This 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe is expected to bring $25 million or more at the Gooding Christie’s auction. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has denied a petition seeking to open an investigation into the hidden manual door releases on the Tesla Model 3. More at Electrek.
+ Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda warns the company is experiencing “a considerable sense of crisis,” framing complacency, not competition itself, as the existential threat. More at Automotive World.
+ General Motors is investing another $430 million in expansions and technology upgrades to its manufacturing plants in Wentzville, Missouri and Spring Hill, Tennessee. More at Autoblog.
+ Formula 1 officials have confirmed that the Bahrain Grand Prix, postponed due to the war in Iran, will be replaced by the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on October 5. More at Racer.
+ A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) determined that Waymo‘s driverless vehicles crashed 68 percent less often than human-driven vehicles. More at CBT News.
+ Ford Motor is recalling 565,691 Bronco vehicles from the 2021‑2026 model years due to a risk of engine‑compartment fires caused by a potentially damaged wiring harness. More at USA Today.
+ A sequel to the 1990 NASCAR-themed movie Days of Thunder is reportedly now in development, with actor Tom Cruise and original director Jerry Bruckheimer on board. More at Car and Driver.
+ According to the latest JD Power APEAL Index, electric vehicle owners have a greater emotional attachment to their machines than the owners of internal-combustion vehicles. More at Autoweek.
+ CSX2300, the third of six Cobra Daytona Coupes ever built, is expected to bring $25 million or more at the Gooding Christies Pebble Beach auction on August 14-15. More at Old Cars.
+ Seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson announced he will make his final Cup start at the 2027 Daytona 500, borrowing the number 48 from Hendrick Motorsports. More at Yahoo! Sports.
Photo courtesy and copyright of Gooding Christie’s.
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Detroit could never have a car like the Corolla that lasted 60 years and 12 generations. That’s because the model name of the car would change eight times during that period and the Corolla name would be pasted on five completely different sizes, types and trim levels of vehicles .
While Ford didn’t literally patent timed electrical failures, they certainly perfected it generations ago, the slowest learners in the automotive industry history.
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2026/RCLRPT-26V468-6532.pdf
The IIHS “68% lower crash rate” for Waymo in SF smells just like Mark Twain’s classic proverb, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (published in 1906). The reason “68%” appears constantly across roundabout crash data, “renewable” energy, carbon climate policy, and EV/AV metrics boils down to two things: a mathematical law called the Empirical Rule and a psychological phenomenon known as anchoring bias. In statistics, the 68–95–99.7 rule (the Empirical Rule) dictates that for any normal, bell-curved distribution of data, exactly 68.2% of all data points fall within one standard deviation of the average. Ohio gov’t uses the same 68% stat over and over- prolly because 75% feels rounded, lazy, and made up out of thin air. 50% sounds like a coin toss or just a guess. But 68% always lands in that psychological “sweet spot.” It is high enough to sound incredibly impressive (nearly over two-thirds!), but uneven enough to make the layman and average tax cattle think, “Wow, they must have done some incredibly precision math to get to 68%”…
BTW, Tesla’s legal team successfully argues again that because their vehicles comply with all Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) written decades before any touchscreens and retarded electronic electric DEATH trap door latches existed, Tesla cannot be held liable (loophole cascade).
I predict all open ongoing Tesla safety defect investigations will be closed by NHTSA/ODI in similar fashion…
When a major safety institute publishes a “study” with bad math, sanitized data, and a disclaimer that the tracking system is broken, it is just more corporate carbon theater than any science.
The “3x Safer” paradox? This IIHS report claims that Waymo’s have 68% fewer “police reportable” crashes than human drivers per mile traveled. Gobal warming immediately translated this to mean Waymo is “2/3 safer than human drivers”. As internet sleuths, environmentalists, battery zealots and highway safety expurts on platforms like Reddit point out, if robotaxis crash 68% less than humans, humans actually crash 3.125 times more than Waymo (1 / (1 – 0.68)).
At least the shameless IIHS, AV’s and mainstream carbon media earns it’s mockery honestly.
Data dissembling and regulatory confusion are highly profitable. Carbon culture does not waste energy on fraud by accident; they do it because manipulating data yields a much higher and faster financial return than obeying laws of physics, science, engineering or safety.
Ohio’s green energy, EV/AV/Roborig, and 200+ data center mandates successfully separates profit from physical reality the same way. The architects of these loophole cascades capture the immediate financial rewards (and crash taxes), paid directly by the American public in blood and treasure…
In case you mised it –
https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/norway-tested-chinese-bus-inside-180000710.html