Last Week at The Quail

This week was Monterey Car Week and the Concours d’Elegance in California, where the weather is beautiful except for when it’s on fire, which part of it is, but fortunately not along the central coast where there were hundreds of immaculate cars showcased. I’m going to have to make it out there sometime, but since I haven’t, go check out Autoblog or any other number of sites with massive galleries of all the amazing old cars on display this week. One of which was the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept which looks just about as close to a space ship as a car ever has. In addition to the classics, several automakers brought along some new cars or concepts which I thought deserved their own special feature this week.

First was Infiniti’s Prototype 10, which follows the more classically styled Prototype 9 that the company brought to Pebble Beach last year. This one is also a single seat racer in the style of 1950s-era race cars, but with Infiniti’s current styling language applied. Not only that, it’s apparently sat upon the new rigid, adaptable electric vehicle chassis that may underpin future Infiniti EVs, giving it much greater relevance than your run-of-the-mill concept. Of course this will never see production, and we don’t know exactly what drives it anyway, but man is it pretty to look at.

Another pretty silver single-seat electric racing vehicle showed off was the Mercedes-Benz EQ Silver Arrow, which, like the Infiniti, is a modern take on a classic race car. Unlike the Infiniti, it’s a modern take on a specific race car, the 80 year-old Silver Arrow, a Mercedes that set a public road speed record of 269 miles per hour in Germany way back in 1938. Also unlike the Infiniti, we have performance figures for the EQ Silver Arrow, which lays down 738 horsepower, 80 kilowatt-hour battery that gives the car a respectable range of 249 miles. But I doubt you’d get that far with instant torque and more than 700 horsepower on tap. While the Infiniti will never see the light of day through a dealership’s windows, the drivetrain in this car could very easily slot into an AMG performance car like in the EQ range. Sort of like a rival to the Porsche Taycan or forthcoming Tesla Roadster.

Audi was like Electric Vehicles? Oh ja, we do that too, so they brought out their PB 18 e-tron concept which, while having the worst name of the three electric concepts, also had the worst looking style. Not to say it’s bad, but the Peanut Butter 18 just didn’t quite reach the high bar set by the Infiniti and Mercedes. It’s not a single seat racer, but rather a shooting-brake style two seat wagon-y hatchback thing that still features Audi’s recent trend of the front of their cars being 100% grill despite the fact that electric cars do not need grills. It also beats the Infiniti by having a real powertrain, with a 95 kilowatt-hour battery powering three electric motors putting out a combined 671 horsepower and 612 pound-feet of torque, accelerating the car to sixty in just over two seconds. It’s apparently good for a range of 310 miles on a single charge. This thing looks like it’s straight out of Blade Runner of Minority Report. It’s very, very futuristic and I think we’re in for a very exciting time in car design if these new looks are actually implemented in future production cars.

It wasn’t all electric cars though, as Lamborghini, who haven’t found an electric motor violent enough to put in their cars yet, unveiled the Aventador Superveloce Jota or SVJ. While only 30 horsepower more powerful than the Aventador S, how much more power do you need than the SVJ’s 759 and 531 foot-pounds of torque. It comes from a no-doubt throaty 6.5-litre V12 and drives all four wheels, which also feature four-wheel steering, combining with active aerodynamics to make the car especially agile. Of course it has set a Nurburgring record at some time faster than other people that is totally meaningless. It’s lower, it’s stiffer, it has more downforce and it’s faster than the Aventador S, which means it will be absolute hell to drive around anywhere that isn’t an immaculate race track, but I’m sure that isn’t going to stop some pharma bro or tech entrepreneur from trying. After all, they can afford the chiropractic work this car would create the need for.

Not to be outdone, Ferrari brought along a new car, or rather, a convertible version of a car we’ve previously seen, the 488 Pista. It’s the same as the coupe, with a twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 engine churning out 711 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. But with the top down, the car is 0.4 seconds slower to 124 miles per hour than the coupe, taking a whole eight seconds, which I know will probably be a deal breaker for so many people.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum, the new BMW Z4 M40i was unveiled with a sharp “frozen orange metallic” paint job and it’s quite a dashing looking vehicle. Of course we’ve seen virtually every part of this car by now, so the complete package isn’t really a surprise, but what will be a surprise are performance figures, because they have embargoed those until September 2018, which is obnoxious. It’s apparently quick though, getting to sixty in less than four seconds, so draw your own conclusions about the car and its Toyota Supra sibling from there.

