler PT Cruiser is about to disappear from the New Zealand market, 10 years after it first landed. Chrysler has imported the final 50 models, badged Final Edition and painted "brilliant black". The carmaker expects it to become a collector's item. "Interest has been strong and it is a fitting way to say goodbye to what has become a modern automotive icon," says Todd Grove, Chrysler divisional manager. "Few cars have made a style statement in quite the same way as the PT Cruiser." Chrysler sold 1.3 million examples worldwide. A replacement is said to be more than a year away.

Mazda quiet about technology

Mazda is working on the next-generation RX-8 but it won't say if the car's rotary engine will feature direct-injection technology from its upcoming Sky-G family of petrol engines. Global sales and marketing chief Masazumi Wakayama, in Auckland for the launch of the facelifted Mazda6 range, said only that "we are going to make improvements to the petrol rotary engine". Germany's Audi is apparently interested in Mazda's progress with the rotary, especially the hydrogen-fuelled example. The Audi A1 e-Tron electric car shown at Geneva last month uses similar technology.

Toyota hits five million

Toyota has sold more than five million vehicles in Australia since it officially set up shop there in 1959. It knows the milestone was achieved last month but it doesn't know what the vehicle was, who bought it, nor on what day it was sold. But it built 2,728,660 of them in Australia. Ford Australia has built more than four million, not including those built or sold before the first Falcon of 1959. Holden has built more than seven million vehicles since the home-grown FX model of 1948.

Kia Motors on a roll

Kia Motors is on a roll worldwide. It sold its three millionth car in the US in March, around 10 years after it entered the market. US sales last month were the best on record, up 23.5 per cent on the same month last year, 10.7 per cent on its previous best March, and 11.3 per cent in the first quarter. Things are hunky-dory so far this year in both New Zealand and Australia - up 14 per cent here and 27.8 per cent across the ditch.

We are the world

* William Edmunds stumbled from his car at the gateway to the Montgomery County jail in New York and asked the guards: Is this the Canadian border crossing at Niagara Falls? No, they said. Niagara Falls is 400km up the road. Edmunds, 32, was arrested and charged with drink driving.

* Every time Travis Neeley tried to get out of the car he was trying to steal, the car's owner used the remote control key to relock it. Neely, 19, from Lake City, Florida, could only give up and sit back to wait for the police.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz