Last Week at The Quail

This week was Monterey Car Week and the Concours d’Elegance in California, where the weather is beautiful except for when it’s on fire, which part of it is, but fortunately not along the central coast where there were hundreds of immaculate cars showcased. I’m going to have to make it out there sometime, but since I haven’t, go check out Autoblog or any other number of sites with massive galleries of all the amazing old cars on display this week. One of which was the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept which looks just about as close to a space ship as a car ever has. In addition to the classics, several automakers brought along some new cars or concepts which I thought deserved their own special feature this week.

First was Infiniti’s Prototype 10, which follows the more classically styled Prototype 9 that the company brought to Pebble Beach last year. This one is also a single seat racer in the style of 1950s-era race cars, but with Infiniti’s current styling language applied. Not only that, it’s apparently sat upon the new rigid, adaptable electric vehicle chassis that may underpin future Infiniti EVs, giving it much greater relevance than your run-of-the-mill concept. Of course this will never see production, and we don’t know exactly what drives it anyway, but man is it pretty to look at.

Another pretty silver single-seat electric racing vehicle showed off was the Mercedes-Benz EQ Silver Arrow, which, like the Infiniti, is a modern take on a classic race car. Unlike the Infiniti, it’s a modern take on a specific race car, the 80 year-old Silver Arrow, a Mercedes that set a public road speed record of 269 miles per hour in Germany way back in 1938. Also unlike the Infiniti, we have performance figures for the EQ Silver Arrow, which lays down 738 horsepower, 80 kilowatt-hour battery that gives the car a respectable range of 249 miles. But I doubt you’d get that far with instant torque and more than 700 horsepower on tap. While the Infiniti will never see the light of day through a dealership’s windows, the drivetrain in this car could very easily slot into an AMG performance car like in the EQ range. Sort of like a rival to the Porsche Taycan or forthcoming Tesla Roadster.

Audi was like Electric Vehicles? Oh ja, we do that too, so they brought out their PB 18 e-tron concept which, while having the worst name of the three electric concepts, also had the worst looking style. Not to say it’s bad, but the Peanut Butter 18 just didn’t quite reach the high bar set by the Infiniti and Mercedes. It’s not a single seat racer, but rather a shooting-brake style two seat wagon-y hatchback thing that still features Audi’s recent trend of the front of their cars being 100% grill despite the fact that electric cars do not need grills. It also beats the Infiniti by having a real powertrain, with a 95 kilowatt-hour battery powering three electric motors putting out a combined 671 horsepower and 612 pound-feet of torque, accelerating the car to sixty in just over two seconds. It’s apparently good for a range of 310 miles on a single charge. This thing looks like it’s straight out of Blade Runner of Minority Report. It’s very, very futuristic and I think we’re in for a very exciting time in car design if these new looks are actually implemented in future production cars.

It wasn’t all electric cars though, as Lamborghini, who haven’t found an electric motor violent enough to put in their cars yet, unveiled the Aventador Superveloce Jota or SVJ. While only 30 horsepower more powerful than the Aventador S, how much more power do you need than the SVJ’s 759 and 531 foot-pounds of torque. It comes from a no-doubt throaty 6.5-litre V12 and drives all four wheels, which also feature four-wheel steering, combining with active aerodynamics to make the car especially agile. Of course it has set a Nurburgring record at some time faster than other people that is totally meaningless. It’s lower, it’s stiffer, it has more downforce and it’s faster than the Aventador S, which means it will be absolute hell to drive around anywhere that isn’t an immaculate race track, but I’m sure that isn’t going to stop some pharma bro or tech entrepreneur from trying. After all, they can afford the chiropractic work this car would create the need for.

