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

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

New Cars for the Week of March 19th, 2018

Karlmann King

If you're shopping for a car right now, chances are you're looking at SUVs and crossovers, because that's pretty much the only kind of vehicle anyone wants anymore. If you happen to be filthy rich, not care about brand heritage, not care about performance and are shot at quite often, there's really good news! It's called the Karlmann King, and it's a Chinese-designed vehicle built in Europe, which flips the script on how most companies are making cars these days. It looks like an F-117 stealth fighter and is powered by a 6.8 litre V10 from the Ford F550. If you want the bulletproof model though, you're looking at a car weighing 13,227 pounds (for reference, cars generally weigh between 3 and 400 pounds), so obviously performance isn't great. How not great? Despite 400 horsepower, it'll only hit a top speed of 87 MPH. But since it's a car designed to be ridden in, not driven, because it has a coffee machine, flat screen TV, refrigerator, PlayStation 4 and various other pimp-my-ride-type accouterments, you probably won't care how slow you're going.

Mercedes-Maybach Pullman

If you're filthy rich, do care about brand heritage, don't like driving and don't get shot at very often, there's also good news this week because the new Mercedes-Maybach Pullman S650 has been announced. Basically, this is the $615,000 limousine edition of the Mercedes Maybach S650, which means it seats six and features a glass partition between you and the driver so he can't hear you make fun of the poors like him, which should help avoid the development of simple resentment into a seething hatred, reducing the likelihood that you will be killed in a fit of rage by someone you hired to drive you around.

Volkswagen Touareg

In less fancy news, but still pretty fancy, Volkswagen unveiled their new Touareg in China this week. The premium SUV is hugely popular there, in Russia and in Europe, but sales fell off a cliff here in the states after Dieselgate. When it was removed from the market, VW officially claimed that it didn't make much sense for them to sell such a premium SUV since their brand is more of the people's car, but here they are again with a clone of the Porsche Cayenne (with which it was co-developed) but slightly cheaper. In truth, most of Volkswagen's cars have a very premium feel to them despite their relative inexpensiveness, which is welcome, especially as luxury cars are selling way more these days. And VW is sticking to what it knows and to cost efficiencies in keeping the Touareg a higher class vehicle than the Tiguan or Atlas. That said, we don't know if we'll get it here in the States yet, but the way SUV sales are going, they might as well try, even if it lacks a third row or hybrid option.

Cadillac CT6 V-Sport

Back when we learned that Cadillac was trimming the CTS and ATS in favor of something in between called the CT6, I wasn't too surprised since sales of sedans are in the toilet, circling the drain. But I am a bit surprised to learn that Caddy isn't going to just phone it in on the new car, because they announced this week a V-Sport trim package that very much keeps alive the crazy fun factor of the ATS-V and CTS-V. Not only does the V-Sport have a 4.2 litre V8, it has two turbochargers, spooling up 550 horsepower and a tire-shredding 627 pound feet of torque. The turbos actually sit inside the crease of the 90-degree v-shape of the engine. For reference, most engines are 60-degree Vs, so it makes for a pretty compact package. No performance figures yet, but I'm willing to bet that, regardless of the 0-60 time, it'll be quick and loud enough to put a smile on your face.

Jeep Concepts Galore

If you've been listening to my show for a while, you probably know that I'm not really into the muddin' or off-road scene that much. Not because I'm not interested, but rather that I've never really gotten the opportunity. My neighbors do it and love it, and I am a fan of old Wranglers and 4Runners, so I think I'd probably really enjoy it too. You know who else enjoys it? Fiat Chrysler, because Jeep makes a killing off of that scene and they absolutely know how to get to their buyers. This week is the annual Easter meet in Moab, Utah, where all the hardcore off-road types go, and Jeep is bringing seven concepts of different vehicles to the event. While most are Wrangler-based, there is a really neat resto-mod vintage-sytle Wagoneer as well as a really not-so-neat Renegade concept that basically just lifts the suspension an inch and a half. The Wrangler models all have their own brand of unique flavoring and showcase what a blank canvas Jeep's most iconic model is, and just how flexible the new JL platform can be for owners. Fiat Chrysler doesn't do much right, but it's clear that they really "get" Jeep, which is probably why they don't want to sell it even though it's the single most valuable brand in their stable.