Back to the extreme end of the spectrum, Shelby Supercar, one time makers of the fastest car in the world, surprised everyone by bringing a new car to Pebble Beach this year. Called the Tuatara, SSC has worked with Nelson Racing Engines to build a 5.9-litre flat-plane crank twin-turbo V8 flex fuel engine, and this is where it gets a little special. If you run this car on E85 gasoline, it will make 1,750 horsepower. If you only have access to 91-octane dino juice, it will “only” make 1,350 horsepower. While we have no idea how fast it will actually go when those ponies kick in, it does apparently have a super low drag coefficient of just 0.279, which slightly worries me that it doesn’t have enough downforce, which you might want when your car is approaching 2,000 horsepower. The car is not desperately pretty and it is painted in a sort of matte primer color, but the point of this car is that number. The reason you would buy one of the 100 they are supposedly going to make, and have been saying they are going to make for seven years now, is that number. And the reason the police report will cite when it finds your body in three different locations in two different counties will also be that number.

Finally debuting this week was the Bugatti Divo, for which we’ve been getting so many teasers, it just seemed like Bugatti wanted to whip a dead horse, and they whipped it real good. But for good reason, the Divo, based on the Chiron, is a beautiful car and was shown with very fetching teal color accents. It’s 77 pounds lighter than the Chiron, generates almost 200 more pounds of downforce and will touch 236 miles per hour if you have a place where doing that is possible. Instead of just raw speed, this car was built with cornering in mind and was named after French racing driver Albert Divo, who raced a Bugatti to two Targa Florio wins back in the 1920s. It’s much more attractive than the Chiron, which is saying something, and probably worth all of the $5.8 million it would take to buy one because it’s only going to appreciate in value. Oh and if you’re thinking of saving up for one, don’t bother because they’re all already sold because there are way too many rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.

Which brings us to the auctions. No Monterey Car Week is complete without a few ridiculous vehicle sales, and this year was no different. One of the special cars that went up for sale was a 1987 Porsche 959 Komfort, which is one of those “homologation specials” we talk about; basically a car that was produced in road-going form just so the company could make a race car version of it and dominate, which Porsche did in Group B racing. There were only 249,959 Komforts ever made, so this was always going to bring a lot of money. Unfortunately for the owner of this vehicle, the trailer carrying it disconnected from the car towing it and the 959 plowed straight into a tree, and the owner just decided to sell it that way. So yeah, there was a very, very totalled-looking Porsche 959 auctioned off, and you know how much it sold for? $467,500. Amazing. I’m sure the buyer has some plans for it that don’t include leaving the tree-shaped damage to the front end.

But the real star of the auctions was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO being sold by Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee who invested very, very wisely. Only 36 of this vehicle were ever made and this particular 250 GTO, one of four upgraded by Scaglietti and one of only seven to have a more aggressive coachbuilt body designed by Pininfarina, making it lower, wider and shorter than other 250s. So you can imagine that this sold for a bit more than the $467k the crashed Porsche fetched. And yeah, it did okay. $48.8 million worth of okay, making it the most expensive car ever to sell at auction. Amazingly, that’s not even the most expensive Ferrari 250 GTO ever sold, as last year, a 1963 model sold in a private sale for $70 million, with another one going in 2013 for $52 million. So it just goes to show, you can get a better deal at an auto auction. You just may have to widen your definition of “deal.”

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines & New Cars for the week of January 22nd, 2018

Arbeit Macht Schwer

In case you thought the US was the only country with labor relations issue, here comes Germany to reassure us that we're not so different. Factory workers at Audi and Porsche plants have gone on strike to support demands of a six percent raise and the right to ask for a reduction in hours from 35 to just 28 so they can do things like care for children or the elderly for a couple of years, then return to work full time. In response to the union’s demands, employers have apparently offered a two percent raise, a one-time only “bonus” of two hundred Euro, and flat out refused to consider the reduced hours point. As they say, misery loves company, so I’m happy to see the rich American tradition of overwork and underpay is starting to catch on across the world. It makes me feel slightly less guilty for not working in France or Norway.

