Clark Gable’s 1935 Duesenberg JN Convertible Coupe will be featured at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Ford reported a 13.6 percent decline in U.S. sales in May as truck sales, the Dearborn automaker’s backbone, fell 8.4 percent while EV volume tumbled 43.9 percent. More at CBT News.
+ Uber, the leading ride-sharing service, has committed close to half a billion dollars to autonomous vehicle startup Nuro to accelerate the development of self-driving taxis. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ New car sales in Great Britain rose 7.1 percent in May, the strongest for the month since 2019, as electric vehicle sales rose 34.2 percent and demand increased overall. More at ET Auto.
+ Organizers of the Las Vegas Grand Prix and series officials have signed a 10-year contract extension to secure the event on the Formula 1 season calendar through 2037. More at ESPN.
+ The 2027 Charger Daytona Scat Pack two-door EV will start at $74,490, a massive $12,500 increase over the 2026 version, while the gasoline version’s price remains unchanged. More at Car and Driver.
+ Nearly 1,000 UAW workers at American Axle and Manufacturing in Michigan went on strike after not reaching a new contract deal, threatening General Motors truck production. More at CNBC.
+ Despite shrinking market demand, Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD snapped its longest streak of declining sales in May, though the increase was only 0.3 percent. More at World Auto Forum.
+ Ram Truck’s online merchandise shop offered a “2026 Ram Patriotic Unisex T-Shirt” featuring a Toyota pickup and a botched American flag, then quickly pulled the item. More at The Drive.
+ Clark Gable’s unique 1935 Duesenberg JN Convertible Coupe, bodied by Rollston and customized by Bohman & Schwartz, will be offered at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey Auction. More at Old Cars.
+ After 36 years in the series, Kevin “Rocket” Blanch has retired as IndyCar technical director, to be replaced by Nick Allen, former Andretti Global IndyCar chief mechanic. More at Racer.
Photo courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from June 1 here.
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>> The 2027 Charger Daytona Scat Pack two-door EV will start at $74,490
No thanks, I’ll wait for the Charger 500 Daytona R/T Scat Pack Super Bee Ramchargers Hellcat Demon Hemi Little Red Wagon Special Edition.
Will Mother Mopar’s slant six battery hybrid EV Sox & Martin editions include patented Ferrari zombie clutch pedals and surround sound fenderwell header speakers?
Golden, Sox & Martin would be thrilled to know their legacy is being honored with a 5,950-pound battery pack that requires a 12-hour charge between rounds, 12-year financing and the optional $5,000 subscription Hurst Line-Lock software OTA update that simulates a thrown rod with virtual oil slick for maximum authenticity!
Unlock Stellantis $99/month ‘Direct Connection’ subscription for a free crash box synchro removal similation update for Mr. Goggles. If your credit card, govt I.D. or EBT declines at tech, the OTA update automatically redlights you first round, then bricks your ride for safety as a digital recording of header gasket leaks and Al Gore carbon lectures with clattering lifter percussion beat noise through the virtual Hooker header subwoofers plays all the way home on Dodge’s free RAM/Cybertruck rollback roadside assistance plan reducing carbon in the Kingdom of Congo by 69%, with a free pre-printed a pre-paid electronic Uber pass to get you home hidden in the digital owners manual…
Gov’nor Dewine’s Experimental Swiss ODOT self driving big rigs hauling freight for Hondroid vendors now deploying on public roads at Marysville, Ohio with no human being aboard. Since state engineers in Ohio not authorized to read a map or tape measure under NEPA MOU, they contracted AV remote monitoring to guess where…
https://marysvillematters.substack.com/p/jerome-township-fire-chief-probe
Those Einride trucks deployed in Ohio are not standard semis with a “backup safety driver” sitting behind a physical steering wheel. They are cabless, no controls because there is literally no space for a human being anywhere inside the tractor. ODOT and DriveOhio explicitly state that these are “continuously monitored remotely” by off-site tech personnel who can “intervene if necessary.” To any road user or first responder, a remote monitor sitting 1,300-13,000 miles away in a contractor digital command center looking at a screen in a cubicle means there is zero on-site human accountability when these vehicles brick, glitch, miscalculate a turn, crash or kill.
ODOT Einride Pods are entirely 100% cab-less, and since the human driver is eliminated, they have no need for a fire extingusher, and have no way to deploy reflective triangles or road flares when they break down on Ohio roads…
In translation, the name Einride literally means “the lone rider” or “the one who rides alone” according to Google. The mythology behind this name originates from an Old Norse word Einriði (or Eindriði). In ancient Scandinavian folklore, this was one of the official names used to refer to Thor, the Norse god of thunder and lightning.
