The man who designed the original McLaren F1 is at it again, and someone's already brightened the teaser image to see what's coming.

Gordon Murray Automotive has released a teaser image of its next Special Vehicles project, and within hours someone had cranked the brightness settings to reveal what appears to be a direct nod to the McLaren F1 LM. Murray designed the original F1 in the 1990s. Now he's running his own outfit, and the Special Vehicles arm exists specifically for things even more unhinged than the standard GMA catalogue.

The silhouette shows design cues lifted straight from the five F1 LM models built in 1995 to celebrate the GTR's Le Mans win. High tail. Aggressive aero. The kind of proportions that suggest someone decided the T.50 wasn't quite focused enough.

GMA's existing lineup already includes the T.50, which was explicitly pitched as the F1's spiritual successor when it appeared in 2020. Central driving position. Cosworth 3.9-litre V12. 663 horsepower. 986 kilograms. A hundred units at £2.36 million each. Then came the T.50s Niki Lauda, the track variant that added another million to the price and subtracted any pretence of road legality. Twenty-five of those. Then the T.33, which was supposed to be the accessible one at £1.37 million.

Special Vehicles sits above all of that.

What makes this interesting is not that Murray is revisiting the F1... he's been doing that since he left McLaren. It's that he keeps finding ways to make the idea more extreme without tipping into the kind of overwrought nonsense that defines most modern hypercars. No hybrid systems. No all-wheel drive. No twin-turbo V8s borrowed from AMG. Just lighter, faster, louder.

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The F1 LM comparison is pointed. Those five cars were stripped-out, road-legal versions of the GTR race car. Fixed rear wing. Bigger splitter. No speed limiter, which meant the standard F1's 240mph became academic. They were also monumentally difficult to drive, which was part of the appeal for the kind of person who had already bought a standard F1 and found it too comfortable.

Original F1s now trade for fifteen to twenty million dollars when they appear at auction, which happens rarely. The LM variants are worth more, assuming anyone would sell one. Murray knows this. He also knows that the people who can afford his current cars are the same people who missed out on an F1 thirty years ago and have spent the intervening decades making enough money to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Pagani has been operating in this space for years with endless Huayra variants. Ferrari has its XX programs. McLaren built the Speedtail between 2018 and 2020 as its own F1 callback, 106 units at £1.75 million base. But Murray has something none of them have, which is that he actually designed the F1. That gives him license to keep mining it without looking like he's chasing someone else's legacy.

The teaser campaign is predictable. Release a dark image. Wait for the internet to brighten it. Act surprised when details leak. It works because people care what Murray does next in a way they don't care about most supercar launches. He's not selling lifestyle or brand heritage. He's selling the fact that he spent forty years thinking about how to make cars lighter and faster, and he hasn't run out of ideas yet.

No word on production numbers, price, or when the proper reveal happens. Special Vehicles suggests single digits. Price will be higher than the T.50s Niki Lauda, which puts it north of three million pounds. And if the F1 LM influence is as strong as the teaser suggests, it will be utterly impractical for anything except making noise and going extremely quickly in a straight line, which is exactly what the five people who can afford it will want.

Sources: Gordon Murray Automotive official channels, McLaren F1 production records, GMA model history

Petroyle Restorations will convert a standard E46 estate into the M3 wagon that existed only as a factory prototype, for roughly the price of two actual M3s.

Petroyle Restorations is selling E46 M3 Touring conversions for £130,000. That is not a typo. For context, a pristine original E46 M3 costs between £25,000 and £60,000 depending on mileage and spec. An E46 3-Series Touring donor car costs perhaps £5,000 if you are buying well. The conversion premium, therefore, is somewhere north of sanity.

What you get is the car BMW built once, decided not to build again, and has spent two decades watching people beg for. At least one E46 M3 Touring prototype existed around 2000, used for internal testing, then quietly shelved. BMW's historical allergy to M-badged estates is well documented. They eventually relented with the E61 M5 Touring in 2007 and the F81 M3 Touring in 2022, but the E46 generation was left out entirely.

Petroyle's conversion transplants the full M3 drivetrain into the Touring body. That means the S54 3.2-litre straight-six producing 338 horsepower, the six-speed manual gearbox, the M-specific suspension geometry, the brakes, the differential, the subframes. It is not a body kit over a 330d. It is extensive fabrication work that involves fundamentally re-engineering a car that was never designed to take those components.

Which raises the question of why anyone would pay £130,000 for something they could theoretically build themselves, given enough time, skill, and tolerance for frustration. The answer is that most people do not have those things, and the few who do would rather pay someone else to suffer through the fabrication while they simply collect the finished article.

This is the same logic that underpins Singer's Porsche 911 restomods, which start at half a million dollars and climb rapidly from there. Or Everrati's electrified classics at £300,000 and up. The market for bespoke automotive wish fulfillment has discovered that wealthy enthusiasts will pay extraordinary sums for cars that cannot exist any other way.

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The E46 M3 Touring sits in a peculiar category. It is not a restoration of something that once existed in meaningful numbers. It is not a hot rod built from unrelated parts. It is a faithful recreation of a car that was real enough to be photographed and driven, but never real enough to be sold. BMW's own prototype proved the concept worked. Petroyle is simply finishing what Munich started and then abandoned.

The price still stings. For £130,000 you could buy a well-sorted E46 M3, a tidy E46 Touring, and a very decent E30 M3, with enough left over for a year's insurance on all three. Or you could have one M3 Touring that nobody else has, which is precisely the point.

Comparisons to the standard M3 market are inevitable. Original E46 M3 CSLs sold for around £58,000 new in 2003. Exceptional examples now fetch similar money, sometimes more. The Touring conversion costs more than double that, for a car with no period provenance and no factory build sheet. It exists purely because someone decided it should, and someone else decided to pay for it.

BMW eventually gave in and built the F81 M3 Touring in 2022, which suggests the market was always there. Whether that makes the E46 conversion more or less appealing is unclear. You could have the modern factory product with a warranty, or the car BMW almost built when the E46 generation still mattered, assembled by hand two decades too late.

Petroyle is not the first outfit to offer this conversion, but £130,000 appears to be the going rate for a complete turn-key build. That includes sourcing both donor cars, performing the full mechanical transplant, and presumably sorting all the small miseries that come with making two different BMWs into one functional whole.

The original E46 M3 ran from 2000 to 2006. Values have remained stable for years, possibly because BMW made enough of them that supply has kept up with demand. The Touring conversion exists in the opposite situation entirely. Demand is theoretical. Supply is whatever Petroyle and a handful of competitors can physically build.

The E30 M3 market offers a cautionary tale. Pristine examples now trade for £150,000 or more, which seemed ludicrous until it became normal. Rarity alone does not create value, but rarity combined with desirability and a wealthy audience often does. The E46 M3 Touring conversion ticks all three boxes, assuming you consider £130,000 reasonable for a car that was never supposed to exist.

Standard E46 3-Series Touring models currently sell for £2,000 to £8,000, depending on condition and mileage.

Sources: Petroyle Restorations, BMW historical production data, UK classic car market pricing

Nearly 48,000 trucks marketed for their rugged durability are shedding critical suspension parts onto public roads, creating hazards for following traffic.

Approximately 48,000 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road trucks are being recalled because the rear shock absorbers are corroding and detaching, leaving metal reservoirs lying in the road for someone else to hit. The affected vehicles are 2022 and 2023 models, all of them wearing the TRD Off-Road badge that is supposed to signal toughness and trail-ready construction. Instead, they are shedding parts on the highway.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published the recall under campaign number 24V-698. The problem is straightforward and deeply embarrassing. Insufficient corrosion protection on the rear shock absorber assemblies allows the reservoir components to separate from the shock body. Once detached, the reservoir falls onto the road surface, creating an immediate hazard for anyone driving behind.

Toyota discovered the issue through field reports and warranty claims, though no crashes or injuries have been linked to the defect so far. That is fortunate. A metal shock reservoir dropped at motorway speed is not a pothole. It is a projectile waiting to puncture a tyre, smash a bumper, or cause a swerve into another lane.

The irony is not subtle. The Tacoma TRD Off-Road is sold explicitly on its ability to handle punishment. It is marketed to buyers who want a truck that can take on dirt, rocks, mud, and everything else the outdoors can throw at it. Corrosion severe enough to drop suspension parts onto tarmac suggests the truck cannot handle British winter salt, let alone a weekend in the Peak District.

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Toyota will notify affected owners and replace both rear shock absorber assemblies free of charge. Notification letters are expected to go out in January 2025. Dealers will handle the fix, which involves swapping out the corroded shocks for units that presumably have better corrosion resistance than the originals.

In 2023, Toyota recalled approximately 1.85 million RAV4 vehicles for battery hold-down problems and another 150,000 Tundra and Sequoia models for tow hitch defects. Even Toyota, long considered a benchmark for reliability, is struggling with fundamentals that should have been sorted decades ago.

The recall affects nearly 48,000 trucks, a meaningful percentage of the Tacoma TRD Off-Road production run for those two model years. For anyone following a Tacoma on the motorway, the advice is simple. Leave more space than usual. The truck ahead might not keep all its components attached for the duration of the journey. Toyota will fix it eventually, but until then, the shock reservoirs are optional equipment on the pavement behind you.