VW ID R Pike's Peak

Speaking of fun cars you can't buy, Volkswagen has one of those. It's the ID R Pike's Peak, which is an electric race car built specifically for, well, Pike's Peak. It'll compete in the hill climb on June 24th and is aiming to take Rhys Millen's record of 8 minutes 57 seconds and throw it out the window. We don't have any sort of performance figures or power specs, but it certainly looks like a super sleek race car, and if they're explicitly going after the electric vehicle record, you know it's going to be fast. And good for them ; the more interest they can build in electric vehicles, the more consumers will trust and consider the road-going models. Or at least that's the theory.

Toyota Corolla Hatchback

Gone is Scion and with it their upper case-lower case naming convention, so the Toyota iM, has been redesigned and relaunched as the Corolla Hatchback. The changes are apparently welcome because the iM was a real piece of shit according to the reviews I've read. I drove an old Toyota Matrix up in Canada and really enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but that was probably 13 years ago, and I guess the iM hadn't really come very far since then, so the new Corolla Hatch features many changes. The chassis is more rigid, it's longer, wider and lower and out is the ancient 1.8 litre four-banger and in is a new 2.0 litre model. The interior has also been completely redesigned to have supportive seats and functional armrests, which was apparently a problem with the iM as well. Not to mention it really looks quite good, especially in a sort of light blue color in which it's been shown. I don't think it'll kick my GTI out of my garage just yet but I'm sure it'll be quite a capable, reliable little car.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of March 12th, 2018

How’s that Ramp Up Going, Elon?

If you’re hoping, as I do, that every time Elon Musk and Tesla revise their output schedules that this will surely be the time they get it figured out and it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out, you’re not going to enjoy this next story. Tesla had to completely shut down its Fremont, California manufacturing plant for a week last month to fix issues and bottlenecks related to the production of their Model 3 sedan. According to workers inside the factory, a staggering 40% of parts for vehicles were not suitable for use on cars, requiring extensive reworking or re-manufacturing, which are apparently different things. Reworking involves taking a new part and fixing it to be up to a certain standard, while re-manufacturing takes used parts and fixes them up to be new-looking again. Tesla insists they don’t put re-manufactured parts on cars, but if almost half of parts require reworking, and they’re still putting out cars with irregular panel gaps that command comparisons to 90's Kias, you can call it “re-wizarding,” but it’s still not a good thing.

Trump Strikes AGAIN

The President of the United States has a habit of weighing in on things in a…unique way, and last week, when discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and how horrible it is, cited a practice that is either so top secret that no auto industry professional in the world has ever heard of it, or is completely made up. Here are Trump’s exact comments: “It’s the bowling ball test. They take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and drop it on the hood of the car. If the hood dents, the car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible.” What!? What car could possibly pass this test!? After thoroughly baffling the automotive media for a while and offering no explanation for his comments, an astute reader of the Washington Post’s coverage of the story suggested in the comments that perhaps he was referring to a test where Japanese safety officials test pedestrian safety by shooting dummy heads at car hoods to determine how damaged a head might be if it made contact with a car. Perhaps someone explained this with a bowling ball analogy, which could account for some of the misunderstanding, but the part about a car failing if it dents is still completely out of left field. In any case, it’s a test Japan applies to all cars, not just imports to keep them out of the country, so to use it as a sort of argument against the Trans-Pacific Partnership was always a stretch but, when it comes to politics these days, sense and logic doesn’t really apply anymore anyway.

Green with Envy, Yellow with Value

When I chose the gorgeous Reflex Silver color for my GTI, resale value didn’t really factor into my decision; I just liked it more than all the other options available. But apparently people do choose white, silver and black because those sort of “neutral” colors are more universally liked and the theory goes makes your car more desirable secondhand. Well, turns out that’s bogus because a new study by used car search engine ISeeCars.com has revealed that the car color with the lowest depreciation rate was, in fact, yellow, depreciating an average of 27 percent in the first three years of ownership. Also above average were green and orange, going to show that safe colors really aren’t that safe. But that’s not to say all wild colors are helpful. Some of the worst performing colors were beige, gold and purple. The purple car that immediately jumps to mind is the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which immediately makes sense why it would be one of the worst cars for keeping its value.

