The famed 1938 Buick Y-Job will be part of a special one-year exhibit at the Gilmore Car Museum. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ BYD of China, now the world’s largest EV maker in sales, saw its 2025 net profit fall 19 percent, the company’s first decline since 2021, due to an intense domestic price war. More at MSN News.
+ Gasoline price spikes triggered by the military conflict in Iran are boosting used electric vehicle sales across Europe, according to reports from online used vehicle retailers. More at World Auto Forum.
+ A payment dispute between Stellantis and supplier ZF Chassis Modules has halted production at the automaker’s Toluca, Mexico, plant and threatened operations in Canada. More at CBT News.
+ Drivers and leading figures within Formula 1 have called for urgent action after a high-speed crash involving Haas driver Oliver Bearman at the Japanese Grand Prix. More at The Guardian.
+ According to the New Jersey-based Pantone Color Institute, bright colors for automotive exteriors are staging a comeback, with green shades leading the trend. More at Car and Driver.
+ The Trump administration is easing the restrictions on the retail sale of E15 gasoline (containing 15 percent ethanol) in an effort to reduce price increases due to the war in Iran. More at The Hill.
+ Jaguar Land Rover has ordered a temporary halt of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport production at its Solihull plant England following a fire at a parts supplier in Norway. More at Automotive World.
+ Employment at Stellantis grew last year for the first time in the carmaker’s history as the carmaker added more than 10,000 jobs worldwide, 4,700 of them in North America. More at The Detroit News.
+ The 1938 Buick Y-Job has been added to GM Motorama Marvels from the Joe Bortz Collection, a special one-year-exhibit at the Gilmore Car Museum opening on April 11. More at Old Cars.
+ NASCAR announced the 15 nominees for the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s Class of 2027, with 2014 Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick nominated in his first year of eligibility. More at Catchfence.
Photo courtesy of General Motors.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from March 27 here.
Join Mac’s Motor City Garage on Facebook and X to receive notices when every new story is published.
Perhaps consumers would embrace brighter colors if manufacturers didn’t charge $600 for anything other than black, gray & silver. Even white is an extra cost option on several cars. As for those color consultants, they’ve clearly spent too much time in California.
The Buick Y-job is one of the most beautiful cars ever created according to me.
BTW. tomorrow’s NTSB dog and pony show hearing is essentially a public autopsy of the automotive industry’s “self-cerification” hallucination, proving that systems like Ford’s BlueCruise are prone to a total sensory GIGO failure when encountering stationary and emergencyhazards. IMHO, this NTSB Ford Bluecruise hearing is just another red herring in the post-modern jargon monoxide Congress is selling pushing the ADAS Functionality and Integrity Act (H.R. 6688) that turns optional safety suggestions from private equity into mandatory federal “shall” performance standards, while the SELF DRIVE Act (H.R. 7390) will codify the very same private equity autonomy that led to these crashes. Meanwhile, the REPAIR Act (H.R. 1566) that SEMA strongly supports is just a Trojan Horse to shift all legal and financial liability from the manufacturers, private equity and regulaters to independant repair shops…
NTSB Board Members (The Deciding Body)
These five presidential appointees will deliberate on the evidence and vote on the “probable cause” of the San Antonio and Philadelphia crashes:
Jennifer Homendy: Chair
Bruce Landsberg: Vice Chairman
Michael Graham: Board Member
Thomas B. Chapman: Board Member
Alvin Brown: Board Member
NTSB Lead Investigators and Senior Staff from the Office of Highway Safety and Office of Research and Engineering will present the factual reports and safety analysis:
John Humm: Lead Investigator for the San Antonio crash (HWY24FH006).
Robert Squire: Lead Investigator for the Philadelphia crash (HWY24FH008).
Dave Helson: Acting Director, Office of Highway Safety.
Kristin Poland, PhD: Acting Deputy Director, Office of Highway Safety.
Mark Bagnard: Chief of the Investigations Division.
Lisandra Garay-Vega, PhD: Chief of the Report Development Division.
Carl Schultheisz: Chief of the Vehicle Performance Division, Office of Research and Engineering.
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/HWY24FH006-BMG.aspx
The Real Hallucination:
You’re told the car is “Self-Driving” or “Hands-Free” to get you to buy it. The moment the tech fails, the company points to the eye-tracking camera data to prove you weren’t “supervising” the machine. You pay for the expensive tech, you pay for the insurance hike after the crash, and the private equity technocrats behind the elimination of all human drivers scheme move on to additional “safety” funding whichever provides the max short-term dividend.