Not to be outdone, Ferrari brought along a new car, or rather, a convertible version of a car we’ve previously seen, the 488 Pista. It’s the same as the coupe, with a twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 engine churning out 711 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. But with the top down, the car is 0.4 seconds slower to 124 miles per hour than the coupe, taking a whole eight seconds, which I know will probably be a deal breaker for so many people.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum, the new BMW Z4 M40i was unveiled with a sharp “frozen orange metallic” paint job and it’s quite a dashing looking vehicle. Of course we’ve seen virtually every part of this car by now, so the complete package isn’t really a surprise, but what will be a surprise are performance figures, because they have embargoed those until September 2018, which is obnoxious. It’s apparently quick though, getting to sixty in less than four seconds, so draw your own conclusions about the car and its Toyota Supra sibling from there.

Back to the extreme end of the spectrum, Shelby Supercar, one time makers of the fastest car in the world, surprised everyone by bringing a new car to Pebble Beach this year. Called the Tuatara, SSC has worked with Nelson Racing Engines to build a 5.9-litre flat-plane crank twin-turbo V8 flex fuel engine, and this is where it gets a little special. If you run this car on E85 gasoline, it will make 1,750 horsepower. If you only have access to 91-octane dino juice, it will “only” make 1,350 horsepower. While we have no idea how fast it will actually go when those ponies kick in, it does apparently have a super low drag coefficient of just 0.279, which slightly worries me that it doesn’t have enough downforce, which you might want when your car is approaching 2,000 horsepower. The car is not desperately pretty and it is painted in a sort of matte primer color, but the point of this car is that number. The reason you would buy one of the 100 they are supposedly going to make, and have been saying they are going to make for seven years now, is that number. And the reason the police report will cite when it finds your body in three different locations in two different counties will also be that number.

Finally debuting this week was the Bugatti Divo, for which we’ve been getting so many teasers, it just seemed like Bugatti wanted to whip a dead horse, and they whipped it real good. But for good reason, the Divo, based on the Chiron, is a beautiful car and was shown with very fetching teal color accents. It’s 77 pounds lighter than the Chiron, generates almost 200 more pounds of downforce and will touch 236 miles per hour if you have a place where doing that is possible. Instead of just raw speed, this car was built with cornering in mind and was named after French racing driver Albert Divo, who raced a Bugatti to two Targa Florio wins back in the 1920s. It’s much more attractive than the Chiron, which is saying something, and probably worth all of the $5.8 million it would take to buy one because it’s only going to appreciate in value. Oh and if you’re thinking of saving up for one, don’t bother because they’re all already sold because there are way too many rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.

Which brings us to the auctions. No Monterey Car Week is complete without a few ridiculous vehicle sales, and this year was no different. One of the special cars that went up for sale was a 1987 Porsche 959 Komfort, which is one of those “homologation specials” we talk about; basically a car that was produced in road-going form just so the company could make a race car version of it and dominate, which Porsche did in Group B racing. There were only 249,959 Komforts ever made, so this was always going to bring a lot of money. Unfortunately for the owner of this vehicle, the trailer carrying it disconnected from the car towing it and the 959 plowed straight into a tree, and the owner just decided to sell it that way. So yeah, there was a very, very totalled-looking Porsche 959 auctioned off, and you know how much it sold for? $467,500. Amazing. I’m sure the buyer has some plans for it that don’t include leaving the tree-shaped damage to the front end.

But the real star of the auctions was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO being sold by Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee who invested very, very wisely. Only 36 of this vehicle were ever made and this particular 250 GTO, one of four upgraded by Scaglietti and one of only seven to have a more aggressive coachbuilt body designed by Pininfarina, making it lower, wider and shorter than other 250s. So you can imagine that this sold for a bit more than the $467k the crashed Porsche fetched. And yeah, it did okay. $48.8 million worth of okay, making it the most expensive car ever to sell at auction. Amazingly, that’s not even the most expensive Ferrari 250 GTO ever sold, as last year, a 1963 model sold in a private sale for $70 million, with another one going in 2013 for $52 million. So it just goes to show, you can get a better deal at an auto auction. You just may have to widen your definition of “deal.”

