Cadillac has delayed the launch of its dealer incentive program for another three months. Brand president Johan de Nysschen says the delay is all about giving dealers more time to understand the program and has nothing to do with its potential illegality or the extensive dealer backlash against it. (Read More…)
Jaguar Land Rover’s technical design director Wolfgang Ziebart is decidedly not a proponent of hydrogen-fueled vehicles.
Due to the amount of energy required to produce, cool, and then compress hydrogen for transportation and subsequent usage within a fuel cell vehicle, Ziebart is highly critical of its role as a practical automotive energy source.
Still, a minority of automakers disagree. (Read More…)
Remember when we didn’t know what the word “hashtag” meant? Gosh, that was nice. I recall reading one of Jack’s fiction pieces in 2012 (did I mention that Sunday Stories are coming back this weekend! YASSSS! Thank you, readers! #MakeFictionGreatAgain damn it I just used a hashtag) that was laden with hashtags and thinking, “Christ, I’m glad I have no idea what that was all about.”
Of course, it’s now 2016, and I’m busy adding #fordperformance #fordfocusrs #fors #nitrousblue to every single picture I post on Instagram in the hopes that some 15-year-old hot hatch enthusiast will get bored in study hall, find my picture, and give me the highly sought-after “like,” or, if I’m really lucky, a “follow.”
I think we can all agree this is pathetic behavior, yet everybody in the game does it. I’m not as bad as some — my social media pages are designed more to inflame the opposition than inspire loyalty — but we’re all driven to play this silly game by the OEMs, who have universally decided that having 10,000 Instagram followers means you get to have press cars delivered to your door, regardless if you have any knowledge of or about the industry.
Alright … here’s the deal. It’s the year 2007. You can buy one of the highest-performing automobiles ever sold to the general public for a relative bargain — let’s say $70,000. It’s possible that you will pay less, particularly if you have access to an employee pricing plan. Then you can put 30,000 to 40,000 miles on said car over the course of nine years. Maybe a bit more.
When it’s time to sell that car, how much would you expect to get?
Let’s put this in perspective. Last year, Acura won the Edmunds resale-value crowd with a projected retention of 47.6 percent after five years. So if you could match that, you’d be at $33,320. After five years. After nine years? Well, that’s anybody’s guess. But it would certain be less than $33,320. With that in mind, what would be a realistic number to get if you just tossed the thing on eBay? Fifteen grand? Twenty? Would you believe… between $38,000 and $45,000?
If you’re currently the owner of a sixth-generation Corvette Z06, the above scenario is no dream.
Volkswagen will no longer bring diesel-powered vehicles into the United States, ending speculation that the company may have simply placed the technology on hiatus while the emissions-cheating snafu remained fresh in American minds. (Read More…)
Fearing a backlash from die-hard Ram loyalists, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles executives seem hesitant to move the next-generation 1500 pickup away from the styling that’s made it a bright sales light in the FCA portfolio.
Still, as much as they’d like to avoid it, many say the time has come to drop Ram’s most signature design element — the crosshair grille. (Read More…)
Our annual feast of dead bird, fine pigskin, family arguments, cheap electronics, and roughly 200 (of 600) good episodes of The Simpsons is upon us. And once again, we take a glimpse into the wild world of classic car auctions, sure to be another magnificent family tradition.
Due to the holiday weekend here in the States, this week we look east to Milan for RM Sotheby’s Duemila Ruote 2016, an auction featuring over 400 collectibles — all at no reserve. I loved looking through this catalog. The exotics are awesome, of course, but the relatively pedestrian cars that we just don’t see here are what catch my eye.
Or, with one example, turn my stomach.
There are 350 Hyundai dealers in the United States currently offering vehicles from the automaker’s new Genesis Motors brand inside Hyundai showrooms. It’s a model Genesis wants to change — simply too many stores for a fledgling auto brand; too much affiliation with proletarian Hyundai.
It’s also entirely unlike the non-dealer model Genesis Motors began employing in Canada on Monday, November 21, 2016. Genesis began business operations 48 hours ago with no physical locations whatsoever.
Dealers? Pfft. Someday.
Not today. (Read More…)
If one of your DIY car enthusiast friends built a home or office audio system from the muffler and exhaust pipes of their favorite car as both an acoustic and visual part, you’d probably think it was a clever idea — something like using an engine block for the base of a glass coffee table, only more practical.