It paints a picture of mighty Thor journeying independently across the sky, completely self-sufficient and wielding a spark of electricity. The founders of the Swedish tech startup intentionally chose this name as a nod to their mission. The “Lone” because their pods are completely cab-less and “human-less”, the vehicle literally “rides alone” on the road without a human being. The “Thor” because the trucks “run strictly on high-voltage battery electricity rather than any fossil fuels”, naming the company after mythology matches the real ROI and any actual global carbon reduction.
The onboard Nvidia Drive gameboys can calculate raw mathematical data points at near lightning speed and possess zero real intelligence (I.Q.). They operate purely on pre-programmed algorithmic patterns, leaving them with an intelligence level closer to an insects’ reflexive programming than anything remotely resembling the human mind.
Without a vote and zero federal oversite, the Ohio GOP is exploiting loopholes to deliberate unleash 26-ton kinetic insects on human road users, safety entirely limited to “trained” human contractors staring at a screen 1,300 miles or whatever away from the scene, completely removing all traditional safety margins.
Human drivers routinely make minor sacrifices to keep traffic flowing safely and smoothly such as tapping the brakes to let a family merge, or altering speed for a funeral to go by. Roborigs possess no empathy, manners, nor any sense of community. It will mindlessly assert its legal right-of-way aggressively up to the exact foot permitted by its programming. If a human driver expects any roborig to “be polite” or back up a few feet to allow a tight turn, the roborig will wait causing gridlock until rescued by a remote human operator or you get the hell out of the way.
These “insects” are basically mobile 26-ton rolling traffic islands forcing the rest of the world to circle around them. Loophole lawyering reducing all human driving safety in Ohio down to political selfishness using its two-faced “yield line / stop bar” algorithms, now our “conservative” state government has unleash mobile roundabouts against the public…
The State of Ohio loopholes all federal FMCSA and 49 CFR regulations by restricting ODOT’s uncrewed roborigs strictly to intrastate routes within state lines, legally removing them from direct federal interstate commerce jurisdiction. As usual, Ohio exploits its own outdated regulatory language by legally redefining off-site remote technicians sitting 1,300 miles away in Texas or 13,000 mile away in SE Asia as the official “designated operator” of cab-less semis in Ohio.
mr. internet estimated over $30 million in federal funding has been expended on ODOT roborig testing (exploiting NEPA Assignment MOU loopholes) to date. The single largest source is a USDOT Automated Driving Systems (ADS) Demonstration Grant, a $17.8 million project evaluating how automated freight vehicles perform on rural roads. This is followed by a $5 million FHWA Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) Grant, and a $10 million I-70 Truck Automation Corridor project. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is providing the remaining capital needed to upgrade local, county and state highway roadside sensors, and advanced paint/high-visibility lane markers for our honerable governor’s roborig scheme…
To bypass standard roadside enforcement issues when automated trucks cross the Indiana-Ohio border on I-70, INDOT and ODOT integrated both states’ State Highway Patrol units into the testing loop.The platooning trucks are equipped with specific purple lights, signalling to Ohio and Indiana state troopers that the roborigs are actively operating in an authorized “digitally connected” electronic drawbar research mode, instructing law enforcement to recognize the automated spacing configuration rather than citing the trucks for tailgating, speed or unsafe following distances.
In the post-modern Ohio system, the primary crop being cultivated isn’t safety, excess carbon, corn or soybeans, it is federal taxpayer dollars. The GOP state and local governments partnering with special interests in Ohio is the farmer, the green new deal federal infrastructure bills are the soil, and state-level administrative loopholes, executive deception and ODOT data fraud are the tools used to extract maximum yield no matter the harm.
When Ohio government prioritizes grant farming over any objective safety improvement, carbon abatement or ethical civic needs for a decade, public road infrastructure statewide completely shifted from a public safety utility into an unending series of calculated financial extractions, revenue events and aggressive law enforcement on human road users of this hostile architecture, while designing additional Loophole Cascades to justify more and more.
By creating and leveraging federal funding loopholes, state transportation agencies use green infrastructure grants to build highly predictable geometric nodes like roundabouts and road diets removing traffic signals and left turn lanes. These roundabouts and curb bulb human hazards are built not because local accident data requires them, but to provide a controlled environment where AV onboard algorithms can easily calculate yielding vectors without having to execute a complex, human-negotiated left-hand turn. The public street is systematically being “re-engineered” to act as a structured laboratory machine for private equity, algorithmic logistics networks.
