is having some pointed fun with its featuring the called “2012,” only the fun is pointed directly at , which finds it a little too sharp to be all that much fun. So on the eve of the big game, Ford sent Chevy a cease-and-desist letter to pull the ad and “pressured” NBC not to run the commercial, according to a report on blog. Chevy has released a statement in response, which you can read , indicating that the ad will run despite Ford’s protest.
Ford found no reason to chuckle at some of the commercial’s claims, “particularly around durability.” One in particular comes from a character that says of their now-deceased, F-150-driving pal, “Dave didn’t drive the longest-lasting most dependable truck on the road. Dave drove a Ford.”
Ford spokesman Mike Levine says his company has more trucks with 250,000-plus miles on the road than any other brand, which would appear to contradict the small print that appears in the “2012″ ad that reads, “Dependability based on longevity: 1981-2011 full-size pickup registrations.” Ford says its lawyers will decide what to do (if anything) after the ad airs during tonight’s game, but Chevy’s legal minions must have vetted the spot closely well before time.
Or Ford could take Chevy marketing honcho Joel Ewanick up on his offer and bide its time. Said Ewanick, “We can wait until the world ends, and if we need to, we will apologize.”
Jaguar’s headquarters and production were located at Browns Lane in Conventry for more than fifty years. Part of the complex included the and its collection of 150 cars, so when the Browns Lane site was sold in 2007 , the countdown began on the museum’s remaining time.
Now comes the formal announcement that the collection will vacate its current spot in September, the tragedy being that it might not relocate to a publicly accessible location. Museum reps say that the collection will continue to be in circulation, either on the historical circuit like Goodwood or on loan to other museums. Even now the Jaguar Heritage Museum only .
Nevertheless, unless another location is secured you won’t be able to just show up, buy a ticket and stroll among cars like the 1935 SS Airline AWR564, 1950 Jaguar XK 120 NUB120 or 1956 Jaguar D-type ‘Long Nose’ 393RW. You’ll also miss Austin Powers’ “Shaguar,” if that’s more your style.
Chris Bangle may be the name most recently associated with design, but he’s just one of many men and women who have sketched and sculpted automobiles for Bayerische Motoren Werke. BMW enthusiast website has to the beginning of the brand, when a BMW was a knockoff of an Austin 7. The names we all know show up in the chronology; giants of post-World War II automotive design world like Michelotti, Bertone, Gandini, Bracq, and of course, Hofmeister.
In addition to the Italian hired guns who sketched for BMW at one time or another, a few surprising names dot BMW’s history. , the largely unsung automotive engineer responsible for much of the original Volkswagen Beetle, also did contract work for BMW. Aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm based his Kamm-Coupe on BMW 328 mechanicals. Raymond Loewy’s mid-century lines were wrought upon at least one BMW 507, and Albrecht von Goertz was a colleague of Loewy’s before he designed the 507.
In more recent years, it’s intriguing to note the diversity of backgrounds. You’ve got Bangle, Henrik Fisker, current design chief Adrian van Hooydonk (the man actually responsible for the “Bangle Butt”), and Z4 designer Juliane Blasi. Perhaps the most understated of all BMW designers is Jojii Nagashima, the man responsible for the outgoing E90 3 Series, the iconic E39 5 Series, and, along with Boyke Boyer, the E36 3 Series. Taken as a whole, BMW has a pantheon of automotive design big-thinkers, a trend that doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon.
Force India has come a long way. What started out as Jordan Grand Prix and changed hands (and names) several times before landing in the stewardship of Indian bazillionaire Vijay Mallya has become a solid mid-field contender on race days. In 2011, the team finished sixth in the constructors’ standings, behind front-runners Red Bull, McLaren, , and Renault GP. In 2012, however, Force India aims to challenge Mercedes and Lotus for fifth place using the car shown above.
The VJM05 bears the same unfortunate stepped nose of the just-unveiled Ferrari F2012 and Caterham CT01, a trend we expect to see across much of the field as teams deal with F1’s technical regulations. Engine, transmission and KERS are again provided by Mercedes-Benz through a partnership with McLaren, and while former DTM champion Paul di Resta returns for another season in the cockpit. Adrian Sutil departs the team in the wake of his , his seat now occupied by Nico Hulkenberg.
We’ll be watching to see if the young duo can continue to move Force India up the F1 hierarchy. For now, you can check out the press release after the jump and photos from the car’s unveiling – which included the first on-track session of any 2012 F1 cars revealed thus far – in the image gallery above.
Let’s take a moment to praise the original NSX, a previously unimaginable coupe from an equally unimaginable source that, as Lexus did with luxury, put every supercar maker on notice. Only the NSX went further than anything Lexus ever did; after all, there’s no clamor today for to make another car in the spirit of the LS 400.
