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This story originally appeared in the February 1989 issue of Car and Driver. To hear Bruce Benedict tell it, invent­ing the first modern ragtop pickup truck was not a stroke of genius but rather a reasoned response to an obvious marketing need. Benedict, product-planning chief for the Dodge Dakota pickup line, says that his people were simply “looking for a niche product that no one else had, to help bring buyers into the showrooms to see the rest of the Dakotas.”Everyone knows that there are a lot of convertible pickups running around in California,” Benedict goes on, explain­ing the inspiration matter-of-factly, “but they’re all one-of-a-kinds built by chop shops. After bringing the convertible passenger car back with our K-body, we thought it would be nice to bring out the first pickup convertible.”Benedict and his posse of Dodge Boys may act as if creating the Dakota convertible was a short day’s labor, but deep down they’ve got to be excited about their new baby. The Dakota convertible is going to thaw hearts otherwise ice-cold to these motorized pack horses. We know. It happened to us.

Dodge

On the surface, a pickup truck with a flop top makes about as much sense as a steel baseball mitt. Pickups are designed for hard work, after all. But everyone knows that most pickups actually live a life of leisure. So if people are buying pickups for the fun of owning a car alter­native, why not go full-frivolous and build a sun-worshiping, let’s-go-to-the­-beach party animal? Why not indeed. If a Dodge Dakota convertible sounds like your kind of wheels we have good news: we’ve driven a prototype, and it works. Out on the road, with the top down, the Dakota ragtop is a four­-wheeled attention grabber. As for the mechanical bits, they work about as well as they do in any Dakota steel-top­—which is to say, the Dakota convertible still drives like a truck. But its ability to let the great outdoors in just about negates its pickup-truck drawbacks.

Dodge

The Dakota convertible will go on sale sometime this spring—the exact date hasn’t been set yet—and there probably won’t be enough to go around. “There’s never been a vehicle like it before,” says Benedict, “so no one really knows how many we can sell.” The production schedule has some elasticity in it, but Dodge’s initial guesstimate calls for a mere 2000 examples to be produced. To keep things simple, all Dakota ragtops will be equipped with the Dakota line’s Sport package. The Sport package includes the short-wheelbase (112.0 inch) chassis; a 125-hp, 3.9-liter, 90-de­gree V-6; and a heavy helping of extras. A live-speed manual transmission, alloy wheels, driving lights, a dashful of gauges, a padded roll bar, velour upholstery, power windows and locks, and rear-wheel anti-lock brakes are standard. The few options include a four-speed automatic and air conditioning. After riding the range in a pre-produc­tion four-wheel-drive Dakota convert­ible, we came away most impressed by its solidity. Slicing the top off of most of to­day’s unit-body cars renders them as wispy as an oak leaf, but the Dakota is built on a separate frame. Sawing off the roof doesn’t weaken it appreciably, so it hardly shivers more than a standard Dakota when the tires thump the bumps.

Dodge

In most respects the convertible also drives like a standard-issue Dakota. Over railroad tracks or rough blacktop you feel like you’re perched atop a galloping horse. The V-6 wheezes and strains, and it can’t deliver enough thrust to keep you from yawning. The four-speed automatic acts as if it were trying to make up for the somnolent engine by slamming each shift home. What will keep you wide awake is the wind noise. At 75 mph, even with the top up, the roar drowns out everything else. Watch the veins in your passenger’s neck bulge as he attempts to shout above the gale. Watch him quit trying to talk. Watch him resort to hand signals. Oops, there we go getting serious, judging the Dakota convertible as if it were a real car. No way. It wasn’t intend­ed to make anyone’s list of top-flight In­terstate yachts. The Dakota convertible is a Main Street trawler. Flip down the manual top—it folds almost effortlessly—dial up some tunes, and watch the world watch you.Oh, and don’t forget the sun block.

