Motor News

Over the past few years, some people who rented cars from Hertz found themselves arrested when the company told police they had stolen the cars even though they claim they were legitimate renters and returned the vehicles on time.It seems now that these cases were mostly mistakes created by Hertz’s computer system when it couldn’t physically locate a car or maybe even if someone’s payment didn’t go through.Thanks in part to a CBS News investigation, a Delaware bankruptcy court judge ruled this week that Hertz will have to make thousands of pages of documents in the case public.File this bit of news under “We’ll learn more soon.” A Delaware bankruptcy court judge ruled this week that Hertz will have to back up, publicly, its claims that as many as thousands of people rented its cars and then stole them.The judge was ruling in a case brought by 230 customers who said they were wrongly arrested after Hertz told police they had stolen the vehicles—even though they claim they correctly returned them. Attorneys in the case say the 230 people involved in the case represent a larger group of about 8000 people whom Hertz accused of stealing its cars. Hertz itself pegs the number of thefts each year somewhere in the middle.

“Of the more than 25 million rental transactions by Hertz in the United States per year, 0.014 percent fall into the rare situation where vehicles are reported to the authorities after exhaustive attempts to reach the customer,” Hertz said in a statement provided to CBS News, which did the math to translate that to an average of 3500 customers stealing Hertz vehicles each year.”The vast majority of these cases involve renters who were many weeks or even months overdue returning vehicles and who stopped communicating with us well beyond the scheduled due date,” the company said in a statement to the Washington Post. Everyone seems to agree that there aren’t actually thousands of people stealing Hertz rental cars each year. The problems are more bureaucratic, such as when Hertz doesn’t know where a particular car physically is and so thinks it is missing. These kinds of problems can pop up if renters switch cars during a rental, or if they extend their rental period. The Post said that even problems with credit or debit cards can generate a theft report in Hertz’s system, which then are sent over to local law enforcement.”We’re having police act as a strong arm for private corporations and private vehicles, when this is not what taxpayer dollars are supposed to be used for.” Francis Alexander Malofiy, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, told the Post.

So, soon, the public will get to see some of these reports and other data. Hertz, which emerged from its 2020 bankruptcy filing last year, had provided the information to the court under seal. The judge ruled this week that this information will now be released, in part because CBS News filed an objection to keeping this information from the public. CBS reported that within these reports lie the number of “theft” reports that the company admits were mistakes.
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The sight of a BMW police car in the U.K. is not unusual at all: 3-series, 5-series, and X5 SUVs are all relatively commonplace.However, you won’t see them doing the high-speed pursuit work they were intended for, now that a series of engine fires have happened.One town has resorted to Peugeots with 1.2-liter engines to take their place. We feel sure that will be only temporary.American gearheads visiting Europe are often quick to notice the radically different police vehicles working on the other side of the Atlantic. Plenty of police interceptors come from mainstream automakers, but European forces also often use upmarket brands, especially for high-speed duties. In the U.K. these are often BMWs, with 3-series, 5-series and X5 vehicles regularly seen patroling Britain’s motorway network in police livery.

BMW 530d Police Interceptor.
BMW U.K.

But now some have been restricted to light duties following a recent history of catastrophic fires that have affected BMWs fitted with the company’s N57 3.0-liter straight-six diesel engine. Some police forces, including Durham in the northeast of England, have reportedly ordered N57-equipped cars not to be used for high-speed pursuits. As BMWs are primarily used as interceptors and to transport firearms officers—keep in mind, police in Britain are not routinely armed—the enforced light duties mean that less appropriate cars are now being used instead. According to one media report, in Durham that means Peugeots equipped with 1.2-liter turbocharged engines are being used by traffic cops. Some other British police services have apparently chosen to dispose of N57-equipped BMWs in their fleets early.The hiatus is understandable after a series of fires involving police BMWs. While we don’t know if the N57 was a common factor to all, media reports in the U.K. have documented numerous infernos in recent years (in Kent in 2016, Liverpool in 2019, southeast London in 2019, and Swindon in 2021 for example). The most serious fire happened in December 2020 when a police officer in Cumbria, Nick Dumphries, died after the BMW he was driving caught fire as he responded to an emergency call. BMW hasn’t confirmed the exact nature of the issue but has said it won’t affect the many privately owned cars fitted with the N57 engine.

