Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

Now that my computer is functioning properly, we can get on with the show. Thanks to a tooth damaged in an old injury finally dying off, I had to get a root canal on Tuesday, which on top of leading to a very painful last week of winter break, has made my upper lip swell up to an amusing size. It’s still impeding my ability to speak clearly a little bit, so if you can’t quite make out what I’m saying, it’s the root canal. Not my own personal shortcomings. Anyway, this week features news on the Tesla Roadster, a possible glimpse at the future of the Corvette, Ford of North America reboots the Taurus to get rid of that Five Hundred smell and Ford of Europe gets the C1 Focus RS. Chrysler announces they’re making what seems like a bad decision that might actually be a good one, Lotus looks into green research, and a extra-tasty Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Also, I go off on a rant for a few minutes to explain why I’ve been so hard on Toyota over the last few weeks. I think it comes off okay, but if you don’t want to hear about such things, I warn you in advance. If you want more of that sort of thing, drop me a line at my new email address: kasey@speedsportlife.com. If not, send me email anyway and hopefully your witty comebacks will shatter my ego so much that I surrender the will to live.

 

 Dubspeed Radio 1/28/08 [17:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story by Jack Baruth

The word on the street is that GM’s new Malibu is quite the sales success. Nearly thirteen thousand of the “New ‘Bu” found homes in December - but wait! They could have sold even more, if they’d had any left! That’s right: for the first time in any of our recent memories, a domestically produced mid-sized sedan is “production constrained”. By any standard you want to use - sales, customer feedback, the drooling, incomprehensible babbles of The Press As A Whole - the Malibu is a winner. This is the one for which we’ve waited, the make-no-excuses product to take the fight to the Japanese. There’s nothing standing between General Motors and complete dominance over the HondOta CamCord.

Nothing, that is, except your inner chimpanzee.

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Story by Jack Baruth; photos by Zerin Dube and Carl Modesette

Are you sick of the Detroit Auto Show yet? Have the endless broken embargoes, family-vacation-disposable-camera-quality photographs, hilariously car-ignorant reporting, and faux-world-weary meta-coverage vomited across the blogosphere finally made you permanently allergic to the condition known as NAIAS? We don’t blame you. It’s been less than ten days since the ZR-1 made its majestic rotating-platform ascension above the crowd at the Friday-night “GM Style” opening event, and it already seems as if 2008 Detroit Show coverage has been with us longer than the previous-generation Land Cruiser.

The farther away we get from the show and its seven thousand sweating journalists, however, the easier it becomes to get a bit of perspective on the whole thing, and we therefore humbly ask you to hang on for just one more article. There won’t be any outrageous Chinese-car-company-chairman stunts in this one. Nor will there be any straight-from-the-show-floor photos that make those old shots of the Loch Ness Monster look like Ansel Adams’ best work. Instead, we’ll simply recap the show and award the Rockers, Suckers, and Snoozers which made the ‘08 show one to both remember and forget. Let’s get started.

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Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

Due to a top-secret mission working as a liaison between US interests and an unnamed German third-party, as well as the Sea of Doldrums that was the Detroit Auto Show, this podcast is a week late in case you haven’t noticed. However, we make up for it by having this one be twice as long as the normal podcast. So long, the normal summary would make this post a novel in and of itself. Besides, the news is so old you probably not only know about it, but have forgotten about it already, which will make it seem like you’re hearing it for the first time on the podcast. Dubspeed Radio, taking advantage of short attention spans in our endless quest for adequacy.

 

 Dubspeed Radio 1/21/08 [21:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Photos by Zerin Dube and Carl Modesette

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Story by Jack Baruth; photos by Zerin Dube and Carl Modesette

“Please, broadcast media only.” Toyota’s bouncers were all up in our grille, yo, and we weren’t in the mood to hear it. It seemed like only yesterday (because, well, it was only yesterday) that we’d watched Dodge herd cattle down Jefferson Avenue for amusement, but as usual Toyota had done the American manufactuer one better, forcing the Press As A Whole to line up for approximately an hour at the entrance to Cobo’s Riverview Ballroom before being, er, herded through a narrow gate and a humiliating little inspection, as if we were… cattle ourselves! And just when Dubspeed Driven’s little herd of literary longhorns had made it to the entrance, we were shoved aside so the television people could just breeze through! What? The? Foxtrot?