Now, enthusiasts and NSX owners wait, hoping that the channels everything that made its (by then) 25-year-old ancestor so great.
And that’s why Honda has compiled more than seven minutes of NSX video eye candy, with special attention paid to the Le Mans car and the NSX-Rs. You’ll find it .
The beige blurs in the still above are sheep, and they’re apparently very excited about something in that little blue car. Supposedly, a farmer in the Caucasus was just trying to get through a lane, and this, dubbed the “sheep cyclone,” is what developed.
for the video. If you put on headphones and listen closely, you might be able to hear the car whispering Or whatever that would be in Russian.
The good people of Tennessee are no doubt thrilled to have a plant in Chattanooga. The facility already features well over 2,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, and now the German automaker is bolstering employment by another 200 full-time VW staffers, boosting the employment total to 2,500 full-time and temp workers.
VW says it is making the move to enable the plant to increase production from 31 vehicles per hour to 35. The boosted line rate also means that VW dealers will soon have more sedans to sell, though the automaker failed to mention the sedan in the post-jump press release. Given VW’s torrid sales pace in January, we’re guessing the jump in factory output will be good news for the automaker’s retail outlets.
VW isn’t just looking for line workers – the automaker is also looking for supervisors and engineers. Hit the jump to read over the VW press release, which includes information on how to apply for a position.
Two more Japanese auto industry suppliers, Yazaki and Denso, have been fined by the U.S. Department of Justice and four executives from Yazaki will go to jail, according to reports in the New York Times and Automotive News. Yazaki’s $478 million fine and Denso’s $78 million fine come on top of the $200 million penalty paid by another Japanese supplier, Furukawa Electric Company, last November as . Three Furukawa execs also were sentenced to prison.
The DoJ opened the investigation two years ago into collusion among firms setting prices for parts like wire harnesses and ECUs, but is said to have found evidence of such practices since 2000. Yazaki was charged with three felonies, fixing the prices of wire harnesses, instrument panel clusters and fuel senders. Denso was charged with two felonies, conspiring to fix the prices of ECUs and heating control units. Four Yazaki employees, working mainly for its North American operations in Ohio and Kentucky, were charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and will serve from 15 months to two years in prison.
Both companies have pledged to retrain their employees and bolster their antitrust compliance, and both Yazaki’s Chairman and CEO said they would return half their pay for three months. The Justice Department investigation continues, and said the CEO of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, “I’m dead certain that there has to be a lot of concern out there.”
Feel free to read over the official statements from both Yazaki and Denso .
Few things can stand between a and the finish line. Not rain, not sleet and certainly not snow. So while the latter on Maranello, where Ferrari was planning to unveil its latest F1 challenger yesterday, that didn’t stop the Scuderia from showing it off to the world, through the magic of this newfangled invention they’re calling the “internet”.
The F2012 you see here is the fifty-eighth F1 car built by Ferrari, comprising a chassis and powertrain developed and produced entirely in-house: a rarity among F1 teams, particularly in these past few years since major manufacturers like , and withdrew from the sport.
The most prominent change to the car’s form over the it replaces is the rather aesthetically challenged but aerodynamically-optimized stepped nose, which (like the one on the and expected to follow on several more) conforms to revised FIA regulations while allowing sufficient air to pass underneath the nosecone to allow the underbody aerodynamics to do their thing. The rear section is also more tapered, leading to the rear wing with the Drag Reduction System that returns from last season.
That’s all well and good, of course, but what really matters is how the F2012 is going to stack up against the competition – particularly from the returning champions at Red Bull and longtime rivals at McLaren. Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will wring out all the F2012 it has to offer, but only time will tell if they’ll be able to add another trophy to the cabinet in Maranello. In the meantime you can check out their new ride in the high-res image gallery above and for the full press release, technical details and video footage.
In crafting its Super Bowl strategy, cribbed a page from the . (Have we ever been able to say that before?) The Bavarian brand will be airing two regional commercials on Sunday, one in New York and the other in the Los Angeles area, both promoting the new 2012 .
The east coast ad promotes the Bimmer’s heated steering wheel, of all the mundane features. But the SoCal spot showing off BMW Connected Drive’s is pretty darn funny, even if it is stereotypical mother-in-law humor. BMW has also created four additional commercials that it says will soon be appearing online on streaming sites like Hulu.
What’s most notable here is that in none of the clips do we actually see driving, though we do see kids, a dog and twin babies.
Click to see all the videos and read the press release.
