From Charles Morgan’s personal blog.

October 18 2013 – Statement from Charles Morgan

As has been widely reported, I have been asked to leave the Morgan Motor Company by the board. It is a sad decision that I am appealing; I remain a major shareholder in Morgan.

I’m proud to say I leave with the company’s annual production volumes double what they were at the start of my tenure, with new export markets such as China opened to the company. Morgan remains a small but successful family firm.

I’d like to be clear that I am not a tycoon but a family man – I inherited a company not wealth –  and unexpectedly leaving its employment will be a hardship for myself and my family. Being asked to leave the company that bears my name is also extremely personally distressing. That is made more painful as today marks 10 years since my father, Peter Morgan, died and I feel him in spirit with me in this dispute. (Read More…)

(Let’s all welcome Zombie McQuestionbot back to TTAC. He’s a well-known and well-loved writer who is now writing for “bigger” and “better” and “more easily recognized” and “less thoroughly despised” outlets than this one, but we managed to convince him to write a few questions for us — JB)

Mustangs. I know, right? I almost bought a Mustang once. Actually, I did buy a Mustang. I was in the American South on my way to see an actual underground bullfight, with a bull and everything. But it turned out that the two-year-old “Mustang” that I agreed to pay five thousand dollars for in a back room of a Mexican restaurant was actually a Mustang.

You know, a horse.

The good news is that “Trigger” and I had plenty of good years together before I let him retire to a farm in Oregon. For “plenty of good years” subtitute “one drunken night”. And for “a farm in Oregon” substitute “the glue factory”. Oh, how I cried when they led Trigger away. Mostly because he’d stepped on my foot. But that isn’t the kind of Mustang we’re talking about here. The retro Mustang’s been around since 2005. What’s your favorite one?
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As part of a new free trade agreement due to be signed with the European Union, Canada will remove its 6.1 percent tariff on imported vehicles from the European Union, while the EU will remove its 10 percent duties on autos and and its 4.5 percent duty on parts.

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Elon Musk, the real-life Tony Stark of our times, has quite the extensive résumé: Founder of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors; billionaire investor of projects and businesses such as SolarCity and the preservation of Nikola Tesla’s lab; inventor of the Hyperloop rapid mass transit concept; 007 cosplayer…

Yes, you read that right: Musk is a huge fan of the man who loves his martinis shaken and his women to have double entendre naming schemes. So much so, in fact, that he now has one of Bond’s most awesome vehicles ever conceived.

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“Don’t bid on that. I’m on it.”

Normally I wouldn’t be so mouthy and blunt with my competitors. But this guy was a rare breed. A large scale buyer and owner of five different car lots who maybe, just maybe, would give me the break I needed with buying this partricular vehicle.

Of course I would return the favor whenever it was asked of me. I just didn’t expect it to be the very next car.

After about seven seconds of futility trying to find a higher bid, the auctioneer laid down his hammer. I had bought this…

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Sorry, couldn’t resist

After months of teasing, Nissan officially pulled the wraps of the ZEOD RC. The Zero Emissions On Demand Race Car will occupy Garage 56 at the 24 Hours of LeMans in June of next year. This weekend it is expected to hit the track at round 6 of the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship, October 18-20 at Japan’s Fuji International Speedway.

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As the plot thickens in Toledo and un-shipped Cherokees start to pile up in the storage lots, there’s a new conspiracy theory being passed around to explain Chrysler’s problems.
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A brief memo from General Motors Canada confirmed that the Oshawa consolidated line, scheduled to close in 2014, will stay open until 2016. GM is citing strong market demand for the Chevrolet Equinox and the outgoing, Chevrolet Impala (sold as a fleet-only model) as a reason for the decision, but cautioned that ” All scheduling adjustments are subject to market demand”.

Under the terms of the bailout, GM must keep 16 percent of its production in Canada until it has repaid its loan obligations to the Canadian government, or until December 31, 2016. After that date, the future of Oshawa is uncertain.

courtesy of blick.ch

Meet Susie Wolff; Race Driver.

It has been decades since Lella Lombardi and Janet Guthrie broke into the male dominated sport of auto racing. Since then the notion of a female race driver is nothing new, even in Formula 1. But as the new darling of the “Money Circus,” Susie Wolff is poised to be the next newsmaker.

It would be easy to dismiss Wolff as being in the car because she’s pretty. But in Formula 1, this is  flawed reasoning.

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In a sign that the European automobile market may finally be recovering, new car registrations in September were up 5.5% from the year before. Sales in the UK and an extra sales day in the month were factors but industry analysts say that things have finally bottomed out in Europe. Year to date sales were still down, -4% to 9.34 million cars, still on track to be the worst year in two decades.

After the longest European recession since the adoption of the euro currency ended with GDP growth in the second quarter of this year, demand has increased but when car sales were down in August, there was concern. With September sales up, industry watchers now think the August decline was just a blip. (Read More…)

The UAW has enlisted the help of the German IG Metall labor union in its effort to organize Volkswagen’s U.S. operations. Now Fiat has apparently gotten the union that represents its Italian workers, Fim Cisl, to reach out to UAW officials in an effort to resolve the issue of just how much Fiat is going to pay the UAW’s retiree health benefits trust for the 41.5% of Chrysler the VEBA owns. Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne wants to merge the two companies and that can’t be done without buying that stock. Fiat and the VEBA sides are more than a billion dollars apart. (Read More…)

One of our readers, Noble713, commenting on a news items about the BMW i3, asked if TTAC could provide more coverage on BMW’s carbon fiber productions methods. The i3 EV, and upcoming i8, are built upon CFRP structures. Weight is the enemy of electric vehicles. The more weight you can take out of the actual structure of the car, the more battery cells you can carry for more power and better range, hence BMW turning to carbon fiber. It turns out that BMW has released a series of videos (bilingual, wait for the English) on that very topic. Their CFRP production uses materials made by SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers, a joint venture between the BMW and SGL groups and the effort spans the globe. SGL has expertise in carbon fiber and in 2011 BMW took a 15% stake in the company. (Read More…)

The BMC ADO17, popularly known as the Landcrab, sold pretty well in Europe but was nearly unknown in North America. Not completely unknown, though; a few Landcrabs were sold in the United States, and one of them has just washed up in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)

Looking to take advantage of the natural gas boom currently occurring in America, Chevrolet will market a bi-fuel version of its Impala sedan starting next year.

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With yet another Ferrari 250 GTO selling for record sums, the world has its eyes focused on the funny little microcosm that can be described as“blue chip cars”.  Investors are looking at high-profile classic cars as a potentially lucrative asset class, a way to diversify their portfolios in a world where interest rates are zero and the only investment offering decent returns are securitized car loans. Others think that it’s just another bubble, reminiscent of the million-dollar Hemi ‘Cudas that were crossing the blocks at Barret Jackson in the good old days before the Great Financial Crisis.

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