Shelby, whether good or bad, has a knack for staying in the news. Unfortunately, the latest item to come across our desks is not about an upcoming variant of the Ford Mustang, but rather a lawsuit involving the limited-edition GT500KR built in 2008. According to papers filed in Vermont, Plasan Carbon Composites, the maker of the carbon fiber parts on the car including the hood, front spoiler, and mirror covers, is suing Shelby for non-payment of the components as well as a bonus promised by Shelby if the parts were delivered on time.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story is that the lawsuit reveals the cost of the carbon fiber parts. Remember that whole fiasco in which Shelby was charging nearly $18,400 for a replacement hood? According to one of the documents in the lawsuit, a set of 200 carbon fiber components costs $760,000. Do the math, and that's just $3,800 for all the carbon fiber parts on the car. But straight division doesn't work here.
As we learned when Shelby announced it would drop the price of the carbon fiber hood to $9,700 (dealer cost), it's not about the exact end cost of the components, it's about the development and testing. The GT500KR is the first U.S. production vehicle to get a full carbon fiber hood and the amount of energy, resources and testing involved in bringing it to market far outweighs basic production costs. Making the hood – along with the other assorted tidbits – involves all the extensive OEM-level, Tier One testing that every automaker has to endure to meet federal crash standards. In short, it's not cheap and the price reflects that.
So you're Chrysler, and you hop into the Chapter 11 pool to save your own skin. While you can wash away some of your past sins with a bankruptcy-protection filing, the deal with Chapter 11 is that you've got to come up with a way to get out of your financial pickle and return to profitability. Part of the Chrysler plan to keep its head above water was divestiture of 789 dealers, a very unpopular idea with the rejected sales organizations (and no small number of politicians, whose ears were subsequently bent by the affected dealers).
When adversity strikes, what else is there to do but unleash legislative changes and legal challenges to and fro like archers' arrows? Recent alterations to dealer laws in Oregon, Maine, North Carolina and Illinois contradict bankruptcy code and are unconstitutional. The new laws allow the states to block Chryser from granting a new franchise or relocating an existing dealership into a market once belonging to a rejected dealer.
In response, Chrysler has fired off a lawsuit in Manhattan bankruptcy court naming eight parties as defendants, including the Oregon Attorney General, secretaries of state in Maine and Illinois, and other transportation officials. The filing argues that the laws being contested would force Chrysler to give consideration to the dealers for rights that they do not have, and furthermore, the dealer rejections were approved as part of the sale to Fiat.
Drama, drama, drama. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking American Chopper is all about the motorcycles. In reality, the television show has always been about an amazingly dysfunctional family, and in particular the fatherson relationship of its two main characters: Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr.
Truth be told, we're not big fans of the show. Don't get us wrong, we love motorcycles, but as we said, this series has never really focused on building motorcycles (plus we prefer to ride bikes designed to be, um... ridden). That's never been more true than right now, as anyone who happens to catch an episode from the last two seasons can tell you that Sr. currently has no contact at all with any of his children, including Jr. and Mikey.
Those on-air disagreements have reportedly culminated in a lawsuit filed by Paul Teutul Sr. in the Supreme Court of New York. The elder Teutul is seeking to buy his son's shares in Orange County Choppers Holdings, Inc., along with over $1 million in damages. Kinda makes all that talk in previous seasons of not letting anything get in the way of family seem a bit disingenuous, no?
Remember the case of Dimitrios Biller versus Toyota? The lawyer and former Toyota employee accused the Japanese automaker of withholding evidence in rollover crashes and claimed to have boxes full of evidence that would make his case.
Well, Toyota is still dealing with Biller, but one of the side cases that sprung up as a result of Biller's allegations appears to be going away. The New York Times reports that Todd Tracey, a lawyer with a history of suing Toyota, is dropping his plan to reopen 17 cases against the automaker. Tracy reportedly went through Biller's stash of evidence and found that "I did not see any type of concealment, destruction or pattern of discovery abuse that affected my cases that I had sought to reopen."
That's a far cry from the "rise up to get Toyota to tell the truth about its hidden crash safety data" rhetoric Tracy unleashed a couple months earlier and one less headache for Toyota to deal with in what appears to be a very busy 2010. True, it's likely Toyota will still have to deal with Biller, but Tracy's public statement that the evidence wasn't enough to justify opening old suits shows is less than a vote of confidence for the former Toyota employee's chances in the court of law.
If you buy a hybrid, you'll be rewarded with excellent fuel economy, right? Well, that's the idea, but sometimes things don't turn out exactly as we had hoped. Such is apparently the case with a number of Honda Civic Hybrid owners who claim that their vehicles don't even come close to achieving the mileage figures estimated by the EPA, leading to a class action lawsuit against Honda.
Back in the summer of 2007, we conducted a telephone interview with John True, one of the two men who started the suit. At the time, True claimed he only achieved, at best, 34.6 miles per gallon and had averaged well under that figure. The window sticker showed EPA estimates of 49 city and 51 highway, though the EPA's revised 2008 rating sits at 40 city and 45 highway.
For its part, Honda admits to no wrongdoing and points out that it was the EPA that estimated those mileage figures. Still, according to The New York Times, the Japanese automaker has agreed to settle the case out of court. If approved, owners of 2003-2008 Civic Hybrids will get a voucher worth up to $1,000 to purchase a new Honda or a check for $100 if they can prove they complained to Honda about their car's mileage.
The walls are closing in on Dean Kruse, head of the Indiana-based Kruse International auction house. In September, a slew of lawsuits were filed against the company. Further opening the wound, a county court in Indiana has now ordered Kruse to pay more than $1.3 million to a bank in Warsaw -- just one of several debtors seeking money from the company -- for an overdue loan originally in the amount of $4.5 million. Two foreclosure lawsuits in DeKalb County, Indiana, are pending. One is for $6.5 million in unpaid loans. The other is for a loan in default for $7.8 million. Adding to his growing headache, and slowing down his travel, GE's financial arm has asked a federal court to repossess Kruse's million-dollar Cessna corporate jet.
While Kruse isn't talking to the media about his current events, he told The Journal Gazette last month that the recession has been hard on his sales. Compounding his troubles and drying up his cash flow, his longtime business practice of releasing cars to good customers before payment has come back to bite him. Understandably, he told the Gazette that he has since suspended that practice.
Hell hath no fury like a racing team scorned. Among the dozen teams that lodged bids this year to join the F1 grid for 2010 was N.Technology. The racing outfit is known to some European fans as the squad that fielded race-prepped Alfas in various touring car series (pictured above), but its bid was ultimately rejected by the FIA in favor of Campos, Manor and USF1, Lotus joining the roster in BMW's stead after N.Technology had withdrawn its bid.
Citing irregularities in the selection process, N.Technology and its parent company MSC Organization Ltd. (itself an organizing body responsible for the International Formula Master feeder series) sued the FIA in French courts. According to the plaintiffs, the FIA only selected teams that were willing to use the Cosworth engine package which the governing body commissioned. N.Technology wasn't interested, while the teams that were selected all agreed to use Cosworth power.
Unfortunately for N.Technology and MSC, the French courts didn't see things their way, and rejected the rejected entry's claims. Some people just can't win.
Porsche AG is known for vigorously defending its intellectual property. It's understandable, as the company has spent more than half a century building its performance-oriented automotive brand around design patents, logos, and the company's familiar vehicle nomenclature. Crocs, Inc., on the other hand, is a shoe manufacturer credited with introducing the world to low-cost injection-molded foam footwear. Crocs does not build cars... um, thankfully.
What Crocs did do was name its popular sandal the "Cayman" (pictured at right). Of course, this set off all the alarms at Porsche as that name is already trademark registered by the automaker for its two-seat sports coupe. What followed next was expected... in mid-May, Crocs received a letter from Porsche notifying them of the alleged trademark infringement. At the end of July, Porsche filed a notice of injunction in German courts against the European use of the Cayman name by Crocs.
While we realize that few of our readers would ever confuse a pair of Crocs' Cayman with the Porsche Cayman, one has to wonder if Porsche is taking this a bit too far. Rumor has it that the Cayman Islands in the western Caribbean are monitoring the situation and already working on their own legal defense...
Following a statement from the DOT and NHTSA asserting that the unintended acceleration issue potentially involving millions of Toyota vehicles is "not closed," McCuneWright, LLP, a law firm in Southern California, has filed a national class action lawsuit on behalf of all Toyota and Lexus owners that claim to have experienced this phenomenon. Representing the class will be Los Angeles County residents Seong Bae Choi (owner of a 2004 Camry) and Chris Chan Park (owner of a 2008 FJ Cruiser).
According to the suit, Toyota has known about reports of unintended acceleration for years and has received over 2,000 such complaints. Citing statistics from Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., the lawsuit alleges that there have been 16 fatalities and 243 injuries from Toyota and Lexus crashes attributed to runaway vehicles. Toyota attributes these accidents to improperly installed or incorrect floormats that prevent the accelerator pedal from returning to its idle position.
Wright, though, said in a statement, "[N]either driver error nor floormats can explain away many other frightening instances of runaway Toyotas. Until the company acknowledges the real problem and fixes it, we worry that other preventable injuries and deaths will occur."
It's hard to believe, but cab drivers in New York City are prohibited by law from talking on cell phones, with or without headsets. That doesn't seem to stop them, says the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. Citing phone-related accident statistics, the commission is now proposing more stringent rules that would raise fines and even keep cabbies from using hands-free devices to chat. "We've tried everything else; there's no other way we can make this work," says Matthew W. Daus, the taxi commissioner.
In the first six months of 2009, only one ticket was issued for every 500,000 cab rides. Cabbies escape prosecution because they claim they were only wearing the hands-free devices, not using them. "Judges have been dismissing summonses because there's no proof of conversation," says Daus. Under the proposed rules, the wearing of a headset merits an infraction. Under the current rules, cab drivers are allowed to talk on cell phones while stopped at a red light. The new rules would require drivers to pull over to answer the phone.
Without a doubt, the cabbies are riled. Calling the proposed rules inhumane, they claim mobile phones are crucial in emergencies and the only way they are able to keep in touch with relatives during their 12-hour shifts. While the drafted rules are subject to public hearings next month, the drivers point out the absurdity of some of the proposals. When one organizer at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance was told that he'd have to pull over to answer a ringing phone, his amusing answer was rather succinct: "Where do you get space to put your car?"
