Why Can’t We Be Friends: Automotive Partnerships Pick Up

The automotive landscape is in a pretty significant state of flux right now, with sales down, tariffs up, and a trade war looming around the corner. But, driven by the ever-increasing pressure to generate value for their shareholders, automakers can’t just sit back, shrug and say, “hey, shit happens, guys.” So what we’re seeing is a dramatic uptick in the number of partnerships between automakers and investment by automakers in technology companies. The largest of these is undoubtedly Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi partnership, heralded by Carlos Ghosn, which is an alliance, but not a single company like the Volkswagen Automotive Group, which holds Audi, Porsche, Bugatti, Skoda and others. Just by cooperating, Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi saved a collective $6.6 billion last year alone. This is by sharing development costs of new platforms, technologies, parts, components and by their increased purchasing power, being able to buy more in bulk at a cheaper price. The alliance is basically like a membership to automotive Costco. There's been talk about this alliance becoming a merger, but Ghosn squashed those rumours this week.

And when someone says their alliance saved them almost $7 billion in a year, people start paying attention, specifically that same Volkswagen Automotive Group announced a strategic alliance this week with Ford. The details of the Memorandum of Understanding signed are pretty vague, but it sounds from the statements made like it’s an awful lot like Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi, where they will share development costs and technology, apparently primarily for commercial vehicles. I’d say this is a win for both companies since Ford has been ahead in the hybrid game for a while and Volkswagen’s infotainment system is one of the best I’ve used in a long time, but how necessary those are for commercial vehicles is another question. I’ll go ahead and take credit for the partnership since my household has been a Ford-VW garage since February.

Volkswagen isn’t stopping with Ford though. Through their Audi brand, they are partnering with Hyundai to co-develop fuel cell vehicles. Audi has apparently been tasked with developing fuel cells for the rest of the Volkswagen Automotive Group while VW works on battery cars. Audi will start working with Hyundai’s ix35 fuel cell SUV and the forthcoming Nexo and leverage collective R&D to take their fuel cell tech to the next level. The next level, of course, being a level at which someone might want to purchase a fuel cell vehicle, which I think is probably more a matter of fueling infrastructure than car quality or availability at this point. Regardless, the partnership should save both companies a lot.

But speaking of Volkswagen running the battery game, they announced this week that they have increased their stake in QuantumScape Corporation, forming a joint venture for the purpose of producing viable solid state batteries. The goal here is to put them in production vehicles by 2025. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Toyota is doing pretty much the same thing, but on their own. Future partnership incoming? As a refresher, solid state batteries, basically pack more power and energy storage capacity into smaller packages. They said that a solid state battery could increase the range of VW’s E-Golf from its current 186 miles on lithium ion batteries to a whopping 466 miles, which would beat basically every other car out there right now. Hell, that’s more range than my GTI gets on premium gas. I may be looking at the Golf GTE come 2026 or so!

Also in the Volkswagen Automotive Group, Porsche has bought a minority stake in Rimac, makers of two electric super car models, one of which was crashed by Richard Hammond on a hill climb attempt last year. As is the case with most partnerships entered into voluntarily, both companies stand to benefit, with Porsche tapping into Rimac’s experience with electric super cars for their upcoming Taycan and future electric cars, and Rimac getting access to Porsche’s suppliers and potentially greater savings on parts from increased purchasing power.

And you know what stands out to me about these partnerships? They’re all international. Every single one. To me they show the great potential for progress when companies work together, share technology and help one another out, rather than operating in silos, shutting out the competition. The market is tough right now, and if companies are going to survive, they have to work together. And the result for us petrolheads? More choices, lower costs and better, more developed options. If only more people believed in tearing down walls, huh?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of June 11th, 2018

Daimler Defeat Devices Doom Diesels

In Germany this week, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer made like a middle school principal and called Daimler CEO Dieter Zietsche to his office. On Monday, he asked a sheepish Zietsche if he know how exactly five cheating devices were found in new Mercedes diesel engines. Of course Dieter claimed he had no knowledge of such a thing and that it was his classmate Martin Winterkorn over at Volkswagen who was the cheater! Well, said Principal Scheuer, he didn’t believe that, but he did believe that Daimler had put defeat devices in as many as one million recent Mercedes cars to try to skirt the Euro 6 emissions standards and that, to make things right, Dieter would have to do the equivalent of resubmitting his homework. Which in automotive terms is recalling 774,000 of their latest model diesels. All joking aside, these cars were probably designed after Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal came to light, so just how was it Daimler thought they were going to get away with this? And how far does this dieselgate rabbit hole go? The more they cheat, the more it seems like diesel cannot be made clean and really has no future.

Tesla Drops Employees, Props Autopilot

Just one week, I’d love to go through Feedly, which is an RSS reader I use to aggregate my news and think, “oh wow, not a single notable thing about Tesla this week, I guess their 5,000 vehicle production rate is humming along smoothly.” Sadly, that was not this week and they remain the brand mentioned more than any other on my and most websites.

First, some lawsuits; one from an employee who alleges he was fired after he expressed concerns about workplace safety, and another who claims he was ousted after expressing interest in joining a union. Both are crimes, both will probably be settled to nobody’s satisfaction, and both have been denied by the company. Why cover this? Because such rumors have been floating around for a long time and the more we hear about them, the more it seems Tesla has a toxic culture of secrecy, cover-ups and anti-union sentiment, which is a problem when it comes to protecting workers’ rights and well being. Also because no other company is having this sort of problem, at least not visibly.

Then came the news that Tesla is laying off nine percent of their workforce in an effort to streamline efficiency and gain better profitability, which is to say “any profitability at all.” It sounds like the cuts will come primarily from salaried positions because they need all hands on deck for the production of their vehicles. Despite planning factories in Shanghai and Europe, Musk still claims he won’t have to raise any new capital and that the company will be profitable by the third or fourth quarter of this year, so this culling is probably critical to getting there or close.

Finally, hot on the heels of a report from the Association of British Insurers and Thatcham Research indicated that calling vehicles “autonomous” led to dangerous grey areas and driver over-reliance on technology, Tesla announced that they will begin rolling out full self-driving features this August. Details are scarce (as they are on the fact that the next Roadster will apparently have rocket thrusters), but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that people are too dumb for this technology. If you hear the word “autonomous” and you immediately stop listening to anything else and immediately start thinking that cars are going to do everything for you, you should not be allowed as a passenger in a car, let alone driving. Seriously, hop on a train.

Toyota Drops Cool Bill on Grab

Any time a car maker spends a billion dollars, it’s going to get some attention, and that’s just what Toyota did this week when it took a stake in Singapore’s Grab Holdings, which is Southeast Asia’s largest car hailing service, a company that drove Uber out of their home markets. That Toyota had to spend so much to buy in indicates not only the growing value of ride sharing, but the view among car companies that they think that traditional vehicle ownership is going to be majorly disrupted by car sharing and autonomous ride hailing services. Toyota’s big cash drop means they’ll get a seat on Grab’s board of directors, which analysts say almost guarantees that Grab will start buying Toyota cars for its service. As they say, you gotta spend money to make money, and with $54 billion in cash laying around, I’d say Toyota has some they can spend! Toyota has increased partnerships and investments in a bunch of automotive disruption companies that focus on ride hailing, ride sharing, electric vehicles and autonomous cars, so they are hedging their bets that one or more of those is going to take off and they’ll be well-positioned to take advantage. Once more, Ford should be taking note of how Toyota does business before they have to kill off their entire passenger car production because they didn’t plan well enough.

Autonomous Vehicles will be SO GREAT

Even though autonomous cars aren’t very good right now, they won’t always be glorified assisted driving systems. According to a report by Security America’s Future Energy, autonomous vehicles will be so great for everyone and will lead to an incredible $796 billion in total annual benefits by 2050. This comes from congestion mitigation and economic impact as well as the totally super easy to quantify “quality of life improvements.” It also means cost cutting for taxis and truckers since those hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs will be taken over by robots, and it’s like you always hear those people who lose their jobs to robots say, “but my quality of life is so much better now that I’m unemployed.” This report is full of bogus or at the very least dubious data and projections, including safety because, as we’ve been learning lately, safety isn’t exactly guaranteed by autonomous vehicles. Maybe by 2050 they’ll have it all figured out. That’s only 32 years or so from now.

