Hardly Transformative, But More Than Meets The Eye



When we last left our hero, Malibu Man was struggling mightily. Beset by meddlesome marketers and ineffective engineers, allies who had inexplicably trapped him in the dull green glow of an Eco ray, Malibu Man was about to face off against new and stronger nemeses than ever before, foes intent on dispatching both our hero and the Middle American Way he represents to car buyers across the globe. Would Malibu Man fight back? Could he stand a chance when Aston Fusion, Camrybot and Dr. Altima came to battle?

Well it's time for the next exciting episode of Malibu Man Against the Midsize Marauders, and – spoiler alert – this one has a happier ending than the last. We finally had the opportunity to drive the mainstream version of the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu equipped with a new 2.5-litre four-cylinder and did, in fact, come away with our expectations firmly met: If you want a Malibu, this is the one to buy.

Attention Chicagoans and other Midwesterners: If you've been wondering when the Local Motors Rally Fighter might be coming to a show in your neck of the woods, the answer is Sept. 10-15. And no, the Chicago Auto Show has not been rescheduled, it will still be held next February. Rather, the Rally Fighter will be on display at something called the International Manufacturing Technology Show, which is where those few who get excited about metal cutting and forming, tooling, CAD/CAM, and other various industrial operations gather to spend a week pretending that the North American masses still care about manufacturing.

While you might think that Local Motors would simply haul or drive the Rally Fighter to IMTS, that's not the case. Instead, one of the cars was boxed up and trucked there, where it will be built live on the floor of the McCormick Place convention center. This demonstration is all part of the IMTS fun, and while the show is really designed for people who still build things for a living, there's likely no reason that blog-reading cubicle-dwellers (or writers...) can't pony up the $50 to attend the exposition.

Click here to watch a video about the IMTS Rally Fighter.

File this one under "not surprising in the least." Fired Lotus CEO Dany Bahar is reportedly suing his former employers for some US$10.6 million, claiming that the automaker and its Malaysian owner, DRB, broke the law when they dismissed him. According to a report by Bloomberg Businessweek, DRB and Lotus will defend themselves in court rather than settling, including filing a countersuit against the former top executive.

Bahar, 40, was canned on June 7, about two weeks after Lotus suspended him pending an investigation into his conduct. The report cites a Kuala Lumpur stock exchange filing as its source of the information; the filing also indicates that DRB has decided against selling Lotus, despite continuing losses.

News Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Here's a question to ponder: If it can outrun a C5 Chevrolet Corvette off the line, can we even call it a skateboard anymore?

While we're intrigued by this Kickstarter project from Gnarboards, we'll admit to having no idea what we'd do with an electric skateboard that can do 0-45 km/h in under two seconds. We do, however, know exactly what we'd do with that C5 'vert in the video: Remove those Z06 brake ducts and those terrible wheels.

Click here to watch the electric skateboard drag race the 'Vette.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is the second-oldest motorsports event in the United States, having been contested since 1916. It's an outlier in the sanitized, corporate-sponsored world of professional racing, remaining true to its unique and local roots. The race has a long history of encouraging ingenuity and experimentation, so its not surprising that proponents of alternative fuels have long mixed it up amidst the more conventionally deployed big blocks and turbos.

But this year something special happened when course record holder and defending champion Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima showed up with an EV. Now Tajima was certainly not the first to attempt a run up the mountain under electric power, but his embrace of the technology after years of racing machines powered by internal combustion engines has to be regarded as significant. The EV movement couldn't have asked for a better public relations opportunity, which is why our sister site Translogic was there with cameras to document the occasion.

Unfortunately, Tajima's day was prematurely ended when his car caught fire. His course record was broken as well, but the former champ has promised to be back next year to give it another go with his Monster Sport E-Runner Pikes Peak Special.

Click here to watch the full episode of Translogic.

Nevermind the fact that Bentley hasn't built anything resembling a real production sports car since W.O. was running things – and back then sports cars were inspired by locomotives rather than jets. Still, the Volkswagen-owned luxury marque intends to bring just such a concept to the Paris show next month, according to Car and Driver.

