I may be going out on a limb here, but I would guess that something like half of the men in the developed world have drawn, sketched or doodled a Ferrari at some point in there lives. Given this seemingly inborn tendency, you’d think that young, ambitious design students would jump into a Ferrari design challenge with shockingly distinctive, radically passionate, heart-wrenchingly beautiful designs, matured by years of fixation on the most aspirational sportscar brand in the world. And yet… many of the designs at the Ferrari World Design Challenge 2011, depicting a “Ferrari of the Third Millennium,” seem like they could be any brand’s “car of the future.”

Some may put this down to the fact that these are design students, not the trained teams that come up with Ferrari’s current designs, but I have another explanation: good design, even for something as frivolous and over-the-top as a Ferrari, has to have function at its core. But what is Ferrari’s function in our uncertain future? What is Ferrari without V-12s? Where does performance go in the next millennium when the current “base” Ferrari hits 60 MPH in just over three seconds? How can a brand like Ferrari maintain its exalted position without breaking down major performance barriers in each generation? Rather than knocking these students for their sometimes-disappointing designs, let’s take a moment to appreciate just how tough their task is.

Government officials like Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood spend much of their time justifying their positions by tilting at national windmills like the “epidemic” of distracted driving, generally with relatively modest results. And yet, despite the massive increase in mobile device use over the last decades or so, on-road deaths per vehicle mile traveled are at an all-time low. So here’s a new “epidemic” for Secretary LaHood: lane discipline. Every time I take to the freeway, I’m absolutely shocked by the number of people driving at or below the speed limit in the left lane, and the number of people who stay in the fastlane even when there’s nobody to pass. And I don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence to know lane discipline is a problem in America (or, at least in the Pacific Northwest). According to the PEMCO Insurance Northwest Poll,

43 percent of Washington drivers don’t know that impeding the flow of traffic in the left lane is against the law.

To which I say “bullshit.” Not only is it illegal to impede left lane traffic in Washington (and Oregon, where I live), but the freeways in both states have regular “keep right except to pass” signs, so the ignorance defense doesn’t really apply. People simply don’t care about maintaining lane discipline, and ignore any sign that urges them to do so. Clearly signage and the National Motorist’s Association’s Lane Courtesy Awareness Month aren’t doing the trick… and neither does giving the finger.

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The debate over 2025 CAFE standards will continue to rage all summer long, but if there’s one thing I learned from the industry lobbyists that I spoke to in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, it’s that the media debate severely lags the conversation that’s going on behind closed doors. It’s a frustrating situation for commentators who hope to influence the process, but then D.C. debates are rarely about the ideas anyway. But environmental groups who hope to come between an industry that’s already relatively well-positioned for short-to-medium-term standards and a government that’s more interested in helping the industry than ever are still hoping to bring some public pressure to bear on an issue that, according to my sources anyway, was already largely settled weeks ago. Bloomberg [via AN [sub]] reports that

The auto industry is pressing the Obama administration for a promise to reevaluate rules that may more than double U.S. fuel economy standards by 2025 before they become final…

Still under negotiation are details of the midpoint review, including the timing, whether there will be a judicial review and whether the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department and California’s Air Resources Board will coordinate efforts, Gleberman said.

Environmental groups oppose the midterm review, saying it’s a gambit by automakers seeking to kill the program at the halfway point, when a president more friendly to the industry may be in office, said Dan Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign.

According to my sources, a mid-way review of 2017-2025 standards was agreed to in principle by all the major stakeholder stakeholders some time ago. And for obvious reasons: with disruptive new technologies under development and the trajectory of fuel prices remaining an unknown quantity, nobody knows precisely what technologies will be available and what the market will demand come 2017. Like California’s ZEV mandate, a push to kill the mid-term review makes CAFE even less responsive to the market than it already is. If anything, environmental groups should embrace a review of current standards because there’s a good chance fuel prices will be higher and the nation will be more determined than ever to sacrifice for higher emissions standards. Besides, if CAFE loses touch with the market and has no opportunity to sync back up, the industry could be in for another disastrous downturn. And no matter how pro-regulation you are, it’s tough to argue that CAFE should be totally unresponsive to market forces. Unless you know exactly what the market will look like in 2025 (in which case, let’s start a hedge fund), trying to set 2025 emissions standards in stone now makes no sense at all.

TTAC Commentator SupremeBrougham writes:

Hey Sajeev, out of the blue a man calls me up and makes me an offer to take my Chevy HHR off my hands. I made a counter-offer and the deal was done. Hooray, no more car payments, I’ll just keep and drive the Mystique!

But, as luck would have it, the Mystique decided that it didn’t want to run anymore, so I had to have it towed to my local independent shop, and it’s been sitting there for a while. It turns out that the main wiring harness under the hood has disintegrated and needs to be replaced. He has tried calling a number of junkyards and he said they all laughed at him, and said they all cut the harnesses when removing the engines on junk cars, so none are available. At the dealer, they quoted him a price of ~$800 for a new one! He told me that he is going to try and see if he can salvage enough wiring under the hood to try and reconnect the ends together so that the car will run again. Also, I’ve tried looking online for this part but I haven’t had any luck.