Food in Fords Making Moves in Miami

Speaking of autonomous vehicles, when Ford isn’t buying old train stations in Detroit to slap their logo on, they’re building customized Ford Transit Connects to act as Postmates food delivery vehicles in Miami. The small vans will be equipped with curbside lockers to hold food, which will be placed in the car by the restaurant after a customer places an order through the app. The food will then be taken to the customer who will receive a locker number and code to unlock the locker. Car arrives, customer gets food, and we all move on with our lives without having to make polite small talk with the delivery person while you try to decide how generous you will be with the tip. In the wake of vacating sedan and small car sales, Ford may be jumping in with both feet on this “autonomous mobility” movement sector and this pilot project could help inform systems and layout for an entirely food delivery-focused vehicle sometime in the future. I look forward to the Domino’s Transit that will cook my pizza while it’s on the way to my house. I don’t mind having to cut it because it’s not like the people at the store actually do it worth a damn anyway.

China Proves U.S. IS Not so Bad

Starting on July 1st of this year, China will be rolling out a voluntary system by which all new cars will have RFID chips placed on the windshield of vehicles, thereby allowing the Chinese government to use its dense network of surveillance technology to track you wherever you go. If you’re thinking, “well at least it’s voluntary,” starting in 2019, it won’t be anymore, and all of those 30 million or so new cars sold in the world’s largest car market every year will be equipped with these chips. China already has a number of surveillance systems, including incredible facial recognition technology, in place that use artificial intelligence to track criminals and shame people with high debts or for petty shit like jaywalking, so this is just another way of maintaining social control, and probably another way in which China can expand its incredibly creepy social rating system. While it sounds like this is yet another step on China’s journey into a dystopian nightmare, bear in mind that we all carry around cell phones equipped with RFIDs, so this could already be happening in the U.S. without your knowledge.

Dieselgate Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Despite beginning in 2015, here we are three years later and Volkswagen is still dealing with the consequences of their diesel cheating scandal or “dieselgate.” They set aside 28.5 billion Euro to cover the sprawling fines and lawsuits stemming from their inability to make clean diesels that won’t kill us with excess carbon pollution, but just this week they were hit with another one billion euro fine from the German government for the same scandal. The Germans’ investigation was apparently much more exhaustive than the one we had here in the U.S. because it took way longer, but also resulted in lower fines. Add to this the fact that former owners of cheating diesel cars in Vermont and Arizona will receive $1,000 for the hassle of having to turn their cars back in and this thing only gets more expensive for Volkswagen.  In any case, they have to be getting close to putting this whole thing behind them. Just too bad the millions of people in Europe who will likely die early from inhaling those diesel fumes won’t be able to. SAD!

Fishy Filings Could Trouble Toyota

For the last…ever, people and politicians have been saying “where are the jobs?” and this year, Toyota and Mazda came through, committing to spend $1.6 billion on a new plant in Alabama, where everyone was super happy to greet them. Well, almost everyone, because the Center for Biological Diversity has been saying for years, “what about the fish?” Specifically, the Spring Pygmy Sunfish, which is a rare species and could theoretically be driven to extinction by the construction of the factory and the various infrastructure and activities around it. In a lawsuit filed this week, the Center alleges there hasn’t been enough legal protection for the fish’s only known habitat near the factory location, and they’re hoping to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to make some special efforts to protect the important characteristics of the apparently critical habitat. All this for a small striped fish that rarely exceeds an inch in length and has already been presumed extinct twice before someone found one living somewhere. But being the relative conservationist that I am, it strikes me that it can’t be that hard to accommodate some small fish, plus what if there’s like a butterfly effect where if this fish dies, Elon Musk never colonizes mars? Talk about a disaster.

Fuel Economy Matters, but Does it Really?

A new study released this week by Consumers Union and sent to me by AllWaysDrive Blog minion Jordan revealed that, among 19 popular vehicle features, almost 1,900 drivers chose purchase cost, reliability, safety and fuel economy as their top four most important, in that order. The researchers also asked study participants which vehicle they would prefer and participants generally chose options that cost 25% more but increased reliability, safety, and fuel economy. Less important were acceleration and performance, which surely indicates that this study polled the wrong people. Setting aside the fact that the study’s sample size was relatively small compared with the total car buying public, this isn’t really reflective of reality, with the average cost of cars climbing and the average fuel economy of new cars sold actually decreasing since mid-2014 with the booming sales of SUVs and crossovers. So there’s obviously a disconnect between what consumers say they want in an ideal car and what they actually end up buying. Go figure that people can’t be trusted to tell the truth!

Cars Drivers Drive the Least

If you’ve looked on the app Autolist for a car, which I highly recommend you do, you’ve probably seen a bunch of “online only” results from a company called Carvana, which will deliver vehicles to your door in a sort of backwards dealership kind of situation. Well, they also come up with lists, apparently, and after analyzing more than 1.6 million automotive sales from January through May of this year, they’ve come up with a list of vehicles they say get driven the least each year. In the top 15, you get your regular list of high class Mercedes and BMWs that are someone’s “treat yoself” vehicle when they’re not driving their ’94 Ford Ranger back and forth to work, and the same go with the Sunday cars like the Maserati Ghibli, Lexus RC, M4 and sure, even the Volkswagen Beetle. Also on the list are the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3, which people don’t drive because of range anxiety and the Smart ForTwo which people don’t drive because it’s crap. But there are cars on the list like the Mini Cooper, VW Golf Sportwagen and Buick Encore, which are just sort of normal cars. Why are you not driving your Buick Encores, people? Is it because you’re tired of people asking “oh, that’s a Buick?” But leading the list are the Porsche 911 and Chevy Corvette, which are driven just 4,700 and 4,500 miles per year on average, which is just a crying shame because they are both some of the best cars to drive. You stupid collectors are ruining everything!

Fifth Gear Returns this Fall

After the bummer news last week that Matt LeBlanc was leaving Top Gear after his third season, we got a boost this week with the news that competing show Fifth Gear would be returning this fall, with old hosts and top blokes Tiff Needell and Jason Plato once again hosting after a three year hiatus. Fifth Gear never had the budget of Top Gear, didn’t do the crazy stunts and always focused less on the antics of three weird oldies instead of the cars themselves, which was always attractive to the real car nerds out there, even if it was a bit tougher to get the significant others interested. As I mentioned when the old Top Gear crew left for the Grand Tour, more car shows will never be a bad thing and, even if Vicki Butler-Henderson doesn’t return, I’m going to try to find a way to tune in here in the States, and so should you.

Ford Files Patent for Existing Thing

When they’re not buying train stations, delivering Miami’s to-go-orders or killing off popular vehicle models, Ford is busy filing patent applications for silly things that have existed for decades. Recently, the company applied for a patent for a screen that drops from a car’s tailgate to provide a privacy curtain. One could imagine this being especially handy at the beach for changing out of a swimsuit before hopping back into the car or for doing your business while out in the woods or when overcome with a sudden case of bowel evacuation syndrome because you ate curry for lunch and you knew it was risky but decided dammit, Darryl, just go for it. In any case, these screens have been around for years and you can buy them on Amazon if you’re the type of person who chooses not to think about if someone could just look through the windshield and see you despite the privacy curtain. The difference here is that they will apparently be built into the tailgate instead of being an add-on you purchase separately. There’s also a variant that deploys into an awning, basically giving you a shady spot to sit behind your car on sunny days. Plus, with the fact that the Mustang will be the only Ford vehicle without a hatchback or tailgate, this means they could apply it to almost every single car in their U.S. lineup! Hooray for small victories? 

