‘Good job, Al’, ‘Thanks Bill’

For the 16th consecutive quarter, Ford Motor Co. profits have risen, with the Dearborn automaker reporting a 2nd quarter 2013 profit of $1.23 billion, up 18.6% from 2012, working out to 45¢ per share, exceeding analysts’ projections of 37 cents a share. Pretax profit for the quarter was up 40% to $2.56 billion. The company said that it set records for pre-tax profits in both the 2nd quarter and 1st half of 2013, making $4.8 billion in the first six months of the year.

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“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” – Henry Ford

Anyone who aspires to review cars should give Mary Walton’s “Car: A Drama of the American Workplace” a careful examination. In 392 pages, Walton introduces us to the men and women who went through the gruelling task of designing, engineering and planning DN101, the second-generation Ford Taurus that was meant to dethrone the Toyota Camry once and for all from its spot as America’s favorite car. Only the hardest of hearts would fail to identify with the Ford staffers who spent billions of dollars and countless hours slaving away at a project that ultimately flopped in the marketplace. I know it gave me pause for a long time when it came time to review a car. I began to second guess whether it was right to harp on some poorly fitting trim or wonky steering feel or a carried-over powertrain. Surely, someone wanted to do better, but budget constraints, infighting or other external factors must have conspired to taint their platonic ideal of an automobile.

And then I spoke to someone who worked at Ford and told me the story of their mother’s car shopping experience. “I went to the Lincoln dealer with her to look at a new MKZ,” he told me. “I was there, wearing my Ford jacket, picking the car apart on the showroom floor, cussing and spitting tobacco into a cup. There was flash (extra plastic that hasn’t been filed away) on the fascia. The fit was poor. My mom ended up buying a Lexus.”

Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad anymore.

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Bentley Motors today has confirmed that a fourth model will join the Bentley lineup, this one a SUV, and that it will be built at the British luxury car maker’s Crewe plant starting in 2016 after a £800 million ($1.228 B USD) investment in the facility. The automaker says that over 1,000 new jobs will be created to manufacture the unnamed SUV, which is said to look nothing like the widely criticized EXP 9F concept shown last year. A very basic sketch of the planned vehicle was also released. The company said that Bentley customers have responded “extremely” positively to the idea of a SUV that wears the winged B and claims that the car will be “a thoroughbred Bentley” and have styling that sets “it apart from any other SUV on the road”. Like the company’s Continental models which are related to the Audi A8 and Volkswagen Phaeton, though, the new Bentley SUV will likely share a platform and components with other VAG vehicles.

Bentley press release below. Read More >

The honeymoon is now officially over. 2011 Ford Motor Co. photo.

Two years ago, Ford and Toyota agreed to perform a feasibility study on the two companies working together to develop a hybrid drivetrain for rear wheel drive pickups and SUVs. Apparently, working together wasn’t going to be feasible because Ford and Toyota have both issued statements announcing the end of the tie-up. Ford said that the Dearborn automaker will be developing their own hybrid system for RWD and said that the completely new hybrid architecture will be available by 2020. Read More >

Cadillac is making a major change to its logo for the first time since 1999, rumored to be appearing for the first time next month at Pebble Beach. If Cadillac does use the Pebble Beach festivities to introduce the large RWD flagship sedan that Dan Akerson recently announced, you can expect to see it bearing the new logo for its public debut as well. The current logo is rather long in the tooth for a Cadillac emblem. It’s usually changed more frequently, 40 times since it was first used in 1906. The latest iteration will not have the laurel wreath that currently surrounds the coat of arms. Read More >

In the spirit of our many posts (here, here and here) about the Hongqi Red Flag limousines used by the Communist Party elites in China, and our own Murilee Martin’s interest in limos from the former Soviet Bloc (here), we bring you the winner of a design sponsored by Russia’s Maruissia Motors and the CarDesign.ru website.

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Well, folks, it was nice knowing you. Really, it was. I’ll never forget the days I spent reading Nissan LEAF-related anecdotes from gslippy, and Hummer-related anecdotes from Hummer, and of course fully capitalized anecdotes from bigtruckseriesreview @ Youtube. Really, ladies and gentlemen: the pleasure was all mine.