Lamborghini Says, "Damn the Fuel Economy Standards!"

Speaking of yellow cars that don’t depreciate much, Lamborghini was in the news this week for comments made by the company’s chief technical officer, Maurizio Reggiani. He indicated that, while other companies like Ferrari are moving to a V-8 or V-6 turbo hybrid in their future cars, Lamborghini has no intention to stop making their V-10s like that which powers the Huracan today. I love this quote from him: “My question is, why do I need to do something different? If I trust in the naturally aspirated engine, why do I need to downgrade my power train to a V-8 or V-6? I am Lamborghini, I am the top of the pinnacle of the super sports car. I want to stay where I am.” You do you, Lamborghini, and we will love you always for it.

GM Wants to Rent Your Car

With the launch of its Maven service in several US Cities, General Motors joined the ranks of the ride-sharing businesses, but using new cars put into circulation by General Motors themselves. Starting this summer, GM will begin a pilot program, expanding vehicle availability to personal cars if owners are willing to put their vehicles up for rent. This equates to a sort of Air BnB on wheels, which actually already exists with services like Turo, which I did not previously know about. But this being a GM venture, it has some extra benefits, like Maven offering liability insurance for GM vehicle buyers who choose to take part in the plan. Given how people generally treat their rental cars, I can’t imagine there would be a whole lot of interest in pimping out your ride, but if you need some extra money, maybe it’ll catch on with the likes of people who see their cars as appliances.

Arlington 86s its Buses

In other ride sharing news, Arlington, Texas has done away with its public transportation, which apparently was lacking anyway. Instead of buses and routes, the city has launched Arlington Via, which features Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans that can be hailed via an app or phone number and will come around and pick you up and take you to your destination. If this sounds a lot like Uber or Lyft, you’re totally right, except that it’s publicly subsidized, so trips are only $3 or you can buy a week pass for $10, which is crazy cheap! For about $40 a month, you can basically have your own driver that you occasionally have to share with other passengers. Mark my words, smart people will use and abuse the hell out of this system and it will be fantastic until the city realizes what a massive loss it is and discontinues it after its one year contract is up. I would absolutely be doing that if such a service were available here. It’s less than the monthly payment on any car! And you don’t have to drive in traffic!

Toyota Bolsters Avis’ Connected Fleet

Finally in rental car news, Toyota has signed a multi-year deal with Avis Budget Group that will supply 10,000 connected cars to Avis to “help streamline the customer rental experience.” It’ll basically help provide real-time location, odometer, fuel level and other information without the need for attendants to go check the cars manually, which would honestly be pretty handy if you’re running late for a flight and just needed your receipt so the accounting department doesn’t crucify you when you get back to work. It’s not very exciting and it seems like something that should’ve been accomplished years ago, but I guess we should just be happy with progress when we get it.

Buick’s Naming Crap Continues to Confound

Last you heard of Buick, they were prohibiting the use of the word wagon when mentioning their new Regal TourX, insisting it was a crossover. Well, starting next year, they will begin forcing drivers of all their new vehicles to insist that their car is indeed a Buick when asked by incredulous friends as happens all the time because their commercials are so reflective of real life. That’s because Buick is removing the “Buick” lettering from the back of its vehicles in the same way that BMW and Mercedes-Benz don’t actually say “BMW” and “Mercedes-Benz” on the back because people just know what the propeller circle and tri-star signify. Buick has the audacity to think that buyers most definitely know that the tri-shield badge means that a vehicle is the Buick. And while, sure, loyal listeners of my show may know that, I think it’s a bit presumptuous to suggest everyone does. But you know, good luck to Buick, who sold 4.5% fewer cars in America in 2017 than they did in 2016, which is also half the number of vehicles they sold in 2002. You’re probably doing just fine.