Infrastructure, Now with Stuffed Crust

After so many campaign promises by so many politicians to address the country’s crumbling infrastructure, we are finally starting to see some progress being made. Oh, wait, did you think the government was doing something? Oh, no, sorry. We can’t even get a coherent trade policy. The entity currently working on restoring our roads is actually Domino’s Pizza. Under the guise of creating a smoother ride for their delivery vehicles so our pizzas don’t arrive in a jumbled mess, Domino’s is fixing potholes from California to Texas to Delaware and, after paving over the road canyons, painting them with a very tasteful Domino’s logo and their tagline, “Oh yes we did.” Yes, this is a publicity stunt and yes it’s working but hell no, I don’t mind driving over Domino’s logos in the streets instead of feeling the jarring crash of a six-inch deep pothole and wondering if my wheel has bent so much I won’t make it home. Oh yes you did, Domino’s, because oh no, our elected officials can’t.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Trade War Update

Donald Trump this week celebrated a small victory in a preamble battle to the Trade War he wants to start and insists will be easy to win. China announced that they will cut import tariffs for cars from 25% to just 15% starting on January 1. Car parts will be cut from 10% to 6%, which will help lower the cost to build new cars in the country as well. In exchange, the United States has lifted a ban on products from Chinese telecom company ZTE Corporation, which had apparently crippled the company. Set to benefit most from the relaxed tariffs are Volkswagen and luxury car makers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, who don’t produce cars in China. Tesla also benefits, as do some premium Japanese brands, which will now be able to compete cost-wise on a more level playing field with vehicles produced in China.

This doesn’t particularly help Ford or GM, who have already established extensive production in China specifically to avoid high tariffs, and with the 15% tariff still in place, there isn’t much likelihood brands will magically decide to start producing cars in the States again and ship them over. There’s also some rich irony that the Germans seem to benefit most from the actions of the U.S. President.

Photo by Dilworth Police Department

And while China cuts their import tariffs, Trump heard only the phrase “import tariff” and decided “yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s look into that” and assigned the U.S. Secretary of Commerce some homework. Specifically, Trump wants him to initiate a Section 232 investigation into the import of automobiles, trucks and auto parts to determine their effects on America’s national security. And right now you’re thinking “oh, this is supremely stupid,” but remember, it has happened twice that Ford Fusions from a plant in Mexico were caught in the U.S. loaded down with a bunch of weed that some drug mules north of the border failed to offload, so it’s entirely possible that cars are the single greatest source of drug trafficking in the United States. Or maybe it could be that pot should be legalized and regulated and we wouldn’t have people smuggling it in and that two examples of some incompetent drug cartel don’t exactly signify a trend. In any case, the Commerce Secretary will decide.

But Trump’s call for the investigation itself has been met with widespread condemnation from, well, kind of everyone. It’s being regarded as a waste of time and resources that could end up not only harming our relationship with other countries, but harming American consumers through generating higher prices for goods, much like the tariffs on steel and aluminum have done. Moreover, most consider it a stretch to think that an import tariff has anything to do with national security, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau going so far as to say it rests on “even flimsier logical grounds.” Automotive News has a great roundup of all the quotes lambasting the move but the best and most concise probably comes from John Bozzella, CEO of the Association of Global Automakers, who said “The U.S. auto industry is thriving and growing. To our knowledge, no one is asking for this protection. This path leads inevitably to fewer choices and higher prices for cars and trucks in America.” So who’s going to win this Trade War again?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Re-Reflecting on Ford’s Future Product Plans

A week removed from the breaking news that Ford was cutting all of their passenger vehicles with the exception of the Mustang, Focus Active and SUVs or crossovers, I’ve had some more time to think on and read about the decision, and the more I reflect on it, the worse the decision seems to sound.

Clearly needs a truck.

First, a reminder of why this happened. Cars and sedans are about as popular as getting kicked in the nuts. Sure, some sickos out there still like it, but, just like getting kicked in the nuts, owning a sedan makes you feel like less of a man because you could’ve just paid $10,000 more and bought a real man’s car. And by man’s car I mean a truck. In any case, cars and sedans are not selling well, and even when they do, they are low margin vehicles, meaning there’s not a lot of profit to be had for companies selling them. For publicly traded companies like Ford, continuing to sell unprofitable things that you have to continuously sink money into in order to remain competitive means it’s a profit suck, which affects your all-important balance sheet and is reflected in the stock market’s valuation of your company. The more profit you earn, the higher your valuation, the more satisfied your investors are that they made the right choice in buying your stock.

And there’s some old business wisdom to back up axing the sedans. It’s called “core competencies” and is the reason I pay someone to do my taxes and spread mulch around my front yard. It’s just easier, faster and more efficient if I pay someone who does those sorts of things all the time to do them than to try to do them myself. Those are not among my core competencies. And I pay different people for those things because my tax guy’s core competencies don’t include spreading mulch either. At least, not as far as I know. So what Ford is basically saying here is that, “we understand that the car market in the U.S. is not really growing and that we do not make cars and sedans that are compelling enough to compete well against such cars from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai or even General Motors. Therefore, we are willing to sacrifice a larger market share in favor of a smaller share that is more profitable by focusing on our core competency - producing SUVs, crossovers and the Mustang. And we’re going to save $26 billion by doing so.”

In fact, other companies have thrived on this sort of business model, including Porsche, Lamborghini or Ferrari, all of whom focus on sports cars, or Land Rover or Jeep who focus exclusively on SUVs.

Right now you’re thinking, “oh well that does sound pretty logical and I guess they made the right decision so that’s the end of the top stories, right?” Wrong, and sorry, it’s not the end. Porsche and Lamborghini have both hopped on the SUV bandwagon and Ferrari is about to because Porsche’s Cayenne became the company’s best selling vehicle when they first produced it in 2002. And no, that does not mean that Ford is right for sticking with SUVs, it means that those companies understood that they needed a diverse product offering to withstand economic fluctuations. Land Rover can produce only SUVs because they are owned by Tata, who also owns Jaguar, so they have all the product diversity there, it’s just across different brands but under the same umbrella. Jeep is just a freak and is literally the only good thing Fiat Chrysler makes.

And paring down their products doesn’t mean Ford instantly becomes a lean, mean healthy profit machine. It means they have all their eggs in a single basket that is far from immune to market volatility. Healthy companies like Toyota and Honda are constantly evaluating their products and if they deem a certain model isn’t as competitive as it should be, they invest in improvements and get better, more competitive models out there. Think back to Honda’s newly redesigned 2012 Civic, which was universally panned by critics for being noncompetitive. Honda didn’t say, “Oh well, we tried, might as well kill off the civic, it never made much anyway.” They dumped money on redeveloping the car and came out with a completely redesigned model the very next year! Because Honda knows about a thing called owner loyalty, and while the Civic may not make much money, it’s a great first car for kids or young professionals who need an appliance and not a race car. After the Civic, maybe the owner will graduate to an Accord or Pilot or even CR-V. It’s like Black Friday Sales. Those deep discounts exist not because companies want to not make money, but because they want to get you into the door so you’ll spend more money with them, either now or later.

Toyota knows this too. It’s why, this week, they announced that they’re investing $170 million and hiring 400 new people to produce the next generation Corolla in Mississippi. Toyota sold more than 300,000 Corollas last year, so even though the sedan market is tanking, you cannot say with conviction that there isn’t money to be had by selling them, and if buyers aren’t cross-shopping the Corolla with the Focus, that’s a failing on Ford’s part, either in marketing or in product development, not a sign from the market that they should just quit.

Plus, by exiting the small car market, Ford creates a bit of a vacuum there to help its competitors sell more cars, more entry-level vehicles that will generate future loyalty sales. Whether it’s for Toyota, Honda or Hyundai or if the hole is big enough, attracting some Chinese auto manufacturers to come sell their goods here on the cheap. And one of those Chinese companies, or even Hyundai or Mazda (who actually used to be part-owned by Ford) could have been someone Ford could have partnered with to develop a new small car platform that was both more competitive and more cost efficient. But they chose the lazy way and just said screw it, I’m out.

And for what? $26 billion back in their pocket that they’re going to spend somehow. And by the looks of things, not wisely. This week we learned about Ford’s Smart Window concept that utilizes a motor attached to the window to vibrate at different frequencies, allowing blind people to “feel the view” out the window of a car. We also learned about a patent Ford filed for a vehicle with an integrated electric motorcycle. What?! Ford, you can’t make a good Focus or Fiesta, but you’re going to make us a damn transformer? Or how about the fact that Ford is looking for buy-in from its board to purchase and refurbish Michigan Central Station, which as you might be able to tell from the title, is for trains.