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of February 26th, 2018

Time to Flee Chicago

An investigation from ProPublica and Mother Jones this week revealed that the city of Chicago has been bankrupting its citizens through aggressive efforts to collect on parking fines. And it’s not just a few isolated cases. They found around a more than 10,000 Chapter 13 bankruptcies that included debts to the city which were usually for unpaid tickets in amounts averaging $3,900. Tickets totaled about 7 % of the city’s total operating budget, around $264 million in 2016. Chicago loves to make parking difficult. For residential streets, they require you purchase a city sticker. Where you can find a parking spot, sometimes there will be neighborhood stickers too, further restricting spots. If you don’t have a city sticker, bam. $200 fine, and it’s not like they won’t give you a ticket because you have already received one. Unpaid tickets can result in garnishment of tax refunds, impounds, license suspensions and more. So while they can’t imprison you for debt, they basically make it impossible for you to travel, which makes it awfully hard to hold down a job to pay off fines.

There are many caveats to this, of course. You should obey the law and pay for parking and park legally, and in Chicago especially, having a car sucks because of the winter and it’s generally pretty easy to get around with the L and Metra, but they don’t go everywhere. So while it’s not impossible to avoid getting trapped in this cyclical debt loop with the city, it’s pretty hard to get out of once you’re in it. That’s where bankruptcy comes in, which is sometimes the only choice even when it wrecks your credit score. Chicago has been one of the only major metropolitan areas to lose population recently and one can’t help but wonder if it’s policies like this that place the city’s budget over the wellbeing of its people that is driving the exodus.

Geely Owner Buys into Daimler

This week Li Shufu, Chairman of Chinese automaker Geely, spent 7.3 billion Euro on Daimler stock, making him the largest single shareholder in the company who rejected advances from him previously. He now owns almost 10% of the company after initially asking for only five and has signaled his intention to stick with that amount for the time being, which sounds like a threat if he’s not taken seriously. China has been one of the strongest markets for German vehicles in the last decade and vehicles from Audi, BMW, Mercedes and others are frequently copied by Chinese manufacturers looking to cash in on their popular style. The Germans don’t need help selling their cars in China, and Daimler already has partnerships formed with BAIC Motor and BYD to develop electric vehicles under the Denza brand name, so it makes sense why Daimler wouldn’t want anything to do with Li or Geely. What it is Li is hoping to get from his hostile purchase of Daimler stock is still unclear, especially after it was reported that he had kicked the tires at Fiat Chrysler before going after Daimler stock. The companies are very, very different, so perhaps it’s just an effort to exert a greater control on overseas automotive players. Sort of the business equivalent of building sand islands in the South China Sea to claim more territory.

BMW to Build Mini-E in China

Speaking of China, they’re way out ahead of the rest of the world in terms of electric vehicle adoption and automakers the world over are seeing the advantage of working with Chinese companies who have developed expertise in this space. One such company is BMW, who has partnered with Chinese company Brilliance to produce the forthcoming electric Mini. Apparently this will be the first mini vehicle ever produced outside of England even though Mini has been owned, operated and designed by Germans since 2001. For some reason, some Mini electric vehicles will also be produced in England, but they will be different than the ones made in China. Given the strong history of both countries producing unreliable crap, this is sort of like a choose your own painful automotive adventure scenario. 

UPS Expands Electric Fleet

Meanwhile, UPS is keeping Brown close to town. Er, home. Hometown. They’re getting some electric vehicles from the U.S. Specifically from Workhorse, who we’ve mentioned a few times here for their electric pickup truck. Apparently they’ve been working with UPS for about four years on the development of a class 5 delivery truck, whatever class 5 means, but UPS want more of them and have placed an order for 50. They’ll use these vehicles as a technology testbed with the aim of purchasing more next year. Of course the range of these trucks won’t be as good as on their gas-powered counterparts, especially when hauling heavy loads, UPS said that, just like their skimpy shorts, they’re okay covering less ground than is appropriate.