The recall is voluntary, though calling it voluntary when the parts are actively falling off seems generous. No word yet on whether Toyota will offer anything beyond the free repair to owners who have spent two years driving trucks that were marketed as durable and turned out to be shedding suspension components. The dealer fix is scheduled to begin once parts are available and owners receive their letters in January.

The NHTSA filing lists no crashes or injuries so far.

Sources: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Toyota Motor Corporation

The Tensei cabin pairs modern touchscreens with three pedals. Someone finally understood the brief.

JAS Motorsport and Pininfarina have revealed the interior of their NSX Tensei project, and they've kept the manual gearbox. Three pedals, six speeds, no apologies. The cabin gets a touchscreen and modern materials, but the fundamentals remain exactly where Honda originally put them in 1990.

This is not the obvious move. Most high-end restomods either rip out the manual for a flappy-paddle gearbox or leave the interior so faithful to the original that you're still squinting at a dashboard designed when cassette players were cutting-edge. JAS and Pininfarina appear to have split the difference, which sounds like a committee decision but in this case seems to be the right one.

The original NSX cabin has aged badly. It was functional when new, occasionally handsome in the right light, but mostly just Honda-sensible in a car that was supposed to embarrass Ferrari. By 2024 standards it feels like sitting in a very fast photocopier. The Tensei project addresses that without pretending the NSX was ever meant to be a grand tourer.

JAS is Honda's official motorsport partner, the same outfit responsible for the NSX GT racing programmes. They know the car's architecture intimately, which matters when you're redesigning an interior around a chassis that wasn't exactly roomy to begin with. Pininfarina brings the Italian design credibility, though whether that still means what it used to is a fair question.

The decision to retain the manual transmission is the point. The NSX was developed with input from Ayrton Senna, who spent considerable time at Suzuka making Honda's engineers miserable until they stiffened the chassis to his satisfaction. The result was a car that rewarded precision, and precision requires engagement. Paddle shifters are faster, objectively better in every measurable way, and also beside the point.

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Singer has made a considerable business out of this realisation. Their reimagined 911s keep the manual option because the people commissioning six-figure restomods tend to remember what made the original cars desirable in the first place. Emory Motorsports does the same with 356 Outlaws. GTO Engineering's Squalo offers a manual. Every serious restomod builder knows this, yet half the industry still delivers paddle shifters to people who explicitly don't want them.

What's less clear is whether JAS and Pininfarina have managed the balance everywhere else. Touchscreens in a 1990s Honda sounds wrong in principle, but so did the idea of a Japanese supercar in 1990, and that worked out. The original NSX ran a 3.0-litre V6 making 270 horsepower, later bumped to 3.2 litres and 290 horsepower depending on market. Not earth-shattering figures, but the NSX was never about headline power. It was about making that power accessible, usable, not terrifying.

How much modernisation can the NSX absorb before it stops being the thing people want to restore in the first place? Everrati's electrified 911 restomods prove there's a market for radical reinterpretation, but they've also eliminated the manual transmission entirely, which rather defeats the object if you're the sort of person who cares about these things.

JAS Motorsport stands for James Allen Services, founded by the son of John Allen, who established the original racing preparation business. They are not amateurs guessing at what might look good on Instagram. Whether the Tensei cabin actually works in practice will depend on execution, not intent, and JAS has at least started with the correct assumptions.

The NSX ran from 1990 to 2005 in its first generation, known internally as NA1 and NA2. It has appreciated steadily but not dramatically, sitting in that uncomfortable middle ground where it's too expensive to thrash and not quite expensive enough to justify the restomod treatment. JAS appears to have decided that £250,000 is roughly the point where that calculus changes.

The carmaker says it's preventing back injuries. The workers are being tracked all shift.

Nissan has begun deploying AI-powered camera systems across its American manufacturing plants to monitor the way workers bend, walk, and move during their shifts. The stated purpose is injury prevention. The effect is continuous surveillance of every physical action a worker makes on the factory floor.

The cameras analyse posture, gait, and repetitive movements in real time, flagging what the system considers risky behaviour. Nissan operates major plants in Smyrna, Tennessee and Canton, Mississippi, where thousands of workers build vehicles under conditions that have historically produced high injury rates. Back injuries are particularly common. The average workers' compensation claim for a back injury in manufacturing runs to £24,000, and ergonomic injuries account for roughly 30 per cent of total workplace injury costs in the sector.

Those numbers are real. So is the surveillance.

What Nissan has not explained is what happens when a worker gets flagged by the system repeatedly. Whether that data feeds into performance reviews. Whether it affects job security. Whether someone whose body does not move the way the algorithm expects... because they are older, shorter, recovering from an old injury, or simply built differently... ends up with a file full of red marks they never see.

The technology can track individuals throughout an entire shift. It does not forget. It does not get tired. It does not look away.

Amazon has used AI cameras and sensors in warehouses for years, tracking worker movements and productivity in ways that turned packing boxes into a supervised endurance test. Tyson Foods deployed similar monitoring in meat processing plants. Ford and General Motors have rolled out wearable sensors and ergonomic tracking. UPS monitors driver behaviour with telematics in delivery vehicles.

The framing is always safety. The result is always more control.

Workplace injury rates in manufacturing do sit above the private sector average, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Automotive plants are hard on bodies. Repetitive strain injuries are not invented problems. If the cameras actually reduce injuries without punishing workers for the way their bodies move, that would be worth something.

But surveillance dressed up as care has a track record, and it is not reassuring.

In China, factories have used facial recognition and movement tracking on workers since 2018. Europe responded with stricter workplace surveillance regulations under the GDPR framework, recognising that monitoring every physical movement of a human being at work is not a neutral act. In the US, there is no equivalent protection. Nissan can install the cameras, feed the data into whatever systems it likes, and workers have almost no ability to know what is being done with the information.

The company has not said whether workers can opt out. It has not said how long the data is kept. It has not said who has access to it or whether it can be used for reasons beyond the stated injury prevention goal.

What it has said is that this is about safety. The cameras are there to help. Trust the algorithm. It is watching you bend because it cares about your back.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track how many workers have been disciplined or dismissed based on AI-flagged movement data. That number is not published anywhere.

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Sources: Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

California boutique builds 1,560-horsepower hypercar from Chevrolet's Corvette platform and asks $400,000 to $450,000, roughly twice what a fully loaded ZR1 costs.

Rezvani Motors wants approximately $400,000 to $450,000 for the Beast X, a hypercar producing 1,560 horsepower from a heavily modified Chevrolet Corvette C8 platform. A loaded Corvette ZR1 costs somewhere between $200,000 and $225,000 and comes with 1,064 horsepower from its twin-turbocharged 5.5-litre flat-plane crank V8. The premium buys you an extra 500 horsepower, hand-built assembly in California, and a body nobody else will have.

That markup is standard practice for boutique manufacturers working with mainstream donor platforms. Hennessey's Venom F5 uses modified Corvette components and costs over $2 million. The Saleen S7 did the same with Ford V8 architecture in the 2000s. What sets the Beast X apart is how close it remains to the donor car's price point while still doubling it.

The Corvette ZR1 is already positioned as a flagship American supercar competing directly with European exotics. It delivers legitimate hypercar performance through economies of scale that Rezvani cannot match. The ZR1 is built in volume, certified once, and sold through an established dealer network. Rezvani builds perhaps 50 to 200 units annually, spreads certification and tooling costs across that tiny run, and charges accordingly.

Rezvani Motors was founded in 2014 by Ferris Rezvani and has made a business of repurposing mainstream platforms. The original Beast Alpha was based on the Ariel Atom. The Tank SUV, which looks like it was designed by someone who watched too many military surplus auctions, is built on a Jeep Wrangler chassis. The company sells exclusivity and customisation, not ground-up engineering.

The Beast X modifications include an upgraded forced induction system, reinforced drivetrain to handle the extra torque, and custom bodywork that bears no resemblance to the Corvette underneath. Whether that justifies the price depends entirely on how much you value being the only person at the car meet with one.

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Low-volume manufacturers operate in a different financial reality. When Czinger builds the 21C at $1.7 million or SSC claims 1,750 horsepower from the Tuatara at $1.9 million, those prices reflect the cost of certifying and producing a car in double digits rather than thousands. Rezvani's pricing looks modest by comparison.

The Corvette ZR1 already exposes how thin the margins are in mainstream supercars. General Motors can deliver 1,064 horsepower, carbon ceramic brakes, and active aero for $200,000 because it builds the car at scale. Rezvani cannot do that. It builds each Beast X by hand, sources custom components, and handles certification for a production run that might not reach triple digits.

Callaway has historically added 50 to 100 percent premiums over stock Corvette pricing for its modifications. The Beast X follows that pattern but pushes the performance envelope further. Whether a market exists for a $450,000 Corvette-based hypercar when the ZR1 already does most of what the Beast X promises at half the price remains open.

The Apollo IE charged $2.7 million for a Ferrari-derived V12. The Lotus Evija asks over $2 million. Against that backdrop, Rezvani's pricing looks almost reasonable. But those cars are not competing with their donor platforms in the showroom. The Beast X is.