Look Ford, honey, darling, I get it. Your shareholders are whiny babies who wanna be fed. But remember that their love is temporary. You can create all the value in the world for them, but you are far, far behind in autonomous tech and electrification. Yet here you are blowing cash in window vibrators and center consoles that become motorbikes. How long do you think the bump from cutting less profitable models is going to last? Probably right up until Toyota and Honda have compelling electric vehicles out there and you’re still trying to shill the new Bronco, which we all know is going to be a shadow of the original. Investor love comes and it goes. It’s a hell of a lot easier to log on to E-Trade and click “sell” when the going gets rough than it is to design and produce a compact, fuel-efficient vehicle if the minds of American consumers start to change again. I just can’t help but feel like you’re going to be sounding a whole lot like Gob Bluth here in a few years. 

Authored by

Devlin Riggs

Ford's Future Lineup: A Tremendous Gamble

Almost exactly one year ago, Ford fired CEO Mark Fields and replaced him with Jim Hackett amid dissatisfaction about the company’s stock price and fears that the company wasn’t evolving fast enough to meet the fickle, ever-changing demands of today’s consumers. As recently as January of this year, Automotive News published a story that Hackett hadn’t done enough to turn the company around and investors were still impatient to see their share prices increase.

It turns out, Hackett was pretty busy. As the former head of Ford’s innovation unit, he’s been analyzing America’s and the global car market for some time, but had been holding off on making any drastic moves. That is, until yesterday. But first, let’s take a trip back in time to an age when none of us was alive – 1908. This is the year that Ford introduced the Model T, which was a terrible car despite being the most influential car of the 20th century. The reason everyone knows of the Model T is because it was the first broadly reliable, easy-to-maintain car that was affordable by a growing middle class. It defined mainstream and opened up an entirely new era in transportation to the masses.

Alan Mulally
Ford's President & CEO, 2006

Fast forward a hundred years all the way to 2008, when the average price of gas climbed to $3.61 per gallon and looked to head even higher. We were in the depth of a recession and nobody was buying cars. Banks were being bailed out and, as a consequence of over reliance on gas-guzzling SUVs to generate profits, so were GM and Chrysler. Ford, however, had remortgaged its assets in 2006 and retooled its smaller, efficient vehicles, which buyers were snapping up to avoid hefty bills at the pump. Sure, they still took the government’s money, since it was being handed out like candy, but they didn’t need to because their excellent small cars and sedans sustained them through the financial crisis.

Just ten years later, those small cars and sedans, the life vests during the rising tide of the recession, have turned to an anchor, weighing down Ford’s stock price as consumers abandon rational thought and return to purchasing gigantic SUVs and crossovers they don’t need. Hackett’s answer to the investors’ pleas for greater share value? Abandon the exact kinds of vehicles that sustained Ford as one of the biggest auto manufacturers in the world. In other words, kill the sedans.

And he’s not the first. Chrysler has mostly done away with its sedans, leaving the ageing 300 and Charger out there just in case someone is interested in looking cool on the back of a flatbed on the way to the service department. But Ford’s is certainly the most extreme. They’re killing off the Fusion, the Taurus, the Fiesta, and the Focus, its bread-and-butter entry-level vehicle. In their place will be the EcoSport, a compact crossover, the Bronco, a baby Bronco to fight the Wrangler, and refreshed Escape, Explorer and Edge. The Focus will live on, but only as a jacked-up hatchback akin to the Subaru Crosstrek. In fact, the only way you will be able to buy a Ford that has a trunk, is with the Mustang. That, or live somewhere else in the world where Ford will continue to sell its low-margin vehicles.

Dealers worry this will mean they will stop seeing first-time car buyers shopping for Fords, and it’s a valid concern. Hackett says dealers will still have the Focus Active and the EcoSport, but those will command at least a 20% price premium over the outgoing Focus. In the age of the declining middle class, rapidly growing debt and deep subprime borrowing, as well as auto loan terms of seven years becoming more common, it’s absolutely clear to anyone paying attention that people are simply less able to afford cars than they have ever been. So abandoning those buyers to the used market and focusing on higher margin SUVs and crossovers is definitely a very risky move, and exactly what got Chrysler and GM in trouble in 2008. But maybe since Ford didn’t get bailed out the same way the others did, they didn’t learn the lesson of diversification.

Of course, things are different now. The Ford Escape has virtually the same fuel mileage as the 2006 Ford Focus, so if gas prices continue to rise, as they are expected to, fewer buyers may be trading in their SUVs on fuel-sipping sedans because the gains are minimal. And the housing market isn’t a bubble ready to burst, sending everyone’s finances into a tailspin. However, one might argue that the auto lending market or higher education are two bubbles primed to burst in the near future, and that mass migration to cities could drive interest in more compact vehicles more well-suited to city dwelling. In either case, no investment portfolio manager has ever gotten rich by telling investors not to diversify and I think it’s foolish to do so with automotive lineups as well.

So what’s there to gain for Ford? While they forsake the entry level and low income buyers, despite not remotely being a premium brand, Ford will be satisfying their investors by cutting almost $26 billion in operating costs from producing lower margin vehicles and capitalizing on current sales trends. But let’s not forget that those same trends stem from the whims of consumers, who are fickle as hell, and with a possible trade war looming to increase costs of virtually everything, Ford better hope their investors aren’t as fickle if SUVs start going out of style again.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of March 19th, 2018

List time!

Do you like lists? Well we got some lists this week, starting with Consumer Reports, who, uh, reported on the ten new cars most likely to last longer than 200,000 miles. This is, of course, not based on any sort of long-term testing since they're new cars, but rather based on expectations set by old versions of the cars. As you'd expect, the list is entirely comprised of Hondas and Toyotas, with the sole non-Honda/Toyota being the Ford F-150.
Another list we got was from Edmunds of their vehicle brands with the most and least loyal buyers. So did the likelihood that cars will last longer than 200,000 miles correlate with higher brand loyalty? Yep. Toyota and Honda were first and third, with only Subaru coming between them. Also in the top ten non-luxury brands were Ram, Chevy, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Ford and Mazda. Jeep just missed out on the top ten, ranking that high probably only due to the popularity of the Wrangler. At the bottom? You guessed it. Dodge, Chrysler and Fiat.

Ford’s Future Sees Several SUVs

Remember the first generation Ford Explorer? The one that had the exploding Wilderness AT tires that caused them to flip over and kill people? Well, one of the reasons that story was news was because SUVs were relatively new and the high center of gravity exacerbated the likelihood of the vehicle flipping in an accident. From that Explorer, we got tougher safety rules for tires, for roof rigidity and for rollover resistance. But what we also got were a whole slew of other SUVs that followed Ford's recipe of building large vehicles built primarily for on-road use. It's surprising then, that one of the pioneers of the SUV movement has fallen so far behind its competitors as the SUV craze heats up again. Ford's existing Escape, Edge, Explorer and Expedition are fine, but don't particularly stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

So Ford is taking action as we've discussed recently, coming out with a new Bronco and now a baby Bronco that promise off-road prowess to those seeking it, while ST versions of most models will inject some sportiness where there currently really isn't any. While other brands go upmarket, Ford is looking to expand to performance niches, which should be attractive to enthusiasts. But Ford also announced this week that it's entering a three year partnership with Indian manufacturer Mahindra to develop some small cars, but interestingly, an electric SUV. Apparently Mahindra will supply the body of the vehicle with the technology that goes inside coming from Ford, who only have a few forays into the electric vehicle realm currently. Its interesting that Ford wouldn't want to use any of their existing platforms for such a development, but perhaps Mahindra just has a chassis that caters particularly well to electrification. In any case, these cross-company collaborations are becoming increasingly common as brands look to reduce costs and expand into new markets.

Musk Makes Mad Money

Despite not accepting a paycheck for his work at Tesla, the company's board and shareholders have generously decided to force one upon him, assuming he meets specific goals related to the company's value in the stock market. The company is currently valued at $56 billion and the bonuses for performance kick in once the company hits $100 billion. If the company becomes one of the highest valued in the world at $650 billion, Musk would earn an incredible $55 billion for himself. As is, he'll have to be content with his paltry $2.6 billion in company stock, which in addition to his existing $20 billion net worth, will probably be enough to keep him warm at night. This comes despite the fact that, yet again, the company is likely going to miss its production targets for Q1 for the Model 3, which still has around 450,000 outstanding orders yet to be filled.