Ferrari Keeps on Rolling (Back Odometers)

Some disturbing news for all of you looking at the used Ferrari market this week when it was revealed that Ferrari corporate openly allowed dealerships to manipulate odometer readings, rolling back mileage to zero to inflate the value of their vehicles for sale. It’s not clear if they could roll back mileage to an arbitrary number, since a car with 50,000 miles on it will show some signs of wear and the odometer reading zero miles would smell awfully fishy. There’s also a statement from Ferrari that this could only be conducted on cars with fewer than 311 miles or 500 kilometers, which seems like it was intended to be used to wipe off delivery miles so new cars could be handed over to customers with a big old goose egg on the dash. How many times they could be reset though, could be meaningful. And the fact that, in order to use the tool, dealerships were required to receive authorization from Ferrari HQ is most definitely meaningful because it means they’re at least complicit in violating US federal and state laws against odometer manipulation. Ultimately, I don’t think this is going to result in any substantial change in the used Ferrari market since its application was apparently so limited, but it’s just sketchy as hell that such a function existed anyway. It’s pretty strange to me that Ferrari makes cars where you can change the odometer willy-nilly, but you can’t even stop it catching fire because they used cheap glue. Italian priorities...

Metal Market Manipulation Means More Migraines

Back here at home, Donald Trump has announced that he will be applying a 25% tariff to foreign steel and a 10% tariff to aluminum, apparently to prop up U.S. metal manufacturers. This is, of course, shortsighted and idiotic because lots of things use metals as components including, importantly, motor vehicles. So by making parts more expensive to come into the country, that incentivizes companies to produce their cars elsewhere and then import them, costing the U.S. vehicle manufacturing jobs. It will also result in higher vehicle prices during a time when vehicle sales are down, costing dealerships salespeople jobs. It could also kick off a trade war with China, the world’s largest steel manufacturer, who could impose tariffs on American goods in response, costing jobs in other sectors like farming. While the tariffs haven’t been implemented yet, the announcement alone took the stock market down 500 points because real businesspeople have the common sense to understand how supply chains work and appreciate the consequences of such actions. Hopefully this is a warning sign enough to scare Trump away from actually implementing the tax.

Ford’s Dumb Advertising Record

Visitors to Madrid, Spain may have noticed the iconic España Building looking a little different due to a truly massive Ford advertisement recently. Showing off the new EcoSport compact crossover, it is actually the Guinness World Record holder for largest billboard. I know an audio medium is not an ideal venue to discuss the scale of a visual advertisement, but consider it’s the size of 20 tennis courts and you sort of have a mental picture of how huge and unnecessary it is. If you’re thinking it’s ironic that they’d use such a wasteful display to promote the EcoSport, Ford says that when the ad campaign is complete, it will be donated to the Apascovi Foundation employment center for people with disabilities, where the materials used in its construction will be repurposed somehow.

Toyota to Build Mini-Nurburgring

The Nurburgring in Germany is widely considered the best place to test the limits of a car thanks to its long and varied course. That’s why it’s so popular to try to set new records there - automakers think of it as a measure of a car’s ability to cope with the most demanding conditions a car can face while driving as fast as possible. But for Japanese companies, Germany is half a world away, so getting cars there for comprehensive testing can be a huge pain in the ass. So as Toyota got to work on a new research and development center back home in Japan, they have decided to dedicate two square miles to the creation of a mini-Nurburgring. It’s just 3.3 miles but will feature many of the most demanding turns and elements of the famous German track. Fortunately, since this will be owned by Toyota, I don’t think it’ll experience the same ridiculous lap time contests, saving journalists the world over from having to roll our eyes when some new company claims to be the fastest ever around it.