What, then, to think of the $3,500 Porsche Design 911 Soundbar Bluetooth loudspeaker that incorporates an actual titanium rear silencer and twin chromed exhaust tips from a Porsche 911 GT3 in its subwoofer?
Sometimes a manufacturer churns out a base trim that — all things considered — might just be the primo choice for that particular model. Here’s an example.
The Jaguar F-Type has been around since 2013 creating leagues of bug-eyed gearheads whose jaws invariably hit the ground when they finally see one in person. It’s one of those rare cars that looks a gazillion times better in the metal than on paper. The slinky Coupe version showed up in dealers a year later, with Jaguar periodically adjusting trim levels and feature content.
An alert reader (thanks for writing in!) hinted we should use the F-Type for this series, and I was buoyed by the suggestion. Why? It’s well-known I tend to choose the largest engine and loudest colour available when spending my own hard-earned dollars on a vehicle. Yet, the base V6 F-Type appears to make a compelling case for itself.
Does one need to pop for the F-Type’s optional bellowing V8? Let’s find out.
Hey, let’s give this a try again.
Do you hear that sound? It’s the collective silence of every cheerleader in America not giving a single care to the possible death of a V6-powered Mustang. Even though the automatic, drop-top, V6 Mustang is colloquially called the Cheerleader Edition, do you think Sally McJumpyskirt really cares if four or six or eight pistons are doing battle with physics under the hood? Nope.
But we’re different. We care that the V6 offers a more aurally pleasing soundtrack than the cookie-cutter 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder model. We care that, in the real world, the V6 will likely return fuel economy that’s nearly as good as its smaller, boosted cousin. We care that the tried-and-true 3.7-liter V6 is just that — tried and true.
Yet, I can’t help but not care about its death.
Disgraced automaker Volkswagen AG is trying to smooth things over in the United States by promising to increase its commitment to North America. The company has stated that its core brand’s lineup will swell to include new electric vehicles slated for U.S. production in 2021.
The task of building those vehicles comes with a mountain of challenges.
A crop of General Motors pickups and SUVs left the factory with potentially deadly Takata airbags, but the automaker has won approval to delay their recall.
According to The Detroit News, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has allowed GM to defer repairs on 2.5 million vehicles so it can test the lifespan of the faulty parts. Naturally, there are conditions attached. (Read More…)
For the time being, we can still call it “Indian Summer.” Maybe not for much longer — my alma mater, Miami University, bent the knee to social-justice pressure on this issue a few years ago. We had been the Miami Redskins, but after a prolonged siege by the forces of manufactured outrage the university agreed to change us to the Miami Redhawks. It is worth noting that the Chief of the Miami Tribe in no way objected to the old logo or name; he thought it was used in a reasonable and dignified manner. But when faced between the choice of respecting the opinion of an actual Native American or listening to the incoherent babble of their own privileged white-girl hearts, Miami’s students of course chose the latter.
I kind of like the bird they chose — it looks angry, although to my mind it is not distinct enough from the Bowling Green Falcon, and that’s a shame because BG is an emphatically third-rate university and Miami is only second-rate. Angry is good. It’s easy to picture such a red hawk flying above the muted palette of the Ohio late fall forest, two-lane roads with orange and red leaves disconnected from stems by a killing morning frost then resurrected in impromptu whirling whorls set to spinning above the tarmac by the Vettes and ‘vertibles of all sorts, the lumbering Harleys and white-trash sportbikes and adventure-cuck bikes taking brief but permitted nonsense trips to nowhere. We can get these magical weekends every once in awhile, right at the end of the season, and this past Saturday was the perfect example — 76 degrees and a panoply parade of pleasure vehicles out for the last sorties of the year.
Now it’s 28 and I’m the only bike on the road to work this morning, flash-frozen on the freeway, every joint hurting and the tires chilled to a sort of bitter truce with the road surface, chittering at the hint of a lean.
The slow-selling Volkswagen CC premium sedan — a model you’d be forgiven for forgetting — has reportedly ended production in Germany.
In happier times, the model added a dash of upscale panache to the squeaky-clean brand. Now, Volkswagen has cast off the aging, underperforming model as it seeks to reclaim lost market share and revenue with the CC’s shadowy replacement. (Read More…)
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