Shareholders and the board also don't seem upset by the fact that many of the new cars coming off the assembly line have to go directly to reworking facilities because the part quality, fit and finish are so poor. Nor does it bug them that things are taking so long because much of the cars are being hand-built while the robots that are supposed to be making them just sort of hang out in Germany. Also not phasing them is the fact that Tesla fired 700 employees in October or the fact that the United Auto Workers union is getting increasingly aggressive with its activities around the Fremont, California facility. Nope, none of this matters because they say that they see a bigger opportunity for long-term value through energy capture, storage and use. Well, unfortunately for them, they're not the only company working in each of those areas, and they certainly aren't the company with the best product in any of them. And in the interest of full disclosure, I do work for a company that produces an energy storage system similar to Tesla's, so I do have an idea of what the competitive marketplace looks like.

LSEV EV is 3DP

It was inevitable. After we heard about Porsche and Bugatti 3D printing parts for their vehicles to improve performance and reduce cost, it was only a matter of time before we saw an entire car made by a 3D printer. Well, that day is today because Chinese company Polymaker has worked with Italian manufacturer X Electrical Vehicle to produce the LSEV, which is almost entirely 3D printed. Obviously things like the chassis, tires and windshield could not be printed for safety reasons, but that's apparently about it in terms of other parts produced normally. They say they've also been able to reduce the amount of plastic parts in the car from 2,000 (which is typical in conventionally produced vehicles) to just 57. Imagine driving a car with just 57 plastic panels on it! Of course this comes at a cost, which is performance. It has just 93 miles of range and only drives 47 miles per hour, making it mildly more effective than a golf cart, which honestly probably has even fewer plastic panels and apparently fewer is better?

Nissan’s Electrified Future

Nissan announced this week a new initiative called M.O.V.E., which is an acronym for "Mobility, Operational Excellence, Value to Customers and Electrification," and which aims to sell a million electrified vehicles by 2022. Of course, "electrified" can mean hybrid or plug-in and not necessarily true electric vehicles, so perhaps the goal isn't that ambitious, but another part of the plan is for 20 models to have autonomous technology. As part of this, they announced the forthcoming Altima would be the third Nissan vehicle to get their Pro Pilot autonomous system, which is pretty basic so far. And that's probably a good thing, given the week autonomous vehicles have had.

Accord to Cheap Out to Sell Out

Fresh off a redesign that has it looking uglier in almost every respect than its previous generation, the Honda Accord now features a hybrid model that uses the company's tried and true system of pairing a 143-horsepower four cylinder with a 181-horsepower electric motor to somehow combine and create only 212 horsepower. Impressively, the trunk space isn't hindered at all by the battery, which probably means there's no spare tire. Also impressive is the fact that the new Accord Hybrid costs a whopping $4,000 less than the outgoing one. The reasons for this, to me, are many. First, the new hybrid is actually less efficient than the old hybrid, averaging just 47 MPG in the city. Second, just look at it, with its awkward chrome unibrow-looking front end and Volvo knock-off rear with its incomplete styling lines and random chrome. It's an ugly car. I used to really like the Accord, but this really changes all that. Also, sedan sales are dropping like a stone and the Accord, usually a best seller in this class, is stagnating on dealer lots. As of the beginning of this month, dealers averaged a 103-day supply of Accords, which are normally so in-demand they can be hard to find. The problem is so bad that some dealers have canceled orders for new Accords and others are asking Honda to come up with some generous incentives for leases just to get them out of their inventories. And it's still not a bad car, it's winning acclaim for its performance from many news outlets. But man, just look at it! I suspect many buyers are, and that's the reason they're still sitting on the lot.

Viper Factory’s Future Features Past

When the production of the Dodge Viper ceased last year, Detroit lost a factory (again) and gained an empty building (again). Fortunately, Fiat Chrysler have come up with some plans to not just let the structure languish and decay the way so many other factories have in the motor city. Instead, the building will be remodeled to become a museum for historic Chrysler and Fiat vehicles in North America. It will be renamed the Connor Center and become home to 85 of the company's 400 or so historic cars, but for reasons unknown to me, it will not initially be open to the public. If I were Chrysler, and thank god I'm not because I can't stomach another breakdown, I'd be out there every day imploring the public to remember that we once made some cars that some consider historic. Basically anything to distract from the current fleet's J.D. Power and Consumer Reports scores.

Design Finally Trending the Right Direction

When you think of over-designed cars, the first thing that has to come to mind is the current Honda Civic. It's just vile in its ostentatious, look-at-me boy-racer styling, but it's far from the only guilty party. The new Lexus style is fairly polarizing and the Germans have been guilty of applying 15 feet of styling to a 12 foot car recently as well. But, at least in the latter's case, that's set to change with upcoming models, as both BMW and Mercedes have announced plans to tone down their looks and bring styling back to a simple, understated elegance. Honestly, it's what I like most about German cars and part of the reason I bought the GTI. For the price, for the performance, it was the least shouty choice and the silver paint really made the few styling lines on it pop in a way that I thought was really clean looking. Whereas with recent Mercedes and BMW vehicles, intersecting styling lines have tended to create design clash instead of flow, new models will emphasize sleekness. Audi has been doing this for years, but their downfall is that, in creating a minimalist design, they have minimized the differences in all of their vehicles, making them virtually indistinguishable from one another. 

Driving Test Involves Not Much Driving

Photo by Buffalo Police Department

Things didn't go too well for a 17 year-old in Buffalo, Minnesota on Tuesday, when she went to take her driver's test. Parked right out front of the exam office, the teen fired up the vehicle, which is apparently the only part of the test she got right, then shifted into drive, stomped on the gas instead of the brake and launched her Chevy Equinox straight through the front of the office. Fortunately, nobody was inside and the teen wasn't hurt, but the 60 year-old examiner in the car with her had to be hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries. While no charges will be filed against her for the mistake, I am pretty sure her classmates will sentence her to life without forgetting what she's done.

Stig’s Strange Speed Stunt

Photo by Guiness World Records

Last week it was lawn mowers, this week, tractors, as Top Gear's Stig has set a new Guinness World Record for fastest modified tractor. As a stunt for this weekend's episode, the bright orange rig with a ridiculous wing on the back hit 87.27 miles per hour after two runs were averaged. For a 5.7 litre 507 horsepower Chevy V8, that isn't very fast at all, but for the Stig, in a tractor with open sides, I bet it felt pretty damn quick. Some say, he moonlights as a scarecrow.

Bike Breaks, Brings Brown Boxers

In other speed-related news, things didn't go quite to plan for Valerie Thompson this week at the World Speed Trials in Australia, which takes place on a salt flat that I didn't know existed outside of Bonneville. While attempting to break her 304 mile per hour record on a custom motorcycle, Valerie's bike...experienced trouble...causing the bike to lay down and slide for about a mile, shedding bits of itself along the way as it came to a stop and leaving a bright red stripe across Australia. Fortunately, Valerie is okay and she did manage to hit 328 miles per hour before the problem started. The bike, however, needs some serious work. Experiencing technical difficulties is never fun, but I can't imagine a more pants shitting moment than technical difficulties occuring above 300 miles per hour on two wheels.

McLaren Finds Friends with Flops

McLaren may not have had much luck with Formula 1 last year since they used Honda's shitty, under-powered, unreliable motors, but they haven't lost their sense of humor. Since now all Formula 1 vehicles will be fitted with the so-called "Halo" to prevent drivers' heads being taken off by flying debris or, indeed flying other vehicles, that means there's a new hashtag branding opportunity for companies constantly seeking for a way to make the most expensive motor sport cheaper. Some have accurately noticed that the halo device looks less like a halo and more like the straps of flip flops or, if you live in Australia, thongs. So who better to sponsor the halo than a flip flop company? McLaren has brought on Gandys, a British lifestyle brand who are, fittingly, launching a McLaren-inspired flip flop called the "halo edition," from which 100% of profits will go to the company's charity that benefits orphans in Sri Lanka. So while we'll wait to see if this season has a happier ending for McLaren, we should all go out and buy some F1 flip flops and give some orphans happy endings a little sooner.