The notion of Bentley building a car that doesn't weigh as much as a Brontosaurus certainly strikes our fancy, as the corporate powertrain department certainly has no shortage of monster motors to motivate a more lithe Bentley beast. Perhaps the marque could even make a return trip to Le Mans with a racing version that's more Bentley and less Audi than the old Speed 8.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here, as details at this point are as scarce as modern Bentley owners who could tell you who Woolf Barnato is. In fact, besides the fact that the Bentley sports car is coming, about all the magazine says it that the concept should be the sportiest thing to wear the Flying B since the 1999 Hunaudières concept car. That shouldn't be difficult – let's just hope that this time VW doesn't steal the design for Bugatti.

Click here to watch a video on the history of Bentley.

News Source: Car and Driver

Image Credit: Copyright 2012 Drew Phillips / AOL

The Canadian Auto Workers Union may soon be a thing of the past, but it still has to negotiate one more contract with the Big Three before its planned merger with the Canadian Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. The current deal expires on Sept. 17, so CAW representatives are meeting with the automakers this week in Toronto – and they're coming armed with a strike authorization, according to The Detroit News.

While we can't call the vote unanimous, some 99 per cent of Chrysler union members voted in favour of walking out, with 98 per cent of General Motors workers and 97 per cent of Ford workers authorizing the action if the parties can't come to terms. According to the report, the last CAW strike occurred in 1996.

News Source: The Detroit News

Car salesmen have long ranked among the most universally reviled members of society, just south of real estate agents and lawyers. But the past decade has seen the plaid sports jacket and gold chain crowd doing much to bolster their image, with many auto dealers building impressive online reputations by cultivating positive customer feedback.

That's where this latest tale of woe begins: Automotive News is reporting that Google has been deleting hundreds of reviews of dealerships from its Google+ Local pages, but doing so in a capricious and arbitrary fashion. The dealerships, as you might expect, are angry.

One Suzuki dealer who reportedly had 400 reviews zapped in two days time told AN, "Google believes it can do whatever it wants and has no accountability." His store saw its positive ranking disappear as a result of the deleted reviews. Google's response was that it has merely been trying to make sure that reviews are "authentic, relevant, and useful," according to the report. The Suzuki store owner and two other dealers have subsequently filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission.

Google has no formal way for dealers to appeal the deletions, or even understand why they were made, leaving them with little recourse but to go through the process of rebuilding their cache of positive reviews one customer at a time.

News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.

If you haven't seen enough of the Norelco-inspired Lexus concept from this year's Detroit show, just wait until October. The Australian International Motor Show has formally announced that Lexus will be bringing a hybrid coupe concept to the Sydney show floor, reportedly another version of the LF-LC that graced Cobo nine months earlier.

Car Advice says that the Aussie concept is likely to be differentiated from the concept we've already seen by employing an all-wheel-drive powertrain. Its gas-electric hybrid driveline is said to produce close to 500 horsepower, though we reserve the right to remain skeptical of anything still wearing a "concept" label, especially a vehicle that's likely three or four years out from production, assuming it gets the green light at all.

Click here to read the official press release from AIMS.

News Source: Australian International Motor Show via Car Advice

Image Credit: Copyright 2012 Drew Phillips / AOL

MyFord Touch is an enigma – not just because the infotainment system itself is difficult to understand and use, but because Ford just can't seem to figure out what to do about it. Ford's marketing chief Jim Farley tells Automotive News that despite ongoing criticism of MyFord Touch, even after a 2013 model year update, it "won't change our commitment to being a leader in infotainment. We want to be the best at it even if it means we have to improve the usability forever."

Farley goes on to say that despite all that the pundits at Consumer Reports have had to say – including writing that the system "stinks" in a recent blog post – 56 per cent of buyers tell Ford that technology is an important consideration. Meaning that despite Ford's admitted inability to work the bugs out of MyFord Touch and make it more intuitive and speedy, it needs to stick with the system because it's a prime determiner for car shoppers.