After having us over to drive its raging new last September, is now aiming to show just how efficient their F10 can be with the occasionally silent and rage-free ActiveHybrid 5. Whereas the ActiveHybrid X6 and ActiveHybrid 750i arrived somewhat lacking in state-of-the-art hybrid credentials, the ActiveHybrid 5 carries a true and undeniable full parallel hybrid powertrain starting with all the goodness you find in a 535i.
This ActiveHybrid 5 is essentially a 535i sedan that pollutes less, travels farther on each of its 17.7 gallons of fuel, is painted BMW’s alternative-propulsion color of choice, Bluewater Metallic, and weighs 330 pounds more due to its electric motor, electric power unit motherboard and lithium-ion battery pack. Both CO2 emissions and range are said to improve by roughly 16 percent in a car that performs up to par with a 535i, so it’s a likeable proposition. Sticking with the standard 17-inch wheel/tire setup and setting the Driving Dynamics Control to Eco Pro mode, that’d make the CO2 rate 240 grams per mile – an impressive stat that most Americans still don’t care about – and an average EPA city/hwy combined fuel economy score of around 31 miles per gallon.
Last year, made a big splash in the advertising world with its “Imported From Detroit” campaign, a marketing blitz that kicked off with a Super Bowl spot featuring rapper Eminem behind the wheel of a . The campaign jumpstarted a national dialogue about Detroit, went on to win an Emmy, and the tagline has since become a cornerstone of Chrysler’s marketing efforts. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the Auburn Hills automaker isn’t looking to return to The Big Game with Marshall Mathers – it’s going with veteran actor Clint Eastwood.
According to the WSJ, Eastwood will feature in an expansive two-minute long ad and the action will likely center on the actor “giving the country a pep talk.” While seemingly every other automaker has already spilled the beans on their Super Bowl marketing efforts, the Pentastar is playing its hand close to the vest, with the WSJ unable to get Chrysler to comment on the story.
has announced plans to enter the FIA with this, a hot new racer based on the newly redesigned (well, the European five-door, anyway). Details are slim about the new touring car racer, but the automaker has released a statement confirming that the Civic will be powered by a bespoke 1.6-liter turbocharged inline-four, developed by Honda R&D in accordance with FIA’s Super 2000 regulations. Honda has also formed a joint partnership with Mugen and J.A.S. Motorsport to develop the new Civic.
So, how soon will we get to watch the new hatchback swap paint with other WTCC racers? Honda hopes to officially join WTCC this season, with some inaugural rounds possibly held in Japan, China and Macau. Following that, a two-car team will be entered into every race in the 2013 championship. for the full details.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama visited the Washington Auto Show, and he even had time to get a closer look at a few vehicles. We’re guessing that the carmakers were more than happy to set aside some time to talk to the Commander In Chief, but not every automaker got the chance.
Bloomberg says that the Association of Global Automakers is upset because the president only spent time with the Detroit Three, even though other automakers reportedly flew in executives from around the world for the occasion. The executives were reportedly on hand and waiting in a “bullpen” in the event President Obama had any questions about specific vehicles, but The Pres stuck to American cars like the , , and the .
AGA CEO Michael Stanton voiced his disappointment about the perceived slight, adding that many members “bent over backwards to meet the request from the White House.” Stanton also points out that AGA members have invested $43 billion in the U.S. and employ over 80,000 workers here.
The annals of automotive history are filled with nameplates that weren’t quite able to survive the boom and bust nature of the business, especially here in the United States. One of the most successful orphaned automakers was , for such design gems as the bullet-nosed post-World War II Starlight and trend-setting fiberglass-bodied .
Sadly, Studebaker officially ceased producing automobiles in 1966, though a small portion of its legacy lives today in the form of the ex-Kaiser . But if a Colorado-based business has its way, the Studebaker name will once again appear on vehicles sold in America. Somehow, we’re far from convinced any of its conceptual designs will ever see the light of day.
Looking over the proposed revival, we see a range of so-called Studebaker cars, trucks, motorcycles and scooters. Half the motorcycles are actually Hyosung models from Korea with Studebaker scripting on the fuel tanks, and the other half are nothing but poor renderings. As for the cars, well… there isn’t a single shred of Studebaker DNA in any of them. In any case, the company is reportedly looking for “qualified investor/partners”. We wish them the best of luck… they’re gonna need it.
is a lot of fun – trust us on this – but this video is headache inducing. And scary. Seems like the pit crew on hand at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi was so concerned with starting the camera and setting its white balance that they didn’t bother checking to see whether the passenger’s safety harness was tight enough. And it clearly wasn’t.