Uber Rider Blacks Out, Finds Himself Home (300 miles away)

Another week, another crazy Uber story, but fortunately this was in no way the company’s fault. A man visiting friends at West Virginia University got hammered and, like a responsible college kid, called himself an Uber to get back home. Problem is, he lives in New Jersey and the driver, a well-meaning chap with a ridiculously comfortable Toyota Sienna, obliged for the 300 mile journey across three states to return him home when he blacked out in the back seat. The cost of this monumental cock-up? $1,635 and one rich Uber driver’s whole night. Even worse, the guy accidentally ordered an Uber XL instead of just an X, so he paid $700 more than he even could have if his drunk ass had been able to press buttons right. At least he didn’t drive, but maybe there is such a thing as too drunk to Uber.

Stink Bugs Create Rotten Situation for Kiwis

New Zealand residents waiting for new cars from Japan have been forced to wait a bit longer due to a severe infestation of stink bugs on container ships from Japan. New Zealand has a fragile ecosystem to which stink bugs could potentially do severe damage, so three container ships hauling approximately 10,000 new and used vehicles from Japan have been made to sit off the coast of the country until they can be cleaned out. A further 8,000 are sitting at the dock in Japan waiting for transport. New processes will be put into place after this fiasco to ensure cars are cleaned prior to shipment, but there’s still no word on when those ships will be cleaned up and vehicles delivered. Suddenly my house’s infestation doesn’t seem so dire.

Clever Man Pays, Steals with Own Tools

Here in the Midwest, police across several states are looking for a man who has been stealing thousands of dollars from automated car washes in Ohio and Indiana. This guy rolls up to an automated wash, inserts a laminated $20 bill attached to some fishing wire, yanks out the bill and cancels the sale on the wash machine, which spits out money in the amount he paid. At one station in Indiana, he was able to complete the task 35 times, netting him $700 just at one location. He’s apparently done this several times at different locations in different states and has yet to be caught, despite his face being visible to cameras on the machines. And we’re not talking about some criminal hacker mastermind, we’re talking about a clever guy with a laminator and fishing line. I had no idea car washes were so easy to game or held $700 worth of cash in them at one time! Kudos to this guy, but also not because, you know, criminal.

Naked Man Plays, Drives by Own Rules

In Kansas City this week, drivers along the 435 freeway that loops the city were treated to quite the show. Specifically, on display was a nude male riding a stolen bright yellow ATV into oncoming traffic. He refused to stop police and kept going for a while, managing to be filmed by several drivers which, let me tell you, makes for one hell of an animated gif. Police were eventually able to apprehend him and noted that no “dangerous instruments” were found on him, which seems like an especially harsh commentary on his personal endowment. Apparently the owner of the ATV called the police to report it stolen, at which point the 911 dispatcher started laughing and said “we know where your ATV is.” The owner may want to go ahead and purchase a new seat though.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the week of February 5th, 2018

Super Bowl Commercial Round-up

The Super Bowl was last weekend and it may have been one of those occasions where the game was actually more interesting than the commercials. Except for the Tide ads, those were great. We seemed to have far fewer car commercials than usual this year, but a few featured prominently.

Jeep had several ads talking about roads and going off of them and even had Doctor Ian Malcolm being chased by a T-Rex in a Jurassic Park throwback ad, which was clever but not especially impactful. Overall I got a very “meh” feeling from Jeep.

Hyundai had an ad where they tried to be profound by telling drivers of their vehicles at the Super Bowl that they helped contribute to cancer research but it ended up looking more awkward than anything else. 

Toyota tried to go the funny route by uniting a bunch of unfunny holy people in a Tundra to go root for the same football team as some sort of “God Squad.” I guess they were trying to walk the line between a profound “look at us all being together as one” and funny buddy comedy, but it just fell flat into boringtown.