Geld Macht Spaß

Last year we covered the launch of the Porsche Passport Pilot Program, or as nobody calls it, Quadruple P. Well, they have some early numbers to report based on the program in Atlanta and signs are good for the brand, with 78% of participants having never owned a Porsche before. The company envisions this as just one way buyers can experience Porsche ownership, and they anticipate about 30% of buyers will purchase vehicles online in the next couple of years. Mercedes-Benz is thinking similarly, estimating that 25% of their new and used sales will come from the internet by 2025. But back to Porsche Passport - they also say it’s reaching a younger demographic, though they don’t specify how young. Given the fact that most of the participants are opting for the higher-cost, $3,000 per month service, I can’t believe these people are that young. To be able to basically have $36,000 to spend on a car every single year in addition to housing costs, food and other things, it seems like you’d have to be doing pretty damn well for yourself, which generally takes a few years. Or, in some of our cases, not at all. 

We Really Did Forget Dieselgate

After a disastrous 2015 and '16 where they were found to be using defeat devices to circumvent global emissions laws in their diesel cars, Volkswagen spent most of 2017 trying their absolute hardest to help buyers forget about dieselgate. A lot of this included generous discounts, goodwill campaigns and reinvestment in popular vehicles, not to mention the rebirth of the Microbus as the I.D. Buzz. Turns out, all that work paid off and buyers around the world pretty much did forget and stepped right back in line to snatch up new Volkswagens. What makes it more incredible is that, while the industry as a whole was down last year from 2016, Volkswagen recorded record sales, increasing 4.2% verses the year prior. And while the rest of the industry braces for more stagnating sales, VW sales chief Juergen Stackmann is optimistic, expecting sales to continue to rise in 2018. Based on the popularity of the gigantic Atlas, the compact Tiguan twins and the attractive Arteon, as well as the deal I was able to strike on a leftover 2017, it looks like their aggressive measures may be pretty effective!

Infiniti’s Shocking Moves

Meanwhile in Japan, Infiniti also had a great year, increasing sales eleven percent over 2016, but they’re still very much playing catch up to the German, English and Swedish luxury brands. Their plans to overtake their competition hinges primarily on electrification, as Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa explained this week. All new Infinitis launched after 2021 will be all-electric or will be range-extended hybrids, but not in the conventional sense. The company’s technology called ePower uses a gasoline motor to recharge the battery in its range extended hybrids, but that gas motor doesn’t drive the wheels at all. And there’s no plug-in feature. So the propulsion is entirely electric and the power generation entirely gas. It’s a weird setup, and especially considering Infiniti’s recently-announced variable compression engine, a strange change of approach to try to lure buyers. Then again, it could be a great solution for buyers without a garage or access to plug-in locations. 

Acura Wants to be Exciting Again

In addition to announcing the new 2019 RDX, Acura dropped a bombshell on the Detroit Auto Show, announcing the return of Type-S and A-Spec brands. For the uninitiated, Type-S is a high trim level applied to Acura models that are especially fast and good handling, and it was last used ten years ago on the TL sedan, but was famously applied to the RSX and Integra coupes, which were a ton of fun to drive. A-Spec is another trim level more focused on comfort, style and refinement than outright speed, so it’s somewhat less exciting, but no less important to buyers. The bombshell, however, was kind of a dud because they didn’t announce which models would get which trim levels or if they’d be bringing back an actually affordable fun car. It’s like Honda has this caged lunatic who wants fun cars and they let it out just a little bit at a time because if they let it off the leash completely, we’d end up with cars enthusiasts like and that’s just too much for them.

