There’s nothing wrong with other people admiring your car. But sometimes you catch the eye––or in this case the eight eyes––of the wrong element, and next thing you know your car is full of spiders. At least that’s the scenario reported by USA Today and other news outlets after an infestation of spiders caused Mazda to issue a recall of almost 66,000 Mazda6 sedans.

The bad guy here is the yellow sac spider, a common spider you’ve probably seen in your basement. Unlike most spiders, which spin webs and sit back waiting for something tasty to get caught in them, the yellow sac weaves a tight little ball to live in, leaving it to hunt for food.

But how did this dime-sized arachnid mobilize an international car company to recall so many cars? For reasons so far unknown, the yellow sac spider has taken a liking to setting up shop inside the fuel-tank vent, blocking the line in about 20 cars and potentially causing pressure problems and leaks. While no actual leaks have been reported, Mazda’s not taking chances, and recalled 2009 and 2010 model Madza6s, most in the U.S., and the rest in Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. More...

If you call yourself a gearhead, it’s not without reason—you know things, and stuff. Part of knowing more is learning more, so here are a few quality tidbits of automotive industry insight. These are no sundry chunks of data, and we’ll tell you why they matter.

Gaps in the Argument Against Toyota  

Evidence is cropping up to support what many industry types have said all along (though not the “experts” all over television): reasoning behind the Toyota accelerator-pedal recall smells fishy.

The actual occurrences of sticking gas pedals, according to our own sources inside Toyota, have been few and far between. Moreover, those “sticking pedals” that have been found have been of routinely suspect origin. In the case of one dealership, the only sticky accelerator discovered out of more than 1000 recall replacements was in a car that had been parked on a street in New Orleans a few summers ago. Yup, that summer – a flood car.

Are we seeing shadows of Audi’s “unintended acceleration” nightmare? Hopefully Toyota’s got the muscle to push through it. More...