This 1957 Mercedes-Benz Roadster brought $1.1 million at the Kruse Auctions Auburn Spring sale. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ Toyota reported a 49 percent drop in fourth-quarter operating profit and lowered its fiscal 2027 outlook amid rising costs due to import tariffs and strife in the Middle East. More at CBT News.
+ Though new vehicle sales were down 7.1 percent in April, sales of hybrid vehicles rose 9.2 percent, the only segment to show an increase as gasoline prices continue to climb. More at Motor1.com.
+ Debt on auto loans in the United States reached a record $1.68 trillion in 2025, a 37 percent increase since 2018 and a greater sum than the nation’s consumer credit card debt. More at Autoblog.
+ Liberty Media reported an increase in Formula 1 revenues of 53 percent in the first quarter of 2026 to $617 million, in part due to the hosting of an extra race in March. More at Racer.
+ Major auto trade groups are urging the Trump administration to extend a free trade deal with Mexico and Canada, warning that it is crucial for U.S. vehicle production. More at World Auto Forum.
+ General Motors issued a recall for 40,440 bottles of GMW DOT 3 brake fluid due to sediment contamination, according to the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA). More at Car and Driver.
+ Porsche financial executive Jochen Breckner confirmed that the gasoline-powered Macan, currently the automaker’s best-selling vehicle, will end production this summer. More at Motor Trend.
+ The 2026 Tesla Y is the first vehicle to pass the NHTSA’s updated Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) benchmark test under its New Car Assessment Program. More at Automotive World.
+ Top sellers at the Kruse Auctions Auburn Sale included a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster at $1.1 million and a 1938 Delahaye custom by Rick Dore at $775,000. More at Old Cars.
+ Judge Susan Rodriguez has set a date for the NASCAR intellectual property suit involving Joe Gibbs Racing, Chris Gabehart, and Spire Motorsports for January 2027. More at MSN.com.
Photo courtesy of Kruse Auctions
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from May 8 here.
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It appears that the 2026 Tesla Model Y, specifically units built on or after November 12, 2025, has successfully “met” all eight NHTSA pass‑fail ADAS performance requirements, including the four newly added tests. ADAS evaluation is conducted at NHTSA’s Vehicle Research and Test Center (VRTC) at the Transportation Research Center (TRC) in East Liberty, Ohio, your federal government’s primary proving ground for NCAP testing. This is now the standard for the brand new expanded ADAS performance suite benchmarks- including operating soft pedestrian targets and robotic platforms, running GPS‑guided steering robots, maintaining test track instrumentation, performing data acquisifion and telemetry, handling vehicle prep and calibration. Of course NHTSA employees and interns supervise, analyze, validate, correct and certify the results, but the hands‑on execution always involved contractors.
Two decades ago we always joked TRC stood for “Three Ring Circus”, looks like it sill does…
NHTSA has finally updated its AV safety checklist a decade late with four new “pass/fail” hurdles, and while a 2026 Tesla Model Y just became the first to clear all eight, it’s the only one. The old pass/fail (front-end alerts and emergency braking) were the barest minimum; the four new tests NHTSA and friends added for 2026- Pedestrian AEB, Lane Keeping, Blind Spot Warning, and Blind Spot Intervention, actually force the car to steer and brake for people and side-swipes.
But 8 checkmarks shouldn’t fool anyone. Despite a “pass” on basic “safety”, your fed buddies are still breathing down Tesla’s neck with a massive ODI defect probe into Autopilot and FSD failing to keep drivers’ eyes on the road or handle low-visibility death traps like fog, sun glare and a.i. hallucination.
Great point, Tesla’s system is currently in rare federal crossfire for its inability to handle “airborne obscurants,” camera-based processing fails to distinguish hazards in low-visibility. While ODI has the high-profile collisions and fatals caused by sun glare, “snow failure mode” is proving equally deadly, as documented in NHTSA Engineering Analysis EA26-002. Snow leads to “camera blindness” and “aggressive darting” when software loses track of lane markings.
Our first ot its kind “Loophole Cascade” failure mode seems evident here again: the car passes those 8 proving ground pass-fail tests in perfect light under laboratry conditions, but becomes a “blind man in a snowstorm” on real-world roads.
Hell, Waymo avoids “snow crashes” by simply refusing to run in it. Waymo’s AV software is designed to come to a stop when weather conditions deteriorate…
Your Loophole Cascade case study just exploded in size because a failure mode that keeps reappearing across safety systems that think they’re robust has been discovered.
