The perpetual cycle of one-upmanship in the pickup truck game seems to be continuing at a breakneck pace into the electric era. The in-yer-face Ram brand, never one to shy away from bold or poke-the-bear marketing, let fly with a Twitter post touting their upcoming Ram EV – one day before the scheduled launch of the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning.
We pick back up in the Stutz story today, at a time when (once again) all was new and promising at the luxury brand. Under the company’s new ownership, Stutz had the funding for Italian craftsmanship and hand-built goodness. The all-new Stutz Blackhawk entered production in 1971.
Nineteen feet long and full of wood, precious metals, and optional mink upholstery, the Blackhawk asked for a stunning amount of money that was far greater than domestic personal luxury coupes and more than a Rolls-Royce. At a base ask of $22,500 ($162,533 adj.) in 1971 dollars, there were few cars that actually competed with the Blackhawk’s purchasable exclusivity. And said exclusivity attracted some very wealthy people. Let’s talk celebrity status.
A group of German automakers, chemical concerns, and battery producers have announced the joint development of a “battery passport” designed to help government regulators trace the history of the cells. The consortium is funded by the German government and is supposed to work in tandem with new battery regulations that are being prepared by the European Union.
According to the German economic ministry, officially the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the overarching plan is for the EU to mandate traceable hardware be installed in all batteries used in the continent by 2026. Those intended for use in electric vehicles are up first, with the passport scheme also serving to chronicle everything from the vehicle’s repair history to where the power cell’s raw materials were sourced. (Read More…)
Datsun is dead again and the likelihood of you having any emotions tied to the matter hinges upon whether or not you were driving prior to the 1990s. Formerly a catch-all brand for Nissan’s exports, the automaker eventually decided to unify its products under a single name when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Max Headroom was talking up the merits of New Coke on cathode-ray tubed televisions.
While the Datsun moniker would grace the odd pickup on the Japanese domestic market after the 1980s, Nissan planned a compressive relaunch of the brand in 2013. The following year, Datsun became a low-cost car marque for Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa, India, and Russia. A few years later, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Lebanon were added to the brand’s list of markets. However, Datsun had announced a retreat from Indonesia and Russia in 2019 and has since confirmed that it will be halting production in India later this year — effectively ending Datsun’s existence once again. (Read More…)
Following an abundance of rumor and conjecture (plus a bit of trying to wring the grapevine for news), top brass at General Motors have confirmed an electrified Corvette will prowl the streets and tracks of America as soon as next year. Even more interesting? An all-electric Corvette, based on The General’s new Ultium EV architecture, will also show up in due course.
Dodge’s import truck story began in 1979, when the Mitsubishi Forte (or L200) arrived on North American shores, rebadged as the Dodge D-50 and Plymouth Arrow. A captive import like the Colt, the durable Dodge D-50 (later Ram 50) proved itself a solid entrant into the compact pickup truck market. What proved unpopular was the Plymouth Arrow, which did not make it past its initial 1979-1982 outing. The Ram 50 was refreshed in 1982 but was certainly due for replacement in 1987 when the second generation arrived.
Once the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon, front-wheel-drive econoboxes that began life as Chrysler Europe designs, proved to be strong sellers in North America, Lee Iacocca and his poker buddies decided that a pickup based on the Omnirizon platform would be a fine idea. The result was the Dodge Rampage and its Plymouth-badged sibling, the Scamp. I found one of those cartrucks in a Denver-area wrecking yard a while back. (Read More…)
I got to thinking about one particular big old Kia from the late Nineties the other day, and upon searching it on The Internet, I realized the Korean manufacturer had a much longer history with large cars than I’d thought previously. Given most of them were (or are) off-limits to the North American market, it might be time for a history lesson. We begin today with Kia’s first large car. It’s one you’ve probably heard of, because it was a Peugeot.
Ford’s commercial vehicle arm has been teasing the upcoming Tourneo Custom EV ahead of its formal debut on May 9th, 2022. Ford Pro is eager to expand its lineup of all-electric light commercial vehicles and has already started production of the E-Transit, making the Euro-focused Tourneo the next model queued to be juiced up. (Read More…)
If you drive drunk in Tennessee and kill someone, and that someone has a child or children under the age of 18, you may end up paying child support.
After years of speculation that Mazda would someday bring back rotary-powered performance, the company is finally willing to confirm that our collective hope was not in vain. However, there will be no rear-drive RX model spinning up its triangular Wankel beyond 8,000 rpm because piston-free rotary engines are difficult to seal. Despite making oodles of power for their size, they’re not well optimized for everyday driving and tend to offer the kind of fuel economy and emissions that get regulators’ panties in a twist.
Given the circumstances, Mazda’s rotary will be returning as a range extender for the MX-30 PHEV. (Read More…)
Dan O’Dowd, the billionaire founder and CEO of Green Hills Software, has announced he’s running for the U.S. Senate and his campaign has a single platform — destroy Tesla Inc.
“Today I launched my campaign for U.S. Senate to make computers safe for humanity. The first danger I am tackling is @ElonMusk‘s reckless deployment of unsafe @Tesla Full Self-Driving cars on our roads,” O’Dowd tweeted on April 19th.
The tweet was accompanied by a 60-second advertisement that showed clips of various Tesla vehicles equipped with the contentious software nearly striking pedestrians and making other mistakes in traffic while a disembodied voice explains does its utmost to make you feel like Tesla is an evil company that wants its cars to kill people. (Read More…)
While it never managed to reach the notoriety of the Mercedes S-Class, BMW’s 7 Series has long been a popular alternative for well-dressed henchmen in action movies. There have even been periods where the Bimmer came pretty close to matching Daimler’s flagship sedan in terms of sales. But BMW’s decision to take what was effectively a well-appointed sports sedan and reform it into a limousine with an optional 601-horsepower V12 seems to have backfired.
The 7 Series is allegedly getting more in touch with its roots for the seventh generation (G70/G71) model and throwing in the all-electric i7 for good measure. However, the resulting automobile still looks to be following the lead of the Mercedes, rather than focusing on being the “ultimate driving machine” of yore. Meanwhile, BMW is pulling out all the stops in terms of styling and is throwing down every modern technology at its disposal. (Read More…)
Lincoln is promising three new fully-electric vehicles by 2025. Ford’s luxury arm took the wraps off of a concept previewing one of them last night.
Rare Rides Icons concluded its 22-part series on the Imperial recently, as the long-running luxury model-brand-model exercise by Chrysler came to its timely end in 1993. Today we embark on a new luxury car series. It’s one you’ve asked for, and it’s also about luxury cars and will be an extensive series. Come along, as we consider the life and times of Lincoln’s Mark series cars.
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