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What do we mean when we talk about assemblies of steel, carbon and plastic in terms of “emotion”? Every craft has a very narrow dividing line between mere technical proficiency and creating something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, but few crafts enjoy a cadre of critics that are as obsessed with constantly defining this line as auto journalists. I suppose that after spending enough time driving and trying to evaluate cost-no-object luxury items the line may become more obvious, as skills are sharpened and observational powers are honed. But more than increasing the ability to define the line between mere “excellence” and “greatness” or “proficiency” and “emotion,” a career of supercar driving largely seems to reinforce the importance of simply having that line. After all, what’s more important to the reviewer of supercars: preventing some poor soul from squandering a quarter of a million dollars on the wrong supercar, or establishing their own exquisite taste? Here’s a hint: only one of these things keeps the gravy train rolling. So when you’ve got two similarly-performing supercars competing directly for the attentions of the well-heeled, few will actually care which laps what the fastest… and when the going gets tough, the tough get wobbling.

This is all well and good… after all, everyone wants to drive a Ferrari 458 and a McLaren MP4-12c, but nobody wants to go through the motions of justifying why you think one is fundamentally better or worse than the other. Besides, consumers are free to understand that one man’s “lack of emotion” is another man’s everyday usability… or “waste” their money on the car the journalist says he prefers. But when McLaren comes out and gives the latest mid-engined Ferrari a run for its money with its first roadvcar in over a decade only to be met with accusations of a “lack of emotion,” there’s no way a self-respecting sportscar firm would make a change to their baby. But that’s exactly what’s happening…

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The 2012 Chevrolet Impala may have the oldest “bones” of any current production sedan, but it’s not quite ready to put those bones in the graveyard yet…

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Hey, it’s a station wagon… and it’s built by Audi. Also, you may not be able to tell from this angle, but it’s new. Really. What, you couldn’t tell?

Voters in Washington state will decide in November whether to slow down the state’s push toward tolling. Initiative 1125 prohibits lawmakers from diverting toll road revenue and other levies on motorists toward non-transportation purposes. It also forces politicians to vote directly on any toll hikes.

“If there’s going to be tolls, there has to be accountability and transparency,” initiative co-sponsor Tim Eyman of Voters Want More Choices wrote in an email. “It’s simply not too much to ask for taxpayers who are being forced to pay twice for their roadway infrastructure (the highest gas tax in the nation and tolls) that the legislature be required to follow the law and abide by the Constitution.”

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There’s really no reason for an old Detroit pickup to die, but The Crusher’s blind hunger for steel makes no distinction between a Mercury Tracer with fire damage and a solid ’70 Chevy with small-block and manual transmission. (Read More…)

Volkswagen just sold one of my inventions, and I didn’t get a dime for it. Volkswagen didn’t get rich on the sale either. After more than 20 years of trying not too hard, Volkswagen is getting out of the non-OEM service business and  sells its Stop + Go chain of quick-fit shops to the management.

“It was supposed to be an all-out assault on the non-OEM service business,” writes Automobilwoche [sub] in an eulogy. The attack ended in defeat. (Read More…)

Thailand, with a low currency, strong local demand and many foreign trade agreements, turns more and more into the South-East-Asian auto hub. Business-in-Asia gave it the unfortunate title “Detroit of Asia.” Thailand’s auto industry is targeting production of 3 million vehicles annually by 2015, more than countries like Canada, France, even Mexico currently make. Toyota, Honda and Nissan already have a pretty tight grip on the country. Now, Nissan is taking it a notch up. (Read More…)

Yesterday, we talked about a new gasoline-powered Daihatsu car that gets 70 mpg (non-EPA). After The Nikkei [sub] broke that story, the phone rang in Tokyo and several other manufacturers said “watashi tachi mo!” (Us too!) And today, The Nikkei [sub] is out with the story that other manufacturers “are mounting a challenge by launching gasoline-powered models that can compete with hybrids on fuel economy.” Not only that, they severely beat the pricey hybrids on price. Buy the car, and you can start saving right away. (Read More…)

What are we looking at here? Well, it’s a Camry, that much is obvious. In the window is a sign for “Educators Against 5.”

What’s “5”? It’s a bill, recently passed in Ohio, which prohibits collective bargaining by public employee unions on issues such as health insurance, sick leave and pension benefits. Needless to say, it is massively unpopular among unionized public-sector workers in said state, many of whom view it as the first step towards “union-busting”.

The actual merits of the law are probably best discussed elsewhere. However, this is the third car I’ve seen in two days carrying the “No 5” sign… and all three have had a little credibility problem.

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Despite signs that the horsepower wars are over (or have at least been refined), nobody would argue that the American market lacks for high-powered offerings. Except, apparently, Dodge and its crack ad team at Wieden + Kennedy who have based the latest Durango ad around the idea that performance is dead in America. This canard is so preposterously misguided and thoroughly misinformed that I can’t even bring myself to lay out the all-to-obvious critique piece-by-piece. Instead, let’s turn to the legendary auto ad-blaster, the Autoextremist himself to point out why this may well be one of the most stupid car ads in a long time.
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As I noted in an earlier piece on the macro-level issues with EVs, it’s dangerously misleading to assume that electric cars can simply replace internal combustion-engine vehicles without a basic re-think of nearly every way in which we relate to our cars. That’s true in terms of consumer-end issues like refueling grid impacts and “range anxiety” […]