But boringtown was anywhere but where Ram went after their ad aired. Fiat Chrysler’s truck brand’s commercial focused on service and utilized a portion of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s “Drum Major Instinct” sermon. The backlash was swift and ruthless, calling the ad exploitative and out-of-step with the legacy of Dr. King. There’s actually some great irony in the fact that, later on in the same sermon, Dr. King warns parishioners of the dangers of advertising and capitalism, and how the man will try to sell you expensive cars you don’t need.

Conveniently, that bit was not included in the selected audio for the commercial, which showed clips of Ram owners using their trucks to apparently give back to their communities. There’s an old saying in PR that any press is good press and while Dodge, Ram and Fiat Chrysler are all feeling the burn from using Dr. King’s speech out of context, granted with the blessing of the organization that sells the rights to use Dr. King’s speeches (apparently against the will of his estate and foundation), guess what we’re all talking about? The new Ram. Well played, Ram. 

Labor Pains

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how German steel workers were going on strike to get the option of working 28-hour work weeks for a couple of years to care for family members and some other various benefits. Well guess who gave in? Yep, the German Unions wore down the companies and factory workers will now get the option to go part time for a while and return to full time work with no penalties. Lucky bastards.

Photo by Reuters

Meanwhile back here in America, former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles labor relations chief Alphons Iacobelli accepted a plea deal for his role in siphoning off more than $4.5 million in training center funds to union and company personnel. The fact that he was offered a deal indicates Iacobelli was ready to roll over on others who played a part in paying UAW officials $1.5 million to sway union negotiations in the company’s favor, rather than looking out for the workers who paid their dues to ensure the union looked out for them. So the plea deal here isn’t the end. Instead it’s somewhere in the middle as this scandal starts to spiral out. The FBI has also begun asking questions about current contracts because although companies and the union both insist this activity was in the past, officials aren’t convinced. In related news, I’m thinking of starting an auto worker’s union. Who’s in?

F1’s GridKids and FE’s New Digs

In racing news this week, Formula E unveiled their new race cars for next year, which look like a mashup of Formula 1, IndyCar and LeMans prototype, all to good effect. But the changes aren’t just cosmetic. The cars will be faster and have nearly twice the energy storage capacity, doubling range, demonstrating the drastic evolution that’s taken place in battery technology recently. The cars also feature the protective “halo” that is being rolled out to Formula 1 cars to protect drivers. With Jaguar, Nissan, Audi and Porsche all taking part next year, and with the cars being faster and more aggressive than ever, this could be the turning point that makes Formula E a legitimate racing series. Or we could end up with a glorified marketing showcase that features precious little go-karts that operate on a slightly faster scale than you can do in some indoor arena near your house.

Photo by Formula E (Twitter)

Meanwhile in Formula 1, the changes taking place there this year won’t be limited to the cars. Following the #metoo and time’s up movements and widespread allegations of workplace abuse, F1 has decided it will no longer objectify women by using the pretty ones as Grid Girls from this season on. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the sexes are equal. We still don’t have any female F1 drivers on the horizon, but at least it’s an overdue step in the right direction. In their place will be some adorable GridKids, sort of like the ones you see walking out professional soccer players. So Formula E gets faster and Formula 1 gets less sexy, but also cuter. 

When your Kids are Sheep

In other kid news, a new service funded by Jaguar Land Rover is enlisting Land Rover Discovery LR4s to take kids to school in Massachusetts. The service, called Sheprd, is described as Uber meets the School Bus and provides parents the opportunity to book rides for their kids to one of the 70+ partner institutions in Newton, Massachusetts. It’s $17 per ride, per child, regardless of distance, which sounds like a not bad deal, considering it’s a luxury ride with a driver who faces much stricter rules than any old Uber or Lyft yahoo. This type of service has been around for a few years apparently, and I did actually see some minivans in Boston when I was there with big yellow “School Bus” signs and flashing red lights on the top. My immediate reaction was of course, “Sorry, Chrysler Town & Country, but you are not a school bus." Turns out, they are sort of sanctioned that way. Go figure. In any case, if you’re rich and think the ol’ big yellow fellow is too pedestrian for your offspring and you happen to live in Newton, Massachusetts, look up Sheprd.