Philippines Phlatens Phat Rides

If you're familiar with Rodrigo Duterte, this next story is probably going to seem pretty tame by his standards. After all, he operates death squads that have killed a documented 1,400 drug users, petty criminals and homeless people, even children. But he is the president of the Philippines, where he rules with an iron fist and squadron of bulldozers. And I do mean literal bulldozers, which he used this week to crush 14 vehicles worth about $525,000 that were illegally imported into the country. The cars included Mercedes, Porsches and Maseratis and the show was broadcast for the entire country to see, apparently as a confirmation of the Duterte's commitment to build a country free from the shackles of corruption. There's more work to do as apparently there are almost 1,000 other smuggled vehicles on the docket for destruction. As much as I don't want to see Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and others impounded and then crushed in a reality show kind of way, I suppose it's worth it if it takes Duterte's mind off of killing the children of drug addicts.

Highway to Hellcat

A Wisconsin man apparently out to prove the unsuitability of the Dodge Challenger Hellcat was arrested on Tuesday for driving 140 miles per hour on an Indiana Toll Road. If you're thinking, "how the hell did the cops catch a 707 horsepower muscle car?" Well it's not because he crashed, it's because he got caught behind everyone's favorite rolling roadblock; two semis driving side-by-side without passing each other. This may have been the only occasion that that happening was actually a good thing. When asked for an explanation why he was driving at twice the speed limit on an interstate, the driver just said he was trying to get to Maryland. Because there can't possibly be faster ways to get there than by endangering hundreds of people on public roads with a drag race car with shitty suspension.

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

2018: The Year the Sedan Died?

Mid-sized sedans - we’ve talked about them before on this site, and the news is rarely good. But recently, it’s just been one hit after the other for the segment and, according to a Bloomberg article this week, there’s a very real possibility that the mid-sized sedan segment ceases to exist in as little as eight years. So could 2018, a year heralded as the Year of the Truck by three very high profile unveilings in Detroit, also be the year the sedan died? 

Truthfully, this movement started years ago. After the days of $4 per gallon gasoline subsided, American buyers resumed the 1990s trend of buying gas-guzzling SUVs and driving vehicles vastly larger than they needed or could justify simply because they could. The family car became the family SUV and the primary victims of this trend were the cars that performed most poorly in a shrinking segment. These, of course, were Fiat Chrysler products. 

But to his credit, Fiat Chrysler CEO, Sergio Marchionne, did the unthinkable - he killed off the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart - the traditional bread-and-butter mid-sized sedan and compact sedans that kept the big three American automakers alive during the oil crisis of the 1970s. And the outcome for Chrysler has been incredible. They’ve refocused their efforts on selling Jeeps, SUVs, big, powerful Dodges and Ram pickups, all of which are much higher margin cars than the 200 or the Dart, and the company is finally looking to turn a profit in 2018, which it has not done since 2012.

Other companies are taking a different path, moving production from the US, Canada or Mexico to China. It’s where pretty much all future Buicks will be built, and Ford has alerted Fusion suppliers that they will cease Mexican production, with the alternatives being China or not producing the car at all. With such a declining pie, the pieces are getting smaller for each manufacturer and to justify their existence, mid-sized sedans need to achieve a greater profit margin, which means cutting production cost or raising price. And in a declining automotive market where SUVs and crossovers frequently cost around the same price as sedans, the latter simply isn’t an option. 

So, will 2018 be the year the Sedan died? I think not. Or, I should say, not yet. Toyota has unveiled a brand new Camry and Avalon, the Honda Accord just won car of the year (again) and a new Nissan Altima is coming soon, too. But there’s an unshakable feeling that, even though these sedans will be the best they’ve ever been this generation, this could be sort of a last hurrah for them, as crossovers continue to come in and eat their lunches.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for crossovers either, though. A study released today showed that compact crossovers, some of the most popular vehicles, especially among young buyers, are among the fastest depreciating cars on the market, losing up to 1.18 percent of their value every week. It’s terrifying to think that you could go in and buy a Honda HR-V or Toyota C-HR or Mazda CX-3 or any number of the other alphanumeric-named, useless hatchbacks on stilts and find yourself a year later with a car worth just 39 percent what you paid for it 52 weeks ago. And the truth is, there’s no great advantage to these compact crossovers. They have less storage than the cavernous trunks of mid-sized sedans. They handle worse, usually have less powerful engines and generally all have obnoxious styling. But they’re hip and offer a slightly higher ride height, which allows you to see more of the road beyond the screen of your iPhone 10. Plus, they’re easier to park in these urban communities where I’m told the youth all live. 

So sure, things could turn around for the sedan, once people realize how poor these compact crossovers are both in terms of value and practicality. But at the rate sales are declining and sedans are being put out to pasture, by the time common sense catches up with buyers - by the time they realize that sedans really are enough car for virtually everything - it could already be too late.

Authored by
Devlin RIggs

Headlines & New Cars for the Week of January 15th, 2018

BMW’s Double Drift of Daring

This week, BMW reclaimed their Guinness World record for longest vehicle drift, which was taken from them by a Toyota GT86 almost four years ago. To do so, BMW set their new M5 out on a skidpad and let it rip. For eight. Straight. Hours. They covered a truly ridiculous 232.5 miles in that time period and required refueling, but did they stop to gas up? Hell no! BMW saddled up a second M5 with a custom fuel tank and some tech borrowed from fighter jets and performed a mid-drift refuelling, where the second M5 drifted alongside the first one while a technician hung out the window, gassing up the record car. They blew away their old record of 51.3 miles and more than doubled Toyota’s 89.6 miles and kept the rubber tires intact by continuously wetting the skidpad. Undoubtedly, this will drive hundreds of millionaires into BMW dealerships to purchase M5s so they can try to recreate it in their lavish circular private driveways.

World Rally Championship Will Do It Live

Racing has been kind of on a bummer streak lately. Formula 1 had the fewest passes ever this past season, the World Endurance Championship keeps losing teams due to high costs, Forumla E is still kind of a joke and IMSA, which is looking really good, is hard to find. Well good news, sports fans, because the World Rally Championship has launched a WRC All Live package on their WRC+ service that will stream every single rally stage as it happens, along with the ceremonies, interviews and press conferences, among other things. In total, it’ll be more than 25 hours of live video coverage of every rally. It’s not free, unfortunately, and at $10.83 per month or about $110 per year, it’s not cheap, especially considering many of these live stages happen in the middle of the night for us here in North America. But pound-for-pound, rallying is some of the most exciting, entertaining racing you can watch. The only danger is that you’re going to get hooked and start treating any gravel or dirt road as your own private stage when in fact it’s someone’s driveway and they’d like very much if you’d get your stupid Subaru out of their bushes so they can go to work, thank you. 

Diners, Drive-Ins and Distractions

Just when we thought it was over. Just when we thought Elon Musk and Tesla could cool the hype machine and have a real conversation about the bottlenecks in production and challenges of building a car company from the ground up. Just when a very real satellite malfunction may have cost the US Government billions of dollars aboard a SpaceX rocket. Just when shit was getting a little too real, Elon Musk resorted to what he knows best - the rabbit in a hat trick. He tweeted this week that he’s “gonna put an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant" at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA. And you know who will care? The same number of people showing up to Rams games in LA. AND THAT’S NOBODY. That being said, there was a super cool video this week of a Tesla Model X towing a Volvo semi truck up a snowy hill, which is crazy to think it’s capable of doing that, given its max tow rating of just 5,000 pounds. I also saw my first Model 3 on the highway yesterday morning and it looks like a cross between the egg-shaped Model X and the svelte Model S, which is to say I didn’t like it very much.

Toyota & Mazda to Colonize the Deep South

Toyota and Mazda pulled their own little LeBron James stunt this week except Alabama is in almost no way similar to South Beach Miami, which is probably a good thing, considering the companies plan on building Corollas and crossovers there and not...sand castles? What do they build in South Beach? Failed baseball franchises? In any case, the new $1.6 billion plant will open in Huntsville, which is a charming little town that’s about to get a lot of new manufacturing jobs to complement all the high tech industry that’s there already. Other than crossovers and compact vehicles, we don’t have much information on what Toyota and Mazda will collaborate on there, but I look forward to the chance to interview some Japanese businessmen who have developed southern accents.

