Now and then a story comes along that’s right in a writer’s wheelhouse. Yesterday, Chrysler filed a lawsuit in US District Court alleging that Pure Detroit, a small chain of gift shops specializing in Motor City memorabilia, was infringing on their trademark “Imported From Detroit” tagline, popularized in Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad starring rapper Eminem. Pure Detroit started selling their version of the shirts on Feb. 7th, the day after the Super Bowl, followed by Chrysler’s own shirts a few days later, which sold out in short order. Chrysler is donating the profits from those sales to Detroit area charities, and the company says that it tried to work out a similar arrangement with Pure Detroit. Pure Detroit did agree to stop online sales, but they continued to sell the shirts in their retail stores, resulting in the lawsuit. Courts have been pretty consistent that owners of intellectual property have to diligently defend it. According to a leading intellectual property attorney, in this case the courts should side with the Auburn Hills automaker, not the small stores in downtown Detroit.

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This driver had the bad luck of being on a coastal road in Japan when the tsunami hit. He had the good luck to make it through alive. And he had the amazing luck to have a video camera going while it happened, capturing the tsunami crashing into road and car. Read More >

It is one of those strange twists of fate that Toyota’s arch-nemesis, GM, would be one of the first overseas automakers to experience shutdowns caused by a lack of supplies from tsunami-devastated Japan. Read More >

Last year, GM’s German patient, Opel, hemorrhaged $1.6 billion. It could easily have been twice than that, if Nick Reilly had fired the more than 8,000 workers that are on Opel’s endangered species list. Letting people go can get very expensive in Europe if you are a going concern. The only factory that was closed was Antwerp, to the tune of $532 million. That came to a little bit over $200,000 per worker. Reilly didn’t want to rain on the IPO roadshow, and moved the mass firings to this year. GM’s thank you: Reilly was fired. Read More >

Ethan writes:

Steve and Sajeev,

I’m a young gentleman in college, and I currently own a 1995 Volvo 850 wagon, a 2005 Dodge Ram and a 2005 Cadillac SRX with the Northstar (I received a good deal.) I adore the Caddy, but I recently have been lucky enough to come across a bit of money. With that money I am looking to try to find a car to take the Caddy’s place as my daily driver when I’m home. I have my heart set on a new Maserati Quattroporte, now that it has had a true automatic for a few years. Even though the Maser has a extremely frustrating dashboard button layout, it is the best driving large sedan I have ever been graced with the opportunity to drive. But I have looked at the much uglier, faster, and more expensive Panamera too, and that’s where my dilemma begins… I want to know, should I buy one of these two cars, or is there a better option out there? By the way, I don’t want another SUV, and I’m 6’5” and over 300 lbs. so no smallish sedan will ever accommodate my body (I can’t drive the Aston Martin Rapide, sadly because the seat is too narrow, and my driving loafers tend to cover more than one pedal each.)

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The greatest thing about the Nissan Juke is its absolute peach of an engine, a 1.6 liter, direct-injected, turbocharged little screamer. In fact it’s such a wickedly fun little engine that it’s a shame it exists only in a polarizing vehicle like the Juke. To that end, I noted in my review of Nissan’s funky “sportcross” that

Without the marketers, it’s tempting to believe that Nissan’s engineers would have widened the Versa platform, added the fantastic turbocharged engine, and then decided to simply put a steroidal Versa body on top, creating the king of all B-segment hot hatches.

Well, according to this shot from China Car Times, at least part of that fantasy is coming true. In this first shot of an updated “2011/2012” Tiida (Versa), you can see the phrase “DIG Turbo” gracing its flanks, suggesting that the Juke’s little 188 HP mill (or, at least a detuned version of same) could be headed to the next-gen Versa. Does this mean a high-po “GTI”-style variant is coming to America’s best-selling B-segment car? Let’s hope so. Frankly, the more vehicles that get that feisty little engine, the better. [Awesome “Engine porn” video for Nissan’s 1.6 DIG Turbo after the jump]

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With the proliferation of in-car connectivity systems like SYNC, MyLink, MyFordTouch, Blue&Me, etc, the ability of a car to play MP3s, read out text messages and update social media accounts has surpassed such traditional attributes as power, efficiency and handling for many car buyers. And though many of these OEM-branded systems are underpinned by identical software architectures from Microsoft or Garmin, they are taking an ever-more important place in the marketing of new cars. Differentiating these differentiators, then, takes a huge amount of development effort on the part of automakers and their suppliers, and the result is another electronic system with the potential to go out of date with the same speed as a cellular phone. Wouldn’t it be smarter to just create an open-standard connection between your phone and your car so that you don’t need to replace your car when its onboard connectivity electronics go out of date? That’s the goal of the Car Connectivity Consortium, which is aiming to explode the OEM-branded in-car connectivity model.
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Opel and Renault are next in what probably will be an increasing number of casualties after Japan’s earthquake last week led to shutdowns of car parts factories.

According to Automotive News [sub], Opel will stop the lines at its plant Zaragoza, Spain, for 24 hours this coming Monday. The reason: an electronic item has not arrived from Japan. More stoppages are possible.

Closer to Japan, Renault will cut output at its factory in Busan, South Korea, by 15 to 20 percent. Problems with parts supplies from Japan have an impact on the SM7. A Renault spokesman hopes “a solution will be found rapidly.”

Apart from donating 1,000 portable generators, Honda delivers something really useful: Precise information about road conditions in the disaster areas. Together with Google Maps and Honda’s traffic data suppliers Internavi and Smartloop, Honda provides real time road conditions for the disaster stricken areas. Read More >

Grassroots anti-camera activists in Missouri yesterday charged that a photo enforcement firm was creating fake advocacy groups to promote the use of red light cameras and speed cameras. Wrong on Red and the Jefferson County Tea Party blasted American Traffic Solutions (ATS) for hiding its involvement in a slick advertising effort designed to persuade the legislature to allow photo ticketing to continue uninterrupted in the state.

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We had predicted early on that “the disaster in Japan could have a major impact” not just on the Japanese auto industry, but on the auto industry worldwide. If anyone had silently hoped (you can’t say these things aloud) that the disaster over there would provide breathing room for the car industry over here, then get ready for a disappointment. First automaker to be affected over here by the Japan syndrome is GM. Read More >

Under fire for its un-annotated edits to Scott Burgess’s Chrysler 200 Review, the Detroit News has reposted Burgess’s original review even as the departed critic confirmed that those edits were the reason for his departure. The NYT reports

“What we did was wrong because it was done at an advertiser’s request,” said Mr. Burgess, who had been at the paper since 2005. “I was ashamed I made the changes.”

Mr. Burgess said he first tendered his resignation on Monday, but was asked to reconsider. Susan Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, said his resignation was effective on Wednesday.

The episode marked the first time Mr. Burgess had been directed to alter a review due to a negative reaction — from an advertiser or otherwise. “There were plenty of times where I’d written reviews that people were upset about, but we never did what we did on Friday.”

Online changes were made without any notation that the piece was re-edited, which breaches accepted industry practice, said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a journalism training and advocacy center in St. Petersburg, Fla. “What happened gives the impression that content might be for sale, whether that’s real or perceived. And that will cause the erosion of trust in the newsroom.”

DetN business editor Susan Carney admits that the situation was handled “poorly.” Burgess will be appearing on AutoLine After Hours at 7 p.m. ET, and is likely to comment further on the story.

Sometimes news stories don’t need commentary. This little item, from orange.co.uk, seems like one of those stories:

Simona Suhoi, 28, faces up to five years in jail after police found her behind the wheel a month after she was banned from driving.

The former singer and designer, who is known as Simona Sensual, was pulled her over for not wearing a seatbelt in her home city of Bucharest.

She said: “I admit I shouldn’t have driven the car but I had no other choice.

“You see, I was having terrible pains in the chest, I think it was because of these brand new breast implants.

“I tried to get a taxi but they were all busy so I jumped into the car and dashed for the clinic. I mean, what was I supposed to do?”

And aren’t two airbags safer than one seatbelt anyway? You’ve been a great crowd, don’t forget to tip your waitresses.

I’ve dispatched one of TTAC’s writers to get to the bottom of the copyright fight that’s surrounding Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” tagline, as Reuters reports that Chrysler’s claim to the line may not actually hold up.
Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

[Moda’s] attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

But the attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”

Meanwhile, another battle over automotive copyrights may yet be brewing: Saab has introduced its own answer to SYNC and Onstar, named IQon, a term which may be in conflict with Nissan’s display technology used in the Juke, named I-Con. Hit the jump to see a video of the Nissan system in action, and let us know if you think Saab is going to have to come up with a new name, or if copyright law will let both of these naems coexist.
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Good news! Google Maps will now point you to the nearest “electric car charging station” if you search for same, reports CR.

[Google] is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing a database of available charging stations (known as EVSEs, or electric vehicle supply equipment) around the United States. Installers of EVSEs have the option of having their stations displayed as public. When we were charging the Nissan Leaf at our facility, not a public venue, our chargers showed up on the Leaf’s navigation system; The navi in the Leaf is designed to remember sites at which it had been charged.

The bad news? Well, just look at that map. Unless you live in California, you don’t need Google to tell you where the nearest charging station is, you need a clairvoyant to tell you where one might someday be built. If you’re still struggling to understand why EVs need to be tested on a local level before the federal government spends more money subsidizing them on a national level, look no further.
[UPDATE: The screen grab above is not comprehensive. Surf over Google Maps for a closer look at EV charging stations in your area]