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Last week, I joined fellow car writer Andrew Ganz on a four-day trip to Northern England, with one of Great Britain's two Ewe Pullet-style self-service junkyards as our primary destination. This was the U-Pull-It in York, and today's Junkyard Scrapyard Find is one of the more interesting products of the Société Européene de Véhicules Légers during the 2000s.
Alfa Romeo departed our shores after the final 164s and Spider Veloces were sold here as 1995 models, then returned for the 2015 model year with the 4C. Thanks to its position in the mighty Stellantis Empire, the current American-market Alfa Romeo lineup looks quite a bit like the Italian-market one, but we missed out on some interesting machinery during our Alfa-deprived 1996-2014 period. One of those cars was the 2006-2010 Spider, and I found a discarded example in an Italian/French specialty breaker's yard near Leeds, England during a recent trip.
YORK, England — By the time our current century got started, most American car shoppers had become fully committed to pickups and SUVs as their preferred rides. Cross the Atlantic at that time, however, and you'd find that the compact MPV was one of the most popular choices for Western European drivers seeking plenty of passenger and cargo space in a small package. The Citroën Xsara Picasso was one of the best-selling compact MPVs of its era, and I've found this '06 in a self-service scrapyard (as they call them here) in York, England.
Lancia has lain dormant for decades, its extensive engineering and rally racing heritage languishing under the expansive Stellantis empire. Since 2017, the brand has only been selling cars in its home country of Italy, with the aging Fiat 500-based Ypsilon keeping Lancia afloat since 2015. But Stellantis has promised to revitalize Lancia, and the new Ypsilon, revealed in full today, is the first step in that plan. The Ypsilon shares its underpinnings with the latest Peugeot e-208 and Opel Corsa-e, which were among the best-selling cars in Europe in 2023. The Lancia, however, sports distinctive bodywork, with the hexagonal headlights sitting below a wide, gloss black trim piece that contains LED lights meant to resemble the letter Y. Around back, the circular taillights, apparently meant to emulate the iconic Stratos sports car, also incorporate the Y motif. The Ypsilon arrives exclusively as
Maserati has delayed the launch of the seventh-generation Quattroporte, citing concerns that the model needs to adhere to a certain level of performance outlined by the manufacturer. However, the benchmarks the brand intends on reaching are largely a mystery and the company has already expressed some troubles related to transitioning its lineup toward all-electric vehicles.
Following the unveiling of the STLA Medium last July 2023, Stellantis has revealed the STLA Large platform — the second of the four global BEV platforms for the brand's next-gen cars. This unibody platform will underpin a wide array of full-size models in the D and E segments, aiming to launch eight models by 2026.
Hot on the heels of a Jeep Wagoneer S teaser and photos of the prototype next-generation Dodge Charger (or Challenger), comes a reveal and details of what will likely underpin both of them: the STLA Large platform. It's one of multiple Stellantis flexible architectures that will be the basis of its upcoming electric cars, and apparently internal combustion ones, too.
► Details on Stellantis’ STLA platforms ► Smell, Medium, Large and Frame versions ► More production details of Large revealed