Dodge Dart, Chrysler Q1 sales, FR-S and BRZ versus MX-5, 2013 Nissan Altima’s Hyundai Sonata influence
Episode #279 of the is here, and this week, Chris, Dan, and Zach chat about the Dodge Dart, Chrysler’s first-quarter 2012 sales, a Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ smackdown at Motegi with a Mazda MX-5, and the influence of the Hyundai Sonata on the 2013 Nissan Altima. Your questions and comments power the end of the ‘cast, and for those of you who hung with us live on our , thanks for taking the time. We’ve embedded our Q&A module for you to scroll through and follow along, too. Thanks for listening!
Autoblog Podcast #280:
in Q1, especially in
In the Autoblog Garage
Hosts: , ,
Runtime: 01:41:32
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There are plenty of reasons to steer clear of a cruise. We typically shy away from the idea of cramming ourselves onto a vessel filled to capacity with overweight American tourists, all waiting to descend on some unsuspecting port of call like a scourge of consumerist locusts. Now, we have another reason to pass on the big boats.
WFTV discovered a parking lot owner in Cocoa, Florida was taking customer vehicles out for little joy rides. The news crew promptly set up a little sting by renting a red ChevroletCorvette Convertible and installing a GPS tracker. The car wasn’t on the lot for six hours before Jay Nieves, the owner of Premier Parking Spot hopped in.
The news crew filmed Nieves thrashing the car on a dirt road, parking it at his home overnight, doing sizeable burnouts on the street, transporting lumber and leaving the car with the top down and driver’s door wide open for extended periods of time. All told, Nieves clocked 60 miles on what he thought was a customer’s car before the news crew confronted him about the situation. Nieves promptly denied everything. for the full newscast.
Few automakers do camper vans quite so well as . From factory additions to aftermarket conversions, models like the Transporter seem perfect for on-the-go living. Now a company in the UK has taken the camper conversion one step further with the Doubleback. In addition to a large pop-up roof tent, the creation boasts an expandable aft section than can increase the vehicle’s length by an additional 6.5 feet. The conversion is said to add just 286 pounds to the Transporter, and the mechanism expands in under 45 seconds to nearly double living space. Unfortunately, you’ll be splitting all that extra room between you and only one other friend. The swap nixes all but the front two seats.
If this all sounds familiar, it certainly should. We of the Doubleback a month ago, but the company has released a few videos showing exactly how the conversion works here in the real world. With a load rating of 1,323 pounds with the legs extended, the structure is engineered to sleep even the biggest boned campers out there. Unfortunately, snagging one will cost you. Look to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $87,975 for the Doubleback if you like what you see. to check out the videos for yourself.
is looking toward the future. A new Japanese ad for the company has made its way to YouTube featuring some of the most important models in the automaker’s past. From lowly bicycles and small-displacement motorcycles to the ever-sexy 1965 RA272 F1 car and perfectly proportioned S800, the ghosts of yesterday are all lined up behind the new Acura NSX Concept. The spot spends plenty of time talking about the power of dreams and determination before finally ending on the rally cry of “Let’s surpass yesterday’s Honda!” The simple spot is titled “We won’t be beaten.”
At least that’s according to the subtitles. The announcer could be reading us his grocery list for all we know. If the translation is accurate, though, it sounds like Honda is tacitly acknowledging that it needs to pull itself up by its bootstraps and get back into fighting shape. Let’s hope they figure it out. to watch the video for yourself.
We keep track of every idea that for . Of the hundreds we get after each episode airs, one is without question at the top of everyone’s list: drive 200 miles per hour.
Despite the first production car eclipsing 200 mph back in the mid-’80s, we thankfully aren’t yet jaded by the feat. Unlike back then, however, more than a handful of today’s cars can beat two bills if given enough runway.
That’s exactly where Jessi and Patrick found themselves on the day we asked them to do the deed: the runways of the near Mojave, CA. Eagle-eyed Autoblog readers will remember that this is one of the locations used by to conduct their . We should know; we’ve gone after the elusive two hundred twice now, but at this very location (check out the gallery from that experience below).
We enrolled Jessi and Patrick for a day’s worth of double-hundy attempts in vehicles like the and new . Each took their own shot at 200-mph glory, and one even discovered that reaching 200 mph is the easy part.
