GM’s Opel unit is faced with dwindling demand and wants to shorten workers’ hours at its Rüsselsheim plant, media from Reuters to Germany’s Manager Magazin report. Rüsselsheim makes the Opel Insignia, and for that, the rapidly deteriorating southern European markets are especially important, an Opel spokesman said. A shortened work week at Opel’s engine plant in Kaiserslautern is also being negotiated, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says. However, this is Germany, and it is not as easy as is sounds. Read More >
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The sink itself is a recycled oil sump
Israeli artist Ronen Wasserman turned recycling into an art form. Literally. For the Ronmen TinMan design studio, Wasserman creates on-off furniture pieces from recycled car parts. Says TinMan in its mission statement: Read More >
Last week, Jalopnik ran a story bemoaning the loss of Joel Ewanick, complete with some appropriately DeLorean-esque winks towards possible conspiracy and a note that Mr. Ewanick just busted out a $1.4 million mortgage for a home in Detroit. This doesn’t seem like a good deal; surely $1.4 mil should get you, oh, I don’t know, 1,400 homes in Detroit.
What was so great about the guy who apparently green-lit “Chevy Runs Deep”? Perhaps a look into what GM once considered to be good marketing copy will offer some insight.
… most, if not all of them seem to land in the moderation queue at the moment. This appears to be caused by a computer problem of so far unknown nature, and is not due to some baton-wielding police action. Read More >
A few years ago, we drove the Switzer P800, a Nissan GT-R that put slightly over seven hundred horsepower to the wheels. Switzer has since gone on to sell dozens of P800 kits; in fact, your humble author worked with Switzer for the summer of 2010 in an advisory capacity to help sell even more of them. If you’re going to drive a GT-R, you might as well drive a really fast one, right?
Switzer’s customers weren’t satisfied with 800 horses at the crank, though; they wanted a thousand at the crank. And once that was done, they wanted a thousand. At the wheels. Getting to that level wasn’t easy.
New exterior
Last year I recommended the Hyundai Elantra Touring for those who “want a simply designed car that’s easy to see out of, capable of toting a bunch of stuff, solidly constructed, and fun to drive.” A replacement was on the horizon, and I wondered if it would retain the ET’s increasingly uncommon strengths. Well, the 2013 Elantra GT is now here, and it performs well enough to rank above other new compact Hyundais. But what about its predecessor?
Tycho of Beijing’s Carnewschina is onto a rapidly trending phenomenon among the big boys of China: Heavy trucks with convertible tops. It appears to be an aftermarket mod that is not always strictly voluntary: Trucks sometimes roll. Due to the amazing build quality of Chinese trucks and the help of a few hundred migrant workers, a rolled truck quickly is back on its many wheels. With parts essential for a repair safely secured, the chop-top truck is back on its merry way. Read More >
The Wall Street Journal has an extensive report in which Neal Boudette caught BMW cheating with its sales numbers. Boudette unmasked the shocking practice of car makers selling cars to dealers instead to customers: “Hundreds of BMWs counted as sold in July remain in showroom inventories and are still advertised for sale as new cars, according to dealers.” The WSJ dug deeper into the scandal.
Ben Klayman, Reuters’ Detroit-based crack car correspondent, wrote a very good feature on self-driving cars. After interviewing many sources, he comes to the conclusion that “it’s been more than half a century since some of the first concept cars boasting self-driving features were presented to the world” and that this probably will not change anytime soon. Even Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and the staunchest supporter of the technology cautiously says that “self-driving cars should in our lifetime become the predominant way.” Read More >
How far will an insurance company go to save money? Most people expect modern insurers to attempt to wiggle out of claims, use inferior parts to repair a car, or argue every possible technicality. How about defending in court the person who kills one of their insured clients, just to make sure they don’t have to come across with underinsured-motorist coverage?
Sometimes there is no point in buying new.
Case in point? Well consider the folks who are the anti-enthusiasts. The ones who look at cars as rolling spreadsheets where the owner simply needs to divine the biggest bang for the buck.
Maruti Suzuki “ will likely resume partial production at its violence-hit factory in Manesar, in the northern state of Haryana, by Aug. 21,” says The Nikkei [sub]. The plant remains closed since a mob killed the firm’s human resources manager and burned down parts of the factory. Fifty management personnel and 9 police officers were injured during the clashes. Mass arrests were made. Maruti Suzuki declared an indefinite lockout at the plant on July 21. Read More >
TTAC commentator Sinistermisterman writes:
Why isn’t Sajeev all over this one like a rash? GM recalls 38,000 cop cars.
Europeans: Use instead of Euros. Americans: Use it as a screensaver
Shame, yes, shame on you, Americans, you horrible people. You are the weakest of the globe – when it comes to Porsche’s July numbers. Porsche sales in the U.S. climbed only a miserable one percent. At the same time, people in Europe withdrew their last sinking Euros from faltering banks and moved them to the safety of a new 911 or Cayman. Read More >
Here is the perfect way to fight a brewing PR disaster from boiling over: Fire your CEO! Fisker Automotive named the former head of the Chevy Volt, Tony Posawatz, as CEO today, “marking the second time the green car start-up has replaced its top executive this year,” as Reuters can’t help to remark. Read More >
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