“This issue is associated with the particular way in which the police operate these high-performance vehicles. This unique usage profile puts extra strain on some components and therefore BMW has specified a special servicing program for these vehicles,” the company said in a statement. “There is no need for action on any civilian vehicles.”BMW was first named as a “key supplier” to police forces in the U.K. in 2010 by the National Policing Improvement Agency. The 330d Saloon Interceptor pictured above was particularly selected as a “high-performance pursuit vehicle” at the time. The N57 engine has been superseded by the newer B57, meaning the newest at-risk car is now more than three years old, and volumes will diminish as police fleets replace older models. Many constabularies are choosing to move away from BMW altogether, and these days police-liveried Volvos an increasingly common sight on Britain’s roads. And, yes, the Swedish company does indeed remove the 112-mph speed limiter that is fitted to all the cars it sells to civilians.

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This ex–SpeedSource/Mazda Lola B12/80 competed in the IMSA prototype class from 2014 to 2016, and now it’s up for auction on Bring a Trailer.Important detail: It doesn’t come with an engine. Bidding is currently at $52,888, and the auction ends on Monday, February 14. This 2014 Lola/Mazda IMSA prototype racer, our pick of the day from the auction site Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is most intriguing for what it doesn’t have: an engine. But it has pretty much everything else you need to go racing, including pushrod-actuated Multimatic DSSV dampers, carbon-carbon brakes with AP Racing calipers, and an XTrac 1059 sequential gearbox. But as it sits, it’s just a human-scale Pinewood Derby racer. And that’s part of the fun—daydreaming about what kind of powerplant you’d stuff into the space between the cabin and the rear wheels.

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That XTrac gearbox is rated for 590 pound-feet of torque, which means there are lots of possibilities as to what you might bolt to it. A Mazda rotary would be appropriate, of course. Or how about an LS7? Or maybe something like this. You probably won’t use an engine of the sort that originally powered the car at the 2014 24 Hours of Daytona—a four-cylinder diesel. That was back when Mazda was promoting its Skyactiv diesels as the future, a future that never quite materialized. This car spent two seasons as a diesel before racing a final season with a turbocharged gas four-cylinder. We’d also guess that whoever wins this car won’t install a turbo four. Unlike Mazda, we don’t have to think on-brand, here. “Siri, will a Lamborghini V-10 fit in a Lola B12/80 chassis?”

This car, chassis MM07, never finished better than fourth place in any given race (that was with the gas engine). But you’ll definitely win your local track day if you show up with this monster, turn the key, and unleash the ragged blat of a Metzger air-cooled Porsche flat-six. Or an Alfa Romeo 2.9-liter turbo V-6. Or . . . Okay, you get the idea. But we’re just saying that if you’re already shelling out the money for this delectable assemblage of road-course-slaying hardware, you may as well spend another $40,000 for a 10,000-rpm, 600-hp naturally aspirated four-rotor rotary. That is all.

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Valentine’s Day is coming up and we decided to celebrate by choosing hypothetical gifts for each other. On this week’s episode of Window Shop, the contestants were each assigned to shop for someone else with the goal of finding a car that could serve as an automotive soulmate. The budget was set at $50,000 with the stipulation that we could stretch to $100,000 if the car was red or pink.This meant carefully considering the tastes of our fellow window shoppers. Road & Track senior editor John Pearley Huffman, shopping for cars director Tony Quiroga, kicked things off and immediately broke the rules with a nice low-mileage Toyota Land Cruiser in silver that went way over budget considering the color-based rules. Senior editor Joey Capparella went next and chose an obscure luxury sedan with a name you may not recognize for contributor Jonathan Ramsey (we won’t ruin the surprise).Ramsey found a Porsche 911 in a specific color for Pearley and then deputy testing director K.C. Colwell went the JDM direction for noted Japanese car enthusiast Capparella. And finally, Quiroga selected a supercharged Lotus Elise—the only red car of the episode—for deputy testing director K.C. Colwell.We voted based on who we thought selected the best gift and, as always, chaos ensued while we tried to determine a winner. Check out the episode in full above and a happy Valentine’s Day to all.

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Aston Martin’s front-engined sports cars, the Vantage, DB11, and DBS, are all set for major revisions for 2023. That’s according to chairman Lawrence Stroll, as first reported by Autocar.One of the most important changes is a new infotainment system, which trades the clunky trackpad for a fresh touchscreen interface.The alterations will be so drastic that they will be, in Stroll’s words, effectively “all-new cars,” but the DBS will retain its 5.2-liter V-12. Aston Martin revealed its all-new AMR22 race car for the upcoming Formula 1 season yesterday. It sported a new livery with lime green accents that echoes the paint job on the Valkyrie Pro. But along with showing off Aston Martin’s latest F1 challenger, chairman Lawrence Stroll also dropped some details about major updates to the brand’s front-engine sports cars, as reported by the U.K. publication Autocar.