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A lifetime of World War 2 movies and an 11 year marriage has taught me one thing about the Japanese; they never do anything half way. Whether it is diving a Zero into an American ship or cutting yours truly down to size, if it is a job worth doing it is worth being fanatical about. The attention to detail the Japanese put into every tiny thing they do is awe-inspiring and so it makes sense that when a Japanese car company spends billions of yen to design and produce a vehicle, they back that up with a mechanics’ training program so thorough that an average graduate can completely tear down and rebuild one of their cars. And isn’t it convenient that one of Nissan’s main training centers was located just a kilometer from where I used to live? Read More >

Like any red-blooded American, I have some pet peeves… like people that wait to merge until the last second, discovering a lack of toilet paper, and brake dust. Why God allows brake dust to exist will be one of the first questions I ask Him when I arrive at the gates of St. Peter. A molecular engineering textbook written in Wingdings would make more sense to me than why we can’t invent brakes without brake dust, or at least something that stops brake dust from getting on our wheels. I will get into how to clean wheels in a future post, but for now I’m trying to stop the monster from ruining yet another set of wheels. It’s not just an appearance issue either; brake dust is corrosive and over time will damage your rims. As always, I will only use products that the average car owner has access to and could easily use. I’m sure there are differences in brake pads that effect the amount of dust produced, but they will have to pay someone else $0 to do that test.

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As Detroit’s own police force tells tourists that the city is too dangerous to enter and local judges use the city’s financial collapse to interview for jobs in the District of Columbia, many of its residents would surely like something a little more bullet-resistant than, say, a Chevy Sonic purchased at supplier discount. Many of Detroit’s residents have previously worked in quieter, safer locales like Kandahar or Kosovo and remember that the proper vehicle for such an environment is a nice, solid, low-mileage main battle tank. But where can such items be purchased? And where can newly-minted tank owners learn the skills they’ll need to operate yesterday’s armored equipment on tomorrow’s streets?

The answer is here, and it’s called Tank Town USA!

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Photo shamelessly stolen from here  because I can’t actually show the one I drove.

Prior to my current posh post, last year I was posted in the now defunct TTAC Caribbean bureau. It was in Curacao, a small Dutch protectorate just north of Venezuela.

While there, I did have a chance to test drive a “Hard Car.” A 2005 Scaletta Moloney Armored Police Code Crown Victoria. When offered the keys to this unnecessary luxury, I snapped them up faster than the boss could say “what the…”and hit the streets of Curacao looking for villains to mock from behind 2 inch layered ballistic glass like Billy Crystal ala’ “Running Scared.” Alas,’ there were no criminal masterminds. Like most tropical locations, Curacao has a good bit of petty crime, but is a safe place. Instead, I occupied myself by sampling the manners of a unique version of a very common car.

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Final assembly at Lotus’ Hethel plant

DRB-HICOM, which owns the Proton car company in Malaysia and Lotus in the UK, announced at the Jakarta launch of the Proton Preve that the British specialist sports car maker and engineering firm has been “cleaned up” and is proceeding with a three year product plan based on variants of the Elise, Exige and Evora cars, starting with the £52,900 Exige S roadster.

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Land Rover’s Solihull plant will produce all-aluminum 3 Series fighters for Jaguar, starting in 2015

The Ford Mondeo based X-Type failed to get Jaguar a foothold in the segment that is usually defined by the BMW 3 Series and the cars that compete with the 3. Now the Financial Times has reported that Jaguar will be launching an entire line of entry level luxury vehicles for that critical segment and that the new cars, said to be ready for sale about two years from now, will benefit from Jaguar’s expertise with lightweight aluminum structures.

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Noriko Uno was killed in 2009 when her 2006 Toyota Camry sudenly accelerated to 100 MPH, resulting in her leaving the roadway and hitting a telephone pole and a tree in the median. Today, jury selection begins in a California lawsuit filed by her survivors.

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During a visit to USA Today‘s editorial offices, CEO Dan Akerson of General Motors clarified the question of a rear wheel drive Cadillac flagship.  Akerson confirmed that Cadillac is indeed working on a RWD based model that will likely slot in above Cadillac’s current top of the line XTS sedan and probably go on sale in 2015.

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