Specifications

Specifications
Dodge Dakota ConvertibleVehicle Type: front-engine, rear/4-wheel-drive, 3-passenger, 2-door convertible pickup truck
PRICE
As Tested: $17,500 (estimated)
ENGINE
V-6, iron block and heads, Chrysler electronic engine-control system with 1×2-bbl throttle-body fuel injectionDisplacement: 238 in3, 3903 cm3Power (SAE net): 125 hp @ 4000 rpm
TRANSMISSION
4-speed automatic with lockup torque converter
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 112.0 inLength: 192.2 inWidth: 72.3 inHeight: 67.1 inCurb Weight: 3950 lb
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City: 14 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED

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Cadillac offered select buyers of its first EV, the Lyriq, a $5500 rebate if they agreed to sign an NDA and participate in a study. The Lyriq is priced starting just under $60,000.The study looks to discern driver behaviors like charging and maintenance habits.Only around 20 people were selected for the study, and data is collected verbally, not through real-time tracking.If you participate in a clinical trial, you try a certain treatment, allow the researcher to collect data about you and your treatment, and often get compensated for it. Cadillac is trying something similar as it rolls out its first all-electric vehicle, the Lyriq. As first reported by Carsdirect.com, select buyers were offered a $5500 rebate on their vehicle, which the Detroit Free Press reported was on the condition that GM could collect data on how they use their Lyriq. Participants also had to sign a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting them from disclosing their experience with the Lyriq to anyone but GM.

Cadillac

The program is not widely available, however. Only select buyers were offered the opportunity, according to Cadillac spokesman Michael Albano in a statement to the Free Press on Saturday. Though he didn’t share the selection criteria, he said that there are about 20 participants, primarily in and around New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit.Albano characterized the participants as “tech-savvy” and “early adopters” and said that “We will use the program to learn more about customer behaviors and their vehicles.”According to Albano, Cadillac has typically used employees to conduct vehicle studies, but that through researching customers, GM “can see [customers’] charging behaviors, driving behaviors, and how they use the vehicle.”

The study is designed to help Cadillac identify bugs or problems and learn how their customers use their electric cars. Cadillac reportedly sold out of Lyriqs within hours of them going on sale May 19, with GM initially prepared to build 25,000 2023 models. The Debut Edition started at $59,990. Eventually, Cadillac, like most other automakers, will only offer electric vehicles, so getting their first EV launch right is of utmost importance, especially with the launch of their low-volume flagship EV, the Celestiq, just beyond the horizon. GM did not respond to a request for comment.
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Aston Martin has redesigned its logo, removing the U-shaped line in the wings to create a cleaner look.The British sports-car maker also announced a plan to raise $783 million to help pay down its debt and develop new vehicles, including EVs.Part of the investment will come from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which will spend $93.5 million to take a 16.7 percent stake in Aston Martin.The introduction of an Aston Martin SUV, the DBX, in 2021 was meant to bolster the British sports-car brand’s sales and help the company that has outlived seven bankruptcies avoid an eighth. But DBX sales haven’t exactly taken off, and as of March, Aston Martin had a net debt of nearly $1.2 billion, according to Autocar. Now executive chairman Lawrence Stroll, who led a group of investors to take over the company in 2020, has announced a plan to raise $783 million in capital to pay down that debt and develop new models. And as part of this massive reinvestment, Aston Martin has also given a subtle update to its logo and coined a new tagline.

Aston Martin

The logo, which was redesigned in collaboration with British art director and graphic designer Peter Saville, is minimally changed, simply removing the U-shaped line that previously ran beneath the “Aston Martin” text. There are also slight revisions to the font and the thickness of the lines in the wing design. This is the first update to the logo since 2003, and the icon has only been changed eight times in Aston Martin’s 109-year history. The refreshed wings arrive alongside a new motto—”Intensity. Driven.”—and Aston Martin says the new marketing strategy is meant to attract a younger audience.The new wing design will be seen for the first time this weekend on the Aston Martin AMR22 Formula 1 car at the French Grand Prix. Aston Martin says the revised logo’s first appearance on a road car will be on its “next generation of sports cars,” with updates to the Vantage, DB11, and DBS rumored for 2023.

Aston Martin

But more important for Aston Martin’s continued existence than a slightly redrawn logo are the wave of new investments that should give the firm some breathing room when it comes to launching refreshed models and preparing for an electrified future. The reinvestment plan, as first reported by Autocar, includes a $93.5 million deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) for a 16.7 percent stake in the company. Stroll suggested that the PIF’s $1 billion investment in EV startup Lucid Motors could provide a path for Aston Martin’s electrification strategy; the PIF also became a major investor in McLaren earlier this year.