Buick’s Wagon “Problem”

Despite Buick’s inability to make good commercials, they do actually make an interesting car now with the Regal TourX. Originally, Buick only figured the wagon would account for about 30 percent of their sales, but based on its popularity so far, around 50 percent of Regal sales could be the TourX wagon. But according to Phil Brook, Buick’s US Vice President of Marketing and Horrible Music Choices, its popularity all comes down to how they pitch it. Instead of calling it a wagon, Buick is all like "it's a crossover!" because instead of trying to change the ridiculous, dated perception that wagons are boring boats for big families, Buick, who themselves are trying to overcome dated perceptions, would rather take the easy route and just call their wagon something it is not. So while they say crossover, we’ll know the truth, and so will your eyes, because that thing is glorious and it’s a wagon! 

Mitsubishi’s Good News/Bad News

Hey, remember Mitsubishi? They made the Eclipse and Lancer Evolution and the Montero and they were cool and good. Well, now they make the Outlander and the Outlander Sport and a few old Mirages, but mostly crossovers. Turns out people are still buying them for some reason! Last year, for the first time since 2007, Mitsubishi sold more than 100,000 vehicles in the US, with their Outlander Models comprising more than ⅔ of that volume. With the upcoming Eclipse Cross bastardization, I mean crossover, that’s likely to tick up even further and could mean six years of steadily increasing sales for a brand struggling to find relevance in a very competitive market. 

At the same time, in the last two weeks, Mitsubishi has also had to recall more than 368,000 vehicles for parking brake, sunroof, stalling and other issues. If your math needs a bit of a refresher, that’s more than three times the total amount of cars they sold last year, which only demonstrates the scope of the problems the brand is going through. It’s difficult for me to really root for a brand that consistently kills off their interesting cars in favor of bland and uncompetitive crossovers, but it sounds like Mitsubishi needs all the help it can get, so good luck, guys.

SUVs Keep Rolling

Even though they’ve killed off the good cars, Mitsubishi does have the right idea, and it’s showing with increased sales. Crossovers and SUVs are hot. They’re the reason Honda has told us not to expect another S2000 roadster and why Nissan keeps kicking the Z can down the road, which sucks, but is understandable. As a case in point, consider Mazda. In January, Mazda sold more CX-5 compact crossovers than every other model in their lineup combined. So that’s the 3, the 6, the Miata, CX-3, CX-7 and CX-9. All of those together sold fewer than the 13,463 CX-5s that sold last month alone. And for good reason. They’re good cars. Several of my friends own them and so do many of my neighbors. But when asked by one of those friends why I didn’t consider one when buying the GTI, you may recall I mentioned that I wanted something that felt special. In all of last year, Volkswagen sold just more than 20,000 GTIs in the US. In one month, Mazda sold way more than half as many CX-5s. They’re not exactly special. But they are really, really good cars. For compact crossovers, I mean. Whatever.

But Mazda’s not alone here, and it’s not just limited to compact crossovers either. Big SUVs are going gangbusters. So much so that Ford can’t keep up with the demand for the new Lincoln Navigator. They’ve never had to make so many, so they simply can’t keep up with the number of buyers knocking down their door. And, just to prove everything is relative, “so many” in the case of the Lincoln Navigator means they sold fewer than 1,300 last month, which is actually on pace to be more special than the GTI. Then again, I don’t have $72,000 to drop on a gargantuan SUV that gets 18 miles per gallon combined.

But where Mazda and Ford are seeing success, Fiat Chrysler is being, well, Fiat Chrysler. Turns out, nobody wants or trusts that their Maserati Levante SUV will hold up to the rigors of driving. Demand is so low for the big, expensive, pointless SUV that the factory in Turin, Italy will have its working hours cut by 59 percent until July, when they’ll reevaluate their life choices, or at the very least their product mix.