Elsa Lets the Boston Police Go

Video from Time

In South Boston this week, for the first time in, well, a week, the city got 16 inches of snow, which trapped a Boston Police van. Normally this type of story wouldn’t make the news, but the van was freed by none other than Elsa from Disney’s Frozen. A man dressed as the ice princess approached the beached van and asked the drivers if they wanted to build a snow ramp. She dutifully guided them as they rocked the van out of its spot and pushed until the vehicle was clear of the snow and then let it go. Turns out the cold never bothered her anyway. And that’s enough Frozen jokes.

New Cars

Baby Bronco and Mustang GT500

Ford made a big splash this week, announcing plans to refresh 75% of its lineup by 2020, which is good because, honestly, it needs the help. Where’s it making the biggest investment? Predictably, in vehicles that sell like hotcakes, namely SUVs, where the brand’s existing models are pretty long in the tooth. But we’re not just talking about the Escape, Edge and Explorer, all of which will get new versions, which include ST trim models that up the performance factor a bit. We already knew a new Bronco is coming and, although we haven’t seen it yet, Ford announced that they would have a smaller off-road-focused SUV that would be coming out to slot in below the revival of the bucking horse truck. We don’t really have any details on it, but the speculation is that it’ll give the Wrangler a run for its money in performance if maybe not in the customization sector. They also teased a photo of the new Shelby Mustang GT500, which can obviously only be a good thing. As we see automakers continue to churn out compact crossovers, it’s honestly great to see Ford say, “Yeah, but how about a Wrangler alternative and an even faster Mustang?” The market may not be demanding the most exciting vehicles, but at least automakers still have some people working there that want to inject the fun into cars to satisfy those of us in the so-called niche markets.

Audis for Everybody

If you like Audis, then screw the year of the truck, this is the year of the four rings for you. The company shared this week that they expect sales and deliveries of new cars to be pretty poor this year because they’re basically going to spend the entire next eight and a half months dropping new cars on us. They say there will be over 20 redesigned and new models launched this year, including the launch of several all electric models like the E-Tron crossover and E-Tron GT, a sedan. There will also be redesigned versions of most of the rest of Audi’s lineup, and the rate of unveiling means we’ll see a new car from them just about every three weeks, which is crazy ridiculous! But then again, when you think about Audi’s styling and realize they just stick an existing car in a copier and change the magnification level and hit “print,” maybe it’s not that outrageous to have so many cars coming out at once. Especially when Audi apparently achieved a billion Euro cost reduction last year by reducing research & development. Be prepared for a new generation of, “Oh, that’s a nice A-6. Er, A-4? Ach S-8!”

VW is S.O.L with New Names

Meanwhile at parent company Volkswagen, the Germans apparently had to come up with a new name for the electric vehicle brand they are preparing to launch in China with partner company JAC because they were not allowed to use the Chinese name for SEAT. Instead, they have chosen SOL, in all caps, which of course is Spanish for “sun,” conjuring images of a bright, shiny all electric future. Or, if you’re the type of person who uses acronyms, the capital letters S-O-L means “Shit Outta Luck,” which is just as well because the first car of the joint venture is a re-badged JAC vehicle that boosts just 114 horsepower and a top speed of 80 miles per hour. So, sorry, China, if you were hoping for a better electric vehicle to come from the partnership. I guess you’re, well, you know.

Lexus RC Black

It’s been at least a few weeks since our last black edition of any car, so we were about due for one. This time it’s Lexus, who is creating only 650 versions of their RC F Sport Black Line. The trick is, it’s not actually a trim available for the RC F. Just the RC 300 and 350. So not the V-8, just the V-6 and I-4 models, which, to me, causes it to lose a bit of the sinister element to it. What’s the Black Line version get you? More black. Just like in every black version of any car. Can this trend stop now?

Also from Lexus, they are launching the Sport Yacht concept, which is not a tongue-in-cheek concept car that plays on large sedans being referred to as land yachts. It is actually a yacht. It started as a fun concept from Toyota Marine Division, a 42-foot ship that features two Lexus 5-liter V-8 engines cranking out 885 horsepower and an almighty sound. The concept was never intended for production apparently, but after being handed the “Boat of the Year” award at the Japan International Boat Show, Toyota has had a sit down and think and decided that, yes, it would like to make more money from rich people and will actually build the boat and offer it for sale worldwide. Not just that, but they’re planning on a 65-foot version that can entertain up to 15 guests, because rich people love offering people a ride in their Lexus only to pull up in their Maserati and say, “Ha, silly, my Lexus is docked!”