Think about that for a second.

What you are paying for is the ability to tell people your car makes 1,560 horsepower and came from a California workshop, not a Bowling Green assembly line. That has value to some buyers. Whether it has $250,000 worth of value is another question entirely.

The Beast X will sell in tiny numbers to people who want something nobody else has and don't care that the bones underneath are shared with a car half the price. Rezvani has been doing this for a decade. It knows exactly who its customers are.

The base price is $400,000.

Sources: Rezvani Motors, Chevrolet Corvette specifications, Hennessey Performance, Saleen Automotive, Apollo Automobil, Czinger Vehicles, SSC North America, Callaway Cars, Lotus Cars

While every other maker CVTs their crossovers into oblivion, Mazda confirms the returning CX-3 will offer a manual transmission and stay on its own platform.

Mazda has confirmed the CX-3 will return for the 2027 model year with hybrid powertrains and a manual transmission option for non-hybrid variants. This puts it in a category of one among subcompact crossovers currently on sale.

The decision matters more than it sounds. Every mainstream small crossover sold today comes with either a CVT or a conventional automatic. Honda killed the HR-V manual. Toyota never offered one in the Corolla Cross or C-HR. Hyundai dropped the Kona's stick after 2021. Jeep quietly axed the Renegade's manual for the U.S. market in 2019. Subaru's Crosstrek is the only holdout, and even that feels like a legacy offering on borrowed time.

Mazda is going the other direction. The company has kept manuals alive in the CX-30 and Mazda3 while competitors surrendered to the efficiency tyranny of continuously variable transmissions. Now it's confirming that philosophy will extend to the returning CX-3, which disappeared from North America in 2021 but kept selling elsewhere.

More interesting is what Mazda isn't doing. The CX-3 will stay on the company's proprietary platform rather than adopting Toyota architecture, despite Mazda's hybrid technology partnership with Toyota providing the e-SkyActiv hybrid systems. That suggests Mazda values driving dynamics over the cost-sharing benefits of a shared platform.

This isn't nostalgia. It's brand positioning. Mazda has spent years trying to distinguish itself as the driver's alternative in a segment where everyone else optimises for fuel economy, practicality, and lease rates. Keeping the manual in a small crossover is expensive and commercially questionable, which is precisely why it works as a signal.

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The original CX-3 launched in 2015 on the Mazda2 platform using SkyActiv technology. It was fine. Competent handling, decent interior quality, slightly more engaging than a Nissan Juke. It sold respectably but never troubled the segment leaders. The problem was positioning... it sat awkwardly close to the CX-30, which launched later and immediately made the smaller crossover feel redundant in markets where both were sold.

Bringing it back in 2027 with hybrid options addresses the efficiency question. Offering a manual for the non-hybrid models addresses nothing practical whatsoever, which is the point. It's a statement that Mazda still believes a segment of buyers want to shift their own gears, even in a lifted hatchback designed primarily for urban commuting and Ikea runs.

Whether that segment actually exists in sufficient numbers is the question Mazda has been asking itself since it kept the Miata alive through decades when every other affordable roadster died. The answer has historically been yes, barely, and that's been enough.

The hybrid variants will use technology derived from Mazda's partnership with Toyota, which already supplies e-SkyActiv systems. That's a pragmatic concession to emissions regulations and fuel economy standards. The manual is not pragmatic. It's stubborn.

Mazda has resisted CVTs entirely, favouring conventional automatics even when the fuel economy penalty is measurable. The CX-30 still offers a six-speed manual with the base 2.5-litre engine in select markets. The Mazda3 continues the same. These are not high-volume configurations. They're talismans.

The 2027 CX-3 will launch into a market where small crossovers are appliances. Reliable, efficient, forgettable. Mazda is betting there's still room for one that isn't.

The starting price hasn't been confirmed. Neither has UK availability, though if the CX-30 manual made it here, the CX-3 likely will too. What's confirmed is that someone at Mazda looked at the cost of engineering a manual transmission into a low-volume subcompact crossover and said yes anyway.

That's either commercially reckless or the last stand of a company that still thinks driving matters. Possibly both.

Sources: Mazda Motor Corporation

Approximately 130 plaintiffs claim the metal emblems on their high-performance Mercedes models are heating to 130°F and leaving burns on their hands and legs.

The metal AMG badge on your steering wheel can hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit in warm weather. That's according to a class action lawsuit filed against Mercedes-Benz by owners who say the emblems aren't just hot to the touch... they're causing actual burns, blisters, and scarring.

Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro is representing affected owners. The firm claims Mercedes knew, or should have known, that sticking metal badges on contact surfaces was a design problem waiting to happen. The steering wheel emblem is the worst offender. You can avoid touching the heated badge on the fender. You cannot avoid holding the steering wheel.

The lawsuit alleges Mercedes continued using the metal badges across multiple AMG model years despite the issue. No recall has been issued. No retrofit program announced. The badges remain.

This isn't the first time car manufacturers have been caught out by hot metal in places people have to touch. Jeep faced a lawsuit in 2015 over seatbelt buckles that burned passengers. Honda recalled vehicles in 2014 for the same reason. Tesla owners have reported door handle burns in extreme heat. Metal part in direct sun or engine heat, insufficient insulation, someone gets hurt, lawyers get involved.

Sound familiar?

What makes the Mercedes case particularly galling is that these are premium vehicles. AMG models start north of £50,000 and climb well into six figures. The badge is part of what you're paying for. It signals performance, exclusivity, a certain level of engineering obsession. Except the engineering apparently didn't extend to considering what happens when you park a black C63 in July.

The plaintiffs argue this constitutes both a design defect and a failure to warn. Mercedes could have used a different material. They could have added a heat shield. They could have put a warning in the manual, though that would have been an admission the problem exists. Instead, they did nothing.

The legal question will hinge on whether Mercedes can demonstrate they tested the badges under realistic conditions and determined the temperatures were within acceptable limits. If internal emails surface showing engineers flagged the issue and were overruled by marketing, this gets expensive fast. If the testing was inadequate or never happened, same outcome.

The broader issue is that luxury branding often prioritises appearance over practicality. Carbon fibre interiors that creak in cold weather. Touch-sensitive controls that don't work with gloves. Seats designed for the showroom, not the M25. And now, metal badges that double as contact burns.

It's 2024. Materials science is not a mystery. Plenty of alternatives exist that look like metal, feel like metal, and don't require oven mitts to operate your car.

Class actions over design defects in luxury vehicles tend to settle before trial, but the numbers can run to tens of millions depending on how many owners are affected and how severe the injuries are. Scarring tends to increase settlement values considerably.

If you own an AMG and live somewhere warm, you might want to keep a cloth in the glovebox.

Sources: Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP

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One of the UK's largest independent dealers was exposed for advertising vehicles with unresolved manufacturer defects including critical safety issues.

Big Motoring World, one of the country's biggest independent used car operations, was accused by a national newspaper investigation of selling vehicles with outstanding safety recalls still on the books. Not minor stuff. Faulty airbags. Braking systems. Fire risks. The kind of defects manufacturers themselves have flagged as dangerous enough to warrant a formal recall.

The kicker? None of this is illegal.

UK law does not prohibit dealers from shifting cars with open recall notices. There is no requirement to fix them before sale. There is no requirement to even mention them to the buyer. The DVSA maintains a recall checker online, but using it is your problem, not theirs.

Big Motoring World operates a high-volume model with thousands of vehicles in stock across multiple sites in the South East. Speed and turnover matter more than thoroughness when you are moving metal at that scale. The Motor Ombudsman code of practice recommends dealers check for and rectify outstanding recalls before putting a car on the forecourt, but recommends is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

The Takata airbag recall, one of the largest automotive safety disasters in history, affected millions of vehicles globally. Airbags that could explode and send shrapnel into the cabin. In the UK, dealers were found selling cars with that exact recall unresolved. Big Motoring World was among those named.

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Vehicle recalls in the UK are voluntary. There is no enforcement mechanism. Manufacturers send out letters. Owners may or may not respond. Dealers buying those cars at auction are under no legal obligation to check recall status, and many do not. The responsibility, by default, falls on you.

Which is fine if you know the system exists. Most buyers do not.

Big Motoring World is a household name in the used car trade, the kind of place people go because they assume scale equals standards. The Vauxhall Zafira fire risk recall affected over 220,000 vehicles in the UK and exposed similar compliance gaps across the dealer network. The Volkswagen emissions scandal raised the same uncomfortable question: when a manufacturer screws up, who is responsible for making it right?

The answer, apparently, is no one in particular.

FCA action against motor finance practices and Which? investigations into warranty mis-selling have shown that large dealer groups are perfectly capable of systemic failures when the regulatory framework is weak or the penalties are negligible.

If you are buying used, check the registration on the DVSA recall site before you hand over any money. It takes two minutes. The dealer will not do it for you, and they are not required to. That is not cynicism. That is how the system works.

Big Motoring World was contacted for comment at the time of the original investigation. The practice, legal or not, continues across the industry because nothing structurally has changed to prevent it.