You’ll notice in the screenshot above that the passenger’s helmet appears to be striking the bulkhead in front of her, which is definitely not supposed to happen. Indeed, she gets thrown around something fierce as the two-seater F1 car corners and brakes. So let this serve as a lesson to those of you who might embark on your first hot lap on a race track: Tighten up those belts until they are truly snug.
has had its share of drivers who knew their way around a snowy rally course. Gilles Villeneuve, for example, was famous for the drifting techniques he picked up racing snowmobiles in his native Quebec. And Kimi Raikkonen, for another, left the Scuderia for the World Rally Championship where he exercised his Finnish roots. Thing is, both of these top drivers were gone from the Ferrari roster long before the company introduced the as its first all-wheel-drive car.
That’s where Markku Alen comes in. The former World Rally Champion took the FF up to the Arjeplog track in the north of his native Sweden, just an hour’s drive south of the Arctic Circle, to stretch it out in the snow. Fortunately, he also brought a film crew along. While Ferrari’s shot footage of the FF playing in the snow before, none of it came out quite as majestic as this clip. to check it out.
Forget about all the talk, about the contracts and the lawsuits. The real sign of the Formula One season gearing up to start is when each team unveils its new car. As you may already know, unlike most other series, each team in F1 is not really considered a team. They’re called “constructors”. Each is responsible for designing and crafting the cars they’ll be fielding in the championship.
That process got under way last week when Caterham beat all the others to the punch by unveiling its new Renault-powered . And that’s all well and fine, but we all know that the Caterham is far more likely to finish last than finish first. What you’re bound to see taking checkered flags is the car you see here: the new McLaren MP4-27.
McLaren, you see, is the winningest team on the grid this side of . And with Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton – both world champions – performing the driving duties, the British squad is hard at work on closing that gap. The more immediate challenge, however, is overcoming Red Bull, which returns as reigning champion once again and to which McLaren finished second last season.
The MP4-27 you see here is the car with which McLaren hopes to seize the lead. Although the design looks rather similar to the 2011-spec it replaces, McLaren insists it represents a comprehensive redesign. Fortunately that does not include the stepped platypus nose already shown on the Caterham and which is expected to proliferate across a good part of the grid. Power once again comes from , a relationship that McLaren it is not about to terminate in favor of another supplier or building its own engines in-house.
We’ll have to wait and see as the season gets underway to see if the MP4-27 will be a winner for McLaren, but for now you can check out the high-resolution images from the launch in the gallery above, and for the full press release and the sound file of the Mercedes-Benz V8 cranking over.
There’s no end to the perks of being a Formula One racing driver, especially if you happen to drive for Scuderia . As if piloting one of the fastest F1 cars on the grid weren’t enough, Ferrari has gifted each of its gifted drivers his own , and , to name just a few. And something tells us that if either Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa wanted anything else from the expansive - product range – say, a , for example – that would hardly pose a problem.
That’s exactly what the talented duo got the other day at the Fiorano test track at Ferrari headquarters in Maranello, where the first two examples of the new SRT8 in Europe were delivered to the pair of stars. Certainly, the Grand Cherokee SRT8 has plenty to love, what with its 6.4-liter Hemi V8 and 5-second dash to 62 mph, but Fernando And Felipe got more than that.
These two unique examples were decked out in Rosso Corso , with matte black front grille, a black offset racing stripe, black roof, carbon fiber trim and white accents. Ride height was lowered by 1.5 inches on unique forged and painted 20-inch alloys, and the interior has similarly been decked out in red leather accents and top-stitching and even yellow dials on the instruments.
Nice work if you can get it. All you have to do is convince the most victorious team in motorsport that you’ve got what it takes to be world champion, and you can have one too. Otherwise you can for the press release and scope out the high-res images in the gallery above.
has released details on the upcoming before the vehicle gets an official unveil at the 2012 Chicago Auto Show. The vehicle will bow with the same turbocharged 2.0-liter diesel engine found in the and , and Volkswagen projects the engine should help the oil-burning 2013 Beetle net 39 miles per gallon highway and 29 mpg city.
Those numbers aren’t quite as lofty as we’d expect, especially given how well our has performed with the same engine under the hood. While we’re still waiting on Environmental Protection Agency numbers, our guess is real-world drivers will see significantly better out of the latest diesel Bug, which, for what it’s worth, is the first oil-burning Beetle since 2006.
With 140 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque, the vehicle shouldn’t be a slouch to drive, either. Buyers may choose either a six-speed manual or dual-clutch gearbox. Otherwise, the Beetle TDI remains aesthetically similar to its gasoline counterparts. Expect to see the vehicle hit the market in mid-2012 as a 2013 model. In the meantime, stay tuned for our Chicago Auto Show coverage and for the full press release.