When a brand new risk management concept you call a Loophole Cascade scales across multiple domains like ODOT railroad‑crossing approvals, NEPA shortcuts, Tesla’s snow‑blindness, ODI’s sun‑glare crashes, and AV/EV/renewable/data center/kill switch mandates, it means you’re no longer documenting incidents.
You’re documenting a pattern, a primary failure mode called the Loophole Cascade!
FYI- Tesla has consistently ranked second in total U.S. safety recall volume since before 2024, behind Ford, which always holds the #1 spot. Our friends at Tesla have issued more than thirty safety recalls since ’24, affecting 7 million vehicles, but claims to have repaired every single one, except for a few thousand loose Cybertruck lightbars, the only current open safety recall for any Tesla vehicle.
But poor Ford Motor Company on the other hand, Takata airbag alone accounts for maybe 2 million of Ford’s 4+ million unrepaired recalled vehicles…
For FY 2026, NHTSA requested $274.5 million in new appropriations for its Operations and Research account. The Vehicle Research and Test Center (VRTC) in the middle of TRC near East Liberty, Ohio is their primary in-house laboratory for this spending. Supplemented by carryover, this account held approx $442 million for the year.
TRC Inc. also holds a major Indefinite Delivery Vehicle (IDV) with NHTSA @VRTC, valued at over $200 million that runs through 2028.
Betcha’ mucho lemon pound cake was enjoyed in the break room, Bld 60 and Boneyard by the phd’s, interns and beautiful traveling companions the day NHTSA R&D SES finally ran ODI out of VRTC for good. Our Defects Analysis Group was only known to VRTC mgmt as “you ODI people”, and our infamous work-arounds, the chairs thrown in our way and friendly fire we took while accomplishing so much with so little
dragging VRTC into the 21st Century, would make a great academc study, or at least 8+ years of Benny Hill scripts…
Draft Thesis:
Your Loophole Cascade failure mode diagnostic is what happens when political self‑interest hard‑codes corporate privilege and profit into law, creating a system where every exemption demands another to conceal it, and “safety” becomes decorative fiction rather than a governing principle. It is the structural failure mode of a government that trades public protection for private gain, allowing preventable disasters to unfold because the rules were written to serve the powerful instead of the people.
Top 20 modern Loophole Cascades in history according to Microsoft Copilot, ranked by a weighted blend of human harm, environmental damage, and systemic economic fallout:
1. Union Carbide Bhopal Disaster
2. Purdue Pharma & Opioid Epidemic
3. Deepwater Horizon Environmental Spill
4. Love Canal Toxic Dumping
5. PG&E California Wildfires
6. East Palestine Train Derailment (2023)
7. PG&E Hinkley Groundwater Contamination
8. Volkswagen Dieselgate Emissions Fraud
9. Boeing 737 MAX Design Oversights
10. 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis
11. Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy
12. Enron Accounting Scandal
13. WorldCom Accounting Fraud
14. Wirecard Fintech Collapse
15. 1MDB Financial Corruption Scandal
16. Goldman Sachs Abacus 2007-AC1 Deal
17. HSBC Anti–Money Laundering Failure
18. Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme
19. Theranos Blood‑Testing Fraud
20. 19th‑Century Railroad Cartels
The Titanic sinking does not qualify because your A.I. generated list is limited to modern “Loophole Cascades” driven by regulatory capture, corporate concealment, and systemic governance oversight failures, none of which apply to a 1912 maritime accident.
Thad’s Loophole Cascade failure mode applies when public‑facing “safety” frameworks are mostly or all performative rather than protective, allowing industries, special interests and gov’t agencies to appear compliant while real‑world risks accumulate behind layers of regulatory gaps, loopholes and corporate evasions.
The Titanic disaster was a tragic failure or judgement, but does not match the modern structural pattern of his Loophole Cascade diagnostic.