Dieselgate, Down on the Farm

A class action lawsuit was filed this week against Ford and Bosch, alleging that emissions defeat devices were installed in diesel F250 and F350 trucks, causing them to produce 50 times more nitrogen oxide than legally permitted. Sound familiar? Well, Bosch was allegedly the company behind Volkswagen’s diesel cheating as well and we saw how that turned out for them. Unfortunately for Ford, half a million of these trucks have been sold from 2011 to 2017 and could be subject to this lawsuit and to recall. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the Ford Super Duty pickups would have been better off called Super Dirty, thereby proving that lawyers are not completely devoid of humor, just devoid of good humor. We’ll see how this plays out for Ford and if they’ll be on the hook for billions like VW was when they got caught.

Takata Recalls Expand, Again. Again.

In other stories that just won’t die, Takata announced this week an expansion of their airbag inflater recalls, adding 3.3 million cars to the list, just in America, making it the largest of its kind. The cars range from Audis, BMWs, Jaguars, Land Rovers and Mercedes Benzes all the way to Fords, Subarus, Mitsubishis, Hondas, Mazdas and Fiat Chrysler cars. So everyone, please get these replaced if you receive a notice, because they do kill people. I’m less worried about the Fiat Chyrsler owners though, because a car has to be running to hit something and have the airbag go off and “running” isn’t really one of their strong suits.

A New Dealership Experience

A Rolls-Royce showroom in London will be the first location to feature the new Elysium-R. The $51,500 masterpiece features near-black pure aniline leather, an almond gold frame and will be limited to only 18 production units. It’s also a not a car, but actually just a chair. But it’s a really fancy chair that neutralizes gravity, implementing flotation theory, whatever that means. Also its gel-filled armrests are supposedly meant to mimic the quality of human skin, because everyone knows that rich people love nothing more than to rest their arms on the skin of the under-folk. This is apparently the product of years of research into human kinetics, which sounds an awful lot like some rich kid spent a few years sitting around and his rich dad told him to get off his ass and do something, so he made a chair.

Bad News for Turkwomen

Do you like driving? Are you from Turkmenistan? Are you a woman? Well shit news, you can’t drive anymore, honey. That’s according to their certifiably insane president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, who last week banned all black cars because he thought they were unlucky. What’s his reasoning for banning women? Just some good, old-fashioned misogyny! Naturally he thinks pretty much all of the car crashes in the country are caused by or because of women, so banning them from the roads entirely, in his words, “rectifies the situation.” The ban was actually announced in December but has started getting implemented this week, with women drivers being stopped and having their licenses and cars seized by the government. Look, I’m sure Turkmenistan isn’t a shithole, but they sure do have a shithead for a president. You know you’re backwards when Saudi Arabia looks more progressive than you do.

Beetles Belong in Junkyards, not Trees

Photo by Scott Sommerdorf of The Salt Lake Tribune

In other bad news for ladies, a woman in Clearfield City, Utah is going to be charged with a misdemeanor if she doesn’t remove her nuisance vehicle. The problem is, that vehicle is a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle that doesn’t run. Oh, and it’s also in a tree. Since it didn’t run, the owner, Janis Zettel, decided the right thing to do wasn’t to send it to the junkyard, but rather to paint it like a ladybug and have it chained up in a great big old tree as a fun little whimsical effort to put smiles on the faces of children. You hear that, Clearfield City? Think of the children! She even had an arborist check it out to make sure it was safe and that the car wouldn’t bring down the tree and harm anyone. I’m sure her neighbors love it, but hey, there are probably other houses in Clearfield City they can move to, the damn grinches.

 

New Cars

Ginetta G650-LT-P1

British company Ginetta unveiled this week their G650-LT-P1, or G60 for short, and it’s a non-hybrid race car that they intend to race in the LeMans Prototype 1 category, which finally gives Toyota’s unreliable hybrid racer at least one competitor for the upcoming season! Or, well, at least part of it because Ginetta is only fielding two or maybe three cars if they can find the money, and they’re only committing to a “super series” of eight races beginning in May. And by only eight races, I mean holy shit, this is a small British manufacturer who has somehow scrounged up the pounds to compete with the world’s largest auto manufacturer at arguably the highest level of motor racing. Good for Ginetta and good for us because this’ll be interesting to watch!

Ford Edge ST

In less than 24 hours, Ford teased, and then released all the details of the forthcoming Edge ST, which will now not debut at the Detroit Auto Show, but instead on your computer monitors or, more likely, your iPhone screen. Clearly their marketing department doesn’t really understand the concept of building “hype,” because they kind of did the same thing with the new Ford GT, which was arguably a much bigger deal. They could, for once, take a lesson from Elon Musk. 

In any case, Ford’s prior ST cars include the Focus and Fiesta, which were fast, nimble little hatchbacks that were available only in manual transmission form for real driving purists, and they were apparently really good fun! Well, Ford has decided that crossover enthusiasts who never learned how to drive a stick deserve to have fun too, because they’ve basically taken the Ford Edge Sport and given it more sport, pumping its 2.7 litre EcoBoost four cylinder up to 335 horsepower and 350 foot pounds of torque routed through all four wheels. It looks and will probably drive a lot like a lifted WRX wagon, which is not a bad thing, so I’m actually on board with this idea. Yes, I generally oppose the concept of crossovers, but they don’t have to be boring and bad and kudos to Ford for trying to raise the bar that Infiniti set with their FX.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

These headlines originally aired in the AllWaysDrive Podcast. Subscribe now and hear all the latest news and reviews!

Headlines & New Cars for the Week of January 8, 2018

Sales Slump to Continue

After all the numbers came in for 2017, overall vehicle sales were down 1.8% over 2016, which marks the first decline in seven years and, unfortunately for car makers, there’s no real end in sight. That is, unless you’re a super car manufacturer. Aston Martin and McLaren both recorded their biggest ever sales years in 2017 because the rich are getting so incredibly stinking rich!

Anyway. During the recession, people held on to their cars longer because they couldn’t afford to replace them. This meant stiffer competition among automakers for the sales that were occurring, so they worked hard to make their cars more appealing, more reliable and safer. When the economy finally bounced back, people spent the next seven years getting rid of their old vehicles and upgrading to newer, better cars.The reports bear this out – cars these days are safer, more reliable and more satisfying than ever before, and so people are keeping them longer, leading to a sales decline.

Sure, you’ll still have incidents where people blow through red lights and total cars, thereby generating a certain amount of reluctant sales, but there are already 1.26 vehicles on the road for every one licensed driver, meaning we have a shit ton of unlicensed drivers out there, or people just have plenty of cars.

And that’s what the industry experts are thinking – we’ve reached peak car, where we’ll back off to a stable replacement level of sales each year. Plus, as interest rates rise, people aren’t going to want to take out loans for new cars either. So how will automakers cope with a shrinking pie from which to get slices? Will they keep innovating as they did during the recession to attract a larger share, or will they collectively start making their products less reliable so they go bad at a prescribed point, forcing owners to upgrade? This is what we’d call the iPhone sales tactic.

Leasing Surges

On the heels of the sales report, leasing looks like it’s going gangbusters. About 31 percent of all new vehicle sales are leases in the US, but if you look at plug-in hybrids, the number jumps to 55 percent of all sales. And then there’s pure electric vehicles. Eighty percent of all EV sales are leases, which is crazy. Almost all people want to essentially rent these cars for a few years and Bloomberg is reporting that a major cause of this is the overall sense among consumers that electric vehicles are going to get better than they are now, so they don’t want to be locked into obsolete technology. Plus, resale value of EVs is currently very, very poor so purchasing one outright just doesn’t really make any sense, apart from for those 20 percent of people who bought them outright. Enjoy your Leaf!

Fuel Costs Jumping

Of course, those EVs may start to look more attractive this year as the 2018 Fuel Price Outlook suggests that gas prices could peak at just less than $3 per gallon. GasBuddy predicts that the national average price will rise 19 cents to around $2.57 per gallon this year, which still is not THAT bad, especially when you look at the rest of the world. But combine that with the drop in fuel efficiency we saw among new car purchases last year and GasBuddy predicts the average household will spend $1,898 on fuel this year. That’s $133 more than last year, which is the cost of at least two nice taco dinners, and I cast shame upon the evil oil spectators behind this rise because nothing should stand between us and nice taco dinners!

