Automotive Reporter Biz News for Wk of 10-19-15

This is the week that Back to the Future arrives from the past.
October 21, 2015—the date that lives in infamy in the futuristic genre.  Toyota is capitalizing on the theme with a series of “Back to the Future” television ads. One of them features a futures recap, starring “Doc Brown” and Marty McFly, a.k.a, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox, discussing which technologies from their 1985 hit have actually come to pass.

For those of you keeping score, “Back to the Future-II” did get a few things right, although McFly is still waiting for self-tying sneakers. But video chats, large screen TV’s, fingerprint scanners, and wearable devices are in the here and now.  In an interesting exercise, a group of teens were asked to review some of the gadgets from the film, and rate how 2015 has kept up with expectations from 1985.

Toyota’s tease includes a promised reveal of a tricked-out Toyota Tacoma 4 x 4, Marty McFly’s truck of choice in the future. Watch for multiple sightings around the country on October 21, 2015.
Great Scott!

What’s that in your rear-view mirror? Red and blue flashing lights? Odds are, that’s a Ford Motor Company police pursuit vehicle that’s giving chase. Ford’s Interceptor sedans and utility vehicles are the best-selling cop cars on the market, with a staggering 61% share, as of the end of June. 

License and registration, please, and keep your hands on the wheel.

The saga of Volkswagen is still being written, but if someone doesn’t make a movie out of this, I’ll be surprised. The board of the beleaguered automaker continues to tweak its strategies on how best to move forward from the “diesel-gate” fiasco, even after replacing its CEO, and shuffling a few other execs.

The company is reorienting its diesel technology stratagem, and pushing for a more standardized electrical architecture for both passenger and light commercial vehicles. Look for a new iteration of the popular Phaeton series, as VW’s efficiency program is accelerated (no pun intended.)

Sales numbers are in for the first three Quarters of 2015. Volkswagen Group says it delivered 7.43-million vehicles to customers globally in the period. Of that number, 4.35-million were passenger cars. General Motors counted 7.2-million vehicles delivered.  BMW Group’s deliveries are up 7.5% for the first nine-months of the year, totaling more than 1.6-million units sold. 

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

The Automotive Reporter/Biz News for Wk of 5-4-15

Handsome, Highly-
regarded Ed Shane
June 26, 1945-March 21, 2015

…and we’re back.

If you missed this column last week, both Harold Gunn and I were attending to the passages of people very close to us. Harold posted to his Facebook page, “I have lost my amazing Mom. She had 92 great years and one crappy month. She's now with Dad. I was blessed to have parents that allowed me to become me.”

The man I credit for giving me my start in the Radio business, Ed Shane, lost his battle with colon cancer in March, and a memorial service was held last Sunday at the Redneck Country Club.  Ed was an under-sung Radio legend, but those who knew him best knew his true worth.
He will be sorely missed.

“American Pharoah” won the 141^st running of the 2015 Kentucky Derby on Saturday (5/2). Fiat-Chrysler America took advantage of the higher than normal TV viewership of the event to debut a new series of TV commercials themed, “Courage is Already Inside.”

 

Tiana Falls

The :60-second commercial features vignettes of such accomplished women as avid outdoorsman Eva Shockey, the first woman in 30 years to make the cover of Field and Stream magazine.   

American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey, Rosie Napravnik, two-time winner of the Kentucky Oaks, and country music artist, Miranda Lambert, the Academy of Country Music Awards most-awarded female vocalist, and professional arenacross/motorcross racer, Tiana Falls, are also seen in the spot.

The love affair between Mazda’s MX-5 Miata and Microsoft’s X-box gamers continues, and who can blame them? The companies have announced the third (and final) contest in Microsoft’s ForzaHorzon 2, as they integrate fans into the launch of the new, 2016 MX-5.   

The photo-sharing competition runs through May 26, seeking provocative images of the 2016 or 1994 Miata’s. Grand prizes include a home theater system, an X-Box One, and X-box gift cards.
(What? No one’s giving away a new Miata??)

Mazda MX-5 Line Manager, Rod McLaughlin, visited the Radio show this week and announced the special pre-sale order-taking for thefirst one-thousand 2016 Miata’s. The cars will be special edition models, with unique paint/interior color combinations.

Mazda set a 20-year sales record in April, with 24,123 vehicles sold.
Year-over-year sales are up 7.5%.

Honda is revealing its “Super Speedway” aero kit of aerodynamic upgrades and components Honda’s teams will use at this year’s 99^th running of the Indianapolis 500.

The Honda Super Speedway Aero Kit includes a variety of individual aerodynamic components fitted to the existing Honda-powered Dallara Indy car chassis.  All are intended to give Honda’s six Indy car the ability to maximize performance during the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series schedule.

Lots of computer crunching went into the development of the aero kits, including Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology. Honda then validated the designs using Driver-In-Loop (DIL) Simulators, which allowed aerodynamic tweaking prior to the creation of full-size components.

Honda’s Indy car aero kits made their public on-track debut during an Open Test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway yesterday (May 3.) Official practice for the Indianapolis 500 opens on Monday, May 11, with the 99^th running of the Indianapolis 500 scheduled for Sunday, May 24.

Chevrolet’s new 2016 Corvette Z06 C7.R Edition is now available in your choice of colors—so long as you like yellow or black.
This is the real deal: A street-legal version of Corvette Racing’s C7 racecars. Chevrolet is going to build only 500 of these beasts, and all of them will include the Z07 performance package—including a specially-serialized VIN.

Don’t you just hate it when you roll up in your new, low-slung mega-money road chariot, pull up to the parking spot, and grind the nose spoiler on that concrete parking stop?? The ZO6 will have a front “curb-view” parking camera.
At least you’ll see it coming.

Over 100,000 served...

Another notable milestone for Ford Motor Company was reached in April. The company built its 100,000^th police interceptor at its Troy Design and Manufacturing facility. This is where Ford’s basic vehicles are “upfitted” to include all the goodies cop cars have that yours and mine do not—beefier suspensions, hotter engines, and upgraded electrical and cooling systems. And lights. Lots of lights.

Ford says the Troy plant has the flexibility to crank out up to 1,200 of the special vehicles weekly. It takes about 5.5-hours to completely upfit a vehicle, including the special vehicle marking wraps.

Who bought Police Interceptor number 100,000?
The Chicago Police Department will place the vehicle into its fleet later this year.

Ford has a 55 percent market share nationally. 

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