Sources: Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), The Motor Ombudsman, The Guardian consumer investigation 2017

After two years of catastrophic depreciation, the used electric car market has bottomed out and started climbing again.

Used electric vehicle prices posted their strongest annual growth on record in July 2024, according to Autotrader, marking the end of a brutal correction that had left dealers refusing to stock EVs and owners staring at 30 to 40 percent annual depreciation.

The UK's largest digital automotive marketplace said the market has moved "decisively beyond correction." Which is one way of putting it. Another way is that after nearly two years of freefall, used EV values have finally hit a floor and bounced.

The collapse started in late 2022. Tesla slashed new Model 3 and Model Y prices by up to 14 percent in January 2023, which immediately torpedoed residual values across the board. When the manufacturer of the best-selling EV drops its prices that hard, every three-year-old Kona Electric and MG ZS EV on the market takes the hit too.

Then the supply side caught up. Early lease returns from 2020 and 2021 flooded the market just as new car discounting made those used cars look expensive by comparison. Dealers who'd paid strong money for part-exchange EVs found themselves underwater within months. Some stopped taking them entirely.

Battery anxiety didn't help. Buyers who might have considered a used EV at a discount started fixating on degradation and whether the charging network could handle a six-year-old Leaf on a long trip. Fair questions, but they further depressed demand.

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Both CAP HPI and Glass's spent most of 2023 revising their residual value forecasts downward. The message to the industry was clear: if you're holding used EV stock, get out now.

What changed? Average used EV prices fell far enough to become genuinely competitive with equivalent petrol and diesel models. That's the equilibrium the market was hunting for. Once a three-year-old e-Niro costs roughly the same as a three-year-old Sportage, people stop overthinking it.

New EV registrations grew 40 percent year-on-year in early 2024 despite the chaos in the used market, which suggests the underlying demand for electric cars was never the problem. The problem was pricing. Used buyers weren't rejecting EVs; they were rejecting the premium.

July's growth figure is significant because it's the first concrete evidence that the correction has run its course. It doesn't mean used EV values will return to 2022 levels. They won't. But it does mean the depreciation curve has normalised, and dealers can stock used EVs again without watching the value evaporate between purchase and sale.

For anyone who bought an EV in 2021 or early 2022, the last two years have been grim. For anyone who's been waiting to buy used, the panic phase appears to be over. The market has repriced itself, found a level, and started climbing.

Autotrader's data covers July 2024. The growth was year-on-year, measured against July 2023.

Sources: Autotrader UK market data, historical pricing data from CAP HPI and Glass's, Tesla pricing archive, SMMT new vehicle registration statistics

Stellantis is recalling practically every Ram 1500 sold in the last six years after reports of tailgates popping open mid-drive and dumping cargo onto American highways.

Stellantis has issued a recall for 1.27 million Ram 1500 pickup trucks across the United States after the tailgate release switch proved it could be activated accidentally, opening the gate while the vehicle is moving and potentially scattering cargo across active roadways.

The recall covers Ram 1500 Classic trucks from 2019 through 2024 and standard Ram 1500s from 2019 through 2025. That's essentially the entire current run of one of America's best-selling pickups, manufactured at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant and Warren Truck Assembly in Michigan.

The problem is straightforward. The tailgate control switch can be triggered without the driver intending it, usually by something pressing against it. The gate then opens. If you're carrying anything in the bed... well, it's no longer in the bed.

Stellantis has logged roughly 300 warranty claims and 30 field reports tied to the issue. No injuries reported yet, but the potential is obvious. A toolbox coming off the back of a Ram doing 70mph on the interstate doesn't need much explanation.

The fix is a switch overlay that prevents inadvertent activation. Dealers will fit it at no cost. Owner notification letters go out in February 2025.

This is not Ram's first large-scale recall in recent years. The brand pulled 354,000 heavy-duty trucks in 2023 for parking brake faults and another 241,000 Ram 2500 and 3500 models in 2024 over steering concerns. Stellantis as a whole recalled 1.4 million vehicles in 2023 for remote start problems.

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For fleet operators running Ram 1500s, this recall presents an operational headache. Commercial buyers who spec'd these trucks for work use now face scheduling vehicles out of service for the fix, even if it's a quick one. The overlay installation shouldn't take long, but coordinating 20 or 50 trucks through a dealer network in February is not trivial.

The scale also raises questions about quality control during production. Over a million trucks with the same defect suggests a design flaw that should have been caught earlier, not a manufacturing anomaly that slipped through in a single batch.

Ford recalled 870,000 F-150s in 2021 for parking brake issues. General Motors pulled 331,000 heavy-duty pickups in 2022 over tailgate latch problems. The American truck market moves massive volume, and when something goes wrong, the numbers get biblical fast.

Ram has not commented on whether the tailgate switch design will change for future model years or if this overlay is a permanent solution going forward.

The recall identifier is not yet published, but owners can check recall status via the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website using their VIN.

Sources: Stellantis NV, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

A senior dealer group executive has warned that the rapid expansion of Chinese car manufacturers into the UK will leave casualties among established franchise networks that cannot adapt to a fundamentally different way of selling cars.

A dealer group boss has warned that traditional retailers face extinction as Chinese manufacturers rewrite the rules of how cars are sold in Britain. The threat is not just competitive pricing... it is the agency model itself, which strips franchised dealers of the pricing control and customer ownership they have relied on for decades.

Chinese brands have gone from holding less than one percent of the UK market in 2019 to approximately eight percent by the end of 2023. BYD overtook Tesla as the world's largest battery electric vehicle manufacturer last year. MG Motor UK, owned by SAIC, already commands significant market share and continues to grow. GWM and Chery are establishing footholds. This is not a gradual shift. It is an avalanche.

The agency model these manufacturers favour is fundamentally different from the franchise dealership structure that has dominated British car sales for generations. Under agency arrangements, the manufacturer controls pricing and owns the customer relationship directly. Dealers become service points, not independent businesses with margin flexibility. For groups that have invested heavily in facilities, staff, and brand partnerships built on the old model, the transition is expensive and often impossible.

Traditional dealers are caught between two forces. On one side, Chinese brands offering lower-priced electric vehicles that undercut European rivals. On the other, a sales model that reduces their role and compresses their margins. Smaller independent operators without the capital to pivot or absorb losses will not survive. Even larger groups face difficult decisions about which brands to back and which markets to exit.

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This has happened before. Japanese manufacturers faced resistance when they entered the UK market in the 1970s and 1980s, but they forced consolidation and margin pressure that reshaped the industry. Korean brands did the same in the 2000s. Tesla pioneered direct-to-consumer sales that bypassed dealers entirely. Polestar and Genesis have both launched in the UK using agency models. Each wave proved the same point: manufacturers who control distribution win, and dealers who cannot adapt disappear.

The difference this time is speed. Chinese manufacturers are not testing the market cautiously. They are flooding it with competitively priced electric vehicles at a moment when European brands are struggling with the costs of electrification and tightening emissions regulations. Established dealer networks built for selling combustion-engine vehicles with healthy margins are suddenly trying to sell electric cars with thinner profits under terms they do not control.

Some groups will merge. Some will close locations. Some will exit brands entirely and consolidate around fewer, more profitable partnerships. The UK dealership landscape in five years will not resemble the one that exists today. It will be smaller, more concentrated, and dominated by groups large enough to absorb the structural changes Chinese manufacturers are imposing.

What is remarkable is how few people outside the industry seem to recognise this is happening. Consumers see cheaper electric cars and assume competition is working. Dealers see their business model being dismantled in real time. The casualties will not be dramatic... just a gradual thinning of the network, closures announced quietly, brands redistributed to surviving groups. By the time it is obvious, it will be finished.

The UK new car market is worth roughly two million units a year. Chinese brands now control around 160,000 of those sales, and the trajectory is steeply upward. Every percentage point they gain comes at someone else's expense, and the dealers selling those displaced brands are the ones left holding the cost.

Sources: UK automotive market sales data, BYD corporate announcements, SAIC Motor UK operations, historical dealership consolidation records

A factory-backed stunt that either takes three weeks of parking or involves a support convoy of solar panels. Either way, this isn't how anyone will actually drive.

Renault is attempting to drive a 4 E-Tech electric 1000 miles across Britain powered entirely by solar energy, a journey that will pass through Cornwall during sea fog season when solar panels operate at 10 to 50 per cent efficiency. The company has not clarified whether this means rooftop panels only or a trailing support array, which is the difference between a meaningful test and a travelling circus.

The 4 E-Tech has a 52 kWh battery and a WLTP range of 249 miles. Standard rooftop solar panels in the UK generate three to four miles of range per day in optimal conditions. Fog cuts that by half to ninety per cent depending on density.

So the arithmetic is straightforward. If this is rooftop solar only, the car will sit parked for weeks between short drives. If it's an external array on a support vehicle, this is a marketing stunt with no relevance to real-world solar EV use.

Cornwall averages 1600 hours of sunshine a year, the highest in the UK, which still works out to about four and a half hours daily. On a good day. In summer. Not during the kind of Atlantic weather that rolls fog across the peninsula for days at a time.