Hyundai Kite Concept

Hyundai is also going nautical with their Kite concept, which debuted at the Geneva show two weeks ago but didn’t quite make it into my rap-up. It’s a sort of light weight dune buggy thing that was designed by 15 students as part of their Master in Transportation Design program at the Instituto Europeo di Design. The wild thing is, it can be transformed into a single seat jet ski, and who doesn’t want that! Granted, the utility of this thing is somewhat questionable. A dune buggy isn’t exactly practical for a daily commute and the number of times I have been flying over dunes only to arrive at a sudden ocean or lake and wished I could suddenly have a jet ski are relatively few. But you have to celebrate thinking outside the box, and this is most definitely that.

Honda Mean Mower Mk.2

Honda, it seems, is getting tired of being asked when they’re going to bring back the S2000 or some other affordable sports car now that their NSX has pushed decidedly upmarket. Instead of replying simply “never,” they’ve resorted to the tried and true internet tradition of trolling their fans. Instead of coming out with a fun sports car with 189 horsepower that will hit 134 miles per hour, Honda this week unveiled the Mean Mower Mk.2, a riding lawn mower with the engine from one of their 1,000 CC Fireblade motorbikes because why make a fun car when you can make a fun lawnmower instead? This isn’t the first time Honda has done this, having put a V-twin from a previous Fireblade into an older riding mower and achieving some impressive numbers. This second generation takes it up a notch, just as it takes up the trolling. Honda knows how to have fun. They’re just not going to go out of their way to help us have any. But hey, keep having your engineers work on pointless shit, Honda. And maybe give your designers the day off so we can have a Civic that doesn’t look like an origami spaceship.

Obituaries

Lincoln Continental

R.I.P

We heard some rumors last week that Ford is planning on canceling the Lincoln Continental after just one new generation of the car they allegedly spent $1 billion to resurrect, which seems like a ridiculous waste of money. That said, last year, they barely sold 12,000 examples, which pales in comparison to the 52,000 Mercedes-Benz E-classes or the nearly 41,000 BMW 5-Series cars of similar size and fanciness that were sold last year. When it debuted, the Continental was mocked for being a knock-off Bentley in its styling, but I guess not that many people are interested in driving Bentley knock-offs? This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but with sales that low and sales of sedans in general tanking like the Miami Marlins, it’s a safe bet that Ford might want to cut its losses. 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of February 26th, 2018

Time to Flee Chicago

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

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

Geely Owner Buys into Daimler

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

BMW to Build Mini-E in China

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

UPS Expands Electric Fleet

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

Ferrari Keeps on Rolling (Back Odometers)

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

Metal Market Manipulation Means More Migraines

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

Ford’s Dumb Advertising Record

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

Toyota to Build Mini-Nurburgring

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

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

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

Stink Bugs Create Rotten Situation for Kiwis

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

Clever Man Pays, Steals with Own Tools

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

Naked Man Plays, Drives by Own Rules

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

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the week of February 5th, 2018

Super Bowl Commercial Round-up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labor Pains

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

Photo by Reuters

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

F1’s GridKids and FE’s New Digs

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

Photo by Formula E (Twitter)

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

When your Kids are Sheep

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

Buick’s Wagon “Problem”

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

Mitsubishi’s Good News/Bad News

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

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

SUVs Keep Rolling

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

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

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

Robocop (But for Real)

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

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

Airbnb for Garages

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

Yet Another Meaningless Degree

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

VaLet’s take the Ferrari

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

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

One Giant Leap Backwards for Man

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

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines & New Cars for the week of January 22nd, 2018

Arbeit Macht Schwer

In case you thought the US was the only country with labor relations issue, here comes Germany to reassure us that we're not so different. Factory workers at Audi and Porsche plants have gone on strike to support demands of a six percent raise and the right to ask for a reduction in hours from 35 to just 28 so they can do things like care for children or the elderly for a couple of years, then return to work full time. In response to the union’s demands, employers have apparently offered a two percent raise, a one-time only “bonus” of two hundred Euro, and flat out refused to consider the reduced hours point. As they say, misery loves company, so I’m happy to see the rich American tradition of overwork and underpay is starting to catch on across the world. It makes me feel slightly less guilty for not working in France or Norway.

