While You Were Sleeping: June 30, 2014

by Jack Baruth

Published: June 30th, 2014

Rust never sleeps, and neither does TTAC, as we bring you a completely random yet utterly essential selection of recent automotive news.

But The True Impact Is To Your Chances Of Breaking Your Two-Year “Dry Spell”: The World Cup has given a lot of people a chance to show how refined and “Euro” they are by loudly decrying the officiating during the Botswana-Tibet quarterfinals. It’s also caused a bunch of people to put the kind of flags on their cars that in the United States are typically seen proclaiming some utter moron’s complete devotion to a group of millionaires who take their direction from a billionaire. But Treehugger notes that driving at 65mph with just one flag on your car is wasting an extra quart of fuel every hour. Unless you’re driving to a soccer match which you loudly proclaim to be a “football” match, in which case you’re wasting all of your fuel.

Never Has A Guitar Rocked Less: According to Autoblog, “Harrison Guitar Works” has decided to build the “ultra-exclusive” Alfa Romeo guitar they’ve been threatening to build for a while now. They’re going to make just eleven of them, in the hopes of selling two. At the most. Seriously. Your humble author has spent new-car money on individual guitars before and I wouldn’t waste a hundred bucks on this thing. Nobody else will either.

And Nobody Thought About Asking Anna Paquin To Endorse It Once upon a time, Nissan built the X-Trail, a sort of too-rough-around-the-edges-for-American-consumption cute-ute. It was an ugly square thing but apparently it was the sole home of a 280-horsepower turbo version of the mighty SR20 engine. Now the X-Trail and the Rogue have been unified in a single homely product, and Nissan says it will double global sales as a result. Sales are expected to be highest in the United States and China. “Because that’s where all the stupid people are,” a Nissan representative very carefully did not say.

That’s Not Quite The Gilette Model, But It’s Not Quite Not, Either: Replacement battery packs for a Nissan Leaf will cost $5500. There’s an additional $225 for early Leaf owners and three hours of labor at your shop’s local rate. Core charge is a “stack”, which is what the kids on the street call $1000. There might be a finance plan.

The Question Is, How Could You Tell It Was Happening: NHTSA is going to investigate the 2012-2014 Nissan Versa for unintended acceleration. Apparently, the piece of carpet that trims the transmission tunnel can trap a driver’s foot. Expect a fair amount of government spending, terminating in abject apologies from Nissan executives who never considered how easy it would be to get your foot stuck in a Nissan Versa carpet trim, mostly because they’ve studiously avoided ever driving a Nissan Versa.

Jack Baruth

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4 of 34 comments

S2k Chris on Jun 30, 2014

"Sales are expected to be highest in the United States and China. “Because that’s where all the stupid people are,” a Nissan representative very carefully did not say." "Hahaha, I'm so edgy because I think Americans are stupid" Put another way...sales will be highest in the US and China because those are the only two countries that matter.

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- Ect on Jun 30, 2014
  
  I've never understood why Americans don't get satire, but apparently they mostly don't.
  
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- S2k Chris on Jun 30, 2014
  
  @ect The "Americans are stupid" Schtick was funny the first 944758485757366575696 times...
  
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Tom Szechy on Jul 01, 2014

Disclaimer: I merely tried to point out how silly it is to call something "football" where you actually hold the ball in your hands while running like crazy. I regret my words, of course you can do/say whatever you want, the world is guaranteed to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1CE4P8qqPE Not a fan of football though (neither types).

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