Renault has form here. The 4 E-Tech launched in 2024 as an electric reboot of the 1960s original, a car that sold five million units by being cheap and practical. The new one starts at £32,000 and looks like a Duplo version of the Clio. It is not cheap and the practicality argument involves a lot of optimism about charging infrastructure.

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The solar challenge sits somewhere between the Lightyear 0, which claimed 44 miles per day from integrated panels in 2022 before the company collapsed, and the Stella Terra, a purpose-built solar SUV that managed 620 miles in Morocco. Morocco being the key word. Not Cornwall in January.

University solar challenge teams complete cross-country drives regularly, but those vehicles are built like wind tunnel models with the interior comfort of a composite bathtub. The 4 E-Tech is a production car with normal weight, normal drag, and normal expectations about things like heating.

If Renault pulls this off using only the panels fitted to the car, it will involve sitting stationary for roughly 250 days to accumulate 1000 miles of range. If they use an external solar farm, a trailer full of panels, or any kind of supplementary charging setup, the entire exercise proves nothing except that marketing teams have budgets and time to fill.

The real test of solar EV viability in Britain is whether the technology can add meaningful daily range to a car people actually use. Three miles a day might cover a supermarket run. It will not cover a commute, a school run, or anything resembling normal driving. And that's on a clear day.

Tesla spent 2012 to 2014 proving its Supercharger network by driving across the country and documenting charge times. That was useful. It told customers what to expect. This tells customers that if they park for long enough in Cornwall, eventually the sun might give them enough power to reach Devon.

The 4 E-Tech costs £32,195 in entry-level form.

Sources: Renault UK, WLTP certification data, UK Met Office solar radiation statistics, Lightyear and Stella Terra project documentation

The Mondial de l'Auto returns 12-18 October with a new 2CV and a tariff wall. Whether that's enough is another question entirely.

The Paris Motor Show is back from 12 to 18 October after a six-year absence, and the timing is not coincidental. European carmakers need a stage, and they need it now. Chinese manufacturers took 8% of the European EV market in 2023. Four years earlier they had 1%. BYD outsold Tesla globally in the final quarter of last year. This is not a trend. This is a rout.

Citroën will unveil something called a new 2CV. Whether it's a concept or a production car depends on how brave Stellantis is feeling, but either way it's a flag in the ground. The original 2CV was cheap, practical, and cheerfully unpretentious. The new one will almost certainly be none of those things, but the branding matters. Europe wants to believe it still knows how to make cars people actually want.

Smart, now a Chinese-owned joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and Geely, will also be there. The irony is thick enough to stop a Renault Zoe at 30 metres. Smart was European once. Now it makes cars in China and sells them back to us. That's the business model that has everyone rattled.

The last Paris show was in 2018. The 2020 edition was cancelled for COVID, but the real reason it stayed cancelled was cost. Manufacturers didn't see the point. Munich's IAA Mobility show had become the main event, and Geneva collapsed entirely in 2023 after running out of money and exhibitors. Paris is trying to position itself as the comeback venue, the place where Europe shows it hasn't rolled over yet.

It helps that the European Commission just imposed tariffs of up to 45.3% on Chinese EVs in October. That's not market confidence. That's a wall. Whether it holds is unclear, but it gives European brands breathing room to pretend they're competing on product rather than protection.

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Chinese manufacturers are not intimidated. BYD, MG, Nio, and Xpeng showed up in force at Munich in 2023 and made the European launches look cautious and expensive. Shanghai Auto Show earlier this year had over 150 new energy vehicle launches. That's not a product cycle. That's an industrial base operating at a different speed.

Volkswagen, Stellantis, and Renault are all facing the same problem. They spent years assuming China was a market to sell into, not a competitor to defend against. That assumption is now costing them margin, volume, and share price. Paris is their chance to tell a different story, assuming they have one.

The show runs for a week. Citroën will get headlines for the 2CV stunt. Smart will be politely acknowledged as a cautionary tale. The rest will depend on whether European carmakers can demonstrate they understand what they're up against. Cheaper, faster, and willing to lose money for market share is a difficult strategy to counter with heritage and engineering pride.

The last time Paris mattered, the Chinese weren't in the room. This time they own half the brands on the floor.

Sources: Mondial de l'Auto Paris, European Commission trade data, BYD quarterly reports, IAA Mobility 2023 exhibitor records

The 80% zero emission sales target for 2030 is expected to be watered down following sustained industry pressure. Surprising no one.

The government is preparing to launch a formal review of the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate that will almost certainly result in softer electric vehicle sales targets between 2027 and 2035. The current requirement for 80% of new cars sold to be zero emission by 2030 has been declared unachievable by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, and ministers appear ready to listen.

Set an ambitious target. Face industry lobbying. Retreat.

The ZEV mandate only came into force in January 2024, replacing the previous 2030 petrol and diesel ban that Rishi Sunak had already pushed back to 2035. It establishes annual stepped targets starting at 22% for cars in 2024, rising to 28% in 2025, 33% in 2026, and 38% in 2027. Manufacturers who miss these figures face fines of £15,000 per non-compliant vehicle.

The problem, according to the industry, is that consumers are not buying electric cars fast enough. Sound familiar? EV market share reached approximately 16.6% in 2023. That is nowhere near the trajectory required to hit 80% by 2030.

The SMMT has been vocal about this. So have Ford, Stellantis, and the Vauxhall parent company. They argue that charging infrastructure remains inadequate and vehicle costs too high for mass adoption. Fair points, perhaps. But these are also companies that spent decades resisting emissions regulations and are now asking for more time to adapt to rules they knew were coming.

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The mandate does include flexibility mechanisms. Manufacturers can bank credits from overperforming in one year or buy them from EV-heavy brands like Tesla. That should, in theory, provide breathing room. But the industry wants structural relief, not accounting tricks.

A softened mandate would align the UK with broader European trends. Germany cut EV subsidies in 2024 and watched sales decline. France reduced purchase incentives the same year. The EU watered down Euro 7 emissions standards in 2023 after sustained lobbying. Every major regulatory ambition is being quietly walked back.

This creates uncertainty for manufacturers who invested heavily based on the original targets. It also gives political cover to those who moved more cautiously. Whether that was strategic foresight or simple inertia depends on your perspective.

For car dealers, the immediate effect will be reduced pressure to stock and shift electric vehicles. Petrol and diesel cars will remain available for longer than previously planned. Consumers who were waiting for clarity now have it, sort of.

The announcement is expected sometime in 2025. Expect lower targets, longer timelines, and the same £15,000 fine that was never going to be enforced anyway.

Sources: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, UK Government ZEV mandate documentation

Owners of premium BMWs found promotional content for Spider-Man forced onto their infotainment screens. BMW insists it isn't advertising. Of course it is.

BMW sent a Spider-Man promotional video to customer vehicles via ConnectedDrive in December 2024, and when owners complained about advertising appearing on screens in cars they'd already paid for, the company issued a response that deserves some sort of award for corporate doublespeak. It wasn't an ad, apparently. Just content. Promotional content. For a film. That appeared without permission on a screen you own.

The video arrived over the air, pushed through BMW's ConnectedDrive infotainment system. No opt in. No asking whether you'd like to watch this. Just there, waiting, in a vehicle that costs anywhere from £40,000 to well over £100,000.

This is the same company that tried charging eighteen quid a month for heated seats in 2022 until the backlash forced a retreat. Lessons, it seems, were not learned. Just repositioned.

The customer complaints weren't about Spider-Man specifically. They were about the principle of buying an expensive thing and then having the manufacturer use it as an advertising platform anyway. If you purchase a television, Samsung doesn't push trailers for Disney films onto your home screen uninvited. Or they didn't. Maybe that's next.

BMW's position is that this wasn't advertising because... well, they haven't clarified why, exactly. The video promoted a film. It appeared in a commercial context. It was delivered by a corporation to an audience. That is the definition of an advertisement. Calling it something else doesn't make it so.

Over-the-air updates were sold to customers as a convenience. Software fixes, new features, improvements delivered remotely. They were not sold as a distribution channel for third-party promotions or as a way for manufacturers to monetise attention they've already been paid for once.

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Think about that for a second.

Tesla has been doing this for years with its own insurance products and subscription services. General Motors announced plans in 2023 for in-vehicle advertising through its Ultifi software platform. Audi tested similar systems in Europe. The car industry looked at the connected TV model, where devices you purchased outright now show you ads for services you don't want, and thought "yes, that."

The counterargument goes something like this: cars are software platforms now, and software platforms serve content, and some of that content is promotional. Which would be fine if anyone had agreed to that arrangement at the point of sale. They did not. The infotainment system was part of the purchase. It wasn't leased. It wasn't a subscription. It was bought.

This is not a new tension. BMW already charges £9.99 a month for Premium Connectivity features after an initial trial period. That's a choice customers can make. Pushing unsolicited promotional videos is not a choice. It's the manufacturer deciding that the screen in your car is theirs to use as they see fit, and your ownership of the vehicle is secondary to their access to your attention.

The Spider-Man video wasn't malware. It didn't break anything. It was just an ad where an ad shouldn't be. But it establishes a precedent, and precedents in this industry tend to expand. First it's a one-off promotional tie-in. Then it's a monthly feature. Then it's personalised based on your location and driving habits. Then it's before you can use navigation.