Geld Macht Spaß

Last year we covered the launch of the Porsche Passport Pilot Program, or as nobody calls it, Quadruple P. Well, they have some early numbers to report based on the program in Atlanta and signs are good for the brand, with 78% of participants having never owned a Porsche before. The company envisions this as just one way buyers can experience Porsche ownership, and they anticipate about 30% of buyers will purchase vehicles online in the next couple of years. Mercedes-Benz is thinking similarly, estimating that 25% of their new and used sales will come from the internet by 2025. But back to Porsche Passport - they also say it’s reaching a younger demographic, though they don’t specify how young. Given the fact that most of the participants are opting for the higher-cost, $3,000 per month service, I can’t believe these people are that young. To be able to basically have $36,000 to spend on a car every single year in addition to housing costs, food and other things, it seems like you’d have to be doing pretty damn well for yourself, which generally takes a few years. Or, in some of our cases, not at all. 

We Really Did Forget Dieselgate

After a disastrous 2015 and '16 where they were found to be using defeat devices to circumvent global emissions laws in their diesel cars, Volkswagen spent most of 2017 trying their absolute hardest to help buyers forget about dieselgate. A lot of this included generous discounts, goodwill campaigns and reinvestment in popular vehicles, not to mention the rebirth of the Microbus as the I.D. Buzz. Turns out, all that work paid off and buyers around the world pretty much did forget and stepped right back in line to snatch up new Volkswagens. What makes it more incredible is that, while the industry as a whole was down last year from 2016, Volkswagen recorded record sales, increasing 4.2% verses the year prior. And while the rest of the industry braces for more stagnating sales, VW sales chief Juergen Stackmann is optimistic, expecting sales to continue to rise in 2018. Based on the popularity of the gigantic Atlas, the compact Tiguan twins and the attractive Arteon, as well as the deal I was able to strike on a leftover 2017, it looks like their aggressive measures may be pretty effective!

Infiniti’s Shocking Moves

Meanwhile in Japan, Infiniti also had a great year, increasing sales eleven percent over 2016, but they’re still very much playing catch up to the German, English and Swedish luxury brands. Their plans to overtake their competition hinges primarily on electrification, as Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa explained this week. All new Infinitis launched after 2021 will be all-electric or will be range-extended hybrids, but not in the conventional sense. The company’s technology called ePower uses a gasoline motor to recharge the battery in its range extended hybrids, but that gas motor doesn’t drive the wheels at all. And there’s no plug-in feature. So the propulsion is entirely electric and the power generation entirely gas. It’s a weird setup, and especially considering Infiniti’s recently-announced variable compression engine, a strange change of approach to try to lure buyers. Then again, it could be a great solution for buyers without a garage or access to plug-in locations. 

Acura Wants to be Exciting Again

In addition to announcing the new 2019 RDX, Acura dropped a bombshell on the Detroit Auto Show, announcing the return of Type-S and A-Spec brands. For the uninitiated, Type-S is a high trim level applied to Acura models that are especially fast and good handling, and it was last used ten years ago on the TL sedan, but was famously applied to the RSX and Integra coupes, which were a ton of fun to drive. A-Spec is another trim level more focused on comfort, style and refinement than outright speed, so it’s somewhat less exciting, but no less important to buyers. The bombshell, however, was kind of a dud because they didn’t announce which models would get which trim levels or if they’d be bringing back an actually affordable fun car. It’s like Honda has this caged lunatic who wants fun cars and they let it out just a little bit at a time because if they let it off the leash completely, we’d end up with cars enthusiasts like and that’s just too much for them.