Because Ohio’s legislative branch has been legally and politically insulated from intervening with ODOT by Statehouse lawyers, local residents are left to navigate roads where traditional human-to-human traffic safety margins and the paid-for-and-mandatory MUTCD are replaced by remote corporate telemetry and intentional revenue events from biased automated probability models.
Federal regulators at the USDOT are insulated from local friction because, on paper, they have outsourced all local administrative liability to Ohio. As long as the paperwork meets the technical definitions of CFR 23 or the Carbon Reduction Strategy, the federal side approves all cash transfers without ever verifying the local, real-world necessity.
The alliance exists because the USDOT and the Ohio GOP share the identical high-level objective: building out the National Automated Freight Infrastructure.The USDOT allocates hundreds of millions in technology and mobility grants specifically to test automated commercial networks. Ohio politicians eagerly capture those grants to fund initiatives like the DriveOhio Smart Mobility Test Corridors (US-33 and I-70).
When all levels of government want the exact same outcome, using public roads as an AV testing ground for algorithmic corporate logistics- local safety data, municipal objections, 5000% crash frequency increases, or a fake intersection with contrived crash data are viewed by both USDOT and ODOT as mere minor regulatory hurdles to be routinely ignored or loopholed around.
That is the high-stakes, long-term geopolitical reality of what is known as Economic and Technological Warfare. You don’t need to land troops or fire a single missile if you can systematically buy, build, and control the underlying infrastructure of your adversary using their own taxpayer dollars. By exploiting the exact grant farming systems and regulatory loopholes you have documented, foreign entities exploiting global supply chains can effectively trap American infrastructure without ever firing a shot or triggering any traditional military response.
Professional American engineering flushed down the toilet to make it happen.
The most tragic casualty of this entire damn process is the systemic destruction of professional American engineering integrity. For generations, American civil engineering was respected globally because it was anchored to an unbending ethical code. A licensed Professional Engineer (PE) signed their name and stamped their seal as a solemn, legal guarantee of mathematical soundness justified by hard data, and engineering primarily to protect human life. Under carbon accounting’s “grant farming” system, the entire public highway safety culture is replaced by “professional ethics” twisted into a pretzel for political selfishness and green agendas…
Ohio’s and California’s notorious massive transportation oversight failures, from widespread NEPA‑Assignment MOU data fraud to the blatantly obvious ODOT autonomous‑vehicle truck and Caltrans highspeed rail boondoggles, reveal a system where these agencies routinely self‑certify on flawed or incomplete information, allowing unsafe, negligent and even nonexistant infrastructure, including the most basic contradictions like yield signs paired with stop bars at Ohio roundabouts, to pass into funding and construction without any federal oversight. Audits and investigation show missing required documentation, data fraud, no peer review, and approving projects with engineering inconsistencies or no engineering at all that directly endanger the public.
Minnesota’s massive Feeding Our Future/daycare scandals demonstrate the catastrophic end‑stage of this same structural weakness: when oversight relies only on rubber stamped paperwork instead of verification, fraud metastasizes into billions of dollars stolen, fake data and children used as statistical placeholders, and entire communities deprived of essential resources.
Together, these man-made fiscal debacles and contrived public safety disasters show how unchecked state government self‑reporting, political selfishness and loophole cascades doesn’t just waste big money, it produces real, physical, and irreversible harm, turning public institutions into systems where errors, incompetence and fraud become real hazards, omissions become cover‑ups, and the public becomes the collateral damage and revenue events of the post-modern America, where the watchdogs were paid to stop watching in the name of “woke” and carbon accounting.
T
What happens if a few vehicles get in front of these rigs and then gradually decrease speed until the truck has to stop? Asking for a friend…
In post-modern Ohio, Governor DeWine’s Roborigs are governed by three competing systems not safety or efficiency:
■ODOT Autonomous Right‑of‑Way Protocol
■Carbon Cult’s Sacred Secret Defect Mandates
■GoOhio Aqueous Compliance Layer
When a few vehicles get in front of an Ohio roborig and gradually slow down, the roborig doesn’t honk, road rage, tailgate, flash high beams or “fight back.”
It does something much worse:
It initiates a cascading State of Ohio loophole lawyer crash tax/compliance paperwork process called the revenue event.