Traffic telematics applications are currently under intense research and development for making transportation safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly. Reliable traffic telematics applications and services require vehicle-to-vehicle (VTV) wireless communications that can provide robust connectivity at data rates between 1 and 10 Mb/s. The development of such robust VTV communications systems and standards require in turn accurate models for the VTV propagation channel. A key characteristic of VTV channels is their temporal variability and inherent non-stationarity, which has major impact on the data packet transmission reliability and latency. This paper provides an overview of existing VTV channel measurement campaigns in a variety of important environments, and the channel characteristics (such as delay spreads and Doppler spreads) therein. We also describe the most commonly used channel modeling approaches for VTV channels: statistical as well as geometry-based channel models have been developed based on measurements and intuitive insights. Extensive references are provided.