France Wants to be Less Exciting

People keep dying on French roads, with increases over the past three years after steady decreases going back as far as 1972. In response, France is lowering the speed limit on most of their highways by ten kilometers per hour, so the fastest you will be able to legally drive in France is just 56 miles per hour, rendering the fairly standard 0-60 calculations pretty useless. To their credit, the French don’t attribute all the deaths just to speed alone and have tightened regulations on cell phone use and drunk driving. This comes as road deaths are up also in Britain and the United States, illustrating a disturbing trend that I think must be attributed to cell phone usage. When I was hit a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to come away uninjured and the other driver offered no excuse for why he ran a red light that had been red for at least seven seconds. Based on the Uber and Lyft stickers in his window though, I guessed that he was trying to find a fare. I wouldn’t go so far as to say those ride sharing companies are complicit in the wreck that has cost me days worth of time fighting with insurance companies and trying to find a new car, but the sooner we can integrate smart features into a car so drivers need look at their phones less, the better. 

BMW to Charge for Not Their Service

BMW, though, has a different idea of how to integrate phones into cars and that involves squeezing its drivers for every penny they can get, like little Bavarian weasels, hiding away all their nuts. But the truth is, the nuts aren’t even theirs! Or maybe the tree isn’t. This is a bad metaphor. BMW wants to charge a subscription fee for Apple’s CarPlay software, which they currently have as a $300 option when you buy a new car. By charging $80 per year after the first year, which is free, they argue that you pay less if you only keep the car a few years, which I guess most BMW owners do because they want to be seen driving a new BMW. The issue here is that more than 400 models of car come with Android Auto and almost as many come with Apple’s CarPlay, but it’s included in the price and not an option you have to add in later. Hell, you can buy a Toyota Corolla or VW Jetta and get these features for free, but you don’t with BMW. It’s like how fancy hotels make you pay for WiFi when you get it for free at Best Western. Why? Because the fancy hotels know you have the money to pay for it. Okay, that was a better metaphor.

Taking Crashes to New Heights

In Santa Ana, California this week, a driver managed to launch his Nissan Altima into the second story of a dental office, using a raised center media as a sweet ramp for the epic Dukes of Hazzard-style flying act. The driver, who was apparently high as a kite, was able to exit the car and hang by the door until police came and literally caught him. He and his two passengers were injured and taken to the hospital where they had some serious coming down to do. 

Photo by Southern Counties News

Tackling Terrible Truckers

From bad drivers to bad truckers, we’re headed back to England, where the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, or DVSA, announced the findings of a 4,000 vehicle roadside test. They found that one in 13 trucks on British roads were fitted with an emissions cheat device that give false emissions readings, allowing the truck better performance while drastically increasing pollution. If this sounds familiar, it should because it seems like there’s this type of story every week, it just usually involves auto manufacturers getting caught doing it, not truck drivers who are looking to skirt the law. A representative of the DVSA, Gareth Llewellyn said, “we’re committed to taking dangerous lorries off Britain’s roads. We won’t hesitate to take action against these drivers, operators and vehicles.” Unfortunately for Gareth, when trucks were found with defeat devices, drivers were given ten days to fix the problem or pay a £300 fine, which sounds an awful lot like they’re hesitating to take action to me.

Have a Seat

Back here in America, our love for three row SUVs has apparently created quite a criminal enterprise, because there have been a rash of robberies - of just the third row seats from SUVs. Apparently, on most General Motors SUVs, like the Chevy Suburban, Tahoe and GMC and Cadillac Siblings, if you’re able to pop open the rear glass on the lift gate, the alarm on the car doesn’t go off. Once inside, the third row can simply be unhooked and then passed out the open hatch. And who is buying all these third rows to make stealing them such a popular endeavor? If you guessed “people who have had their third rows stolen,” you’d be right. It’s tempting to victim blame here and say “just park in a garage or back in so the back glass isn’t so accessible,” but what’s the point of a car alarm if it’s not going to alarm you when someone is stealing something from it? Come on, GM, this is on you.

AI Coming Along Swimmingly

While Google and Amazon work to integrate their digital assistants into more and more new cars, Nissan is going a sort of different direction with their own artificial intelligence. Instead of a female voice, Nissan’s Xmotion Concept features a koi fish as a virtual assistant that swims across the myriad interior screens to provide drivers assistance with, well, driving, as well as entertainment and navigation. It’ll also connect with the driver’s smartphone to share information between it and the car. And in case you’re thinking this is some sort of anthropomorphized Admiral Ackbar-looking fish, no, it’s just a normal koi fish, and I think it’s neat and more companies should think outside the pond when coming up with virtual assistants.