We’re almost ready to record Episode #280 of the Autoblog Podcast, and you can check out the topics below, add your own to the and join us live via , as well, and we’ve embedded our UStream player Thanks for listening!
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #280
A European group called wanted to showcase the dangers of texting while driving, and got ad agency Publicis to help them out. The result: a two-minute spot that put trainee drivers in Belgium with an instructor who said part of their driving test would be to avoid an obstacle while texting a random sentence that he’d dictate.
Since nothing beyond a cone or two was hurt in the making of this video, we’ll admit we laughed. That said, the message is clear.
to see it for yourself. And FYI, a driver training instructor in Belgium doesn’t need to wear a seat belt on a closed course… though maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
With the longest coastline in the world, Canada is bound to get all sorts of weird things washing up on its shores from every which direction. But a Harley-Davidsonmotorcycle? That’s what one Peter Mark found while riding his ATV on a secluded island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia. It’s origin? Japan.
The bike – enclosed along with other random items in what appears to be the compartment off a moving truck – appears to have traveled some 3,000 miles across the North Pacific from Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture to the Canadian province of British Columbia. That’s where Mark found it, rusted but recognizable inside the white cube that was apparently washed out to sea by the tsunami that struck the island nation one year ago.
The finder of the piece of iron driftwood left it where he found it and contacted the Japanese consulate in Vancouver which is trying to track down the original owner whose fate remains unknown. to watch the fascinating video report.
-Davidson lost in Japan’s tsunami washes up in Canada
is trying to make a name for itself on the safety and technology front, recently and outfitting new models with a suite of safety equipment that arguably puts it among the leaders in the industry. We got a chance to sample some of this last month, but we were also allowed to “drive” a semi-autonomous test mule equipped with what Cadillac is calling “Super Cruise.”
Nominally an improvement on adaptive cruise control, Super Cruise is actually a more sophisticated system that uses a camera communicating with the car’s GPS to “see” the road ahead. It goes one step further than currently available systems, however, automatically centering the vehicle in the lane using its electric power steering system. Unlike other active lane-departure systems that use a car’s brakes to help prevent it from veering off the road, the system General Motors is developing allows for precisely setting the vehicle’s position within the lane. The test mule we sampled had steering-wheel-mounted buttons that would allow you to “nudge” the car from side to side by a foot at a time without upsetting its course. Super Cruise also communicates with the vehicle’s other active safety systems to help prevent and mitigate crashes.
Super Cruise is designed only for use on the highway, to “ease the driver’s workload.”
Super Cruise is designed only for use on the highway, to “ease the driver’s workload,” with drivers still required to steer in city traffic and for more complicated maneuvers like passing. GM officials acknowledged the difficulty in deploying a system like this, a technology that if used improperly may encourage inattentive driving. Supposedly the system will only be functional under the specific circumstances for which it is designed, much like today’s in-car entertainment systems will not play video on the front screen unless a vehicle is in Park. Currently the system is somewhat limited by external factors, like weather and the need for distinct lane markings. If visibility is low or the road doesn’t have at least one clear lane demarcation, Super Cruise won’t function. However, GM says it will improve the vision abilities of the system as it readies the technology for the marketplace.
GM says that Super Cruise could be introduced into production vehicles in just a few years, “by mid-decade.” While on the one hand, its ability to help improve the safety of our roads is laudable, we can’t help but express our frustration at the march of technology headed inevitably towards removing the physical act of driving from the motoring equation.
to watch some video of us aboard the Super Cruise-equipped test mule and read the full press release.
We record Episode #280 of the Autoblog Podcast tonight, and you can drop us your questions via our Q&A module below, and chime in to direct our conversation. Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast if you haven’t already done so, and if you want to take it all in live, tune in to our (audio only) channel at 10:00 PM Eastern tonight.
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #280
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“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on television.” So went the script for countless television commercials of yore, featuring the stars of medical dramas capitalizing on their on-air personae to shill for pills, HMOs and what-have-you. But one television doctor didn’t hesitate to jump into action when duty called – medical training be damned.