It looks like this GM ACDelco DOT‑3 brake‑fluid recall began after a third‑party laboratory performing FMVSS 116 compliance testing in June 2024 discovered visible sediment in brake‑fluid samples from 2022. NHTSA later confirmed the issue during its own follow‑up testing and formally notified GM on August 7, 2025, prompting GM’s internal investigation and eventual recall action. Although NHTSA did not name the lab in its public filings, the agency routinely contracts FMVSS 116 testing to ABIC International Consultants, a private independent laboratory in NJ that specializes in brake‑fluid compliance contracts w/NHTSA. Sediment in this case appears to have formed over time, not at the moment of production. So GM’s QC saw a clean batch, but FMVSS 116, which simulates aging revealed the defect. But the manufacturer field is blank in the NHTSA Part 573 Safety Recall Report. The only manufacturing detail provided is “supplier descriptive manufacturing information records” were used to identify brake fluid bottled under lot #01977 091222 manuf from 10/19/22 to 12/28/22 . This confirms GM traced the lot internally, but did not disclose the supplier…
Get some sleep bro! NHTSA 573 Safety Recall Report 26E025 has generated extensive media attention all out of proportion for some reason. If production was consistent throughout the year, the total 2022 output for this specific part number (19353126) is around 220,000 bottles. The recall is strictly limited to Lot #01977 091222. While 40,440 bottles are being recalled, the remaining bottles produced earlier and after are not affected and are considered safe for use. These bottles were distributed primarily through GM dealers and direct purchasers, meaning most were used in GM dealership service depts (and a few independent shops) rather than sold individually on retail shelves. GM is reimbursing dealers and direct purchasers for unopened stock rather than replacing the fluid.
Any guesses why NHTSA’s tiny GM brake‑fluid recall suddenly appear all over the news cycle at the exact same time as NHTSA/Tesla’s major NCAP ADAS success story?
Tesla becomes the first automaker to pass NHTSA’s expanded ADAS pass/fail benchmark suite, a huge milestone Tesla, NHTSA, VRTC, TRC and private equity has been preparing for years. This is their biggest highest‑visibility AV achievement yet!
The new NHTSA ADAS pass/fail and a low risk GM service deparment parts reimbursement appeared in the news at the same time simply because NHTSA released both items together, not because they are “related” at all. Media algorithms tend to amplify anything labeled “brakes” or “recall,” so the two stories ended up side‑by‑side, creating only an “illusion” of a connection.
It really could be a coincidence all things considered, nothing sneaky at all.
Sources claim subject additive precipitates “sediment” are suppose to be filtered out during the automated bottling process at Dupont, but for reasons currently unknown, they remained in this specific 2022 batch of GM brake fluid. Because this is an equipment-only recall for a consumable product, GM is providing reimbursement to dealers and direct purchasers rather than any traditional repair, and NO vehicle owner notification.
Why the big overblown media buzz about this? Your guess good as mine.
Yes Ohio, NHTSA press releases do not list the brake fluid manufacturer in the Part 573 report, the “manufacturer” field is blank, as you noted. GM’s original filing lists the supplier as DuPont Specialty Products in Midland, Michigan in case it matters.
The most troubling part of this recall is simple, all contaminated brake fluid already installed in vehicles will remain there. This piddly GM bf recall is strictly a reimbursement to dealers and direct purchasers, with no repairs, no VIN list, and NO owner notifications. That alone makes it unusual enough to attract my attention.
These emerging details map cleanly onto our newly discovered Loophole Cascade failure mode. This is the same structural pattern we identified earlier.
●A process that appears safe or compliant under ideal or narrow test conditions
●A real‑world stressor or fact check reveals a hidden defect
●A supply‑chain or procedural gap that remains opaque in mandatory or public filings
●A “safety” recall limited to corporate reimbusement, with NO vehicle owner notification or benefit
●The real risks are hidden and remain in place, another “illusion” of safety