SUV Free and Happy to Be

While Ferrari and Lamborghini rush to catch up with Bentley and Porsche on the super-expensive SUV craze, McLaren is pretty content just where they are, thank you very much. The company’s chief designer, Dan Parry-WIlliams, told Top Gear magazine this week that “I’m not the first person to point out that an SUV is neither particularly sporty or utilitarian. It’s not ‘everything for a reason’ unless the reason is to clutter up the streets.” He’s referring there to McLaren’s design motto, “everything for a reason,” and it’s refreshing to see a company stick to its credo. Meanwhile, at fellow British sports car company Lotus, whose mantra, handed down from founder Colin Chapman was “Simplify and add lightness,” they’ll soon be launching their own SUV that will neither be simple nor light, though that may be said of their buyers. 

The (Frozen) Vaporware Car

Photo by Simon Laprise

In Montreal this week, someone had a good time at the expense of some local police, who attempted to ticket a snow-covered vintage Toyota Celica Supra that was parked in a snow removal lane, blocking in other parked cars. Upon lifting the very real windshield wiper to place the ticket, the police officer discovered that the wiper arm wasn’t attached to anything because the entire car was simply a pile of snow molded into the shape of a Supra. The whole thing was the brainchild of a French Canadian artist named Simon Laprise, who found the windshield wiper on the street and placed it on the car for maximum confusion. As for the ticket issued? The citation read “You made our night, hahahahaha” or whatever the French word for laughter is.

New Cars

Jeep Grand Commander

Detroit might make a great place to launch a new Jeep, but that’s just what Jeep hasn't done this week, when images of a new three-row SUV leaked to the media. It seems every company is scrambling to get an SUV with three rows out there for all the families who insist that contorting yourself to wedge in between a door sill and the second row only to sit cross-legged on a tiny, barely-padded foldable bench seat is more dignified than just swallowing your pride and buying the mini-van you should be getting. And with regards to Jeep, they don’t currently have a third-row-capable SUV in their stable and haven’t since the mercy killing of the Commander in 2010. If you forgot the Jeep Commander existed, you’re not alone and you’re totally forgiven because it was horrible and ugly. But now we have had a look at the new Grand Commander, a seven seat SUV that is apparently a China-only vehicle. At least according to what we know about it right now. The new model borrows heavily from Jeep’s other products for styling, which is now a good thing and it looks pretty decent, so it’d be hard to believe Fiat Chrysler wouldn’t wise up and bring it over stateside at some point. Plus, starting at around $38,000, it’d fit right in with most of its contemporary competitors. Until we know if it’s coming here or not, I guess you’ll just have to buy the Honda Odyssey you should be getting anyway.

GM’s Autonomous Bolt

One of the biggest stories to come out of Detroit this week was General Motors’ launch of the all-autonomous Chevy Bolt. This is a big deal because GM is calling it the first pre-production car to be shown without a steering wheel or pedals, which I guess is accurate since we’ve definitely seen concepts without them before. While it’s ostensibly a major step forward in terms of the future of autonomous vehicles, indicating GM’s confidence that they have a car ready to go completely without human controls, it really doesn’t feel all that special. Just looking at the photos of the interior, which doesn’t have to cater to a driver anymore, it really just looks like they took the passenger’s side, went into Photoshop, copied, pasted and flipped it so the former driver’s side looks the same. That’s it. I mean, in a fully driverless car, you don’t even need a dashboard. Your displays can be anywhere, or everywhere! The seats could swivel or not even face forward, and yet here we are, with a Chevy Bolt where they just Control X’d the steering column and pedals. Congratulations GM on making the future of motoring so unappealing.
 
But thank god, Chevy wasn’t the only company exhibiting at this year’s North American International Auto Show. In fact, there were a ton of new vehicles. If you want to learn more, check out to my Auto Show Rap-Up from last week's podcast. 

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

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