In an interview with Automotive News (registration required), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration director David Strickland said that if automakers want to keep their cars and trucks from getting recalled, those cars must not just meet standards in effect at the time vehicles are produced, but that the car companies must also make sure they stay as safe, statistically, as competitors’ products that use different designs.
The little red car sat squat and low on the street looking for all the world like the product of an unlikely tryst between a Dodge Viper and a child’s pedal car. It was a classic two seat sports car, with short rear deck, small passenger compartment and “long” hood that stretched away from the driver just far enough to cover the engine beneath it. The proportions were right, but the actual numbers were ludicrous: 81 inch wheel base, 54 inches wide, a curb weight just a touch under 1600 pounds and 660 CC engine with a maximum horsepower rating of just 63 horsepower. This was going to be an experience, I knew, but first I had to figure out how I was going to fit behind the wheel. Read More >
I’ve had the Cadillac for about three weeks. During this time, I’ve learned a lot of things. Primarily, I’ve learned that it takes at least three weeks for a new key fob to reach a Cadillac dealer. I find this hard to believe, but I’m reassured by my salesman’s constant phone calls that insist it will arrive “any day now.”
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Love ’em or hate ’em, car auctions are a part of the hobby. The hype is annoying, but the only true way to gauge something’s value right now is to put it up for sale. In that case, the most valuable car in the world today is Mercedes-Benz W196R chassis number 00006/54. It sold at Bonhams‘ auction held in conjunction with this year’s Goodwood Festival for $29,619,826, shattering the record for price paid for a car at auction. The previous most expensive car in the world, a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa went for $16,390,000 in 2011 at Pebble Beach. One of 10 surviving cars out of 14 W196R racers made, it’s the car’s provenance that makes it so valuable. Sir Stirling Moss raced it, but more significantly, Juan Manuel Fangio drove this car to victory at the Grands Prix in Germany and Switzerland in 1954, on his way to the world championship that year.
Another Mercedes-Benz car with provenance associated with two well known figures will be going on the block at Auctions America’s upcoming auction in Burbank, California. That’s an appropriate location to be selling the 1957 300 SL roadster owned by two notable television personalities, Robert Stack and Desi Arnaz. In 1960, Stack was enjoying the success of the Untouchables tv show, produced by Arnaz and Lucille Ball’s Desilu studio. A car guy who raced Model A Fords and speedboats, he considered buying a used 300SL in a Mercedes-Benz showroom on Sunset Blvd. In 1998 he told Motor Trend, “the lines were just beautiful…Every day I’d look at it, and my wife would ask why don’t I just save up and get it. Well, I’d never pay that much money for a car for myself.” Someone else bought the car, but unbeknownst to Stack it was his friend and boss Arnaz, who knew of Stack’s desire for the car. That year Stack won an Emmy for his role on the Untouchables while Arnaz was winning one for producing the show. After the ceremony, they were basking in their success. “We’re standing around holding the Emmys and Desi says ‘Let’s go outside, Amigo.’ All of a sudden I hear a roar and around the corner screams this green Mercedes and a guy with Mercedes overalls gets out and says ‘Mr. Stack, here are your keys.’” Stack owned the car until his death in 2003. Since then it’s been repainted in a dark red, but it’s otherwise close to original condition, with blue California UNTCHBL license plates.
The 300 SL was popular in Hollywood but other celebrities preferred the gravitas of the so-called grosser Mercedes, the 1974 600 Pullman limousine, an example of which will also cross the block at the Burbank auction. One of only 429 long wheelbase 600 series cars, it also has celebrity provenance, having been owned by the British acid jazz band Jamiroquai and is said to have appeared in one of their music videos.
No, that’s not a typo. Al is the periodic table symbol for aluminum – the stuff that the next F-150 will be made of.
The wraps are finally off the first Datsun in decades – dubbed the Go, this will be Nissan’s major push into low cost motoring, with a starting price under $6,700.
Ever since Isaac Singer figured that he could make more money making sewing machines for the European market in a factory near Glasgow rather than export them from his Elizabeth, New Jersey plant, manufacturing companies have built products where they’ve sold them.
Around the same time that the one millionth U.S. built Kia rolled off a Georgia assembly line, the first Ram ProMaster was being built in a Mexican Chrysler factory. The ProMaster, a revised Fiat Ducato, will give Chrysler/Dodge/Ram dealers a large commercial van to sell for the first time since the Mercedes based Sprinter went away in 2010.
Both General Motors and the Volkswagen group can claim bragging rights after Chinese sales results for June have been announced. VW outsold GM for the month, 262, 700 units to 236,207, but GM was still ahead for the first six months of 2013 with 1.57 million units sold compared to 1.54 million for VW.
After the leadership change last week, we opened up some communication with Steve Lang about returning to TTAC. Most of our readers would like to see the man behind the gavel back in action here. Unfortunately, Mr. Lang is as tough a negotiator behind the scenes as he is on the gravel of a buy-here-pay-here lot. We’ll continue to work with him to return “Hammer Time” to these pages, but in the meantime Steve’s asked us to print his “final goodbye”. While we haggle with the man, you can find him at Curbside Classic. Cross your fingers! — JB
“Wow! How many people have you helped?”
My father was looking at an article I wrote about car buying during the last few months of his life. He was shocked to see how many folks here at TTAC left their insightful comments and ideas within a matter of a few hours.
Though much of the attention paid to new automotive drivetrains recently has focused on hybrids and battery electric vehicles, the simple fact is that internal combustion engines are going to be around for a while. They’re still teaching the old dog a few tricks and even coming up with a new breed or two as can be seen every year at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress, in Detroit’s Cobo Hall. There is always at least a handful of inventors and promoters at the SAE confab showing off their new engine designs. Maybe it’s the romantic idea of a lone inventor trying to prove his concept in the face of a skeptical world, but after looking over the convention program, the booth that I most wanted to visit was that for the Waissi Engine, the invention of Gary Waissi, an engineering professor at Arizona State University. Read More >
It doesn’t take graphs and analytics to tell you that the crossover utility market is red hot right now. The roads are absolutely jammed packed with them and as their popularity has been on the rise the fortunes of other once popular family vehicles like the minivan have been on the wane. To be honest, I am at something of a loss to really explain why that is. They are, in my opinion, an odd combination that offers none of the real benefits of a true four wheel drive SUV, none of the room or cargo capacity of a van, and virtually none of the economy or road handling of a small car. Why oh why, then, did I buy one? Read More >
Canada’s auto industry grew 1.3% in June 2013, an increase of a couple thousand vehicles. No brand sold more often than Ford. No manufacturer sold more vehicles than Ford Motor Company. No June in history saw Canadians buy more vehicles than they did last month.
Spy photos in Germany of a heavily camouflaged small Ford have set the Brazilian blogosphere on fire. The initial photos were published by a Malaysian site that didn’t really know what they were seeing. It turns out that it’s actually the new Ford Ka, a very important car for our market (and the car I currently drive).
I recently wrote an article entitled “Going Ugly On Purpose.” This was a piece about how automakers are intentionally uglifying their base-level vehicles so people pay more for nicer models. Many of you read this story from start to finish, absorbed the facts, perused the nuances, and then scrolled straight to the comments where you got into a fight about California versus Texas.
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