“What to call these?” tweeted @edmunds.com. “Dudemobiles? Guy Cars? Testosteroners?” And they linked to their scientifically prepared list of the cars with the most men as buyers. Not a list compiled by basement dwellers, but by Polk. The list reflects total purchases made in 2011. And we are counting down …

Number 10: Chevrolet Corvette. 86.9 percent males. Pictured above. At number 10, it practically counts as a girl car on this manly list.

Number 9: Ford F-Series. 87.0 percent males. Only number 9? F as in effeminate?

Number 8: GMC Sierra. 87.5 percent males. Now scientifically proven, more manly than a Ford truck.

Number 7: Nissan GT-R. 87.9 percent males. Carlos Ghosn drives one. That skews the stats.

Number 6: Porsche 911. 88.2 percent males. Because skirts ride up in these cars – German ingenuity.

Number 5: Ferrari California. 88.4 percent males. Driving one grows hair on your chest.

Number 4: Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG. 90.0 percent males. Even looks like a … guy.

Number 3: Audi R8. 91.4 percent males. This stat will drive Sindelfingen boinkers.

Number 2: BMW 1 Series M Coupe. 92.2 percent males. This stat causes uproar in Munich: “An Einser? Whats wrong with our Sexer?”

And the winner is:

Number 1: Ferrari 458 Italia. 95.3 percent males. Cazzo!

(Can someone open the window? It smells like a locker room.)

More and more of the daily news we consume is not written by people, but by robots and spiders. The people at Motor Trend will be painfully aware of that fact when they come back to work on Monday. Today, MT reports that “General Motors is investigating complaints that XM radios installed in Chevrolet Volts do not pick up the satellite radio service’s Fox station.”

Motor Trend goes on to say:

“The apparent defect was first revealed late Friday on the Fox News television broadcast, “Your World Cavuto.”

“Viewers of this network have called in to complain that Fox’s XM channel is not available on President Obama’s car, the Chevrolet Volt,” host Neil Cavuto asserted on his TV broadcast, which is simulcast on XM 114. “Does this sound to you like payback time to Barack Obama from Government Motors?”

“How dare Government Motors?” responded Ann Coulter, a guest on Cavuto’s show. “But I’m not the least bit surprised. This is a liberal car for left-wing liberal socialist Marxists.”

A read all the way to the end reveals that “a GM spokesman said Chevrolet engineers would continue to test Volts through the weekend to see whether they could pull in Fox XM and would issue a report by the end of the day today, April 1.” This, and careful consultation of the calendar, makes a halfway assertive human reader doubt that the article is real news.

The trouble is that a lot of the daily news is collected by robots. In the early hours of April 1, the alleged news item  already is  all over the Internet. Many publications that are proud of their editorial oversight carry the April fools joke as real news. The story is in AOL Money’s Daily Finance, and in the Businessinsider. Untouched by human hands (or aggregated by morons,) the story runs on Topix right underneath Jalopnik’s  “What April Fools Day Automotive Headline Do You Want To Read?”

Most lazywebs from Carnewsarchive to Car Newsticker run the piece and pay the price for automatically scraping automotive sites in the hope for Google dollars. Even AOL News has the story. It is only a matter of minutes before the story will be eternalized in “verifiability, not fact” Wikipedia.

The sad part is that Motortrend’s persiflage already is way behind the times. Other observers had noted a puzzling U-turn at Fox. Usually, the channel poured vitriol over the car. A month ago, Fox drove a Volt and ran out of juice in the Lincoln Tunnel.

Then suddenly, a few days ago, Fox loved the Volt. Fox lauded the Volt as a car that can “help win the war in terror.” Steve Doocy, drove a Volt and attested that the drive was “smooth as glass.” A few days earlier, Foxbusiness declared the Volt the best electric car on the market” and could find only one flaw: The price.

Speaking of price, some people point to the fact that GM had started running Volt ads on Fox.

Truth is funnier than April fools jokes.

A year ago nearly to the day, I was investigating the connection between Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Fiat. With an American-led intervention in Libya underway, Reuters had reported that a Wikileaked State Department document revealed that the Libyan Government owned a two-percent stake in the automaker Fiat as recently as 2006. When I contacted Fiat’s international media relations department for comment, I received this response:

Dear Mr Niedermeyer,

Further to your email, I would mention that the Reuters report you refer to is incorrect. As too are other similar mentions that have appeared recently in the media concerning the LIA’s holdings in Fiat.

The LIA sold all of its 14% shareholding in Fiat SpA in 1986 – ten years after its initial stake was bought.  It no longer has a stake in Fiat SpA.

I trust that this clarifies the matter.

It didn’t, actually. In fact the matter remained as clear as mud to me until just now, when I saw Reuters’ report that Italian police have seized $1.46 billion worth of Gaddafi assets, including “stakes in… carmaker Fiat,” under orders from the International Criminal Court.

So, did Fiat lie? Not exactly. The Libya Arab Foreign Bank did sell back its shares in 1986, but the Wikileaked memo claimed that a successor entity, the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, was the more recent Libyan investor. Not being well-versed in the structure and history of Libya’s sanction-avoiding foreign investment shell companies, and lacking the resources to effectively pursue the story (tracking Gaddafi-era investments is a chore), I left it there. And even now that Italian police confirm that a Gaddafi-controlled stake in Fiat has been seized, it’s not at all clear whether Fiat’s management was aware of this.

The AGI has the most detailed account, reporting

The Guardia di Finanza Corps of Rome has seized property worth more than 1.1 bln euro from members of the Ghaddafi family upon a warrant of the International Criminal Court of The Hague. The property seized includes real estate, company shares and bank accounts that belong to members of the Ghaddafi family or to people of Ghaddafi’s entourage with an overall value of more than 1.1 bln euro

Property investigations carried out by the GdF of Via dell’Olmata, in Rome have enabled to discover two financing companies through which leaders of the former Libyan regime had made investments in Italy. [emphasis added]

That covers Fiat management fairly well: at the very least, it appears that they didn’t know about Libyan investment until police were involved. I might suspect that this very Gaddafi stake in Fiat was frozen by Italian authorities prior to my request for comment, and Fiat’s representative misled me about it… but I have no way of proving it. Time will (hopefully) tell.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, it’s only a little strange that this wasn’t somehow brought to light in pre-bailout vetting of Fiat. Sure, a foreign enemy of the United States was a significant shareholder in the firm that was handed a bailed-out Chrysler for no cash down. On the other hand, Libya was not on the War On Terror radar at the time, and the auto task force had enough to worry about without investigating Fiat’s shareholders. All the same, chalk this up as yet another example of the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy.

