Automotive Reporter Biz News for Wk of 11-9-15

This week’s column can be posted on your refrigerator as a hint for Santa this Christmas.
If you don’t get what you want this year, perhaps you can just print up a 3-D version of anything your heart desires.
It’s coming to that.

On display at the SEMA show in Las Vegas, the Local Motors’ LM3D Swim—which the company touts as the “latest rapid vehicle iteration leading to a fully homologated 3D-printed vehicle…”
Say what?

That’s a fancy way of saying the 3D-printed car will be approved for sale, and you can purchase one as early as next year. The LM3D-Swim is the first of a series of vehicles to be built using the Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) process, which includes 3D printing. 

The design for the car by Local Motors’ community member, Kevin Lo, was selected by a judging panel that included Jay Leno and SEMA VP of Vehicle Technology, John Waraniak. Local Motors is now entering the car into the testing phase, including trials for highway safety and federal crash tests.  The company is constructing a microfactory in Knoxville, Tennessee, to produce the vehicles starting next year. MRSP will be around $53,000.
Colored ink is optional.

A few months ago I wrote about a problem created by trying to put the wrong tires on my MX-5 Miata. I learned the chassis for the Mazda utilizes the same geometry and design as a Lotus, and was in fact told that the Mazda two-seater is essentially a Japanese Lotus.

Pretty sure Lotus doesn’t tell everyone it’s a British Miata, but the similarities in proportional performance still exist. Behold, Lotus is now offering the 2017 Evora 400, which boasts 55-hp more oomph, 92-pounds less weight, and a plethora of advancements.  The company produced this promotional video to show how much fun you can buy for $91,375.

The newest Evora is fitted with a mid-mounted supercharged 400-hp 3.5-Litre V-6 on a new aluminum chassis wrapped in a composite body.
Are you reading this, Santa?

If yon’t have $91k to plunk down on a Lotus, there’s always the Mazda Miata or Toyota’s Scion FR-S. Evo’s “Deadly Rivals” series pits the pair on a racetrack with Dan Prosser at the controls. He’s partial to one car, but cannot deny the superiority of the other. The video tells the tale of the tape.
This clip is also great for sharing with Santa.

We teased this news last week on the Automotive Reporter Radio Show: Hyundai is creating a separate division with its ‘Genesis’ brand to compete with the world’s leading luxury car nameplates. The company’s press release touts “human-centered” luxury with a half-dozen new models. 

Genesis will change its model designations to an alpha system, combining “G” with the numbers 90, 80, 0r 70. In your face, M-Series.

Hyundai is also retooling the Genesis winged badge emblem to create a more luxurious look. Back atcha, Bentley. 

This makes perfect business sense.
For a long time I have believed the Genesis series of automobiles to be among the best values on the road, blending manufacturing excellence with sexy design cues, and backed by Hyundai’s nearly interminable 100,000k warranty.

Dodge SRT is adopting the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving as the “official” driving school of the brand. When you purchase a new 2015 or ’16 SRT model, you receive one full-day session of high-performance driving, including track time and professional instruction.
Hotel and airfare not included.

The entire fleet of Bondurant trainers is being converted to Dodge SRT’s—Chargers, Challengers, and Vipers.

Bondurant says he’s been waiting for the right circumstances to launch the school and capitalize on his racing championship legacy. “The Dodge/SRT muscle cars provide me the perfect platform needed to thoroughly teach road racing,” he says.

The classes combine advanced street driving skills with proven racing techniques, plus hours of track time for vital hands-on experience behind the wheel. The course includes skid control, accident avoidance, line technique and a lead-and-follow session.
This would make a great stocking stuffer. Just sayin...

Following the legacy of its founder, Ford Motor Company is sharing the intellectual wealth by licensing robotic vehicle testing technology to other car makers. Working with Autonomous Solutions Inc, Ford has developed a turnkey test kit available directly from ASI. The package can save time and spare human drivers from the tedium of driving over curbs and through potholes in automobile endurance testing. Or they could just slap a GoPro on some of the bluehair drivers in Houston for that test.

The robotically driven vehicles will perform repetitive tests on torturous surfaces with names like Silver Creek, Power Hop Hill and Curb Your Enthusiasm, compressing ten years of daily driving abuse into courses just a few hundred yards long. 

They should come tryout Houston’s Monroe Drive near the Hobby Airport.
Same thing.

Listen to the Automotive Reporter Radio Show every weekend on Stitcher.com, or from our webpage.

Automotive Reporter Biz News for Wk of 11-2-15

Some days, I wished I worked for Mazda.
It would be so much easier to justify writing about their product line, extolling the virtues of their engineering, and praising the artistry of their designs.
 

By the way, I am still in search (cough, cough) of a full time job (ahem).

Over the weekend, the magicians from Mazda unveiled the new RX-7 Rotary Vision concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show. Think MX-5 with a sloping roofline and a zippy Skyactiv-R power plant. That's the code-name for Mazda's latest iteration of its famous rotary engine.
If this doesn’t make you go weak in the knees, you need your pulse checked.
Mazda’s mass-production of rotary engines is presently on hold, but this new design is evidence that one should never say, “never.”

Meanwhile, at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, MX-5 Miata fans are being treated to two conceptual versions of the Gen-4 edition of the world’s most popular two-seater. 
 

The 2016 MX-5 Spyder exudes the character of a vintage roadster, while the MX-5 Speedster rendition harkens back to the stripped-down racers of yesteryear—even shedding its full-size windshield for a minimalist windscreen.
 

(How can you tell when an MX-5 driver is happy? Count the bugs in his teeth.)

The MX-5 has always inspired experimentation.
Carscoops.com predicts the ND Miata will become The Most-tuned Production Car ever, to which Portuguese designer Hugo Silva responded with this heart-stopping version.
I’ve got to get in to see my cardiologist.

FCA is working on a 2018 Jeep Grand Wagoneer that will be introduced in late 2017.

The larger luxury SUV will be a bigger-better version of the Grand Cherokee, although earlier renderings looked more like a bedazzled Jeep Commander.

Sources reveal the new Wagoneer will attack the Range Rover and Mercedes SUV market share with the Jeep’s 3.0L Eco-diesel V-6 currently featured in the Grand Cherokee. 

The Wagoneer will also be Jeep’s first full-sized three-row seating vehicle since the demise of the Jeep Commander.  What we don’t know is what it will look like, but a retro Wagoneer Woody would be sooo cool.

While we're in retro-mode, Volkswagen is teasing the idea of bringing back its iconic VW Hippie Van as an EV. What could be more hippie-fied than an electric VW Bus? A VW Board member reportedly leaked that an electrified version of the popular camper van is in the development stages.

VW Development Chief, Hans-Jakob Neusser, is quoted by Autocar as describing the three components needed in the return of the iconic bus: “The wide, solid D-Pillar; the boxy design of the center section,” and “the front end must have a very short overhang.”

Volkswagen comes close in the T-6 version of its mini van, but I prefer what I see from the conceptual designers for the VW Bulli (that’s the German approximation for “VW Bus”), which promise a new micro van version by 2018.

The original VW busses were made in Germany in the ‘50’s.
They featured the air-cooled, horizontally-opposed rear-engine configuration, but were woefully underpowered. 

My father bought a ’60 model bus, and took our family on vacation in it to the Texas Hill Country one hot July 4th. The engine blew a cylinder before we got there. The dealer replaced the engine, but it blew up again within a few months. Dad sold that bus and bought something more dependable—a '61 VW Beetle.

Listen to the Automotive Reporter Radio Show every weekend on Stitcher.com, or from our webpage.