That actor is one Patrick Dempsey, who most might recognize for his role as Dr. McDreamy on the ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. He’s also a consummate race car driver – arguably today’s Steve McQueen or Paul Newman – competing in such events as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Baja 1000 rally raid. These seemingly disparate aspects of Dempsey’s life, however, converged when a kid flipped his in front of the actor’s house in Malibu last week.
Having rolled the three times, 17-year-old Weston Massett was trapped inside the wreckage when McDreamy came to the rescue, crowbar in hand, to get the kid out of the car, nursing him until the airlift arrived and following him to the hospital. Massett is expected to make a full recovery from the concussion and stretched optic nerve that were his only injuries to speak of. for the television report.
Is the driver of this driving under the influence? From the looks of this four-minute-long video where he or she pinballs repeatedly between ditch and center line and narrowly misses oncoming traffic, it certainly looks like the wheelman is soggy drunk.
This four-minute+ video catches all the stupidity from the first off-road foray at about 40 seconds all the way to an expertly executed nosedive into a ditch. The impromptu videographers do a a fine job commentating on every jerky move as they attempt to warn oncoming drivers.
There’s high drama at various points throughout the video, and in the end, the driver is lucky that the conclusion isn’t worse.
Before you ask, from the audio, it sounds like the videographers called the cops before starting his camera. We assume the authorities showed up soon after the truck’s violent sudden stop, and presumably hauled the driver off to either jail, hospital or morgue. Either way, watching the video is a sobering reminder of the stupidity of driving under the influence. Watch the video by , but bear in mind there is some foul language.
It takes a lot to stand apart at an exposition as jam-packed with glitzy treasure as the and impress the hordes of automotive journalists there assembled, but we were suitably impressed when we laid eyes upon the at the Messe this past September. The Croatian upstart put together a supercar of (figurative, if not literal) proportions, but instead of building it around a fossil-guzzling conventional powerplant, Rimac designed its hypercar with the equivalent of 1,088-horsepower worth of electric motors.
With a 92kW battery powering the electric motors at each wheel, the Rimac is said to be capable of rocketing to 62 from a standstill in just 2.8 seconds while traveling as far as 372 miles on a single charge. The team of former Pininfarina designers penned an attractive shape to go with it, the Bulgarian leathercrafters extraordinaires at Vilner were brought in to craft the interior, HRE developed a unique set of monoblock alloys and Vredestein debuted its new Ultrac Vorti tires designed by Giugiaro all for the Concept_One.
Impressive specs, all, but what’s most impressive is that the Concept_One is no mere concept – you can actually buy it, assuming you’ve got the scratch. Upon showcasing the electric supercar at Top Marques in Monaco, Rimac announced a limited run of 88 examples will be built, each fetching $980,000 – a price as princely as the regent who was on hand to check it out in Monte Carlo. Which only goes to prove that you can, indeed, have your cake and eat it too, but it’ll cost you dearly.
Take a closer look at the fresh crop of high-resolution images added to the gallery above and check out the bonus video of the car moving under its own power by .
has managed an impressive turnaround since the dark days of 2009. After carpet-bombing the market with a spate of new or refreshed models, the automaker saw its retail sales jump a whopping 43 percent in 2011, helping it report in the process. Chrysler even managed to pay out profit-sharing checks for the first time . According to Richard Cox, director of the Dodge brand, that trend hasn’t slacked up in 2012. Year-to-date in the neighborhood of 40 percent.
But those gains were made largely by fluffing the pillows on old platforms. New engines, new interiors and reworked sheetmetal aside, we’ve yet to see what “the new Chrysler” can pull off with a completely fresh model. At least, that was the case.
Behold the : the first serious small-car effort from the automaker since the Neon rolled off into the sunset in 2005. As the first completely new machine from Chrysler since the automaker’s bankruptcy and subsequent takeover by , there’s plenty riding on the new compact.
While technically based on the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, American engineers have drawn and quartered the chassis while also reworking the suspension to suit domestic tastes. With eye-catching styling, an à la carte option system and a range of fuel-efficient and powerful engines, the 2013 Dart isn’t just a step forward for , it might just be a step forward for the compact class.