Click here to see the video demo on MyFord Touch.

News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.

Here's a shocking statistic: North America (specifically the United States) has fewer cars per capita than Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and 16 other countries. Even more dramatic is one of the potential causes: A declining American middle class.

According to an Atlantic report on a new study conduct by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United States ranked just 25th in the world in per-person car ownership. The actual number stands at 439 cars per 1,000 Americans. Further, the U.S. is an outlier when you compare the number of vehicles per capita to household consumption. While they may have one of the highest rates of household spending, car buying is in decline. It is this disparity that points to the widening income gap as a potential cause of the lower rate of car ownership. Indeed, car ownership rates track with the size of a nation's middle class, according to the report.

To add insult to injury, despite low rates of car ownership, many North Americans still consume roughly twice as much energy as most Europeans.

News Source: The Atlantic

Image Credit: Jaboney - CC Version 2.0

Oh, how we love "rebranding." From the stumblebums at The Gap to the desperate deckhands on the Microsoft Titanic, needlessly changing your logo is all the rage these days, so we shouldn't be surprised to see the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission join in on the fun by eliminating the word "taxi" from the city's cabs. That's right, while they'll still be yellow and hailing one will still prove challenging for out-of-towners, New York's taxis will now be identified by a yellow capital "T" in a black circle.

According to The New York Times, besides their "axi," cabs will also be losing their passenger door fare panel - the information will be displayed on the cab's video screen instead. The subtle shift in design is the result of New York's Taxi of Tomorrow program, in which the Nissan NV200 was picked to become the city's exclusive taxi vehicle, starting next year. The t-in-a-circle logo was created by Smart Design.

David S. Yassky, the Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman, responded to questions about whether people would be able to identify the new cabs by saying, "Even the greenest of greenhorns will know that it's a taxicab," according to the report.


News Source: The New York Times

Image Credit: Copyright 2012 AOL / Alex Nunez

How would you respond to the headline "No More Auto Workers Union"? Well, we'll likely be bidding goodbye to the Canadian Auto Workers Union, as the membership has agreed to merge with Canada's Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that a unanimous vote of delegates at the CAW's convention has approved the merger. If finalized, the new organization will have more than 300,000 members, most of them working in manufacturing, communications and transportation. The CEP still has to vote on the proposal in October, but its president seems bullish on the merger, describing it as a "bigger and better union," according to the report.

CAW president Ken Lewenza (pictured above) agreed, saying, "This union will pose a serious challenge to the unrepresentative, unfair economic and political systems workers now find themselves caught in."

A new name for the combined organization has not yet been determined.


News Source: The Vancouver Sun

Image Credit: Michelle Siu / AP Photo/ The Canadian Press

David Champion, the public face of Consumer Reports automotive testing, is returning to Nissan. The carmaker has hired CR's former auto test center senior director and given him a newly created job: Executive Advisor, Competitive Assessment and Quality. Champion worked for Nissan from 1994-1997 as a quality assurance engineer, before moving into the world of publishing.

Consumer Reports is the 800-pound-gorilla of automotive testing: Exalted by the mainstream, feared by automakers, and often reviled by enthusiasts. While that's unlikely to change after Champion's departure – after all, the institute's reputation goes largely unchallenged due to a dearth of legitimate competition – we do wonder how Nissan will respond to having a former outsider in its midst. At least we imagine Champion is being cast in the role of provocateur when he heads to Nissan's Arizona Testing Center.

While Nissan is clearly doing a pretty good job with product right now – given both its growing sales and our esteem for a number of its recent models, from GT-R to the Juke and Altima – insularity and myopia always seem to be lurking in the next product development cycle. These terrible twin traits have historically proven to afflict even the most esteemed automakers, often when they seem most impervious. A plum gig for Champion this may be, but he will no doubt have his work cut out for him.

Click here to read the full press release from Nissan, as well as a statement from Consumer Reports.


News Source: Nissan, Consumer Reports via The New York Times