France Wants to be Less Exciting

People keep dying on French roads, with increases over the past three years after steady decreases going back as far as 1972. In response, France is lowering the speed limit on most of their highways by ten kilometers per hour, so the fastest you will be able to legally drive in France is just 56 miles per hour, rendering the fairly standard 0-60 calculations pretty useless. To their credit, the French don’t attribute all the deaths just to speed alone and have tightened regulations on cell phone use and drunk driving. This comes as road deaths are up also in Britain and the United States, illustrating a disturbing trend that I think must be attributed to cell phone usage. When I was hit a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to come away uninjured and the other driver offered no excuse for why he ran a red light that had been red for at least seven seconds. Based on the Uber and Lyft stickers in his window though, I guessed that he was trying to find a fare. I wouldn’t go so far as to say those ride sharing companies are complicit in the wreck that has cost me days worth of time fighting with insurance companies and trying to find a new car, but the sooner we can integrate smart features into a car so drivers need look at their phones less, the better. 

BMW to Charge for Not Their Service

BMW, though, has a different idea of how to integrate phones into cars and that involves squeezing its drivers for every penny they can get, like little Bavarian weasels, hiding away all their nuts. But the truth is, the nuts aren’t even theirs! Or maybe the tree isn’t. This is a bad metaphor. BMW wants to charge a subscription fee for Apple’s CarPlay software, which they currently have as a $300 option when you buy a new car. By charging $80 per year after the first year, which is free, they argue that you pay less if you only keep the car a few years, which I guess most BMW owners do because they want to be seen driving a new BMW. The issue here is that more than 400 models of car come with Android Auto and almost as many come with Apple’s CarPlay, but it’s included in the price and not an option you have to add in later. Hell, you can buy a Toyota Corolla or VW Jetta and get these features for free, but you don’t with BMW. It’s like how fancy hotels make you pay for WiFi when you get it for free at Best Western. Why? Because the fancy hotels know you have the money to pay for it. Okay, that was a better metaphor.

Taking Crashes to New Heights

In Santa Ana, California this week, a driver managed to launch his Nissan Altima into the second story of a dental office, using a raised center media as a sweet ramp for the epic Dukes of Hazzard-style flying act. The driver, who was apparently high as a kite, was able to exit the car and hang by the door until police came and literally caught him. He and his two passengers were injured and taken to the hospital where they had some serious coming down to do. 

Photo by Southern Counties News

Tackling Terrible Truckers

From bad drivers to bad truckers, we’re headed back to England, where the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, or DVSA, announced the findings of a 4,000 vehicle roadside test. They found that one in 13 trucks on British roads were fitted with an emissions cheat device that give false emissions readings, allowing the truck better performance while drastically increasing pollution. If this sounds familiar, it should because it seems like there’s this type of story every week, it just usually involves auto manufacturers getting caught doing it, not truck drivers who are looking to skirt the law. A representative of the DVSA, Gareth Llewellyn said, “we’re committed to taking dangerous lorries off Britain’s roads. We won’t hesitate to take action against these drivers, operators and vehicles.” Unfortunately for Gareth, when trucks were found with defeat devices, drivers were given ten days to fix the problem or pay a £300 fine, which sounds an awful lot like they’re hesitating to take action to me.

Have a Seat

Back here in America, our love for three row SUVs has apparently created quite a criminal enterprise, because there have been a rash of robberies - of just the third row seats from SUVs. Apparently, on most General Motors SUVs, like the Chevy Suburban, Tahoe and GMC and Cadillac Siblings, if you’re able to pop open the rear glass on the lift gate, the alarm on the car doesn’t go off. Once inside, the third row can simply be unhooked and then passed out the open hatch. And who is buying all these third rows to make stealing them such a popular endeavor? If you guessed “people who have had their third rows stolen,” you’d be right. It’s tempting to victim blame here and say “just park in a garage or back in so the back glass isn’t so accessible,” but what’s the point of a car alarm if it’s not going to alarm you when someone is stealing something from it? Come on, GM, this is on you.

AI Coming Along Swimmingly

While Google and Amazon work to integrate their digital assistants into more and more new cars, Nissan is going a sort of different direction with their own artificial intelligence. Instead of a female voice, Nissan’s Xmotion Concept features a koi fish as a virtual assistant that swims across the myriad interior screens to provide drivers assistance with, well, driving, as well as entertainment and navigation. It’ll also connect with the driver’s smartphone to share information between it and the car. And in case you’re thinking this is some sort of anthropomorphized Admiral Ackbar-looking fish, no, it’s just a normal koi fish, and I think it’s neat and more companies should think outside the pond when coming up with virtual assistants.

