This 1914 Stutz Bearcat 4E will be offered at Broad Arrow’s inaugural Audrain Concours Auction. Get all the latest auto industry news in the Executive Briefing.
Today’s headlines:
+ A forecast from Cox Automotive predicts that General Motors and Ford will continue to lose U.S. market share as gasoline prices rise and buyers prioritize fuel efficiency. More at CTV News.
+ Japan’s Honda Motor is in the final stages of preparations to build a new $2.5 billion hybrid vehicle assembly plant at an unannounced location in Ohio, Nikkei Asia reported. More at Yahoo! Finance.
+ Demand for electric vehicles continued to underpin growth in Europe’s car market in August, offsetting a steep decline in petrol and diesel vehicle sales, according to ACEA. More at World Auto Forum.
+ The Cadillac Formula 1 team has bolstered its technical team with new staffers, including Craig Skinner from Red Bull Racing to serve as chief development engineer. More at Racer.
+ General Motors has refreshed the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD trucks, introducing a new Mongoose 8.3-liter diesel V8 with 555 hp and 1,230 lb-ft of torque. More at Car and Driver.
+ Because many car loan interest rates move with the yields on five- and 10-year Treasury notes, which have spiked, buyers can expect to pay more for car loans, analysts say. More at CNBC.
+ A survey of British driving instructors shows that many believe teenagers should begin learning the basics of driving long before they’re legally eligible at 17 for a driver’s license. More at Autoweek.
+ Under a new policy, Stellantis dealers will be prohibited from advertising Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, or Ram vehicles at prices below a manufacturer-set minimum starting on October 1. More at CBT News.
+ Broad Arrow’s inaugural Audrain Auction in Newport, Rhode Island will feature 65 collector cars, including a Stutz Bearcat, two Mercedes 300 SLs, and a Cadillac V16. More at Old Cars.
+ NASCAR Hall of Famer and broadcaster Darrell Waltrip is “stepping further away” from public life after a recent diagnosis of frontotemporal degeneration, his family announced. More at The Tennessean.
Photo courtesy of Broad Arrow Auctions.
Review the previous MCG Executive Briefing from September 21 here.
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The original American muscle car is the Stutz Bearcat, Harry Stutz is the mechanical genious who invented “Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday” with his Bearcat prototype finishing 11th at the very first Indianapolis 500 in 1911!
American driver training sucks badly and stinks by design. American gov’t loophole lawyering allows any idiot who can fog a mirror to be licensed regardless of competence, with few U.S. states mandating any formal driver’s ed at all. Sean Dummy’s DOT just shutdown almost 200 domestic CDL paper mills because it had to, not because it wanted to. Japan and Germany professionally treat driver training like an aviation curriculum, building on the same core principles of risk management, checklist discipline, emergency manuvers, and complete mastery of the machine before soloing.
The Chernobyl Disaster of NHTSA’s loopholegineered Level 2 ADAS “Self-Certification” exemption/immunity llusions is the disasterous Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) FHWA NEPA Assignment MOU loophole cascades, intentional OMUTCD breaches, and ODOT District 1’s published corrupted official GPS data for the obviously A.I. designed year-long 5-county 800+ TTC sign OHM-designed TCP U.S. Route 68 detour debacle of 2025. This represents the worst-case scenario for ADAS visual hacking and GPS poisoning IMHO, the root cause and failure mode of more than one ODOT/state contractor-involved Tesla ADAS “hacking/data tampering” crash in ODOT District 1 last year. The documented combination of an absurd massive million dollar “scrap-pile” of non-compliant, incorrect, contradicting, hidden, obscured and missing physical Temporary Traffic Control (TTC) signage and corrupted official GPS US68 detour mapping data functioned as a real-world ADAS “visual hack/spoof/cyber attack” and GPS “data tampering” for a small town municipal U.S.68 streetscape beauification construction for over 11 months, overwhelming the visual perception causing “Safety Factor Zero” of Level 2 ADAS and GPS app users.
The Tesla Autopilot users had no chance in these crashes, and the published D1 construction timeline for U.S.68 indicates ODOT redeploys this same retarded U.S.68 construction detour TCP at least three or more times through 2030, so enjoy!
