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 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.

Automotive Reporter Biz News for Wk of 10-5-15

As if the exciting previews of the new 007 movie aren’t enough brand placement for Aston Martin, the automaker is also capitalizing on the final flight of an iconic Cold War-era British bomber later this month.   

The Avro Vulcan XH558, a delta-wing  long-range bomber built in the ‘50’s, is being reunited with its modern day namesake, the Aston Martin Vulcan, an 800-hp, all-carbon fiber supercar. There are only 24 models of the racecar in existence. 

The company staged a flyby of the Vulcan bomber over the Vulcan race car at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire. The final flight of the Vulcan will be this weekend (10/10-11).

The charity that owns and operates the XH558, the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, has concluded it is no longer safe to fly the aircraft, as technical support for the bombers Rolls Royce jet engines and other systems are being discontinued by various vendors and providers. The Vulcan has already exceeded the maximum flight hours experienced by other Vulcans by more than ten percent, and it is the studied opinion of her operators that identifying and diagnosing future problems and maintenance issues with the aircraft would be increasingly difficult. Without such support, the British Civil Aviation Authority is effectively grounding the aircraft. The bomber will be on permanent static display in England at the Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster.
I have no idea where that is.

Aston Martin says the first deliveries of the track-only Aston Martin Vulcan to customers worldwide will take place before the end of the year. This week Aston Martin also announced the appointment of Laura Schwab as President for Aston Martin The Americas, effective later this month.

The recent backlash over cellphone use in public places has created some interesting social solutions. There is an emerging trend to stack smartphones in the center of the table for the duration of a meal, and the first person to grab theirs has to pay for the group’s tab.

Chevrolet takes that notion one step further, while capitalizing on the need for personal connectivity in a new series of TV commercials you’ll be seeing this week. The point is memorably made.

“Focus Groups” are brought into a room with a big round table, and a big red wood chipper. They are told to surrender their devices for reasons of intellectual security, at which point the moderator calmly walks over to the wood chipper, and feeds the phones into the machine. The reactions of the group members are pretty priceless, albeit rather sedate compared to what my personal response might be in the same situation. The point of the exercise keys in on our perceived need for total connectivity at all times, which Chevrolet says it can deliver in the new Cruse Lite 4G Wifi automobile.

Has Toyota created a flying car? While the new Toyota Mirai Hyrdogen Fuel Cell electric car cannot literally fly, Toyota says it is flying off the virtual shelf!

Nearly 1,900 people have reserved their Miraii, exceeding the expected initial production run of 1,000 vehicles, and pushing the grammatical envelope on how to properly describe what is the plural of Mirai.
Mirai's? Miraii? What?  

Toyota’s order request portal now directs customers to a wait list until production can catch up with demand.  Toyota says existing order requests are being reviewed, and automaker will begin placing the first customers in the driver’s seat of their new Mirai later this month.   

A fellow Mazda MX-5 Miata owner pulled up in front of my house on Friday evening in his early-edition NB and turned off the engine. He sat in the car at the curb for a very long time, tapping on his smartphone, before walking up to my door. His clutch slave cylinder had failed, and he couldn’t shift the manual transmission. 

I repressed my urge to discuss with him the art of engine-rev clutchless shifting, and instead commiserated about the extent to which owners go to keep our MX-5’s running at peak performance, regardless of the vintage. The car remains parked in front of my house this morning, as I compose this column. I don’t know who his insurance company is, but my towing service would’ve been on scene within the hour.

As a public service to him, and to you, I am passing on Mazda’s just-released pricing points for its new Global Mazda MX-5 Cup cars. The version is Mazda Motorsports first-ever ready-to-race production MX-5 Miata, checking in at only $53k. It is an entry-level  racing car, and is Mazda’s contribution to growing the sport by encouraging new drivers to affordably enter the competition. What do you get for that price?

Long Road Racing, Inc. takes a street version of the MX-5 and strips it down to replace several OEM items with high-performance components, including a high-capacity radiator, limited slip differential, a racing cage, cooling lines, performance brakes, and racing fluids for the transmission and crankcase. 

Each Miata Cup car is built identically so that their performance on the track is altered only by the skill of who’s behind the wheel. You can order yours online at www.MazdaMotorsports.com.
You’re welcome.

Ford Motor Company’s newest advertising campaign for Ford service is themed, “The Specialists at Ford,” and will feature big-screen action hero, producer and business entrepreneur Dwayne Johnson.
Yes, The Rock drives a Ford—several, in fact. His favorite: The Ford F-150.

“The Specialists at Ford” are an elite crew of Ford technicians led by Johnson. This dedicated team has all of the training, diagnostic tools and Motorcraft parts that make servicing your vehicle at your local Ford dealership the right decision.

I wonder if he’ll glare into the camera and snarl, “Can you smell what The Rock is fixing?”

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

Automotive Reporter Biz News for Wk of 9-28-15

If you missed that bombshell over Berlin last week, Volkswagen announced that numbers touting its clean diesel engines were not entirely accurate, thanks to a fudging of emissions control algorithms in the cars’ computers. Actually, the bombshell dropped in Wolfsburg, 230-km west of Berlin, but there’s still a lot of fallout raining down.

VW CEO Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn said, “"I am shocked by the events of the past few days. Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group.” While completely unaware of what was being done to the cars, he took responsibility, and removed himself from the equation to allow VW “a fresh start.”

Stateside, the Diesel Technology Forum posted this comment, while painstakingly avoiding any mention of the letters “V” or “W”: “The circumstances involving a single manufacturer do not define an entire technology, or an industry. Vehicle manufacturers and engine makers have invested billions of dollars in research and development to successfully meet the most aggressive emissions standards in the world.”

Volkswagen has erected a webpage for VW owners, listing the affected models, and featuring a video clip from VW America President and CEO, Michael Horn, saying, “oops.” 

Porsche AG Chairman Mattias Muller is now acting interim chief for Volkswagen AG.  He began his automotive career as an apprentice tool maker with Audi, and earned a Masters Degree in Computer Science before returning to Audi. He knows his stuff.

Volkswagen’s internal review reveals nearly 5-million passenger cars with the Type EA 189 diesel engines are affected. VW says the cars “remain technically safe and roadworthy.” This morning, the Financial Times predicts the scandal could eclipse the Enron debacle.

Volvo Cars of North America is building its first American factory in Berkeley County, South Carolina.
The new facility will produce Volvo’s S60 sedans, and ship globally from the Port of Charleston starting in 2018.
In Bloom County, Berkley Breathed had no comment.

Forget the Amazing Race.
Ford Motor Company is releasing a series on the re-making of the Ford Focus RS, one of the most surprising small cars you’ll ever climb into. I rented one of these a few weeks ago while my beloved Silver Bullet was getting a nose job.
It was wicked-fast.
The Focus, not the cosmetic work on my car.

Ford this week launches the first in a series of eight films shot behind the scenes as the RS evolves, “Ford Focus RS: Rebirth of an Icon.” If the trailer is any indication of what’s in store, it should rival any “must-see TV” offerings on any network this Fall.

Nissan’s new 2016 Altima goes on sale this Fall, as well. Over the weekend, Nissan Chairman Jose Munoz undraped the extensively redesigned sedan in Detroit. 

Munoz noted that the Altima has achieved five consecutive years of sales growth, growing more than 60% since 2009. Nissan will offer the new Altima in seven trim levels, including an SR-version powered by a 3.5-L V-6.

Sunday night’s eclipse is big news on social media this morning.
Houston, alas, was socked in by clouds and rain. If you missed it, here’s a two-minute eclipse clip.
You’re welcome.

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