A Japanese motoring show, complete with titles in comic fonts, put three racing pilots behind the wheels of the , and (Toyota 86, in this case) for three laps of the 2.1-mile East Road Course at Twin Ring Motegi. Of course the segment producers know that putting the 167-horsepower roadster against the 200-hp coupes isn’t exactly fair, so they gave the Mazda a small head start of about three grid positions.
Ex-sports car racer Takayuki Kinoshita handles the Mazda, former open-wheel pilot Naoki Hattori drives the BRZ, and former Le Mans-class winner Keiichi Tsuchiya gets fast and loose in the FR-S. The drivers offer copious on-track commentary, but it’s in Japanese. That said, watching the MX-5 try to stay in front and watching Tsuchiya start drifting are universal gearhead languages. You’ll find the action .
Jaws dropped last month in when took the wraps off the Aventador J. Looking like the bastard love-child of an coupe and a KTM X-Bow, the Aventador J packed the same 700-horsepower V12 into a visceral roadster body.
The fleeting beauty and startling reality of it, however, is that Lamborghini only made one. It reportedly sold for $2.74 million and went home from the Palexpo with an unnamed collector. So if you missed your opportunity to see it in Switzerland, the closest you may ever get is with the .
We love action movies as much as the next guy, but sometimes the car stunts just look too ridiculous. Like when a cop car goes airborne during a chase scene after rear-ending a parked car. Or how about when a vehicle flips end over end upon impact. That never happens, right?
Well it apparently does in Russia, where, thanks to seemingly everyone in the country having a dash cam, you can watch video of a Land Rover Freelander 2 driving over a manhole cover and going Bourne Ultimatum.
What caused the cover to blow the way it did is not evident, though it’s interesting to note that in the aftermath (in the second video especially), you see that it’s not a plain, flat manhole cover that comes to rest near the car. It’s a cylindrical object with a square grate across the top. Lending credence to the whole thing not being a fake is that a second static security camera (or similar setup) pointed at the street also caught the whole episode.
was in the off-road business before the cult classic LM002, on a military vehicle concept dubbed in the mid-seventies that it hoped to sell to the U.S. armed forces. The 4,500-pound, fiberglass-bodied troop carrier used a 5.9-liter, 180-horsepower engine mounted in back. Hardly Cheetah-like, the vehicle delivered lackluster performance and didn’t handle well.
Even worse, it was a of a by another firm, which landed MTI and Lamborghini in court when the Cheetah was revealed at the 1977 Geneva Motor Show. The U.S. military tested the sole prototype and totaled it.
Perhaps this is the worst part: the Cheetah was such an expensive failure for Lamborghini that it was one of the reasons the company was unable to follow through on its commitment to BMW for the M1 project.
And with that history lesson digested, you’ll get even more wry satisfaction from the narrator’s dialogue in the Cheetah promo video, which you’ll find .
It’s not every day that Caterham comes out with a new car. After all, the core of its business is centered around a 55-year-old design. But the SP/300.R is an all-new product, a clean-sheet design. And after unveiling the track car built in collaboration with renowned racing chassis manufacturer Lola, the first example has been delivered.
The recipient of SP/300.R #1 is the car’s US distributor, Dyson Racing. Dyson will use its SP/300.R as a demonstration vehicle to drum up sales for the racer, which promises to rival Radical in the growing market for purpose-built, LMP-style track cars. Want to see more? We’ve added more photos to the gallery and a pair of videos (along with the press release).
Ah, Catrinel Menghia. knows a good thing when it finds one, and so it’s no surprise to see a trio of new advertisements staring the Romanian-born and Italian-speaking model alongside the .
First up is a minute-long montage showing the Scorpion-addled Abarth flung around the desert while Catrinel… well, stands around looking beautiful. Next, the turbocharged 500 drives down the Las Vegas Strip while Ms. Menghia walks around looking beautiful. Notice a trend?
In the third video of this new series, Catrinel finally gets to drive the Abarth in a race against a lucky cameraman. Well, sort of. The two cars are actually piloted by “professional drivers on a closed course” – as you can see, they are wearing helmets. Catrinel and the cameraman, on the other hand, emerge from their black and white 500s with hair blowing in the wind.
No matter. Clearly these videos are meant to build upon the first extremely successful tie-up between the model and the Italian hatchback. We’ve gone ahead and included that initial commercial, along with the three new ones, . Enjoy!