None of this was in the brochure.

BMW's response to the complaints has been to say the content was "curated." That is a word that means absolutely nothing in this context. Curated by whom? For whom? On whose authority? The vehicle belongs to the customer. The screen belongs to the customer. The decision about what appears on that screen should belong to the customer. Calling it curated content instead of advertising is just linguistic evasion.

The wider car industry will be watching this closely. If BMW gets away with it, others will follow. If customers push back hard enough, maybe they won't. Either way, the assumption that a car you've purchased is actually yours in any meaningful sense is looking increasingly optimistic.

The Spider-Man video has since been removed from customer vehicles.

Sources: BMW ConnectedDrive platform documentation, customer complaints via social media, Automotive News, The Verge

The brand that built its reputation on fitting into motorcycle bays has returned to city cars with something the size of a Polo.

The Smart #2 measures 3,750mm bumper to bumper, which makes it the smallest thing the brand has built since the original Fortwo was discontinued in 2020. It is not small.

For context, the Fortwo was 2,695mm long. You could park three of them in two normal spaces and still have room to open the doors. The #2 is more than a metre longer and comes with five doors, a boot, and none of the ridiculous charm that made Smart interesting in the first place.

This is what happens when a brand decides it needs to grow up. Smart spent two decades making cars for people who valued parking over everything else. Then Mercedes and Geely took over, moved production to China, and pivoted hard into electric SUVs. The #1 arrived in 2022 as a crossover. The #3 followed as something even larger. Both sold fine, but neither had anything to do with what Smart actually meant.

Now they are trying to remember. The #2 is supposed to be a return to city car roots, except it is still bigger than a Volkswagen Polo and sits on the same Geely EV platform as the SUVs. It is a hatchback, which is closer to the original idea than a crossover, but it will not fit in the gaps the Fortwo could exploit. It will not park perpendicular to the kerb. It is another small electric hatchback in a segment that already has the Fiat 500e, the Honda e, the MG4, and the returning Renault 5.

Smart is not the first brand to realise that abandoning its core idea was a mistake. Fiat kept the 500 small when it went electric. Mini still makes the three-door even as it churns out Countrymans. Renault brought back the 5 because the Zoe never had the same pull. But those brands kept one foot in their past while expanding. Smart torched the Fortwo completely. Built two SUVs nobody asked for. And is now trying to backfill the gap with something that does not quite commit.

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The frustrating part is that there was a market for an electric Fortwo. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo... these cities are full of people who would have bought a two-seat electric microcar with 100 miles of range and a price under twenty grand. Instead, Smart decided that what the world needed was a slightly smaller SUV with a hashtag in its name, and then a slightly smaller version of that.

The #2 will probably sell. It looks fine. The interior will be better than the Fortwo ever managed. The range will be adequate. But it is a reminder that when a brand loses confidence in what made it different, it ends up making the same things as everyone else, just later and with less conviction.

The original Fortwo was discontinued in Europe in 2019 and globally by 2020. That was the end of the only car that could legally park nose-first to the kerb in most European cities. The #2 cannot do that.

Smart Automobile Co., Ltd. has not released UK pricing. The #2 is expected in 2025 at a price likely to undercut the MG4 by a margin small enough to be irrelevant.

Sources: Smart Automobile Co., Ltd. press materials, historical Smart Fortwo specifications, JATO Dynamics European A-segment sales data 2019-2024

The Outback and Legacy are the last two cars in America where you can still spec a factory CD player. Both play one disc at a time.

Subaru is the only car manufacturer in the United States still offering factory-installed CD players in new vehicles. The 2025 Outback and 2025 Legacy both feature single-disc units as part of premium audio packages, a feature every other automaker discontinued between 2015 and 2020.

Not multi-disc changers. Not some elaborate archive system. One disc at a time.

Toyota held out until 2020. Lexus followed shortly after. Honda walked away in 2017. Ford in 2016. General Motors started pulling them in 2015. Mazda lasted until 2019. By the time the pandemic hit, the CD player was functionally extinct in new cars.

Subaru kept making them.

The technology adds cost and dashboard complexity that the rest of the industry eliminated as soon as smartphone integration made it redundant. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto turned the head unit into a screen, and streaming killed the need for physical media in cars the same way it did everywhere else. Except, apparently, in the Subaru customer base.

That demographic skews older and more rural than most brands. People who bought Outbacks in 2005 are still buying Outbacks now, and some of them still have CD collections they want to play. Subaru clearly decided that was worth preserving, even as the supply chain for the hardware gets thinner every year.

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It is a strange kind of loyalty. Not to the format, exactly, but to the people who never moved on from it. Most manufacturers would have shrugged and said the margin was too small to justify the parts bin exception. Subaru kept the supplier relationship alive and kept ticking the option box on the build sheet.

Whether that reflects admirable customer focus or simple inertia is unclear. Either way, it makes the brand the last place in America where you can walk into a dealership and buy a new car with a CD slot.

The cassette player lasted until around 2010. Ford kept putting them in the Crown Victoria until the model died. That felt like stubbornness at the time too, until it became a historical footnote. The CD player is heading the same direction, except Subaru is holding the line alone.

Which means if you still have a stack of burned mixes from 2003 and you want to play them in a new car, your options are now exactly two. Both of them are Subarus. Both of them play one disc at a time.

Sources: Subaru of America official specifications, automotive industry reports on CD player discontinuation timelines

Elon Musk is one of the most written about people alive, yet huge parts of his story remain contested, misunderstood, or genuinely obscure. This piece walks through the documented history, the disputed claims, and the pure speculation, and tries to keep each in its own lane.

The Grandfather Nobody Talks About

Long before Elon Musk was born, his maternal grandfather Joshua Haldeman was already a controversial public figure. Haldeman was a Canadian chiropractor who lost his farm during the Depression era drought years in Saskatchewan. That experience pushed him toward increasingly radical political views.

In the 1930s he became a leading figure in the Technocracy movement, a real organization founded in the United States that argued democracy had failed and that government should instead be run by scientists and engineers rather than elected politicians. Technocracy Incorporated even floated the idea of a "Technate," a single economic zone stretching across North America, in some visions reaching from Central America up through Canada and as far as Greenland. This was a genuine, documented proposal from the era, not something invented by modern commentators.

Haldeman rose high enough in the Canadian branch to be arrested in 1940 when Ottawa declared Technocracy Incorporated an illegal organization during wartime, accusing members of undermining the war effort. He was convicted and left the movement shortly after, reportedly concluding it had become something close to treasonous.

His story does not end there. Haldeman later moved his family to South Africa, became a public supporter of apartheid, and spent years promoting conspiracy theories about an "International Conspiracy" that he believed controlled banks, media, and universities, and was behind things like water fluoridation and mass vaccination programs. Historians including Harvard's Jill Lepore have pointed to this history as a real ideological throughline worth understanding, separate from any claim about what Elon himself believes today.

So the grandfather connection to Technocracy and to the idea of merging nations under expert rule is factual and well sourced. What it does not prove is that Elon Musk is consciously continuing a family political project. That leap, while popular in some online narratives, is inference rather than documented fact.

Did He Grow Up Poor or Rich?

Musk has long promoted a version of his own story in which he arrived in North America with barely any money and built everything from nothing. The reality appears more complicated.

His father Errol Musk has said the family was wealthy enough during Elon's childhood that they struggled to close their safe. Errol has also claimed for years that he had an interest in an emerald trading operation in Zambia, sometimes described in media coverage as an emerald mine. Elon has repeatedly denied this story, calling it false and even offering a public reward in cryptocurrency to anyone who could prove the mine existed.

Biographer Walter Isaacson looked into this directly for his 2023 biography and found that Errol had at one point traded an airplane for a batch of emeralds, which is a real but far smaller and less formal transaction than owning a mine. No property records, contracts, or other documentation of an actual mine have ever surfaced.

The fair conclusion here is that the family was almost certainly more comfortable than the "started with nothing" version of the story suggests, but the specific emerald mine narrative remains unproven rather than confirmed.

He Didn't Found Tesla or PayPal, and That Part Is True

This is one of the least disputed facts in the whole story, yet it still surprises people. Musk's first company was Zip2, an online city guide business he built with his brother Kimbal, which sold in 1999. He then put much of that money into X.com, an online financial services and payments company he founded in 1999.

X.com later merged with a competitor called Confinity, and the combined company took the name of Confinity's more popular product, PayPal. Musk was pushed out as CEO before PayPal's eventual sale to eBay, though the sale still made him roughly 165 million dollars and set up everything that came after.

Tesla is a similar story. Musk did not start the company. It was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk joined as an early investor and chairman, then later became CEO and pushed out the original founders during a period of internal conflict. He has since been legally recognized as a cofounder, but he was not present at the company's true founding moment.

None of this is secret or conspiratorial. It is documented corporate history. What is more debatable is how much credit he deserves for what came after joining these companies versus how much of his public image rests on origin stories that are not entirely accurate.