The Saudi backing will be joined by contributions from Stroll’s investment group, Yew Tree, and Mercedes-Benz to raise $401.6 million, and an extra $381.2 million will be raised by issuing more shares. This will drop Yew Tree’s stake from 22 to 18.3 percent, but the group says it will buy an additional $126.4 million worth of shares to boost its stake back up. Similarly, Mercedes-Benz’s portion will fall from 11.7 to 9.7 percent, but the German automaker will reinvest $67.2 million to increase its stake following the rights issue. Along with the reinvestment plan, Aston Martin confirmed that its first full EV will arrive in 2025 and will likely ride on a Mercedes platform. The British sports-car maker says that it aims to use the new funds to reach 10,000 sales by 2024 or 2025. In the first half of 2022, 2676 Aston Martins found buyers, down from 2901 units in 2021. The company says it expects to sell 6600 cars this year, so a big sales increase will be required for Aston Martin to reach its goals in 2025.
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These are challenging times for customers looking to buy any kind of vehicle but, a newly released study shows, particularly difficult if you’re shopping with an EV startup.The Pied Piper research firm studied customers of 25 premium auto brands, using “mystery shoppers” to evaluate the shopping experience, checking things such as response to website inquiries and the quality of the in-person shopping experience.The resulting Prospect Satisfaction Index found Lucid, Polestar, Rivian, and Tesla were less responsive to shoppers than established brands such as Cadillac and Infiniti, even though EV customers may need more questions answered than people shopping for traditional gas-powered vehicles.Electric-vehicle advocates and early adopters have long maintained the experience of learning about EVs, shopping for them, and buying them is better at those few brands that sell directly to buyers—Tesla foremost, now also Lucid and Rivian—than at conventional third-party franchised dealers of the sort used by Toyota, GM, Honda, Ford, and other established carmakers.

Now a study from the research firm Pied Piper appears to turn that conventional wisdom on its head. Conducted from July 2021 to June 2022, it compared the helpfulness and responsiveness of sales staff from established brands against those at independent locations operated by EV startups. Covering 25 premium brands, it spanned more than 1000 measurements of the in-person sales experience and 1650 measurements of responsiveness to customer inquiries on the company’s website. The five top-ranked brands were Cadillac, Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz, Acura, and Volvo, while four of the five lowest scorers were EV companies: Tesla, Lucid, Polestar, and Rivian.

Pied Piper Industry Studies

The Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) study has been issued annually since 2007. It uses mystery shoppers who rate locations against “customer helpfulness and sales best practices,” which, the company notes, “measure and report how effectively retailers help their shoppers become buyers.”

Pied Piper Industry Studies

The audience for the study is both carmakers and national dealer groups, but Pied Piper funds the study itself. “Our business is helping [automakers] improve their sales,” CEO Fran O’Hagan told Car and Driver, “by calculating sales best practices and then measuring and reporting dealer by dealer whether those best practices are followed.”Owners and advocates note, correctly, that the process of deciding to buy an electric car involves more research and education than replacing a five-year-old compact crossover with a new compact crossover. Questions on how EVs are charged and what their real-world range may be under a variety of use cases, plus concerns over battery life, are among the most common queries.