Finally, there’s the real question: did Gaddafi actually benefit from his Fiat investment? It all depends on when this second investment in Fiat shares took place. The Wikileaked memo says Libya owned two percent of Fiat as of 2006, which means it was enjoying the short-lived Marchionne boom (financed in part by General Motors) after years of decline and stagnation. And when things headed south in 2008, snagging Chrysler for nothing sent Fiat stock on its last real bounce… which means the Gaddafi regime did benefit to some extent from the auto bailout. Still, with Fiat’s shares pricing at all-time lows the Libyan dictator almost certainly lost money on his Fiat investment over the years. Unless the Guardia di Finanza find evidence that Fiat’s management knew about Libyan investment, this might well be a case of “no harm no foul.”

I happened to be in China since Sunday. I volunteer life, limb, and personal freedom to put the story to the test.

When I put “Ferrari” into Google, I get pages of stories.

“Ferrari” definitely is not banned from this search engine, despite a hit that says that the story is off limits in China. Google even leads me to a big Chinese car site, Autohome.com.cn, which reports that “Jia Qinglin’s illegitimate son is suspected to have died in a black Ferrari 458 Spider that crashed under a bridge in Beijing, killing the driver and injuring the passengers.” The site delves deeply into details, says that the 458 Spider has only two seats, but was occupied by a driver and two females. Jia Qinglin is a member of the Politburo.

Well, you say, Google. Sure, Google searches in China are re-routed to www.google.com.hk, but that’s mainly a face-saving exercise. My  (and anybody else’s) searches from China on Google are unmolested. After hours of on-line searches for “Ferrari” from a desk in China, using the public network and no VPN circumvention, my door has yet to be kicked in. Should I write again tomorrow, I will not have been dragged away for questioning. Keep your fingers crossed. Or keep hoping, wherever you may stand.

Ok, let’s move to a truly indigenous Chinese search engine, Baidu. Ferrari is alive and well here. Baidu likewise shows walls of hits for “Ferrari”, along with juicy tidbits about the crash of a Ferrari in Beijing that “suddenly hit the walls on the south side of the bridge, then crashed into the north side of the fence.”

The hits are (duh) in Chinese, you just have to take my word for it. Baidu even has snippets on the story being blocked from Chinese “fishing nets” (i.e. search engines.) Oddly, those very snippets are not blocked on Baidu, the premier Chinese search engine. Inscrutable Orient.

Further digging shows that “Ferrari” as a search term is alive and well on all Chinese search engines. Typing “Ferrari” into any Chinese search engine produces pages upon pages of hits. It does not lead to the familiar sudden temporary outage caused by, say a Google search for nude pictures. It also does not lead to the familiar connection reset that immediately happens when I accidentally access Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube from China.

Also, I can access, from China, a story in the New York Times, where a reporter writes about yesterday’s top searches in China. He writes about finding the Ferrari story in Baidu, he writes that “Bloggers, microbloggers and tweeters quickly seized on the story, lighting up the Sinosphere with photos, rants and rumors.” The New York Times hardly corroborates the story that searches for “Ferrari” are being blocked in China.

The source of the rumor finally is being traced to Global Times. Oddly enough, Global Times is the English-writing sister publication of Communist Party owned People’s Daily. Global Times writes in great detail about the accident, and finally says:

“Sina deleted all microblog posts which mentioned the accident, and blocked online searches of the word “Ferrari.” The Global Times also found that news reports about the crash were deleted from many web portals, such as Tencent’s QQ online chat service.”

Well, that’s down from “China’s online search engines” to “Sina.” However, a search for “Ferrari” on Sina.com.cn likewise produces ample hits. Even more inscrutable Orient. “Sina” probably stands for “Sina Weibo,” a fake Twitter. The real Twitter is blocked in China.

The story about “Ferrari” being blocked from Chinese search engines is a red-faced lie. Oddly enough, it may have been caused by a too hasty read of a newspaper that is owned by China’s Communist Party. True, some microblogging sites may have been moderating initial posts without the necessary moderation. It didn’t prevent the Sinosphere from wading knee-deep through photos, rants and rumors.

As the New York Times attests, the story of the dead son of a party chief and his two girlfriends is all over China. “Ferrari” can be accessed on all search engines. Jalopnik, along with other lazy outlets, has been led astray by China’s Communist Party.

In the market for an upscale Mercedes? Are you a reader of USA Today? In that case, stop talking to your travel agent. If you have already booked a ticket to Beijing, cancel it. USA Today fooled you. Most likely without malice. USA Today doesn’t know better.

Today, USA Today writes:

“If you’re looking for a deal on a luxury car, head to China. That’s where Mercedes-Benz is cutting as much as 25% off the price of some of its swankiest models.

Bloomberg News reports that China, an automaker’s paradise of anxious buyers only a couple years ago, is getting a lot tougher for those who want to sell to those who drive the very best.

Besides Mercedes, BMW and Audi are having to offer discounts of 20% on their flagships.”

Before you head to China, you may want to know what one has to pay there for one of those swank Mercedes cars. Due to murderous duties and taxes on those imported swank cars, prices in China are a tad higher than back home.

According to the Mercedes-Benz website, a Mercedes-Benz S 600 L (they only have longs,) costs 2,598,000 yuan in China. That is $410,821. Before all kinds of other taxes. A Mercedes S 600 (normal) is listed at $162,975 MSRP in the U.S. TrueCar says I should get one for $153,518. Even if I get that 25 percent discount in China, the price I pay here would buy me two S 600 in the U.S.

What the editor did not know (or ignored) is that parts of Wikipedia have embarked on a witch-hunt for “paid editors.” Long standing policies that govern conflict of interest edits are being put into question, and anyone who has professional knowledge of the subject matter is being pilloried. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales even proposed an electronic ankle bracelet for paid editors that blocks them from editing Wikipedia. A monstrous RfC is in process.

The anonymous edit stepped into that hornets’ nest. The Wikipedia community slaughtered Daimler.

The anonymous edit was removed, reinstated, removed again. Edit wars broke out and could only be ended through an edit block. Slowly all the old dirt that could possibly be found about Daimler collected in the article. The article even was adorned with an unsourced claim that “Adolf Eichmann, amongst the responsible for the Holocaust of approximately six million people, was hired by the factory.” (Well, he was hired by a subsidiary in Argentina. If you want to update the German Wikipedia article, the source is here.)

The collateral damage even extended to the author of the Spiegel story: Two days before Der Spiegel broke the article about the matter, the author of the Spiegel article was banned from Wikipedia, for “abuse of E-mail.” Apparently, Spiegel author Marvin Oppong had contacted Wikipedia editors through Wikipedia while duly researching citations for his story.

If there ever was a counter-productive PR move, then it’s this one. Whitewash a little, get tarred and feathered.

Daimler needs to find the hapless editor and transfer him or her to Mongolia.  However, according to Der Spiegel, Daimler cannot locate the perpetrator, for “reasons of data privacy.”

Depending on who you ask, the IP number 141.113.85.93 either points straight to Daimler or to an obscure Corpinter.net.

Looking a little further, one finds out that corpinter.net appears to host just about any Daimler site, from 125-years-of-automobiles.com, through dieter-zetsche.com to  mbenzamg.com. If I would have to find the whitewashing Wikipedia editor, I would start looking among the ranks of my in-house IT-folk.

Merriam-Webster Definition of CANARD: a false or unfounded report or story

Car & Driver horrified lovers of unadulterated driving fun with the news that “just 6000 Subaru BRZ sports cars will be allocated to the U.S. for the 2013 model year.” The source of that report is somehow suspect: “A Subaru dealer.” Car and Driver’s telephone budget must have been cut. The magazine consulted Subaru’s website that says that the BRZ will be built in “extremely limited quantities.” Car and Driver also checked with an old C&D article that said that “Subaru thinks that 5000 ­ to 7000 per year would be enough.” Thus having performed its journalistic duty, Car and Driver ran with the story of a BRZ that will be available in homeopathic quantities only. Which, I assume, should trigger a run at dealerships.

A similar canard had been published last November by the fansite ft86club.com. It comes as no surprise that this time also, FT86club.com immediately jumped on the Car and Driver story.

Time to make some calls.

Spokespeople at Subaru were very busy today, preparing for an event on Friday. Finally, Subaru spokesman Masato Saito was dragged out of a meeting and said that these rumors are not “based on official information by FHI (Fuji Heavy Industries).” He did not want to comment further.

Time to call Toyota. Toyota produces its “hachi-roku” (Toyota 86 in Japan, GT 86 in Europe and elsewhere, Scion FR-S in the U.S.) together with Subaru. The deal was that Subaru stops building minivehicles, which are now built by Toyota’s Daihatsu. As a make-good, Subaru builds the hachi-roku/BRZ in its Gunma plant in Ota, Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. According to Car and Driver, “only the front fascia, badges, and maybe wheels separate the BRZ from its Toyota—and Scion—sibling.” If the capacities are somehow constrained, then Toyota should know about it.

Toyota always maintained that it will sell as many hachi-roku as possible, with CEO Akio Toyoda personally leading the charge. A quick chat confirms that Toyota has not changed this stance.

Not surprisingly, Toyota’s spokesman Naoto Fuse says that “as for the Toyota 86, we plan to sell between 30,000 and 40,000 units annually overseas, mostly in North America and Europe.”

Why were Subaru spokespeople so busy? On Friday, there will be a line-off party at the Subaru plant. Subaru BRZ, Toyota 86, GT 86, Scion FR-S will be rolling off the line as quickly as they can build them, and as many as importers order will be shipped. Expect the first ones to arrive at U.S. shores in approximately a month from now. After a few weeks of thin supplies, common to any new model launch, you should be able to choose from plenty cars. Don’t buy the shortage story and pay above MSRP.

Toyota says that a group of trial lawyers that sue Toyota for money “manufacture controversy where none exists and use media outlets like CNN as tools to serve their narrow, self-interested agenda.” Toyota thinks that “CNN is party of and party to an attempt by lawyers suing Toyota for money to manufacture doubt about the safety of Toyota’s vehicles in the absence of any scientific evidence whatsoever.”

Toyota makes noises that it may sue CNN. What happened?

Yesterday evening, CNN aired a “Keeping Them Honest” segment with Anderson Cooper. That report made the infamous Brian Ross & David Gilbert experiment look like responsible journalism in comparison. The segment is about an internal Toyota memo. The memo is in Japanese, and the segment documents in excruciating length the problems of getting an exact translation from Japanese to English. In the first translation, an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system turned on during stress testing. In the second translation, “sudden unintended acceleration” occurred. In the third translation, the vehicle did “accelerate on its own.” For good measure, CNN uses both translations 2 and 3 in its report. TTAC’s in-house Japanese linguist, Frau Schmitto-san, gives version 1 the thumbs up.

Because discussions of nuances of the Japanese language in an internal memo from one Japanese software engineer to the other does not provide good video, CNN spiced up the program with Tanya Spotts. Last year, Ms. Spotts bought a Lexus ES 350. Seven months later, she drove it into a wall in a shopping mall. She swears she had been on the brakes at all times. The electronic data recorder says she was on the gas until 0.4 seconds before impact. On CNN, Scotts vows “I won’ t drive this car again.” She has not lost her confidence in Toyota: As she swears off the Lexus, CNN shows her carefully exiting her garage in a Toyota SUV (1:43 in this video.) In the end, Ms. Scott, who looks like a member of the pedal misapplication demographic, admits that she cannot prove SUA.

After eight excruciating minutes, the only accusation CNN can make halfway stick is that Toyota did not make this document available to NHTSA. Toyota did not, but it obviously made the memo available to the opposing lawyers. Nobody says outright  where the memo came from. However, in a comment to the CNN story, Toyota says that the document was  “produced in litigation,” hinting strongly that CNN received it from  the other side.

CNN thinks that the document is the smoking gun. Toyota thinks the document is proof that the company is doing its job. The memo documents a stress test process. Not on production cars. On prototypes. The memo documents a condition where deliberately wrong signals would cause an adaptive cruise control in a prototype to release its brakes from a stopped condition, only to re-apply the brake after a few milliseconds and to set an error code. As a result of this testing, the system was changed. The system described in the memo never made it into production. Toyota spokesman John Hanson called the document “evidence of Toyota’s robust design process.”

What’s more, neither the Lexus model, nor the Adaptive Cruise Control were ever sold in the U.S. A.

To me, the only interesting takeaway is that Toyota no longer presents the other cheek when dealing with the media. Toyota was very subdued during the Brian Ross ABC carhacking story. Now, Toyota comes out swinging.  It calls CNN’s report “misleading” and “inaccurate.” Toyta says CNN is “a patsy” and “journalistically irresponsible.” In a memo to CNN, Toyota “reserves the right to take any and every appropriate step to protect and defend the reputation of our company.”

Which in the business translates to “we may sue.”

A topic covered before, but clearly worth covering again…

The author: Georg Kacher, seasoned European bureau chief for Automobile (i.e. not a newb)

The place: page 31, April 2012 issue

The car: Bentley Continental GT V8

The statement: “Alternatively, you can work the shift paddles to keep the engine revving between 4000 and 6300 rpm, where the power and torque curves approach, intersect, and then run almost parallel to the limiter.”

I was originally hesitant to jump on the Tesla Roadster “bricked batteries” bandwagon, and my initial story was written with a sort of cautious neutrality. Further context will be provided by the details that have surfaced in the 24 hours since the story broke. Hope you’re ready to dive in to it all.

Original story here. A quick recap: Tesla Roadster owner Max Drucker contacted Tesla CEO Elon Musk regarding a dead battery in his car. Drucker’s car died after he left his Roadster parked, without leaving it plugged in for two months. The vehicle subsequently died. The car was towed to a Tesla service center and a technician determined that his battery would have to be replaced at a cost of $40,000. Drucker sent an angry letter to CEO Elon Musk admonishing him for poor customer service.

- The Tesla “bricking” story broke on the blog of Michael Degusta. Degusta and Drucker have a long history as business partners. This was not disclosed. I contacted Degusta, who said he would put me in touch with an owner who has had their car “bricked” (he did not say if it was Drucker or one of the other four affected owners) and refused to put me in touch with the Tesla service manager who claimed that, among other things, Tesla was tracking vehicles by GPS without the owner’s consent. I was reluctant to take those claims at face value – now they can’t be independently verified. On Degusta’s blog, he discusses an owner of Roadster #340, who parked his car in a temporary garage, sans charger, while his home is being renovated. This is consistent with Drucker’s emails to Tesla – but also consistent with Drucker at best not following the protocol outlined in various documents (obtained via Green Car Reports) and the Tesla Roadster’s manual, or at worst, being negligent. Drucker’s Roadster wouldn’t have the Tesla GSM connection that can alert Tesla to low battery charge conditions. Those were only installed after the first 500 Roadsters were produced. Degusta makes a big stink about the GPS tracking of the Roadsters, but is on record claiming that, and Degusta is unwilling to back that claim up beyond anecdotal evidence.

- A copy of the Tesla Roadster owner’s manual (covering the Tesla Roadster S and Roadster 2.5. Link is at the bottom of the page for you to peruse yourself), states in numerous places that owners are not to leave their vehicles uncharged for long periods of time, or to drain the battery down to zero. Doing so, the owners are told, will cause permanent damage to the battery, and such damage will not be covered under the Tesla Roadster’s warranty agreement. This is spelled out in numerous places in greater detail throughout the manual. Scans of these pages are available in the gallery below. In addition, there is an agreement which owners must sign at the time of purchase that has the owner acknowledge the responsibility of maintaining a proper battery charge, and that any damage that results from negligence in this area is not covered under warranty. Degusta’s complaints that the “Battery Reminder Card” handed out to owners during servicing don’t contain adequate warnings of the consequences are also misleading, as the consequences are spelled out in the aforementioned documents.

- The Tesla Roadster’s battery, unlike those in the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt, is made up of 6831 “consumer commodity cells”, basically laptop or cellphone type cells that combine to make up the battery pack. These batteries use Cobalt Dioxide chemistry, which is the most energy dense, and prone to decaying with time as well as use. This is not the case in the Volt or Leaf, which use different chemistry. In addition, the “state of charge” used by the Tesla pack is different; when a Tesla range indicator displays “zero miles”, it could have 5 percent of the battery life left. If the car is then parked without charging, it may drain to zero, leaving the car “bricked”. A Volt, on the other hand, may actually have one half to one third of the battery pack’s life left upon displaying “zero miles”; it only uses 10.4 kW out of its 16kW battery. Exact figures for a Tesla battery weren’t available, but are said to be much higher.

-It’s theoretically possible to revive a “bricked” consumer cell via slow trickle charging, in the same way that a dead iPod or laptop can be brought back to life if left to charge for a very long time after months of not being used.

So, we know for sure that it’s possible for a Tesla to “brick”. Tesla has admitted it in a statement, but also seems to have provided ample warnings that it could happen and that it can easily be prevented. These measures, along with the structure of the warranty agreement, leads us to believe that a product liability lawsuit is highly unlikely (a former auto industry lawyer we spoke to agreed, though cautioned that California’s Lemon Laws were the most liberal of any of the 50 states).

Of course, Tesla could have replaced the battery pack in good faith (and maybe had Drucker and the others sign an NDA agreement that also absolves Tesla of any responsibility for the pack’s failure), but for some reason, they didn’t. In the gallery below, we have scans of the manual. You can read the manual for yourself here.

Not a good day at Tesla: As if it’s not enough that the blogosphere is aflutter with bricked roadsters and unauthorized GPS tracking, on top of it we have fresh news from England that Tesla’s suit against Top Gear has been  thrown out.

In 2008, Top Gear had said that the Tesla Roadster would only get 55 miles instead the 200 miles Tesla had specified. To underscore that point, a Tesla Roadster was pushed into a garage.

Tesla brought suit for libel and malicious falsehood. Last October, British Justice Tugendhat disallowed the libel claim and asked that the malicious falsehood claim should be amended if it were to be allowed to proceed.

Tesla’s lawyers handed in an amendment. Justice Tugendhat read it and ruled today that Tesla’s second attempt to formulate their malicious falsehood case on damage was so “vague” and so “gravely deficient” that “it is impossible to say that it has a real prospect of success or is in respect of a real and substantial tort.”

Which, to use the term du jour, bricked the lawsuit. The incriminated video has been “removed by the user.”

From Bloomberg’s intellectual property news, February 15, 2012:

“Daimler AG (DAI)‘s Chrysler unit’s Super Bowl advertisement featuring Clint Eastwood was temporarily taken down from Google Inc. (GOOG)‘s YouTube video-sharing service Feb. 13 following an infringement claim from the National Football League, the Baltimore Sun reported.

YouTube told the Sun it removed the video after receiving an infringement notice from either a copyright owner or a third- party agency acting for the owner.

The league told the Sun it hadn’t filed the claim and that it asked Google to put the ad back up again immediately.”

 

P.S.: The article was corrected after this story appeared.

I am amply qualified to make the call on this topic. I have been a TV addict since I was a preschooler in the late 50s, and I still consider television to be the finest educator in my life, so I believe that I can make a well-informed opinion about the medium.

The fact that my television roots extend into the pre-Kennedy era in the White House means that I can include the 50s TV shows in my range of expertise. However, my choice for 3^rd place has its roots in late 60s TV and takes place on the mean streets of LA, ‘Adam 12’.

The first and only requirement of my contest is the generous use of police cars in the opening credits and ‘Adam 12’ fits the guidelines. The dispatch message is a call to action for the boys to roll, and the 1968 Plymouth Belvedere is the starring set of wheels in the introduction to season one of ‘Adam 12’.

Malloy pinned the Belvey down a straight stretch of LA pavement as he and Reed tackled everything and anything each week in the half hour crime show. It was a magic sequence that opened up endless possibilities for the boys every time they jumped into the car.

Number two on my list came from the 50s and was an early pioneer in cop car TV shows. ‘Highway Patrol’ had a strong theme song that suited its no-nonsense message every week. Its star was Broderick Crawford, and he never built his acting career around a comedy theme.

The opening sequence was filmed from above the highway and involved two 1955 Buick Century patrol cars in a roadblock with a subsequent driving sequence with Crawford behind the wheel of one of these special CHP order Buicks. It was a stylish introduction to a pretty cheesy TV program.

My choice for number one was a well-scripted 80s TV show called ’Hill St Blues’. The introduction featured a police garage door opening and a 1976 Dodge Monaco flying out, light bars blazing, as it answered an armed robbery call.

The posse of police cars grew as they charged towards the robbery location sliding around corners on the slippery winter streets. It was television magic and viewers loved every minute of trouble on the Hill.

‘Hill Street Blues’ had a brilliant opening sequence and was my runaway choice as the best cop car stars in a TV police drama. The music, the driving and the gritty realistic feel to the introduction put this show in front of every one of its competitors.

It was a bonus that it was also a very good TV show.

For more of Jim and Jerry Sutherland’s work go tomystarcollectorcar.com

So what about Chrysler’s halftime ad? You know, the one with a Clint Eastwood who looked like he would die on the set? It did not show up in any of the Edmunds.com rankings. It is neither on the “that ad’s the bomb!” list. Nor is it on the list of ads that bombed. Maybe because Edmunds could not find the car. Car? What car? The ad tried really hard to repeat the “Imported from Detroit” success. Instead, the ad created a lot of controversy. Controversy? The [forbidden word] hit the fan! It might cost Obama the election!

A lot of people mistook it for a political ad. Chrysler Group Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne had to quickly refute the rumor on a Detroit talk radio program:

“It had zero political content. I think we need to be careful, and God knows I can’t stop anybody from associating themselves with the message. But it was not intended to be any type of political overture on our part.”

After Karl Rove, former top political aide to President George W. Bush, said that this is tantamount to “using tax dollars to buy corporate advertising,” the White House had to deny that the ad was a “I give you Chrysler, you help me getting re-elected” deal.  After claiming that all the ad wants to do is “sell cars” (what cars?), White House press secretary Jay Carney went on to say:

“It does point out a simple fact, which is that the automobile industry in this country was on its back, and potentially poised to liquidate three years ago, and this president made decisions that were not very popular at the time that were guided by two important principles: One, that he should do what he could to ensure that 1 million jobs would not be lost; and two, that the American automobile industry should be able to thrive globally if the right conditions were created, and that included the kinds of reforms and restructuring that Chrysler and GM undertook in exchange for the assistance from the American taxpayer.”

So there. Marchionnegate off the table.

Leave it to what Wikipedia calls “an American neoconservative^[2][3][4][5] opinion magazine^[6]” to light one hell of a fire under the ad. The Weekly Standard found out that Detroit’s comeback ad was – are you ready for this –not filmed in Detroit. Really. The Weekly Standard cites Chrysler spokeswoman Dianna Gutierrez who admitted:

“Yes, part of it was filmed in New Orleans . . . and some was filmed in various parts—such as Los Angeles.”

Shockingly, Gutierrez is quoted as saying that the tunnel scenes were taken at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the stadium shots were in New Orleans. According to the Weekly Standard, stock footage of Detroit was used:

“Asked whether any part of the ad was filmed in Detroit, Gutierrez said that previously taken footage from various parts of the Motor City was used. No image of Detroit was shot for the specific use in this ad.”

Now THAT is a juicy scandal. Who needs allegedly illegal; campaign contributions if we have THAT? Fake Detroit! Two hours after the Weekly Standard, Fox News was on the story, and there’s no stopping it. This thing is more viral than Ebola.

At the time of this typing, the ad had 2,730,612 3,933,192 views on YouTube. THAT’s what we need in these trying times: Free advertising.

Nah, not those dogs. We are not referring to the cute canines that populated many commercials aired during the Super Bowl last Sunday. We are referring to the dogs that didn’t hunt, we are talking bad ads, bad, bad, bad, baaaaad ones. The worst. Ads imported from Yucksville. Those we make you watch again today.

Yesterday, we showed you the best commercials, as voted by the people. The data come from Edmunds. How did they measure it? Advertisers expect from their commercials what women expect from a bra: A lift. A lift in interest for the wares being hawked. That lifted interest resonates in the respected pages being hit at Edmunds.com, because people rush to their computer to research the car they just saw on TV. Or so the theory goes.

Yesterday, we showed you the ads that lifted like a multistage rocket. This time, we show you the duds. These ads don’t lift. They suck.

Third worst: The Toyota Camry commercial (above.) I’m sure the creative were pretty proud of that one until the research came in. But I tend to agree: I don’t like it when guys get reinvented as girls. And I like them real, not 3D rendered.

Second worst: The Honda CR-V commercial. What a waste of money.

Worst of the worst: The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 commercial. Looks like people are not moved by frogs falling from the air. Or whatever.

Marketing Directors responsible for the aforementioned ads: Don’t fire your agency just yet. Hold off on putting the account on review. Look, it could have been worse. Says Edmunds in a letter to TTAC:

“At least this year no one’s consideration was flat after their ads ran. Last year, BMW saw no lift from its “Defying Logic” ad for the X3 in the second quarter, and Lexus aired a number of pre-game ads and saw no lift in consideration for its models or the make.”

In case you want to know how the unmentioned middling commercials fared, here the complete Edmunds tally as a bonus:

You may notice that today’s percentages are slightly different than yesterday’s, and that the ranking is different as well. We saw that too. This is market research, not the table of primes, for crying out loud. People change their minds. Or something to that effect.

GM noted that Fox has issues with the Volt. They give Eric Bolling a Chevy Volt for a week. And this is what GM receives in return. Ingrates.

So what was the best Super Bowl ad yesterday? Edmunds has the answer: It’s the commercial for the Fiat 500.

The alluring advert must have touched the inner submissive in America’s men. They are shown an ad where a dork is slapped around by an (allegedly) Italian beauty with an Abarth tattoo (on her neck,) and they obligingly click it to the top of the charts, without even thinking of hissing: “On your knees, Ffffffffiat.”

Wimps.

Of course, it could also have been American females who had their inner dominatrix tickled. Thankfully, we won’t know. Edmunds measured the effectiveness of Super Bowl car ads by monitoring the traffic on the respective pages on Edmunds.com, before, during, and after the ads ran, and clicks are gender neutral.

Edmunds measured whether these ads actually aroused something more than prurient interest – do people want to know more about the car? From a pile of data emailed by Edmunds, we give you the overall cumulative results.

That old Fiat ad that had been around since November last year, but hey, sex never gets old, only we do. The Fiat 500 ad made the top spot by increasing traffic at Edmunds by 138 percent.

Next in line is a more or less unsexy ad (unless you are into suppressed zoophilia): The Lexus ad for the GS 350, titled “The Beast” racked up an impressive 102 percent increase. Apparently, a Lexus busting a box talks to people.

Definitely more production value has the number 3 on the list, the ad for the Chevy Sonic, where perfectly good cars are thrown out of a perfectly good Hercules. That drove up Edmunds traffic by 95 percent. But wait, didn’t ”don’ call it Chevy” Ewanick want to kill“Chevy runs deep?” Maybe nobody found a better one, happens.

PETA should approve of this Hyundai ad that garnered an increase of 81 percent traffic for the Hyundai Veloster, landing the ad in slot number four. PETA loves people that get eaten by animals. The other way ’round, not so much.

In the fifth spot: Volkswagen’s Beetle ad, here shown in the director’s cut versions. Up 67 percent, but what will PETA say about the shameless exploitation of plus-sized dogs for marketing purposes?

Finally, coming in as number six, the Hyundai Genesis ad. (Here depicted with the proper Hyundai badge.) It leveraged boredom into a 63 percent increase.

Speaking of dogs, we asked Edmunds to disclose the worst of the Super Bowl Roman numeral XLVI. If we get this info, you will get it.

Now what was your favorite ad?

PS: AutoTrader ran a similar study, and came to similar, but not totally identical conclusions:

“AutoTrader.com shows that Hyundai performed highest overall based on its pregame sponsorship and the commercials aired for the Elantra, Genesis and the Veloster by the first quarter of the game – rather than getting one spike during the game, they had elevated activity across the length of the game on multiple car models.  At the peak of the game, the heaviest online traffic spikes came from shoppers that were looking at Chevy Sonic and Toyota Camry.  The most unexpected result came from Fiat 500.  On Sunday, over 65 percent of Fiat 500 searches occurred after the big game ad aired.”

First it was Honda that had issues with TrueCar. Now, it is regulators in several states, along with dealer associations that claim that TrueCar’s business model is at odds with “long-standing state laws designed to protect the interests of car dealers and shoppers,” as Automotive News [sub] reports. Says AN:

“Regulators in Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia have issued bulletins to dealers or sent letters to TrueCar concluding that legal problems exist with TrueCar’s business model of charging dealers for leads that turn into a sale. And dealer associations in three more states — California, Kansas and Ohio — say members who use TrueCar may be violating state law.”

This looks like an opening volley of an all-out war. TrueCar said that it has been contacted by regulators in six states: Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

What seems to be at issue here is that TrueCar dealers collide with state laws governing advertising and so-called bird-dogging, or paying a third party a fee that is contingent on a sale, as state regulators and associations claim. Dealers could have to pay hefty penalties, and TrueCar’s business model would be destroyed.

The troubles couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. Or maybe, they have been timed to inflict maximum pain. In September, TrueCar raised more than $200 million  from investors. On January 1, TrueCar was scheduled to become Yahoo.com’s partner for auto shopping. TrueCar agreed to pay Yahoo $150 million over three years.

When Ed wrote about Honda vs. TrueCar, he opined that the “conflict could have profound impacts on the ever-changing face of the new car market.” It sure can.

The Internet changed the way we shop for cars, and the bird dogging fees pay for it. Buying services other than TrueCar can and will be next if this matter gains traction. Countless blogs that feed buying services with customers (TTAC does not) could find themselves out of money. Writers who whip up quickie “car reviews” could be looking for new work. Customers who seek price transparency may have to look harder.