California Banning ICEs

Meanwhile in California, the land of the future, a bill has been introduced to the state legislature that would ban the sale of new cars and trucks powered by gasoline or diesel fuels by the year 2040. If you’ve been tuning into the show for a while, you’ll know that 2040 is also a deadline set by Paris, London and a few other cities or countries, with some even having more aggressive targets for pollution reduction. They estimate that the measure, if it’s adopted, would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels in just ten years. We’ll have to see how they end up voting, but I bet there are going to be some very busy lobbyists in Sacramento this week! 

Mazda’s Creepin’ Tech

Mazda this week filed a patent for some technology that’s both innovative and incredibly creepy. It’s apparently all in an effort to thwart distracted or drowsy driving. Basically, there is a camera or series of cameras set up inside the car, pointed at the driver and the car’s computer uses the driver’s eyes and expression to determine if the driver is paying attention and engaged with the drive they’re going on. If it determines that the driver is busy checking texts or Facebook or dozing off, the car will apparently respond by doing anything from simple sounds and visual prompts to changing the navigation system to route the driver to a more fun-looking road to drive. If the driver looks like he or she is having fun and is entertained by the route, the computer will store that route for later reference. Basically, Mazda is going to find all the cool roads and fill them with CX-9s because drivers can’t put their stupid phones down anymore.  

"Eyes on the road, buddy!" - Mazda

Nissan Gets in Your Head

And speaking of creepy, Nissan is taking it to the next level with their new Brain to Vehicle (B2V) system, which they will be showing off this coming week at the Consumer Electronics Show. Drivers are fitted with a skull cap that monitors brain wave activity and transmits signals to steering, acceleration and braking systems that can respond before the driver even moves his or her hands or feet. The driver still actually makes the car do things, but the car just anticipates what’s going to happen and can start things milliseconds sooner. Apparently this is meant to enhance the driving pleasure when it seems to me it’s just cheaper to make cars faster and more responsive than to dump time and research into brain wave monitoring. But hey, they’re making money like crazy selling Nissan Rogues to people so they can do what they want I guess. 

Tesla Under-performs...Again

Meanwhile a Tesla earnings call this week managed to once again unveil the woeful under-performance of the company in meeting the goals its founder sets for it. Rather than churning out a few thousand Model 3s per week as predicted earlier this year, Tesla’s highest number yet was a little less than 800 and, let’s be honest, making almost 100 cars a day is still a super achievement and they’re ramping up effectively. The problem comes when the founder is all bluster about getting to 5,000 cars per week by the end of Q1 2018 which, by the way, has been pushed back to the end of the second quarter. Tesla’s stock took a hit after the announcement, which was, for once, not accompanied by some other shiny thing to distract investors from the problems going on. Tesla has a big year coming up with the launch of both their semi truck and the Model Y, but it’s critical they get their shit figured out quick, or buyers are going to start figuring out that hey, that Chevy Bolt is a pretty nice car and I can go buy one right now.

Burn Rover, Burn

On Sunday night last week, a parking garage in Liverpool, England, resembled the gates of hell as a raging inferno engulfed 1,400 vehicles. Fortunately, no one was injured and, surprisingly, the fire wasn’t started by an Italian super car. It was rather friendly fire, coming from a Land Rover, of course vehicles not known for their wiring or electronics excellence. The fire really is something incredible to see, as you can tell from the video above. The fuel in the cars just fed the fire until it was completely unconquerable by the local fire brigade, meaning they couldn’t stop it spreading to other cars. Sort of like an automotive herpes that, instead of itching, just creates a huge insurance hassle for thousands of people.

Squirrels Drive Local Man Nutty

A British Volkswagen Golf driver learned the hard way how squirrels are  just rats with fluffy tails last month. Apparently he parked his car outside his girlfriend’s father’s home near London and then left with the girlfriend for a month to tour southeast Asia. During that time, several squirrels decided that hey, Volkswagen does make a pretty comfy car, and called the place home, storing acorns in every conceivable place throughout the vehicle they could access. The glove box, the engine bay, even the transmission was packed and the owner found it tough to shift when he returned home. The clean-up and disposal of hundreds of perfectly good acorns that would feed families of the little bastards throughout the winter cost the driver £230. Which is not a small sum, especially coming back from vacation.

Hot Dog, Cool Crime

In other food-related automotive antics, a driver in Texas got off with a warning this week when he was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. Apparently, prior to departing, he placed a hot dog on the rear bumper of his Chevy Silverado and taped a piece of paper with “Free hot dog” written on it above (hard to tell from the above photo, but easy to see how creepy it is) . He then proceeded to drive from Waco, Texas to Brownwood and back, a journey of more than 120 miles, before getting stopped. The hot dog and sign were still there. Now if you’re me, you think this is like the adult equivalent of free candy written on the side of a seedy van, but if you’re a Brown County sheriff's department officer, you just think he’s a funny dude and let him be on his way. Only a matter of time before witness reports roll in about bodies being found in the back of a white pickup with hot dog residue on the bumper.

Pampered Oregonians Pumping

You may or may not be aware, but New Jersey and Oregon both require full service gas stations, or at least they did. Oregon has started allowing rural stations to permit self serve. You know, the same kind of gas we have literally everywhere else in the country? Well apparently people are freaking out about it, don’t know how to pump their own gas and are afraid that they will either burn the whole place down or smell like gasoline the rest of the day. I get that if you grew up not doing it, you may not know how to pump gas, but I fail to believe that people have never watched an attendant do it for them, and I have absolutely zero sympathy for these pampered brats kicking and screaming to get the good old times back. This really seems like a Portlandia sketch in real life. But apparently that really just is the state of Oregon.

Turkmenistan Bad Luck Ban

They aren’t the only place suffering though. Do you love black cars? Do you live in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan? Well tough luck. Your car has just been banned because the president of the oppressive country has decided they are bad luck and they must be impounded or repainted at the owner’s expense. And I do mean expense because it’s a very poor country and the people there can absolutely not afford to repaint their cars just because their president is a nut job. Sorry Turkmen!

Banned in Turkmenistan.

New Cars

Is there a future for the Fusion?

First up in new car news is actually the cancellation of a new car, or at least new design. In a letter to suppliers this week, Ford announced that they are canceling the planned redesign of the Ford Fusion which was scheduled for a 2020 launch. While this doesn’t mean that the Fusion itself has been discontinued and doesn’t rule out a major change coming later, this does look pretty bad, given the trouble brands have had with selling mid-sized sedans this past year. Buyers just want SUVs, trucks and crossovers these days and while Fusion sales are going okay, particularly to fleets, Ford apparently doesn’t see the value in spending time and money in refreshing a car that has only been around four years and remains one of the best looking cars in its class. That or this is the evidence we need to show that Ford is all a part of a massive marijuana smuggling scheme from where the Fusions roll off the line in Mexico. Remember those stories? Twice Fusions have been found with the spare tire well packed to the brim with weed awaiting receipt by a distributor in the US only to be discovered by a so-called innocent car buyer. Sure, Ford. I’m on to you.

New Audis with New Looks

While Ford foregoes redesigns of its cars, Audi has decided that their utter lack of creativity for their own cars needs to be changed. If you’re like me, you’ve probably sat in traffic, admiring an Audi and thought “that’s a really nice looking S6. Or, uh, A8. No, A4? RS4? Shit.” That’s apparently pretty common. According to an interview with Autocar, CEO Rupert Stadler says the similarity between models was used to make Audis more recognizable to emerging markets, which they say has worked swimmingly and now they’re free to spend money and be creative again. Marc Lichte, Audi’s Chief Designer, was quoted as saying something along the lines of “Oh, thank god, Jesus in heaven I’m bored to death over here and only have rulers on this drafting table!” New designs should start rolling out in March or April of this year.

This originally aired in The AllWaysDrive Podcast on January 4, 2018. Subscribe now and never miss the latest new car news!

Authored by
Devlin Riggs