Mitt Romney has always claimed his dog was perfectly happy on top of the car. He talks blithely about his wife’s Cadillacs, his dad’s success, his Mustang, his car elevator at the beach house, and every time he talks about cars, he says something stupid.
Last Monday in Cleveland, he went even further:
“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” Romney said in an interview inside a Cleveland-area auto parts maker. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”
Echoing another of his boss’s earlier, manic claims, senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said a few days later: “The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.” One wonders how that will play in Detroit and Cleveland.
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Let’s list the things wrong with the new BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe:
1. It looks like a Porsche Panamera.
2. There is no reason for its existence.
3. It is a 6 Series and has the word “Coupe” in its name, but it has four doors.
4. The word “Gran,” which apparently is German for “The word that comes next can mean whatever we want.”
Let’s look at these individually, shall we?
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The 2013 RAV4 EV is a pretty nice car. With Tesla-made battery and powertrain, it gives you good power, a 100-mile range, classy interior and equipment, and plenty of room. Read here a short version of its features.
However, there are a few—let us call them—restrictions. The biggest is price: a whopping $50,610, including destination charge and not including Federal and California tax rebates, which can knock off $10 grand. A very mid-level car with a luxury pricetag.
The second restriction is that it’s available in only four California regions: Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles/Orange County and San Diego. The company expects to sell a mere 2,600 over three years.
The third restriction is that this is clearly a so-called “compliance car,” built to sell only in small numbers to satisfy California’s zero-emissions requirements. The law essentially requires that in order to sell cars in the state, a carmaker has to build at least some few ZEVs.
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When I cancelled a dentist appointment to take a 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera S through its paces, I figured I made the right choice. I think most people would choose a morning with a 911 over having teeth drilled.
Yesterday, though, karma caught up with me in the form of a rescheduled dentist appointment. And drilled teeth. And numbing that didn’t take the first time. I left the dentist’s office with a swollen face, numb lips and the promise of more pain once the drugs wore off. There was only one thing that could make me feel better:
Heel-toeing through the twisties of one my favorite roads. Manual transmissions may be going the way of the dodo, as evidenced by that 911 and its high-tech PDK, but at least I still have my 5-speed.
As it turns out, though, there is hope that manuals may be in the midst of a resurgence in popularity.
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“Character and handling” are the two elements Lexus CEO Kiyotaka Ise says he wants to stress for his brand. His marketers have some other ideas.
I don’t know how tgriffith and I missed this, but back in February, after too much sake, the Lexus lads came up with a totally fabo-genius idea. Take Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Tori Praver, create an actual race course from the outlines of her body, make a video with two professional drivers (and herself, of course; see after the break), and create a downloadable video game app—so you can race around Tori’s body at home!
The thrilling process of how this stunt was accomplished is described here. The multifaceted campaign (basically, to push the new GS) also included print (in the February 14 SI) and online rollouts, plus several Las Vegas events.
If at this point you’re asking what the hell this has to do with character and handling—or whether this kind of silly sexual marketing is really targeting the right buyers—well, I’m with you.
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You’re not a real car enthusiast unless you’re in love with, or at least fascinated on some level by, the Nissan Juke-R.
Even if you absolutely loathe what the Juke-R represents, you’re an enthusiast because you are effected on a primal level by a car that, in a sane and ordinary world, wouldn’t exist.
Why should a twenty-thousand-dollar small crossover, which looks a lot like the business end of a frog, be fitted with a 545-hp supercar engine? It shouldn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. Nobody would buy one. And yet, it happened. And the result is the new definition of the word “awesome.”
Things are about to get even better, too, because this baby’s going into production! Sort of.
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Go to Google, enter “you are what you drive,” and you’ll get some 1,590,000,000 results. Which probably shows just how valid such pairings of cars with people are.
I take my cue from the honorable (generally so, though not in his role as TV critic yesterday) tgriffith’s piece today pairing rich people with the often surprising cars they drive. As the Yahoo survey tells us, sometimes the shoe fits, and sometimes it doesn’t.
There is a lot of misinformation out there on the Web about who drives, or should drive, what. The only reason we care about such stuff is to make inferences about the personalities of the owners. So we look at their big-ticket items like houses and cars. If we really wanted to know more about rich people, we’d look at the offices they work in (or their phone logs), for instance.
It’s a big guessing game, and it’s amusing. Derek Kreindler of TTAC showed a photo of a used Bentley Arnage and a newish Mustang parked in front of a modest house in Toronto. He then speculated that the owners were likely not wealthy or “to the manor born.” I like commenter McGilligan’s remark: “Or it’s owned by the ‘manor born’ landlord surveying his rental property holdings.”
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One of the richest people in the world owns a 1993 Volvo 240
Are you the type of person who would flaunt your riches with one of the most expensive and outrageous cars in the world, or would you go more low-key and blend in with the rest of society?
That’s an interesting question, and one that seems appropriate for a Friday!
The inspiration comes from a slideshow at Yahoo! showcasing the cars driven by some of the richest people in the world. I won’t rehash the whole list here, but there are some interesting choices.
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The jury is still out on the question of how serious Americans are about converting to smaller, greener cars. Still, there is some evidence that the market share for these vehicles is increasing.
In March, small car sales went up, as people reacted to rising gas prices. Honda was the only one of the majors whose sales dropped (by 5 percent). In April, demand for smaller cars went down: sales of the Cruze fell 5 percent; sales of the Fiesta, 44 percent.
One takeaway is that people are confused about what they want and need in an economy that is anything but reassuring and sends out ambiguous, even contradictory, signals.
But what about the real small stuff and the EV-hybrid bunch? We talked about Chrysler yesterday, and the company sold 336 percent more FIAT 500s (3,849 cars) than it did a year ago. Finally, Chrysler brought in new marketing blood.
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I’m not personal friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Alec Baldwin or Larry David. If I were, though, I’d call them up and ask what’s going on. I’ve been hearing all kinds of rumors and teases about some kind mystery project the four comedians are working on together.
Normally, as funny as those four would be on the same screen, they wouldn’t be enough to inspire a post here on these hallowed car pages. But there are signs that the mystery project could be a car show of some kind.
That, while pure speculation and based on only small clues, would be the most amazing show to hit television in America since Top Gear. And not the American version, but the real one, with Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow.
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