Aston Martin

Stroll reportedly said that the changes to the Vantage, DB11, and DBS for the 2023 model year would be so extensive that they would be like “all-new cars.” Significantly, Aston Martin will ditch the Mercedes-Benz–based trackpad infotainment system for more modern touchscreens. A previous agreement had laden Aston Martins with a version of the Mercedes COMAND infotainment system that was originally launched in 1998 and was last overhauled in 2016, although Mercedes itself switched to the new MBUX system in 2018.”How can you have an Aston Martin that sells for £150,000 [about $204,000] with three-year-old technology?” Stroll said. “It is a silly thing the previous management agreed to.” It appears the updated Aston Martin infotainment will be based on the newer MBUX system, with Stroll emphasizing that Aston Martin will distinguish its interface from the Mercedes platform with “our own faces, our own voices—a proper English accent.”

The updates to the front-engine sports cars will also include revisions to the suspension, engines, and gearboxes. Stroll confirmed that the DBS will retain its 5.2-liter V-12. The 4.0-liter V-8 found in the Vantage and DB11 will likely receive the latest tech from AMG. The current Vantage and DB11 can make up to 528 horsepower, but the a newer version of the same engine found in the recently-revealed Mercedes-AMG SL63 is rated at 577 ponies. Some design changes are also expected, with Stroll quoted as saying “there’s no similarity at all to the current cars” except for “some carryover” on the rear end. The updated sports cars should be revealed towards the end of the year, and the move is part of a push to sell 4000 front-engined sports cars per year.
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Because of problems with some engines in 1.6 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles from a decade or so ago, NHTSA issued a consent order with the car companies last fall. One part of the deal was that Hyundai would have to spend $25 million on a safety lab.Hyundai announced today that it will spend twice that much on a new Safety Test and Investigation Laboratory (STIL) next to its existing tech center in Michigan. Only $25 million counts toward the total $140 million the company must spend under NHTSA’s rules.Hyundai also has to spend $15 million on a new safety data analytics team to spot potential safety issues earlier in the process.Last fall, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Hyundai and Kia agreed to two consent orders (one for each automaker) over what NHTSA called “untimely recalls” of 1.6 million 2011–2014 model year vehicles that used Hyundai’s Theta II engines, including the Santa Fe Sport and Sonata. The two consent orders required the companies to pay a combined $210 million in fines, with Hyundai to pay $140 million and Kia for the other $70 million.

At the Chicago auto show today, Hyundai announced that, to fulfill and go beyond its obligations under the consent order, it will build a Safety Test and Investigation Laboratory (STIL) with an investment of at least $50 million. The new lab will be part of the Hyundai America Technical Center (HATCI) in Superior Township, Michigan, near Ann Arbor, and will open in fall 2023. The consent order defines how Hyundai must spend some of the $140 million by creating “Performance Obligation Amounts.” Hyundai’s POA required the automaker to spend $25 million on a test and inspection laboratory and another $15 million on a “Safety Data Analytics infrastructure.” NHTSA also required Hyundai to pay $54 million when the consent order was announced and “an additional $46 million deferred penalty that may become payable if specified conditions are not satisfied.The $50 million investment in STIL is double the $25 million the automaker had to spend on the facility, something that Hyundai Motor North America’s chief safety officer, Brian Latouf, said was the natural result of the automaker looking at what it needed to build safer vehicles. Currently, Hyundai Motor North America benefits from safety research done at the automaker’s global headquarters in South Korea.”We looked at what we needed [for the consent order] and also what makes sense for us in the future of HATCI as well as our regional needs as we grow,” he told Car and Driver. “This is the plan that made sense to us, as a company.”

Hyundai America Technical Center in Michigan.
Hyundai

The STIL will be housed in a new building with a forensics lab, a high-voltage battery lab, and a Vehicle Dynamics Area (VDA) pad. There will also be a 500-meter “high speed” track and an outdoor crash facility at the site. With these tools, Hyundai engineers will be able to take cars from the field and tear them down at the STIL, Latouf said, in order to respond more quickly to problems that might happen in the U.S. “It’s hard to ship crashed vehicles,” he said.Getting Out in Front of Safety IssuesThe $15 million to be spent on safety data analytics could end up preventing major problems like the recall of the Theta II engines. Hyundai’s U.S. safety group, which is currently based in California, features a team of data scientists that form both an emerging-issues group and a safety forensics group.”OEMs are data rich,” Latouf said, pulling in information about the real-world problems with their vehicles from warranty data, customer complaints, people writing in to NHTSA, and field reports from dealers and other sources. Somewhere in there you might be able to spot a problem before it grows, he said.”This group is really focusing on the early buds of the issue and then we focus on it and go through an investigation process,” he said. “The faster we can respond to a field issue, the less safety risk, less chance for injuries and we minimized the scope.”And less chance for future consent orders, of course. “We don’t ever want that to happen again,” he said. “We are building things differently now. We’re all about being best in class for safety.”

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The top bid for this Rod Millen-inspired 1984 Mazda RX-7 rally car is currently $13,777 on Bring a Trailer, with bidding open until Sunday, February 13. Despite a clean Carfax record, this RX-7 has been raced, bumped, rolled, and refurbished. It has lived most of its life as a rally car with stages completed at rally events including the Missouri Show Me Rally, 100 Acre Wood, and a six-hour NASA Enduro race.In addition to the obvious rally-car modifications, a few of the car’s original GSL-SE options, such as electronic fuel injection and power windows, have been removed.

The most attention-grabbing stuff at auction is typically a low-mileage this or a one-of-one uber-rare celebrity-owned that. If the photo of it upside down wasn’t obvious enough, this 1984 Mazda RX-7 GSL-SE rally car fits in neither category. It’s been flipped on its lid. Bodyslammed by a tree. And, later, had its engine’s electronic fuel injection removed in favor of a carburetor.

What made the 1984 RX-7 GSL-SE special was its bigger, better, electronically fuel-injected 135-hp 1.3-liter rotary engine. The 13B had 34 more horsepower than the engine originally in previous RX-7s. Among other improvements, the GSL-SE trim had bigger brakes, an updated suspension, and larger wheels.
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The current owner, who has filmed several parts of the car’s restoration process on his YouTube channel, admits the freshened-up engine doesn’t have much run time. It starts and drives fine but hasn’t been given a proper flogging in any sanctioned event since the resto. The car shows roughly 127,000 miles on the odometer, but its little rotary engine recently went under the knife for fresh apex and coolant seals. Other engine mods include a larger radiator and a higher-output alternator from a second-generation RX-7, likely to help power the big light pods mounted to the nose. The livery is especially eye-catching. The design was inspired by the four-wheel-drive prototype RX-7 driven by Pikes Peak Hill Climb champ Rod Millen throughout the early 1980s SCCA Pro Rally Series. Among the giant striping and Tokico Gas Shocks logos are 2WD stickers that parody the ones found on the winning 4WD prototype car.

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The interior is also a tribute to rallying. The carpets and accessory wiring harnesses have been gutted in favor of simplicity and a six-point roll cage that has been welded to the chassis. The original red dashboard and keyed ignition are still intact. The radio and doors have been recovered with aluminum panels, and bright-red Sparco bucket seats have been installed. There are also new LED interior service lights for the cabin and another service light under the hood that you can move around should you need it. If you’re someone who really likes RX-7s and really wants to compete in rallycross, most of the work is done for you.

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Under the chassis sit extra bracing and supports to help protect the shocks, front control arms, and rear axle. The cat-less exhaust is pure race car with plenty of brap out back thanks to a custom-built setup with mandrel-bent tubing.There’s plenty of well-placed skepticism when buying someone else’s project car, but why chop, gut, paint an otherwise clean low-mile first-generation RX-7? This one’s already hit trees. Now it’s back and ready for more trees, er, racing. And good luck shopping for a race car if buying something barn-engineered makes you flinch.
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Mercedes-Benz has confirmed that the A-class sedan will depart the U.S. lineup.The AMG A35 had already been dropped, and now the A220 model will no longer be available after the 2022 model year.The GLA-class crossover will now be the cheapest Mercedes, and the CLA-class sedan will stick around for now.The entry-level Benz is no more. The A-class sedan will depart the U.S. market after the 2022 model year, as first reported by Automotive News and confirmed to C/D by a Mercedes spokesperson. Starting at $35,000, the A220 four-door served as the price leader in the lineup, but the GLA-class crossover will soon take over this spot with its $37,450 entry cost.

Mercedes had already killed off the A-class sedan’s more powerful AMG variant, the A35, and sales have slipped in recent years. It achieved 17,641 sales in 2019, its first year on the market, but dropped to just 8108 units sold in 2021. The GLA, meanwhile, sold 14,322 units last year. Upon its introduction, the A-class took over the entry-level spot from the CLA-class, a slightly swoopier small sedan best remembered for its 2013 Super Bowl ad proclaiming a starting price under $30,000.The current CLA will stick around for the time being, and Mercedes says the decision to drop the A-class is “consistent with our ongoing effort to streamline our product offering strategy.” The CLA competes in the same segment as the A-class did and we would guess that it earns better profit margins for the company considering its higher pricing. Rival automaker BMW also has two entries in this segment, the two-door 2-series coupe and four-door 2-series Gran Coupe that ride on different platforms, while Audi only has one, the A3 sedan.2022 A-class inventory will likely remain at dealers throughout the year, as Mercedes has not announced when production ends for the U.S.
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