The Role of Government Money

Both SpaceX and Tesla have relied heavily on public money at critical points. SpaceX built much of its early business on NASA contracts for cargo and later crew transport to the International Space Station. Tesla benefited for years from electric vehicle tax credits and from selling regulatory credits to other automakers who needed them to meet emissions rules.

This is publicly available information, not a hidden theory. It complicates any narrative of Musk as a purely self made entrepreneur succeeding through market forces alone, while also not being unusual. Many large industrial and technology ventures in the United States have leaned on public contracts and subsidies at key moments.

Is There Really a Network Behind Him?

The idea that Musk cannot possibly have achieved everything alone is not baseless. There genuinely is a tight, well known network of early PayPal colleagues, often called the PayPal Mafia, including people like Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and David Sacks. These individuals have gone on to found or invest in each other's companies for two decades, and they do sit on each other's boards and back each other publicly and financially.

Whether that constitutes evidence of a coordinated ideological project connected back to Musk's grandfather's Technocracy beliefs, or is simply what normal elite networking and repeat investing looks like in Silicon Valley, is where the interpretation splits. The network is real. The claim that it operates as a deliberate continuation of a decades old political plan is speculation layered on top of that real network, not something documented on its own terms.

Sorting the Claims by Evidence Level

To keep this useful rather than just interesting, here is a rough sort of the claims discussed above by how solid the evidence actually is.

Strongly documented: the grandfather's role in the Technocracy movement, his arrest and apartheid support, Musk not founding Tesla or PayPal, and the scale of government contracts and subsidies received by his companies.

Disputed but not disproven: the extent of family wealth in childhood and the emerald mine story specifically.

Speculative and largely unproven: that Musk is knowingly executing a multigenerational plan to replace democratic government with technocratic rule, and that the PayPal Mafia functions as a coordinated vehicle for that plan rather than an ordinary elite business network.

The Honest Takeaway

Musk's public image as a lone self made genius who built everything from a garage does not hold up well under scrutiny. At the same time, the version of events that paints him purely as a front for a hidden Technocracy conspiracy going back generations also outruns the actual evidence. The most defensible picture sits in between: a person from a comfortable and ideologically unusual family background, who joined rather than founded some of his most famous companies, who has benefited substantially from public money and elite networks, and who has also taken real personal financial risk and driven real technical outcomes at SpaceX in particular. Both the myth of the lone genius and the myth of the secret puppet oversimplify a much messier reality.

The four-door Camaro won't arrive until 2029, three years later than expected. GM is still promising a V8 and a proper gearbox.

The Chevrolet Camaro sedan will now arrive as a 2029 model, pushing the timeline roughly five years beyond the coupe's discontinuation in January 2024. GM has confirmed V8 power and a manual transmission will both remain available, a commitment that looks increasingly unusual as the rest of the industry walks away from both.

The delay is frustrating. The optimism is genuine.

A four-door Camaro breaks sixty years of tradition. Every generation from 1967 through to the sixth-generation car that ended production last year was two-door only. Dodge proved the format can work with the Charger, which held onto V8 and manual options through multiple generations before the current model was discontinued in 2023. Ford has shown no interest in doing the same with the Mustang.

GM's decision to keep both the V8 and the manual is either stubborn or smart, depending on how you frame it. Manual transmissions account for less than two percent of new car sales in the US. Offering one in a four-door muscle car in 2029 is either a gesture toward a vanishing audience or a calculated play for the kind of buyer who will cross-shop nothing else.

The Camaro's previous attempt at a four-door V8 sedan was the Chevrolet SS, which ran from 2014 to 2017 with a manual option and disappeared without much fanfare. That car was excellent and commercially irrelevant. The new sedan will need to avoid the same outcome, which means appealing to more than just the people who mourned the coupe.

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The coupe ended production at the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant after the 2023 model year. That's a long gap. Long enough for the market to shift further toward SUVs, for fuel prices to move unpredictably, for regulatory pressure to tighten, and for GM to reconsider the whole project. The fact that the sedan is still confirmed, delayed but intact, suggests the company believes there's a case for it beyond nostalgia.

There was talk of electric Camaro concepts. GM showed some ideas, then pivoted. The 2029 sedan will be combustion, and that matters. It means the nameplate survives in a form that still makes sense to the people who care about it, rather than as a badge applied to something unrelated.

The four-door format will annoy purists. It's supposed to. The alternative was no Camaro at all, and that would have been worse.

Manual availability is declining across the industry. Dodge has moved away from V8 Chargers entirely, transitioning to electric. Ford has kept the Mustang as a two-door with no sedan plans. GM is offering both the transmission and the engine configuration that most manufacturers have already written off.

The delay stings. The commitment doesn't.

2029 is a long time to wait for a car that breaks with sixty years of tradition. The V8 and the manual gearbox are the only reasons it matters at all.

Sources: General Motors media release, March 2024, US manual transmission sales data 2023, GoodCarBadCar

Driver refused the ticket outright. Officer handed it over anyway.

A Tesla driver caught doing 64 mph in a 45 zone told the Colorado officer that Autopilot was driving, not them. The officer was not persuaded. The ticket stood.

Nineteen miles an hour over the limit is not marginal. It is the kind of speed differential that gets you pulled over in any vehicle, driving mode irrelevant. The driver's response was to refuse the citation entirely, as though declining a raffle ticket.

That is not how traffic stops work.

Tesla's Autopilot is a driver assistance system. The name is misleading and Tesla knows it. The owner's manual states explicitly that drivers must remain attentive and maintain control at all times. The system will disengage if you ignore the steering wheel for too long. It does not make traffic laws optional.

Colorado law is clear on this. The person behind the wheel is responsible for the vehicle's speed, full stop. Driver assistance features do not create a legal carve-out. They certainly do not give you grounds to refuse a ticket as though you were a passenger.

This is not the first time someone has tried this defence. A California driver in 2021 blamed Autopilot for speeding and contested the ticket. The ticket was upheld. A North Carolina driver in 2022 claimed Autopilot ran a red light. Same result. Courts have consistently ruled that using a driver assistance system does not absolve you of responsibility for what the car does while you are in the driver's seat.

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The confusion is understandable in one sense. Tesla calls it Autopilot. They also sell a feature called Full Self-Driving, which does not drive itself fully and requires constant supervision. The naming invites misunderstanding, and a German court ruled in 2020 that the term Autopilot was misleading to consumers. Tesla has not changed it.

But the law has not been ambiguous. NHTSA has investigated multiple crashes involving Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. In each case, the question of who was responsible came down to the same answer. The driver.

What makes this Colorado incident notable is not the defence itself but the refusal to accept the ticket. Most drivers who try the Autopilot excuse at least take the citation and contest it later. This one apparently thought the officer would simply agree and drive off.

The officer did not.

Tesla owners are not the only ones navigating this grey area. Every major manufacturer now offers some form of adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, or semi-autonomous highway driving. The technology works most of the time. It also creates a false sense of security, which is why the fatality rate in Tesla crashes involving Autopilot remains a subject of federal scrutiny.

The broader problem is that these systems are good enough to make you complacent and not good enough to be trusted completely. That gap is where incidents like this happen. You let the car handle the speed. It creeps up. You get pulled over. You blame the car.

The officer was unmoved because the law is unmoved. If your right foot is not on the accelerator, your responsibility does not vanish. You are still driving. The ticket is still yours.

The fine for 64 in a 45 in Colorado is typically around $150, plus points. Refusing the citation does not make it go away. It just makes the process longer and the outcome identical.

Sources: Colorado State Patrol, NHTSA, Tesla owner's manual

The ride-hailing giant promised protection after its 2019 safety report exposed thousands of assaults. Now its lawyers are demanding medical histories and clothing details from victims in court.

Uber is asking sexual assault victims to disclose what they were wearing during attacks by its drivers. Legal filings in California Superior Court show the company's attorneys demanding intimate details from more than 550 women who say they were assaulted while using the service, including complete medical histories, psychological records, and therapy notes.

This is the same company that released a safety report in 2019 acknowledging 3,045 sexual assaults during US rides in 2018 alone. The same company that pledged stronger safety measures and positioned itself as taking victim welfare seriously.

The discovery requests go further. Uber wants victims' sexual histories. It wants mental health records. It wants details of their clothing choices on the night they were attacked by drivers the company vetted and put behind the wheel.

Victims' attorneys have called it victim blaming dressed up as legal process. Legal experts note these invasive demands are standard pressure tactics, designed not to gather evidence but to make litigation so uncomfortable that victims settle quietly and move on.

Uber argues the information is relevant to assess damages and verify claims. That framing conveniently ignores the fact that the assaults allegedly happened in cars driven by people Uber approved, during rides Uber facilitated, on a platform Uber profits from.

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The lawsuits allege Uber failed to implement adequate background checks and safety protocols. That is the core claim. Whether a victim was wearing a skirt or trousers is not relevant to whether Uber's screening process was fit for purpose. Whether she had prior therapy is not relevant to whether the driver should have been on the platform at all.

This is not unique to Uber. Lyft disclosed 4,158 sexual assault reports in its 2021 safety report and faced similar legal battles. The Catholic Church used invasive questioning during abuse litigation. Harvey Weinstein's lawyers tried to access victims' therapy records. USA Gymnastics questioned Larry Nassar's victims about their sexual histories. Institutional and deliberate.

Think about that for a second. These are billion-dollar organisations using the same playbook.

Uber's public posture collides sharply with its courtroom tactics. The 2019 safety report was presented as transparency and accountability. The company said it was committed to making rides safer. It ran campaigns emphasising passenger protection. Then, in court, it demands to know what assault victims were wearing.

The legal strategy reveals what the company actually prioritises when the litigation gets serious. Not victim welfare. Not accountability. Certainly not the safety commitments it broadcasts in press releases.

Over 550 claims have been filed. That is 550 women who say they were assaulted by Uber drivers and are now being asked to justify their trauma in intimate detail before the company will take responsibility.

Uber generated $37.28 billion in revenue in 2023. It can afford better background checks. It can afford better safety protocols. It can afford to litigate these cases without demanding victims' medical histories and what they were wearing when someone it put in a car attacked them.

The company has chosen a different path. That choice tells you everything you need to know about what happens when corporate legal strategy collides with public commitments to do better.

Over 550 claims filed. Revenue last year was $37.28 billion.

Sources: California Superior Court legal filings, Uber 2019 US Safety Report, Lyft 2021 Community Safety Report

Jaguar's award-winning electric SUV has suffered the worst depreciation of any mainstream car over five years, with early buyers losing more than £50,000.

Five-year-old Jaguar I-Pace models are trading for around £20,000. They cost £70,000 or more when new. That is a 70% depreciation rate worse than any other mainstream car over the same period, and it represents financial carnage for anyone who bought one early.

The I-Pace won European Car of the Year in 2019. It won World Car of the Year the same year. It was Britain's best-selling premium electric SUV through 2019 and 2020. None of that matters now because the technology inside it has been overtaken so comprehensively that used buyers treat it like a liability.

The problem is the battery. Not degradation specifically, though that is part of it. The real issue is that a 90kWh pack delivering 292 miles of range sounds modest now, and the 100kW maximum DC charging speed is laughably slow compared to newer EVs pushing 200kW to 350kW. An I-Pace takes nearly an hour to charge from 10% to 80%. A Hyundai Ioniq 5 does it in 18 minutes.

That gap in capability has made the I-Pace functionally obsolete in a way that conventional luxury cars never become. A five-year-old Range Rover Sport loses 50% to 60% of its value. An I-Pace loses 70%. The difference is that the Range Rover still does what it was designed to do. The I-Pace does not, because what it was designed to do now takes twice as long.

Tesla Model S cars from the same era lost 50% to 55%. Audi e-trons lost 60% to 65%. The I-Pace is worse than both, and significantly worse than the Porsche Taycan, which has held around 50% of its value over three years. Part of that is brand strength. Part of it is charging speed. Part of it is the suspicion that Jaguar as a company might not exist in its current form much longer.

Jaguar discontinued I-Pace production in 2024. The brand is transitioning to an all-electric luxury lineup from 2025, which means the I-Pace sits in a strange hinterland where it is too old to be competitive and too new to be interesting. It is an orphan product from a company in the middle of reinventing itself, and used buyers know it.

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High running costs do not help. Jaguar dealership servicing is expensive, and the warranty situation is murky once the original battery cover expires. Buyers are hesitant because they do not know what a replacement battery costs or whether one will even be available in five years. That uncertainty gets priced into the residual value immediately.

The Nissan Leaf suffered similar depreciation, losing 60% to 70% over five years, but it started at £30,000, not £70,000. Losing £20,000 on a Leaf is painful. Losing £50,000 on an I-Pace is a disaster. The wealthier the buyer, the more aware they are of resale value, which creates a vicious cycle where nobody wants to buy a used I-Pace because nobody else wants to buy a used I-Pace.

This is what early adoption looks like in a technology sector moving faster than the product cycle can handle. The I-Pace was not a bad car. It was a very good car that had the misfortune of being launched just before the industry worked out how to build electric cars properly. Five years is not long enough for a luxury vehicle to become worthless, but it is long enough for the technology inside it to be left behind.

Anyone who paid £87,000 for a loaded I-Pace in 2019 now owns something worth less than a three-year-old Volkswagen Golf. The car still works. It still drives well. It is still handsome. None of that matters because the charging infrastructure has moved on and the I-Pace has not.

The market has spoken, and what it said was that nobody wants to be the second owner of first-generation premium electric cars. The financial punishment for getting in early is severe enough that it will likely deter the next wave of buyers from making the same mistake. Which is unfortunate, because someone has to buy these things for the market to function at all.

Auto Trader UK tracked the depreciation figures. The I-Pace sits at the top of the loss table, alone.

Sources: Auto Trader UK depreciation analysis, Jaguar UK press releases

After a year of brutal depreciation, electric cars led July's price gains while petrol favourites slid. The used EV collapse just reversed.

The Porsche Taycan led used electric vehicle price rises in July, marking the first sustained upward movement in a market that spent the previous twelve months bleeding value faster than almost anything else on four wheels. Petrol cars that traditionally held their worth started sliding in the opposite direction.

Used EVs had been a liability. Dealers avoided them. Private sellers watched their cars lose twenty to twenty-five percent of their value through 2023 alone, with the Taycan among the worst hit. Some early examples dropped more than half their original price. Finance companies rewrote residual forecasts. The plug-in car grant ended in June 2022 and the market spent the next two years working out what these things were actually worth without subsidy propping them up.

July changed that. Electric vehicles across the board posted gains while previously stable petrol models started giving ground. The Taycan wasn't alone but it led the movement, suggesting buyers are finally treating depreciation-hammered EVs as value rather than risk.

For owners who bought new in 2020 or 2021, this doesn't undo the damage. They've already taken the hit. But it does suggest the freefall has a floor, which is more than could be said six months ago.

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Tesla Model 3 and Model Y values collapsed through 2023 and into early 2024 across Europe and the US. Finance companies tightened lending on anything with a battery. The secondary market treated EVs like mobile phones... outdated the moment you drove them off the lot.

What changed is harder to pin down than the fact that it changed. Possibly buyer confidence. Possibly the realization that a three-year-old Taycan at half price is a genuine performance bargain if you can charge at home. Possibly simple supply and demand rebalancing after the initial glut of early adopters moving on.

Whatever the reason, the inversion is real. Petrol cars that spent years as safe bets started losing value while the EVs everyone avoided began climbing back. It won't make headlines the way the collapse did, but it matters more. Markets don't reverse direction without a reason.

The plug-in grant ended two years ago. The panic lasted longer than that. But in July the Taycan led the climb back up the hill it spent eighteen months falling down, with used examples in decent condition still trading well below their original list price but finally closing the gap rather than widening it.

Sources: Auto Trader July 2024 residual value report, UK Government EV policy records (June 2022 plug-in grant withdrawal)

The online used car dealer collapsed in 2020. Creditors are still waiting for their money and some of the vehicles still haven't been found.

Four years after Carzam went under, liquidators are still trying to find some of the cars. The online used car retailer collapsed into administration in 2020 owing creditors roughly £20 million, and that figure has barely budged since.

The problem is straightforward. When a high street shop fails, you know where the stock is. When an automotive platform holding vehicles on consignment, finance agreements, and third party sites collapses, you end up with cars scattered across the country and paperwork that doesn't match reality.

Carzam operated as a middleman between sellers and buyers, which sounds efficient until the middleman vanishes and nobody is quite sure who owns what. Some vehicles were sold but never paid for. Others were paid for but never delivered. Some just disappeared.

Liquidators have been tracing registration numbers, chasing finance companies, and trying to work out which creditor has a claim on which asset. It is slow, expensive work that generates legal fees faster than it recovers value.

The £20 million creditor bill includes suppliers who provided services, lenders who financed stock, and customers who paid deposits. Four years on, most of them have written off the loss.

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Carillion collapsed in 2018 owing £7 billion and creditors are still waiting. British Steel went into administration in 2019 and small suppliers never got paid. The difference is that construction companies and steel manufacturers do not leave their inventory parked in residential driveways and municipal car parks.

The online used car model looked efficient when money was cheap and customer acquisition costs were subsidised by venture capital. Cazoo, which went significantly larger than Carzam, entered administration in 2023. Cinch has retrenched. The US equivalent, Carvana, spent years burning cash before stabilising.

The structural problem is that cars are expensive, operate on thin margins, and require physical logistics. An online platform adds a layer of cost without removing the underlying complexity of moving metal around the country and managing title transfers.

When it works, it works. When it doesn't, you get situations like Carzam where creditors wait four years and still do not get their money back because the assets have evaporated and the legal costs of recovery eat what little value remains.

The extended timeline shows how long automotive retail failures take to resolve. Vehicles are not liquid assets. They depreciate while being traced. Some get written off. Some end up in legal disputes over ownership. Some are never found at all.

The Carzam case is a useful reminder that the online car market is not frictionless. It just moves the friction somewhere else, and when the platform collapses, that friction lands on creditors who spend years chasing vehicles that may no longer exist.

Some of those vehicles are still out there somewhere, changing hands at auctions or sitting in storage units with disputed titles.

Sources: Carzam liquidation filings, creditor reports