Robocop (But for Real)

Autonomous vehicles aren’t just going to make driving easier for us, they’re apparently going to make catching us when we’re driving quickly even easier too. That’s because this week we learned that Ford has filed a patent for an autonomous police vehicle that would be fitted with a learning brain that will know how to find good hiding spots to catch speeders and other various vehicular evildoers.

Fortunately, it seems like this is yet another one of those patents that is intentionally vague because the people filing it have no idea how it would work or how they might create such a machine. Again, this makes me wonder what the function of patents are other than to settle the “I thought of it first” legal fights, but I’m comforted to know that if SkyNet ends up happening and the robots take over, it won’t start in our cars.

Airbnb for Garages

As society continues to compact itself into cities, life with a vehicle becomes a little tougher. Whether it’s finding a place to plug in your hybrid or just finding a flat spot to change your oil, garages are pretty useful for car owners. Yet some lucky jerks who have more money than cars may have some free garage spots sitting unused while a gear head is looking for a spot to get some quick wrenching done. Well, like everything else, now there’s an app for that. Garage Time is like the Airbnb for garages, where garage owners with space to spare can list their garage for an hourly rental fee to others interested in using it. Similar services with DIY car workshops have started cropping up in some cities, but nothing quite this peer-to-peer yet. I think it’s a neat idea, and I could certainly spare someone my garage if they needed it, but strangers? I have enough trouble losing hammers by myself.

Yet Another Meaningless Degree

Great news this week in believers of an impossible future, you can now receive a degree in flying car engineering! That is, if you don’t mind going to a school nobody has ever heard of and attending classes digitally. Udacity, which is apparently an online school started by a former Stanford University professor, already teaches a self-driving car program that has attracted 50,000 students since it started in 2016 and founder Sebastian Thrun is expecting at least 10,000 students to sign up for the flying car program. Although this doesn’t offer anything like a bachelor’s degree, it doesn’t cost nearly as much, running around $1,200 per term and also doesn’t require you to take electives like Mongolian Literature or Intro to Sub-Sarahran Political Science. Thrun says that this program is intended to solve the huge shortage of engineers capable of working on such technology, but if the choices are wait a little longer for a well-engineered flying car or get one sooner but it’s been designed by someone who paid less than three grand and took courses in his parents basement in between Overwatch gaming matches, I think I’ll pick the former.

VaLet’s take the Ferrari

Back when I lived in Los Angeles, I remember vividly an occasion in Malibu where I gave a valet my keys and, when sitting down at my table on the patio, definitely heard the squealing tires and unmistakable NISMO exhaust of my G35 as the asshole peeled out in my car, going to park it. I was pissed but wrote it off as some kid having fun. I would have been a whole lot more pissed if he had given my keys to someone else who simply insisted my G35 was their car, even without a valet ticket.

Well, that’s just what happened, except instead of Malibu it was St. Petersburg, Florida and instead of my crappy old, but lovely G35, it was some lawyer’s Ferrari 458 Spider. Fortunately for the attorney, police caught the would-be thief as he tried to enter a highway because he apparently didn’t have the lights on and wasn’t able to drive the supercar very well. When asked for a reason why he might trick a dumb valet into giving him the keys, the driver said he was trying to impress his date. And nothing impresses a date more than a rap sheet including grand theft and possession of cocaine. Because of course he had cocaine. It’s Florida!

One Giant Leap Backwards for Man

In other rich people news, you may know that money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a highly customized Aston Martin Valkyrie. It can also buy you an actual rock from earth’s moon. Apparently some entrepreneur and instagram user with a bunch of fancy cars is having his moon rock ground into dust and used in the mix of his Valkyrie’s Karosserie Lunar Red paint. Not that you’ll probably be able to tell. It’s not like the moon is sitting up there in the sky sparkling like a diamond. It’ll probably just make the paint’s finish a little more dull. But Spacepaint! 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs