And as long as the franchise model enjoys monopoly protection against direct-to-consumer sales, nothing will. 

The responses I’ve seen from Ford personnel are almost aggressive towards the consumer. Stuff along the lines of, “MSRP is the manufacturer’s SUGGESTED retail price, nothing we can do” kind of stuff. A real turn-off and a mishandling of the situation, IMO. It’s really hard to get behind supporting American car mfgrs…

If awarding race points based solely on qualifying is wrong, then Monaco needs to come off of the calendar.

“The thing is, we wouldn’t even still be talking about this if F1 had chosen not to make those two laps count as a race, or moved to run the grand prix on Monday or Tuesday like NASCAR and IndyCar probably would’ve done. But the powers that be were adamant that postponing the race was a non-starter due to agreements…

I like how Jean Todt isn’t considering the stupid rules that allow 2 laps to count as a “race”, and awarding half-points at that point. Basically, the “race” was qualifying, and drivers/constructors were awarded half race points based solely on their qualifying. No race there in my book!

The finished product still looks pretty weird though.

Come on Jason, you should know better. Those are most certainly NOT production lights. You’re most likely seeing temporary units fabricated for pre-production vehicles going through road testing or validation. OEMs do this all the time so they can get prototypes and mules on the road while production level lighting is…

Well, you’re wrong, I don’t know what to tell you.

Im getting strong Gen 1 Neon vibes

Cheap cars ALWAYS cheap on the center arm rest.

Still waiting for “simple mode” where it takes a route with the least number of turns as long as it’s <10% longer, or something like that. Don’t send me zig zagging all over and just show me the route with three turns that I can semi-memorize before setting off. 

Ok, look, I live in San Francisco so I’m more aware of this than your average Kansastonian, but why the fuck has Google maps not taken grade changes into account until now?

Last I checked, people who drive such vehicles use the phrase “smiles per gallon, not miles per gallon” and could really care less. You are correct, that this would in fact save them big bucks, but they just dont care from my experience in the Jeep community. Pretty sure they made that deal with the devil at the time…

EV owner here.

TVR

Thanks Joni! Fixed.

I didn’t have room to get into the party politics of Mazda at the time, with the switchover from Yamamoto to Norimasa Furuta, the differing attitudes the two had with Ford, and the differing attitudes the two had towards Mazda, including how things might never have been as they were had Yamamoto stayed in charge, but…

Raph. This was easily one of the best jalopnik articles of this year. Awesome work.

Correction: I did not “run marketing.” I worked as a marketing manager for the VP of Marketing, John Kramer (formerly from Chrysler). I was just a 20-something “underling” at the time.

It always seemed a little crazy that Mazda was going to have Amati, Eunos, Xedos, and Enfini all in basically the same segment, granted with some geographical segregation for most of them. But, honestly, were they ever going to really need that many luxury brands? Couldn’t they have just picked the best sounding one…