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Story by Jack Baruth; photos by Zerin Dube and Carl Modesette

Day One of the NAIAS, which is called the “Detroit Show” by pretty much everybody in the free world, because NAIAS sounds like something one would discuss with one’s proctologist behind closed doors… there was a distinct odor on the street. Was it the sharp tang of fifty-pound dumps taken by the herd of very expensive-looking cattle herded down Jefferson Avenue to introduce the Dodge Ram? Was it the acrid whiff of a heart-stopping “pyrotechnic” at Ford’s F-150 unveiling? Perhaps it was the reek of terror as Toby Keith bumbled his way through TelePrompter lines clearly written by a Phantom Menace-era George Lucas: “I am a platinum artist. I make platinum records. Is there a play-ti-numm truck out thair for me?”

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Story by Jack Baruth

“Ram Box”. What the heck is it? Well, it’s not a particularly offensive rap song, although it could be. Instead, it’s a rather bizarre secure-storage system built into the 2009 Dodge Ram truck. In this third generation of “big rig” styling Dodge trucks, it appears that Chrysler has decided that it’s not enough to have a new HEMI engine, a completely new frame and body, a new 1500 CrewCab form factor, and a quality regiment that includes 6.5 million miles of testing: they’re actually throwing in the kitchen sink. A pair of kitchen sinks.

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Story by Jack Baruth

I’d like to start this week with a bit of an apology - not for what I’ve done, mind you, but for what I am going to do. Fourteen years ago, I was a flat broke, know-nothing kid starting at the bottom of a small-town Ford dealership’s auto (and light truck!) sales department. The hours weren’t great, and most of the actual minutes were even worse, as Douglas Adams would say. On a monthly “draw” against commission of eight hundred dollars, I didn’t exactly live like a king. Heck, I couldn’t even afford to eat a real lunch. Instead, I’d buy two fifty-nine-cent McD’s cheeseburgers and wander over to the used car department, where “old Frank”, the finance manager for the “used side”, would be telling stories. After forty-plus years in the business, Frank knew all the tales of the car biz, and he wasn’t shy about telling them, no matter how disturbing, slanderous, or just plain obscene they might be. One lifeless Tuesday afternoon, I said to him,

“Hey Frank, you oughta write a book about this stuff.” Frank reacted to this mild suggestion with unconcealed disapproval and what was very possibly contempt, as if I’d suggested that he put a firecracker in the dealership toilet. His lit cigarette - yes, you could still smoke indoors at a car dealership back in 1994 - dangled dangerously out of his stained hand. He “fixed me with his eye”, as the Ancient Mariner did, and replied v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

“I could do that,” he said, “but I won’t. I would never write or say anything against this business. I wouldn’t share our secrets, our business, our life, with people on the outside,” and here his glare became quite focused and intense as I shrank back in one of the used car building’s rickety old wire-frame chairs, “and neither… should… you.” As the years went on, I came to appreciate and understand his statement. I arrived at a deep sympathy with, and later a bit of nostalgia for, the business as it once was. Once upon a time, the car business was a real profession, not a dumping ground for low achievers and double-fisted-handshaking douchebags. Those days are gone, and Frank went with them, dying at the end of a short but brutal bout with cancer well before the turn of this century. I’d like to think Frank wouldn’t mind it if I talked about the business now, but just in case, I want to apologize to him, wherever he is. I’m not going to write a book, but I am going to spend some time talking about the business. We’ll cover it all, from the way dealers finance their stock to the tale of the salesman who took a female customer in a Mustang convertible for a “test drive” that ended with the two of them having rather public sexual intercourse on the road adjacent to the service building…. Today we’re going to talk about how a dealership is really organized, and who really makes the decisions.

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Aston Martin Racing will return to Le Mans in 2008 to defend its GT1 title in the distinctive blue and orange livery of Gulf Oil.

Two Aston Martin DBR9s will look to emulate Gulf’s first victory at the 24 hour race 40 years on.

Alain Dujean, Gulf Oil vice president international, said: “This is arguably the most important year ever for Gulf in motorsport. The famous Gulf racing colours first tasted victory at Le Mans in 1968, so 2008 already had great significance for us, but for Gulf to have joined up with Aston Martin Racing for this year is fantastic – the coming together of two great automotive names, for what I hope will be a long and fruitful partnership.”

David Richards, chairman of Aston Martin, said: “Endurance racing is engrained in the heritage of both Gulf and Aston Martin and we have also both been intrinsically linked through Le Mans for many decades. It was perhaps destined that, in the year we defend our GT1 title and Gulf celebrates the 40th anniversary of its win, we would finally race together at La Sarthe.”

The two Aston Martin DBR9s for 2008 will be entered as numbers 007 and 009.

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