For that reason, this study can be viewed as handicapping EV-only makers, since a majority of their buyers will be new to EVs and require more time and more handholding. A first-time buyer may require more visits to the Chevrolet dealer to choose a Bolt EV over a Trax, but that extra time is rolled into the far larger pool of more conventional sales of vehicles without plugs—which require none of that education.For the first time, this year’s survey included seven exotic brands, including Ferrari and Rolls-Royce, and three new EV brands (Lucid, Polestar, and Rivian) along with Tesla. The exotics’ scores were variable at best: high on some measures, low on others. But the EV-only brands as a group scored lower on responsiveness and steps toward closing a sale, and Tesla’s ratings slid.Wakeup Call for StartupsStill, many of the study’s findings suggest EV-only makers simply aren’t as responsive to inquiries as dealerships. For instance, more than 50 percent of the time, the best of the 25 premium brands responded to customer web inquiries in 30 minutes or less. Polestar, Rivian, and Tesla (as well as Ferrari) did so less than 10 percent of the time. EV brands also scored lower on use of texts, phone calls, and immediate responses to shoppers’ use of website chat features. As for visits to the brands’ locations—the study calls them “dealerships” throughout—there too EV brands suffered against the standardized processes of third-party franchised dealerships for established makers. (Because Rivian has no retail outlets, the study notes its in-person measurement was “carried out instead by customers contacting the brand by phone call, to give the brand an opportunity to interact in a [similar] manner.”)Tesla, the highest-volume EV maker, had rated above average or leading in earlier Pied Piper studies in 2019, 2021, and 2022. But its ratings have now slipped below the average. Tesla’s “sales methodology has transformed more into order-taking than customer assistance,” the company concludes. “Tesla’s model today appears to be, ‘If you want what we sell, and require no assistance, it’s easy to order,’ ” commented O’Hagan. “With an online focus and few retail locations, these new EV brands have a great opportunity to excel with phone, chat, and email interactions with their customers,” O’Hagan said. “However, we found that when their customers reach out for help or with questions, they are usually met with brand reps who answer only simple, scripted questions without being proactively helpful.” He called it a “missed opportunity” to turn inquiries into potential customers.
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The 2023 Porsche Taycan has a quicker infotainment system and updates to its battery that promise to slightly improve both charging speed and range.Other equipment updates made for 2023 Taycan include Variable Light Control available on all Taycans with the panoramic glass roof, easier setup of the Porsche Dashcam, and the deletion of the 19-inch fully-painted Taycan Aero wheels.The 2023 Taycan can be ordered starting at $88,150. Since its debut in 2020, Porsche has sold more than 75,000 of its all-electric Taycan sedan, and Sport and Cross Turismo wagons, globally. For a moment, it looked like its EV would outsell the brand’s crown jewel 911 here in the U.S., but six months into 2022, Taycan sales lurk behind sales for one of our favorite sports cars by 726 units. With plenty of time to heal that divide, Porsche has announced 2023 Taycan pricing and updates that will affect even the earliest Taycans sold three years ago.

Porsche says it has updated the Taycan’s 71.0-kWh and 83.7-kWh batteries’ cooling and heating strategy, as it did last year, to allow it to precondition quicker and to a higher temperature. The result is getting the battery ready to reach its 270-kW maximum charging speed at a higher state of charge. This means instead of having the peak available only between states of charge between 5 to 15 percent, even if charging begins at 30 percent, it’s possible to reach DC fast-charging speeds of up to 270 kW thanks to the car’s 800-volt architecture. This charging functionality will be offered as a free update for current Taycan owners, Porsche said.In theory, reaching that max charging speed more often and more quickly should reduce charging times, and Porsche says the 2023 Taycan also gains 50 kilometers (31 miles) in overall range as measured by Europe’s WLTP test protocol. That’s thanks to the latest software updates, including switching off the front motor in Normal and Range modes in dual-motor variants.
EPA figures aren’t yet out for the 2023 Taycan, but using current WLTP and EPA estimates as a benchmark, the farthest-driving Taycan 4S Performance Battery Plus model earned a 254-mile rating on the WLTP scale and a 227-mile EPA estimate here in the U.S. That means it’s reasonable to assume the max range for Taycan could reach as high as 250 miles from the EPA. The optimizations don’t stop there. 2023 Taycans come with updated PCM 6.0 infotainment software with a revised and more colorful user interface, and the addition of wireless Android Auto. Porsche will offer this as a free update to current Taycan owners, but it will require a visit to a Porsche service center for what Porsche says could take as much as a day to complete. The upgraded PCM 6.0 will allow drivers to filter charging stations by power output, allowing users to prioritize the quickest chargers nearby.In terms of equipment, the new Porsche will look a lot like the outgoing model with the exception of the deletion of the fully-painted 19-inch Aero wheels. Those are gone, but the polished and painted 19-inch Aero wheels remain. Variable Light Control is now available on all Taycans with the panoramic glass roof which allows the driver to electronically change the roof from clear to opaque. Porsche now includes the preparation treatment for its dashcam, in the form of a wiring harness for optional front and rear Porsche Tequipment safety cameras. The 2023 Porsche Taycan is live on the configurator today, with pricing starting at $88,150 for the sedan and $99,150 for the Taycan Cross Turismo wagon.
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