SUV Free and Happy to Be

While Ferrari and Lamborghini rush to catch up with Bentley and Porsche on the super-expensive SUV craze, McLaren is pretty content just where they are, thank you very much. The company’s chief designer, Dan Parry-WIlliams, told Top Gear magazine this week that “I’m not the first person to point out that an SUV is neither particularly sporty or utilitarian. It’s not ‘everything for a reason’ unless the reason is to clutter up the streets.” He’s referring there to McLaren’s design motto, “everything for a reason,” and it’s refreshing to see a company stick to its credo. Meanwhile, at fellow British sports car company Lotus, whose mantra, handed down from founder Colin Chapman was “Simplify and add lightness,” they’ll soon be launching their own SUV that will neither be simple nor light, though that may be said of their buyers. 

The (Frozen) Vaporware Car

Photo by Simon Laprise

In Montreal this week, someone had a good time at the expense of some local police, who attempted to ticket a snow-covered vintage Toyota Celica Supra that was parked in a snow removal lane, blocking in other parked cars. Upon lifting the very real windshield wiper to place the ticket, the police officer discovered that the wiper arm wasn’t attached to anything because the entire car was simply a pile of snow molded into the shape of a Supra. The whole thing was the brainchild of a French Canadian artist named Simon Laprise, who found the windshield wiper on the street and placed it on the car for maximum confusion. As for the ticket issued? The citation read “You made our night, hahahahaha” or whatever the French word for laughter is.

New Cars

Jeep Grand Commander

Detroit might make a great place to launch a new Jeep, but that’s just what Jeep hasn't done this week, when images of a new three-row SUV leaked to the media. It seems every company is scrambling to get an SUV with three rows out there for all the families who insist that contorting yourself to wedge in between a door sill and the second row only to sit cross-legged on a tiny, barely-padded foldable bench seat is more dignified than just swallowing your pride and buying the mini-van you should be getting. And with regards to Jeep, they don’t currently have a third-row-capable SUV in their stable and haven’t since the mercy killing of the Commander in 2010. If you forgot the Jeep Commander existed, you’re not alone and you’re totally forgiven because it was horrible and ugly. But now we have had a look at the new Grand Commander, a seven seat SUV that is apparently a China-only vehicle. At least according to what we know about it right now. The new model borrows heavily from Jeep’s other products for styling, which is now a good thing and it looks pretty decent, so it’d be hard to believe Fiat Chrysler wouldn’t wise up and bring it over stateside at some point. Plus, starting at around $38,000, it’d fit right in with most of its contemporary competitors. Until we know if it’s coming here or not, I guess you’ll just have to buy the Honda Odyssey you should be getting anyway.

GM’s Autonomous Bolt

One of the biggest stories to come out of Detroit this week was General Motors’ launch of the all-autonomous Chevy Bolt. This is a big deal because GM is calling it the first pre-production car to be shown without a steering wheel or pedals, which I guess is accurate since we’ve definitely seen concepts without them before. While it’s ostensibly a major step forward in terms of the future of autonomous vehicles, indicating GM’s confidence that they have a car ready to go completely without human controls, it really doesn’t feel all that special. Just looking at the photos of the interior, which doesn’t have to cater to a driver anymore, it really just looks like they took the passenger’s side, went into Photoshop, copied, pasted and flipped it so the former driver’s side looks the same. That’s it. I mean, in a fully driverless car, you don’t even need a dashboard. Your displays can be anywhere, or everywhere! The seats could swivel or not even face forward, and yet here we are, with a Chevy Bolt where they just Control X’d the steering column and pedals. Congratulations GM on making the future of motoring so unappealing.
 
But thank god, Chevy wasn’t the only company exhibiting at this year’s North American International Auto Show. In fact, there were a ton of new vehicles. If you want to learn more, check out to my Auto Show Rap-Up from last week's podcast. 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs