About a year ago we heard that European emissions standards had killed off any hope of a turbocharged version of the Toyobaru sports coupe. That may be true for the European market, but Japan’s Holiday Auto Magazine [as translated by the Toyobaru-crazed gents of FT-86.com] swears that a Subaru STI is under development which could offer a 40 to 50 hp bump over the stock 200 using a 2.5 liter turbocharged engine. Bigger wheels, fender arches and other racerish accoutrement would help set this apart as the only sporty variant of the FT-86 Toyobaru. And Holiday Auto won’t even speculate about a price premium, let alone the model’s chances of escaping the JDM. Still, it would be a great day to see the European market denied a truly desirable sports car that you could buy in the U.S. I want to believe! [Hat Tip:Yuichi]
A touching story of auto-industry love may be developing between Mitsubishi and PSA, reports All Cars Electric, citing Wards [sub] and French newspaper reports. It seems the French concern was deeply smitten with Mitsubishi’s $45k MiEV electric car and pursued the option for Citroen and Peugeot-branded versions. And apparently, the more PSA learned about the Japanese company, the more they liked. Did hands brush awkwardly over battery capacity charts, causing a thrilling moment of heart-fluttering eye contact? Executives did share the stage at the announcement of the EV-sharing deal, and now sources close to the deal say the new-found relationship could be snowballing towards a full-on R&D cost-sharing alliance.
I think what I saw at Chrysler is what people felt when Iacocca was there. It’s a new level of energy and enthusiasm because there’s new leadership of people that know what they’re doing, of people that have been successful in the automobile manufacturing business.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood waxes eloquent about the New New Chrysler and its Iacoccian leader, Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne. Speaking at the Detroit Economic Club [via Automotive News [sub]] LaHood said Marchionne represents “the next generation of leaders for the American automobile industry.” But who’d have thought Detroit would have had to look outside of, well, Detroit for that? Luckily LaHood was able to ward off such awkward questions by simply stating that “Detroit is back.” Yeah, now that the Italians have taken over. Elsewhere in his Detroit visit, LaHood also pronounced “Taurus is back. Ford is back” after a test drive, confirmed that “high speed rail is not competition for cars,” and predicted Detroit would become a “Midwest cruise-ship capital.” TTAC is still trying to confirm rumors that Secretary LaHood has money on the Lions making the playoffs this year.
With so much attention focused on next-next-gen, alt-energy auto technology, we enjoy highlighting the incremental changes that are making good old internal combustion engines more efficient. The latest evolution to show up on our radar screen is BMW’s development of a host of measures [via Green Car Congress] which it hopes will someday reduce the inefficiencies of cold starts. Perhaps the easiest way of reducing low-temperature, high-friction starts is to encase the engine to slow down the engine cooling process (as well as insulating components that might otherwise need to be cooled). In fact, BMW has shown that with encapsulation, a 176 degree operating-temperature engine can keep its temperature as high as 104 degrees after 12 hours. But good luck trying to change your oil when your engine is surrounded by thermal materials.
At this point about 19 percent… We’ll finalize that, but I’m not interested in going down from that
GM’s Fritz Henderson in Automotive News [sub] on his “plans” for GM’s market share. As Evan Newmark dryly puts it over at the WSJ’s Mean Street blog, “if the Norwegians are giving out Nobel Prizes for aspirations and efforts, then surely Mr. Henderson is up for one.”
Growing up my family owned a Jeep Wagoneer that consistently broke down towing our boat. My frugal parents couldn’t afford to have it repaired by a mechanic so my Pop dutifully bought the repair manual and spent his days off cursing under the hood in our driveway. He eventually grew so frustrated that he dropped a 500cu Cadillac engine in that old Jeep. Technology has made do-it-yourself repairs little more than nostalgic memories. Now it takes expensive diagnostic computers to identify why the light on the dash came on. And not only are the diagnostic computers expensive but in many cases the codes are proprietary. With recent dealership closures, congress has proposed legislation to protect consumers access to this critical repair information. HR 2057, the Rural Communities Stranded Without The Right To Repair Act would require auto manufacturers to make repair information and computer diagnostic codes available to the general public.
The guys at SpeedLux caught the Subaru version of the Toyobaru coupe practicing for the big dance at the Nurburgring. It sure isn’t as pretty as Toyota’s FT-86 concept, but Subaru’s brand faithful won’t let that get in their way. Of course there’s the minor detail that this is a mule, not a concept, but given Subaru’s perennial styling challenges, this might just be as good as it gets. Looks aside though, the shared boxer engine and Subaru-developed RWD driveline make it clear that the FT-86 will be the poser rebadge of the two coupes. Which is why it’s preening in Tokyo while the Subaru is running reps on the Norschleife. Here’s hoping we won’t have to stretch so far to determine the difference between Toyota and Subaru versions when they hit the market sometime in 2012-ish.
Bloomberg is reporting that a deal between Ford and the UAW has been reached. The deal is said to include a ban on most strikes, and wage freezes for new employees. In short, most of what it offered the automakers it holds equity stakes in. Of course, the deal still has to be approved by plant-level UAW leadership which tends to have a harder time understanding that not giving Ford these concessions makes the UAW look like its strangling a competitor to the OEMs it owns. “There’s a lot of sentiment against concessions inside the plant,” explains one Dearborn-based union. This despite the fact that Ford still won’t achieve parity with GM and Chrysler.
The AP [via Yahoo] reports that the FBI has begun using facial recognition software to dig through DMV photo archives searching for fugitives, causing new worries for privacy advocates. “Everybody’s participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver’s license,” the ACLU’s Christopher Calabrese explains. Drivers licenses, argues Calabrese are rapidly becoming more than, well, driver’s licenses. “Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they’re becoming the de facto law enforcement database,” he says. State and Federal laws prohibit the FBI from collecting and storing DMV records as a law-enforcement database, so the pilot program in North Carolina is taking place within the state DMV with its full cooperation.
Cadillac has confirmed that TTAC’s very own Jack Baruth will be allowed to compete in Bob Lutz’s SuperSedan Shootout (also known as the Cadillac V Series Challenge). The race will consist of five hot laps in any production sedan, and will take place at the Monticello Motor Club in upstate New York. Sadly, because of the time-trial format, we will not be treated to awesome footage of Jack putting Maximum Bob into the wall with some trademark “avoidable contact.” Still, TTAC’s resident speed freak will have the opportunity to take on GM’s resident cranky old man (as well as other bloggers) in a face-off that’s been nine years of online confrontation in the making. The only problem at this point is that the bastards at Jalopnik have stolen our whip…
The Wall Street Journal reports GM could conclude its Opel division sale by as early as Thursday, after Fritz Henderson and German officials both signaled that talks were nearing an end. Magna and its backer Sberbank will put down €500m ($740m) for 55 percent of Opel, while Opel’s labor unions have agreed to €265m worth of cost savings. The German government aid package said to total €4.5b through 2015 has yet to be finalized, but this apparently will not affect the deal. The major issue still under negotiation is the potential job loss across Europe, as the EU has already warned Germany that it my not “buy” jobs with its aid package at the expense of other EU nations. Which means Spain, Belgium, Britain and Poland still have to play “shuffle the jobs.” Magna has said that Opel could shed as many as 10,500 jobs, including 4,000 in Germany. On the upside Opel’s unions are getting ten percent of New Opel, although their decision making power is another of the issues still being negotiated. GM fought long and hard to prevent the sale of Opel to Magna/Sberbank, but with the major obstacles to the deal overcome there’s little left to do but grin and sign the papers. And then sit back and watch as Opel’s technology is leveraged to create a modern (and heavily subsidized) Russian auto industry which will challenge Chevy’s position in the Eastern European markets.
This is a tough call. But first, let’s play connect the dots . . . Twice upon a time, I touched upon the fact that the expression “The Cadillac of . . .” had all but disappeared from the popular lexicon. Joe Blow was no longer associating otherwise unrelated product excellence with GM’s luxury brand. A few weeks later, one of our Best and Brightest sent us a screen cap of a Google ad for the new Cadillac SRX, which claimed the vehicle was the “Cadillac of Crossovers.”(Someone at RenCen was paying attention.) And now, suddenly, Cadillac as metaphor has re-entered the mainstream. The debate over a proposed federal tax on health care premiums above $8k (private) or $21k (families) refers to said policies as “Cadillac health care plans.” Here’s the lede from today’s New York Times: “A proposed tax on high-cost, or ‘Cadillac,’ health insurance plans has touched off a fierce clash between the Senate and the House as they wrestle over how to pay for legislation that would provide health benefits to millions of uninsured Americans.” The Times, which never met a tax it didn’t like, feels obliged to put the GM brand in quotes. Why’s that then?
An anonymous vigilante in Rovaniemi, Finland destroyed a speed camera with military-grade explosives on Wednesday. Video of the assault uploaded to YouTube showed the remote detonation of a 700g charge cleanly blew the head off an automated ticketing machine on a deserted road (watch video below). The assault appears to be the most professionally executed attack recorded on tape. In 2006, a British man used thermite to damage what he thought was a speed camera, but turned out to be a police surveillance device.
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