The NTSB hearing tomorrow will likely end with a vote that puts the “probable cause” squarely on driver distraction, with only a polite “suggestion” for the Ford Motor Company to tweak their marketing.
Even if Mrs. Homandy wants to hammer Ford tomorrow for GIGO sensors, off-shore monitoring or straw-man marketing, her NTSB has zero-zilch-nada regulatory power. She can only “recommend.” The actual “teeth” belong to the NHTSA, sadly beholden to the same private equity, special interests and manufacturers for the mist oart. If she officially blames the technology for the crashes, floodgates open for massive lawsuits’ll cost untold billions and wing the Golden goose…
Agreed, the driver is the liability, the passenger is the gold mine.
Bingo! This perfectly frames the liability (the driver) as a public threat to justify the goldmine (the passenger).
Evidently, the goal is total monopolyzing of all mobility into a virtual vending machine that one cannot control nor escape…
At today’s still‑ongoing NTSB hearing on Ford’s BlueCruise system, Chair Jennifer Homendy emphasized that BlueCruise is a “convenience feature, not a safety system,” warning that it encourages driver complacency and questioning whether Ford’s marketing overstates its capabilities. Board member Thomas Chapman pressed investigators on why BlueCruise allowed drivers to travel at high speeds with limited driver‑monitoring and sharply criticized NHTSA for what he called a “lack of leadership” in regulating partial‑automation systems. Board member Michael Graham focused on the system’s failure to detect and respond to stopped vehicles, asking why BlueCruise did not intervene despite operating within its approved conditions. All three members challenged whether current oversight and system design adequately protect drivers given that neither the system nor the drivers applied braking before the fatal crashes.
The NTSB has not yet voted on the probable cause; the board will hopefully release its final findings and safety recommendations at the end of the hearing once deliberations conclude later today.
The board voted on contributing factors, which included:
Ford’s design choices, such as allowing high‑speed operation with limited driver‑monitoring.
System performance gaps, especially stationary‑vehicle detection.
Driver overreliance encouraged by the system’s “hands‑free” framing.
The board approved a set of safety recommendations, directed at:
Ford, to strengthen driver‑monitoring and system limitations.
NHTSA, urging the agency to establish minimum performance standards for driver‑assistance systems.
Other automakers, encouraging clearer communication about system capabilities.
The board voted on edits and amendments to the final written report, which NTSB staff will now incorporate before publication in the coming weeks.
As predicted and to the suprise of nobody, the NTSB voted the primary probable cause of fatal 2024 BlueCruise‑involved crashes was the drivers’ failure to recognize and respond to stopped vehicles ahead “due to inattention while BlueCruise was engaged”. The secondary cause of course voted was Ford’s Bluecruise system failing to detect and “classify” the stationary vehicles as “hazards”, resulting in no automatic braking or steering intervention. Ford told investigators that the system is not designed to reliably detect stationary vehicles at highway speeds in certain conditions. Therefore, the lack of braking was consistent with system limitations, not a malfunction at all. So there.
Unfortunately, the NTSB hearing room is a federal meeting space, not a hotel ballroom or event venue. No architectural or facilities documents available to the public mention Scotchgard or any other protective coating on the carpets there…
Nope — absolutely no ponies or dogs were present, and therefore no animal‑related disasters befell the hearing room carpet.
NTSB hearings are extremely controlled federal proceedings. The only things allowed in that room are board members, staff, investigators, witnesses, press
and the public quietly, in chairs. No animals, no mascots, no service‑animals, nothing even close to a creature that could leave a surprise on that floor sir.
Epilogue: The Bluecruise system behaves like it’s in control- hands‑free lane‑centering, automatic steering, smooth highway behavior, etc. All of this signals to the human brain “You can relax. The car’s got this.” That’s not your imagination — those are proven human factors. But ALL “Level 2” systems require full vigilance. This is the contradiction, the system looks autonomous, the system feels autonomous, the system markets itself like autonomy. But legally and technically, it is not autonomous at all. That mismatch is the safety defect: a structural, predictable, well‑documented human‑factor failure baked into Level‑2 driver‑assist systems…
Source: YouTube https://share.google/OjGSPSsYxGF9rBqHy