It’s been a fascinating year for the compact car, as all six of the segment’s leading competitors brought out new or updated models over the last 18 months. But as our Chart Of The Day shows, the competition has hardly sent the segment into overdrive, as after an early-year boom, compact car sales have slackened considerably. Intriguingly though, Honda and Toyota, which lost sales early this year due to supply interruptions in the wake of the Japanese Tsunami, seem to be the only brands with recovering compact sales. What’s especially interesting about this is the fact that Toyota’s modest refresh and Honda’s poorly-received new Civic were once widely considered by automotive pundits to be under threat from the resurgent competition. Indeed, Honda’s Civic has been especially hard-hit by media criticism, earning a harsh review from TTAC’s Michael Karesh, losing its coveted “recommended” rating from Consumer Reports, and engaging in some ugly media-bashing. But now that the Civic seems to be one of the only compacts to enjoy a late-year sales rebound, Honda’s announcing that it will be upgrading the Civic for the 2013 model-year, just one year after the new model was introduced.

Tetsuo Iwamura, Honda’s top North American executive tells Bloomberg that

Civic is a good product; of course the expectation of the marketplace for Honda product is quite high. We have to once again make it great. The gap between Civic and the competitors has been narrowed. We have to once again make the gap wider.

Honda has not yet announced any specifics about its planned 2013 upgrades to Civic, preferring instead to let Sales VP John Mendel hammer home the relative nature of Civic’s fall from grace. Mendel tells Bloomberg

We disagree with [Consumer Reports]. Did they make some points? Yes they did. We haven’t gotten worse, everybody else has gotten better. Where we used to be four or five laps ahead in the race, there’s more people on the same lap with us.

Moreover, Honda’s execs argue that inventory levels, not product weaknesses are the cause of relatively low Civic sales, as Bloomberg reports

The company has about 117,000 models in inventory, or a 41-day supply, less than half what it should have, Iwamura said.

“Hopefully, by the end of March next year” Honda will have full inventory, Iwamura said. “If John could sell more, then it will be the end of April or May.”

Honda has set a target to increase U.S. sales of its namesake brand to 1.25 million models next year, from about 1 million this year, Iwamura said. It plans to boost sales of its Acura luxury line by 43 percent to 180,000 from about 126,000 this year, he said.

“It looks like quite a high jump, but because of the availability problem we had a really low year this year,” Iwamura said. “That is the reason why growth looks huge, but for us, it’s a natural growth.”

Of course, there are a few problems with this line of reasoning. First, and most obviously, why is Civic receiving an “upgrade” after one year on the market if there’s nothing wrong with it? Second, since when is an 80+ day inventory ideal? Wasn’t this industry supposed to be moving away from the stack-em-high-and-sell-em-cheap ethos? Inventory levels may be a convenient scapegoat for weaker-than-hoped-for sales numbers, but financial results in this industry are closely tied to keeping those inventories from running out of control. And considering Civic is one of the only compact cars showing signs of recovery in recent months, it seems that both the upgrade and the professed need for a skyrocketing inventory may not be as necessary as Honda now seems to think. In any case, we’ll see how Honda’s upgrades affect the quality of the Civic, and we’ll be watching this segment closely to see how this brutal competition pans out…

Automotive News Europe [sub] spotted a new trend in Tokyo: Daredevil CEOs:

“On Nov. 27, Toyota boss Akio Toyoda wowed a crowd of spectators in Japan by racing through a lineup of Lexus LFA supercars in the new Toyota 86 sporty coupe. One day later, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito hopped on a Honda MotoGP racing motorcycle and blasted around the company’s Twin Ring Motegi racetrack.”

Actually, the industry rag should know that Akio Toyoda is an active racer, under the nome de plume “Morizou,” he races for Team Gazoo. He is also a feared testdriver.

Automotive News’ Tokyo correspondent Hans Greimel even scored a ride-along with Toyoda.

But what about Carlos Ghosn? We know that he privately drives a GT-R to go fast, and a Leaf to go shopping. So will there be any stunts from him? Automotive News Europe doesn’t know either:

 “No word yet on whether Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn plans to jump 10 buses in a Leaf, but don’t rule it out before the show wraps up Dec. 11.”

Fat chance. Ghosn left Tokyo and Yokohama right after the press days. Jump officially ruled out. When Ghosn wants to fly, he simply flaps his wings.

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! If you have enough followers on Twitter and the like, Chevrolet might give you a free 2012 Sonic. Not for keeps. But for 3 days. It’s the new long-term tester of the 140 character age.

According to Automotive News [sub], General Motors has hired Klout, a company that ranks a person’s “social influence.” Well, social networking influence. In the past, people with high Klout scores received free review copies of software, deodorant, or coffee. Now, they get a car.

To be eligible, you need a “Klout score” of at least 35. It’s probably too late to prostitute yourself for followers, AN says the program already began in November and runs through Dec. 14. follows a collaboration earlier this year promoting the Volt, Chevy’s $40,000 plug-in hybrid.

139 (gee, why not 140???) drives will be offered in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. All it costs GM is four or five Sonics on loan in each of the five cities.

The twitterati better be careful. A Federal Trade Commission guideline requires bloggers and social-media agents to disclose when writing about products they’ve gotten for free. It’s nice that the FTC has followed an example TTAC has set since day one.

We at TTAC get our fair share of complaints once in a  while. (They usually start with a “b” and end in “ias.”)

We are nothing compared to Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear.  The likewise UK site Carbuzz chronicled the biggest complaints against Clarkson.  According to The Guardian, “Clarkson, who flew out to China to film a new series of Top Gear as the row erupted on Thursday, issued an apology.”

Having read most of the latest raft of auto industry books, with titles like “Car Crash,” “Overhaul,” and “Sixty To Zero,” I have to say, Bill Vlasic’s “Once Upon A Car” is my favorite of the bunch. Not only does it lack the parochial form and voice that define too many of theses tomes, it populates its narrative with rich dialogue and intriguing character studies. In short, it’s got all of the lessons about industry, culture, and competition that you’d expect from a modern study of the auto industry, but it presents them in such a way that they never feel like a lecture or a business school study. Instead you get a well-spun yarn, still-newsworthy anecdotes and an unvarnished look at industry dynamics on their highest level. If ever there were to be a modern movie based on the auto industry, Vlasic’s book should be its basis. Read my full review over at The Wall Street Journal.