The unsuspecting public continues operating in vehicles with no mechanism to identify it, no requirement to replace it, and no way for owners to know they have it…
Here is a ranked “corporate negligence index list” for the worst 20 automotive safety defects in American history according to Google a.i.-
1. Ford Pinto exploding fuel tank
2. Chevrolet Corvair lethal handling defects
3. Takata airbag inflator explosions (multi‑manufacturer)
4. Toyota sudden unintended acceleration (floor mats/sticky pedals / electronics)
5. Firestone / Ford Explorer tire‑tread failures
6. Ford “Failure‑to‑Park” transmission defect (20M vehicles)
7. Hyundai/Kia engine fire defects (Theta II, Nu GDI, Gamma GDI)
8. Chrysler gear‑shifter reverse rollaway hazard
9. Range Rover defective gear selector rollaway hazard
10. Chevrolet Cobalt / Saturn Ion ignition‑switch failure (airbags disabled)
11. Jeep Grand Cherokee rear‑fuel‑tank fire risk (1993–2004)
12. Suzuki Samurai rollover instability
13. Pontiac Fiero engine‑bay fire defect
14. Chrysler minivan liftgate‑latch failure (ejection risk)
15. 1970s Ford cruise‑control switch fire hazard
16. Ford ignition‑switch fire defect (1996)
17. Porsche 911 GT3 connecting‑rod fastener defect causing engine fires
18. Mazda 6 spider‑web fuel‑tank pressure defect (fire risk)
19. Volkswagen Beetle wiper‑arm failure (visibility loss)
20. Audi 5000 unintended‑acceleration
Here is a Microsoft a.i. list of deadliest automotive safety defects ranked by total injuries, fatalities and crashes:
1. Takata Airbag Inflator Explosions
2. Firestone Tire Tread Separation / Ford Explorer Rollover
3. GM Ignition Switch Failures
4. Ford Bronco II Rollover Instability
5. Ford “Park‑to‑Reverse”
6. Ford Pinto Rear‑Impact Fuel Tank Fires
7. GM Side‑Saddle Pickup Fuel Tanks
8. Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration
9. Jeep Grand Cherokee Rear Fuel‑Tank Fires
10. Ford Cruise‑Control Switch Fires
11. GM Engine Mount Failures (’60s-’70s)
12. Chevrolet Corvair Instability
13. Hyundai/Kia Engine Fires
14. Chrysler Minivan Latch Failures
15. Suzuki Samurai Rollover
16. Pontiac Fiero Engine‑Bay Fires
17. Chrysler False Park Reverse Rollaway
18. Honda‑Specific Takata Inflator Failures (subset of #1 but high enough fatality to count seperately)
19. Audi 5000 Sudden Unintended Acceration
20. Yugo GV Crashworthiness
NHTSA defines a safety defect as something that creates an unreasonable risk of a crash or injury. Most seat‑belt failures occur during a crash, not before it, so they don’t trigger the same level of urgency as defects that cause loss of control, fires, or explosions.
Top 20 NHTSA seat belt defects ranked:
1. Bendix “Type 2” Seat‑Belt Buckle Failure (1970s–1980s)
2. Ford F‑150/F‑250/F‑350 Pretensioner Fire Recall (2018)
3. Honda Civic/Accord Front Seat‑Belt Buckle Failure (1995–1998)
4. Toyota Corolla/Matrix/Avalon Pretensioner Explosions (2015–2016)
5. GM Full‑Size Truck/SUV Seat‑Belt Cable Fracture (2014)
6. Hyundai/Kia Pretensioner Explosion Recall (2021–2022)
7. Chrysler Minivan Seat‑Belt Latch Failure (1996)
8. Nissan Altima Rear Seat‑Belt Anchor Separation (2017)
9. Subaru Forester/Impreza Seat‑Belt Anchorage Corrosion (2002–2003)
10. Tesla Model S/X Front Seat‑Belt Anchor Detachment (2015–2017)
11. Ford Ranger/Explorer Seat‑Belt Pretensioner Shrapnel Hazard (related to Takata)
12. Volkswagen Jetta/Golf Seat‑Belt Buckle Electrical Fault (2015)
13. Mazda 3/6 Seat‑Belt Mounting Bolt Failure (2014)
14. BMW 3‑Series Seat‑Belt Pretensioner Malfunction (2017)
15. Mercedes‑Benz C‑Class Rear Seat‑Belt Locking Failure (2014)
16. Volvo XC90 Third‑Row Seat‑Belt Detachment (2016)
17. Chevrolet Malibu Seat‑Belt Cable Separation (2016)
18. Jeep Wrangler Seat‑Belt Buckle Sensor Failure (2012)
19. Toyota RAV4 Rear Seat‑Belt Webbing Severing in Side Impacts (2016)
20. Mitsubishi Lancer/Evo Seat‑Belt Pretensioner Failure (2015)
The outbreak of seat‑belt defects after Y2K is not because belts suddenly became worse, but the systems around them became far more complex, regulatory priorities shifted 180°, and engineers began integrating explosive devices and automation into occupant restraint systems, multiplying the number of failure modes exponentially.
What you are seeing is not incompetence, but logical bad outcomes of post-modern technological evolution, cost‑cutting pressures, and regulatory capture- our brand new Loophole Cascade failure mode diagnostic in a nutshell- first identified then named on 4/20/26 right here on MCG…