When one honestly describes anything American built entirely on legal fictions, contrived revenue events and loophole cascades with unlimited baked-in immunities and exemptions, the unvarnished truth always sounds like a conspiracy theory or manifesto. Be warned ADAS/EV/AV “hacking” and GPS “data tampering” is “legal” under USDOT self-certifications, FHWA/NHTSA loophole cascades and Ohio loopholapaloozas, because “ADAS/EV/AV hacking” LEGALLY DOES NOT EXIST under any American ambulance chaser loopholegineered/immunity/exemption/mandate/EO loophole cascade, MOU’s, pinkie-promises or Ohio law school-style loopholapaloozas roadside enforced at gunpoint. The most powerful feature of these interlocking self-certifications, immunities and exemptions is that “legitimate” administrative reviews, fiscal audits and safety-related defect investigations evidently are never meant to detect any negligence, criminal acts, root cause or document any infrastructure failure mode effects, everything seems loopholegineered only to validate loophole lawyer paperwork loopholapaloozas and perpetual “driver error” to keep that “free money, revenue events, billable hours and crash taxes” perpetually flowing.
HEY ASS ROCKET, USDOT, NTSB, NHTSA, ODI, FHWA, MTV, TESLA, GM, FORD, HONDA, SAE, ISO, YADDA: In case anyone in authority actually gives a flying shit OR a rolling donut, your “mysterious” smoking gun root cause of unlimited single point ADAS failure mode AND glitches including a mammoth pile of priceless contrived negative “edge case Level 2 sensor failure robo-data” is right over there in ODOT Idiotville District 1 HQ. No wonder ODOT in Ohio refuses to release public records about its blatantly defective District 1 detours.
The recommended engineering solution is simple, logical, ethical, obvious and costs nothing, it is called FOLLOW THE GODDAMN RULES OHIO DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION DISTRICT 1 SAFETY REVIEW TEAM ●●●
The most infuriating part of the ODOT/state contractor involved Tesla ADAS vision hacking crashes is they KNOW ALL ABOUT ADAS/AV Signal Detection Theory. ODOT studies how automated decision thresholds behave under stress. If a sign is non-compliant, meaning its size, reflectivity, text layout, or lateral placement deviates from minimal first-grader federal database rules- the machine’s uncertainty spikes exponentionally. To avoid a crash, the software’s safety threshold can then command aggressive, unnecessary panic stops or drive right into a barricade. This issue is so well-known that the FHWA updated the most recent MUTCD specifically to begin accounting for how ADAS machine-vision systems read roads and signage, but its a day late and a dollar short.
Is it possible that the Registered Professional Engineers employed at ODOT do not understand that poor or no traffic control signage and “scrap-yard” non-compliant construction zones not only just confuse humans and cause revenue events- they actively disrupt ADAS vehicle automation software to cause even morr revenue events also? A minimal, kindergarten level of machine-readable MUTCD safety standards would cost Ohio ODOT virtually nothing to implement. Nobody is asking the radium readymix RINOs to spend to billions of dollars of more “free money” to physically rebuild every street and highway overnight. In the post-modern digital age, achieving “ADAS-safe compliance” doesn’t require any more new concrete (sorry dudes) or expensive advanced connected digital fads and more slogans- it only requires a kindergarten basic data management that a modern tech platform handles automatically, installed and maintained by folks who prioritize human life over political selfishness and crash taxes. The fact that this hasn’t been written into any NEPA MOU proves that the omission (and the MOUs) is pure political selfishness IMHO, not safety related at all.
A zero-cost or low-cost minimal ADAS-focused MUTCD will never happen in our lifetimes. The USDOT and Ohio loophole lawyers will never formally recognize any terms like “ADAS vision hacking” or “perception hacking” or “visual exploitation” because doing so would completely upend their trillion dollar golden goose speed trap of the American ambulance chaser.
The tragic reality is that the technology to solve all this has been intentionally sitting in loophole law’s back pocket for over a decade. ODOT continues to hide behind the Kasich-Obama-Dewine-Biden NEPA MOU bullshit while tax chattle Ohio road users watch their money disappear into loophole lawyering’s infinite black hole. This isn’t an engineering problem by any stretch, it is a total failure of the American loophole lawyering lawyer ruling-class political selfishness…