Tucked into a corner of the communication department of Nissan is a Japanese rarity: A closed room. Usually, a Japanese office is a sea of people, working elbow-to-elbow without even the suggestion of a cubicle. Most of the floor in Nissan’s swank headquarters in Yokohama is just like that.

Behind the closed doors however works an unusual group of people who probably have to be kept away from the general population anyway: An international team of professional journalists that could change the way companies interact with the media.

In May, Dan Sloan started his job as the Editor in Chief and General Manager of Nissan’s Global Media Center. His first assignment was the roughest job one can imagine: Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki restarted, only miles from the exclusion zone around the exploded Fukushima nuclear plants. People on the other side of the globe were afraid of being irradiated, and Dan Sloan showed Carlos Ghosn walking through a factory while two more reactors had a meltdown.

All other car manufacturers in Japan avoided the story. Carlos Ghosn and Dan Sloan ran with it. Remembers Sloan:

“This story was radioactive in many ways. But when these things happen, you have to get in front of the story in an adult way, you have to become part of the discussion, and make the story work for you.”

It did work. Carlos Ghosn was once more the take-charge man of Japan, and ranked high in a survey of who Japanese would like to lead them out of the crisis.

The global Media Center is a fully equipped TV studio, and a single room into which Sloan and his team are crammed. The General Manager doesn’t have a corner office, he has a corner. All of the people in the windowless room are top journalists, and that is the big difference of this experiment. In-house TV studios are nothing new, but they usually produce yawners of inspirational messages for the workforce, and possibly training segments for dealers. They also aren’t staffed with this concentration of talent. Says Sloan:

“Other companies never hired in-house people with that external degree of quality.”

If I still would own an advertising agency, I would be worried: Crammed into this room is more talent than in most agencies, and it probably comes much cheaper.

Any wire service would be lucky if it had so much talent in one room.

Dan Sloan was Singapore Bureau Chief of Reuters before he came to Tokyo as Senior Correspondent for Reuters Business TV.

His deputy Ian Rowley worked as Tokyo correspondent for Business Week for 5 years. After Business Week was bought by Bloomberg, he was Deputy Team Leader for Asia.

Coco Masters was Tokyo Bureau Chief of Time Magazine. Now she works as Ghosn’s right hand woman  at the Media Center.

Camille Lim did TV documentaries at Reuters Singapore. Now she will document Nissan’s rich history that goes back to 1914.

There is Shotaro Ogawa, Nissan’s own Mobile Uplink Unit. And there are more whose cards and resumes I forgot to collect at my visit today. I played fly-on-the-wall during their strategy meeting for the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show. It wasn’t a corporate conference, it was very much a meeting like at any TV station or magazine before a big event: Who does what, who goes where, are hotel rooms booked, and what happens if we get stuck in Tokyo traffic. The studio is small, but fully equipped. A chromakey can produce the Yokohama skyline as a backdrop, or Waikiki beach, if that is needed. The editing is done via Adobe Premiere on a Mac, in a pinch on a laptop.

Soon, the Media Center will talk about more than just Nissan. Woven into their coverage of the Tokyo Motor Show will be trends at other manufacturers. Soon, there will be a weekly talk show about the car industry in general, and possibly beyond.

When I ask Sloan what’s different from working on the outside, he says not much. He tells the story that in Japan, the media often has a symbiotic relationship with large corporations anyway. His Media Center simply makes it official without maintaining false appearances:

“We still have to pass the ‘so what?’ test with everything we do.What we want is get a buy-in that we are not dishing out unpalatable corporate-speak. We deliver something beyond ‘everything is alright at the mothership.’ We have access people would not get otherwise, we have content traditional media would be envious to get. We want to provide content other media can take advantage of.”

Magazines and TV stations have budget cuts and fire people. They are being replaced by thousands of bloggers with no money, but a lot of enthusiasm. Any website that wants to do more than just regurgitate press releases will become an eager customer of  Nissan’s inhouse content-machine. This is where Sloan is going:

“People always say we are the death of the press release. I don’t think this is going to happen so quickly. We are a value-add to press releases, they can become more concise now. What we want is something that will be redistributed, reposted, watched multiple times.”

Other carmakers should make a pilgrimage to Yokohama and try to get into that closed room. They might learn something.

TTAC has long held that reviews of press cars made available by manufacturers at launches and press fleets must be complimented by reviews of vehicles acquired from dealer lots. It’s been a controversial position at times, and I’ve had to do battle with OEMs as recently as a few months ago to explain why dealer car impressions matter. Today, Consumer Reports is proving the point by revealing

When VW dropped off an early media car this summer, I remember looking at the trunk and saying to myself “well, at least both of the cheap hinges are dressed up with plastic covers, unlike the Jetta, which just has plastic on the side with the wiring.” As you can see in these two photos from Car & Driver and Edmunds it appears that the Passats in VW’s press fleet have covers on the hinges.

But not that Passat you just bought. No, your new Passat isn’t as nicely finished as the press version.

Like all the vehicles we put through testing, Consumer Reports buys retail samples at a car dealership. I personally purchased the Passat TDI we’re testing. (We also bought a 2.5 SE and a 3.6 SEL Premium.) As you can see in our images, none of the Passats have the two plastic covers found on the press cars. Consumers apparently only get a cover for the wiring loom hinge; the other one goes bare.

Interestingly, we had a somewhat similar issue with VW when a Passat press car proved to be equipped in a spec that is not actually available at dealerships (V6 with 17-inch wheels). When we noticed the discrepancy (and by we, I mean Michael Karesh, of course), we asked VW how we had received a non-representative model, to which they replied that press fleet vehicles were “early builds” from the new Nashville plant, and therefore not necessarily in market-ready spec. Which is a reason, but not an excuse: the media can only serve consumers well if we’re given representative cars to review. So, while these discrepancies are all relatively minor, details matter when you’re spending upwards of $20k on something. Hopefully VW and the rest of the industry will learn from this experience and make greater efforts to equip their media cars exactly to dealer spec. One also hopes that Motor Trend has driven at least one Passat that’s not from a press fleet…