This 1954 Lincoln, a Carrera Panamerica veteran, sold for $117,000 at the National Auto Museum auction. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ CEO Antonio Filosa says Stellantis is holding talks with two possible partners for its Maserati division, with the result set to affect several Italian plants connected to the brand. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ Waymo is recalling 3,871 robotaxis, its entire Gen 5 fleet, for a corrective software update after its vehicles were found entering closed freeway construction zones at speed. More at Automotive World.
+ Profits at used-car retailer CarMax slipped for a fourth straight quarter as margins shrank to $2,177 per vehicle and CEO Keith Barr laid out a multiyear turnaround plan. More at CBT News.
+ The IndyCar Series informed its teams of a new plan to reduce the power output of its hybrid systems by 10 to 25 percent, depending on the track, for the remainder of the season. More at Racer.
+ Porsche announced it will discontinue the Taycan Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo batttery-electric station wagons after the 2026 model year, citing poor sales volume. More at Car and Driver.
+ Slate, the bare-bones EV pickup truck startup, accidentally leaked onto its website the starting price of its first model at $24,950, $5,000 more than originally announced. More at The Drive.
+ United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain is seeking a second four-year term as leader of the 400,000-member union as it nominates a slate of candidates this week. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Three Toyota electric SUVS were unable to qualify for the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) Top Safety Pick award due to their poor headlamp performance. More at Autoblog.
+ Bonhams | Cars scored a 100 percent sell-through rate of 120 vehicles, including 80 from the museum collection. at its National Automobile Museum auction in Reno, Nevada. More at Old Cars.
+ Jesse Love, current NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion, will leave Richard Childress Racing next season to drive the Wood Brothers Ford in the Cup Series. More at Speed Sport.
Photo courtesy of Bonhams | Cars.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from June 15 here.
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NHTSA just recalled Waymo’s entire 5th‑generation Automated Driving System, primarily Jaguar I‑PACE robotaxis (~4000 units). Can’t see school buses, flooded roads, construction zones or emergency vehicles in California or Texas. In one terrifying account shared by a passenger to CBS News, a Waymo accelerated past construction warning lights and active police blockades, leaving the occupants convinced they were about to die before the company later offered them three “$40 ride credits” as an apology.
Toyota new EV SUVs flunked biased IIHS testing with headlights too dim for safe road illumination, yet orders of magnitude bright enough to blind other drivers. More loophole engineering instead of safety, so human drivers can expect even more and more retarded headlight bullshit in the future.
IndyCar rolled out a $120 million hybrid race car sustainability illusion on a twin turbo V6 that does little if anything for lap times or fuel mileage but cannot survive real‑world racing loads, surprise, surprise, surprise.
All three contrived failures exposes the same disgusting post-modern pattern: tech is never ready- implemented using Loophole Cascades and data fraud, but the baked in “revenue event” always is, forcing human road users into unpaid beta testers while shifting all legal and financial liabilities onto human drivers and taxpayers…
Across Waymo’s long overdue ADS safety defect recall, Toyota’s EV IIHS headlamp failures, IndyCar’s hybrid system collapse, the NTSB’s BlueCruise Level 2 findings, and yes- even all of Ohio’s blatantly non‑compliant roundabouts, the same pattern repeats: public funding milestones, arbitrary deployment deadlines, and political opinions/optics are prioritized over any engineering readiness or public safety, producing a new American transportation system where all foreseeable risks, costs, and consequences are dumped onto ordinary road users and taxpayers.
Loophole lawyering, ambulance chasers, snake oil salesmen and crooked car dealer shenanigens cannot substitute for professional engineering. Genuine human safety requires genuine engineering, not tort law, loopholes, data fraud, user agreements, dirty tricks, fine print, gibberish, secret deals, MOUs, waivers, slogans, fads, illusions or mock trial antics.
Real safety is created by the scientific process: good faith testing, data analysis, math, physics, standards, audits, compliance, peer review, human‑factors, transparency, and real enforcement.
Government/private equity civil litigation loophole lawyering has none of this. Expecting political selfishness to enforce any safety is like expecting firefighters to prevent arson…
When public highway safety relies on loophole cascades, legal maneuvering, fine print, data fraud and contractor paperwork instead of any transparent testing, reproducible data, standards or engineering rigor, the process is symbolic rather than functional- like giving a color wheel and paint brushes to a blind Stevie Wonder expecting a Bob Ross landscape painting.
How your civil courtroom metaphor works- the witness list so far:
●Al Gore
●Elon Musk
●Mr. Magoo
●Joker, Riddler, Penguin
●Greta Thunberg
Each one is an archetype:
●green politician/gov’t lawyer
●celebrity technocrat
●blind bureaucracy
●chaotic/opaque/entrenched systems
●moral‑rhetorical pressure
Building a satirical “trial” where every witness represents a different failure mode in the carbon culture system. And the punchline is: None of these archetypes can produce any engineering‑grade safety. That’s the real point!
The name’s Andy “Bones” Claymore, ABC — certified in breakin’ illusions and rollin’ bones.
Lemme tell ya somethin’, folks — You look at this post‑modern carbon‑culture-vulture circus we’re livin’ in, and it’s like Bernie freakin’ Madoff and Bonnie & Clyde
got hired to rewrite all the safety manuals.
Ohhh!
These clowns got more loopholes than a fishnet bodysuit, and they call it “public protection.” Public protection? Get outta here.
Our Founding Fathers — yeah, those powdered‑wig world champion overachievers — they’re lookin’ down like, “Yo, we wrote a Constitution and a Bill of Human Rights, not a tipboard with scratch-off lotto.”
And Florence Nightingale?
She was tryin’ to save lives with data, discipline, and a lamp in the dark — while today’s safety engineer is out here wavin’ around contractor contracts checking our credit reports like it’s a holy scripture.
And don’t get me started on these remote‑operated robocabs. They tell ya it’s “autonomous.” Autonomous? There’s some poor schmuck in an Asian warehouse joysticking your ride like it’s a claw machine maybe hopin’ he doesn’t drop you into oncoming traffic.
Then they roll out the remote‑operated roborigs —
26 — 40 tons of steel and diesel driven by a guy in a cubicle 1000 miles away who’s also monitoring six other trucks, and a microwave burrito.
But hey — it’s “the future.”
Sure it is. And I’m the Pope of Brooklyn.
They’re out here sellin’ Indy 500 hybrid illusions like it’s the second coming of engineering when it’s really just a PR jive on wheels. “Look, Ma, no emissions!”
The Real safety is created by the Real science, not the fake fiduciary deception or the free payola. “Oh look, we have stamped our paperworks — we’re legally certified safe now!”
Yeah, sure — and I’m bench‑pressin’ locomotives, who need physics,
Du-Oohhhhhhh!
When modern culture is rebuilt around carbon‑centric short‑term profits using compliance‑on‑paper instead of safety‑in‑practice, most of the people inside the green movement actually don’t see themselves as villains, they probably see themselves as following the rules, maximizing efficiencies on paper, and doing whatever the system rewards best. That’s why loopholes are now compliance, exceptions and outliers are proof, and why all transparency becomes optional or vanishes completely.
It’s not a hidden conspiracy by a secrat cabal; it’s a very high-tech public operating system where the “logic” of wealth extraction from harm is normalized, celebrated, and routinely defended. This brazenness isn’t evidence of a plot, it’s evidence that local, state and federal American government and their public safety systems are no longer accountable to the people and families who it affects and pays for it.