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A new NBC sitcom called American Auto looks at the struggles of 100-year-old Payne Motors as it tries to navigate the world of self-driving cars and other 2021 industry challenges.The producers and actors have ties to The Office, Superstore, and Saturday Night Live, so rest assured that they’re not as bumbling as the characters they play.Two episodes are out now on Hulu and iTunes, with NBC’s official start of the series coming on January 4.Workplace television comedies can be genius, as The Office and 30 Rock proved. They can also fall flat and disappear before anyone can pay attention enough to remember them (if you can name the early-1990s doctor’s-office sitcom that featured a young Ellen DeGeneres without Google’s help, you’re in the minority). With two episodes already out ahead of the January 4 debut, you can be the judge as to which category the new NBC sitcom called American Auto belongs in.

NBC

As the name might give away, American Auto is about a car company, in this case the fictional 100-year-old company Payne Motors. While the setting is a Detroit-based automaker (and there’s a joke about a former CEO being anti-Semitic that more than hints at Henry Ford), it’s still a relatively standard Hollywood workplace comedy. The cold open to the first episode is pretty damn funny, though, if you’ve ever wondered if the Chevy Nova naming debacle might repeat itself today.

Cyrus (Michael Benjamin Washington) presents plans for the Ponderosa, the company’s first completely autonomous vehicle.
NBC

The show has a strong production pedigree. Its creator, Justin Spitzer, previously worked as a writer on The Office and also created the sitcom Superstore, which followed a group of workers at a Walmart-like big box store. The cast is led by former Saturday Night Live star Ana Gasteyer, who plays the new CEO of Payne Motors, and Jon Barinholtz as the grandson of the retired Payne Motors CEO. Barinholtz was also in Superstore.Spitzer has been working on American Auto on and off since 2013, before Superstore. While that show was about the workers, American Auto is more about the executives. Early in the development work, he said, it didn’t even matter which industry the executives worked for.”The fact that it’s the auto industry came later,” Spitzer told Deadline. “I just wanted it to be about a big multibillion-dollar American industry.”

Barinholtz said this focus on the higher-ups gives American Auto a different vibe than Superstore, even if the creators and actors tried to put some of the same quirky heart into the new show.”Just because [the execs are the] decision makers doesn’t make them any more capable than the workers whose decisions they’re affecting,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “So we see how these decisions are made, and it’s not with as much thought as you would hope it is, if you’re a worker. It’s sometimes kind of just flying by the seat of their pants.”Be that as it may, based on the pilot episode, American Auto is up to date with issues in the modern auto industry. The episode features development and testing of a self-driving car called the Payne Ponderosa that has no brake pedal, with dangerous results. The second episode explores the idea of whether all publicity is good publicity after a serial killer makes another of the company’s vehicles, the Payne Magellan, famous after using it in a crime. You know, just feel-good family fun.The first two episodes of American Auto aired on NBC this past week, before the season kicks off for real on January 4. You can watch the already released episodes on Hulu or on iTunes or Apple TV with a season pass to the show or a subscription.
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French automaker Citroën has revealed this beach-buggy version of its electric Ami city car.The Ami is not just for Europe, though, despite its diminutive size. It will be coming to the U.S. in the car-sharing fleet of startup Free2Move, which is part of Citroën parent company PSA.Citroën said its My Ami Buggy concept is “one of the many faces that could be developed for Ami,” meaning it may not be ruled out for production someday.Citroën answers a question we never knew to ask with its recently revealed My Ami Buggy concept. As its name implies, the My Ami Buggy is, well, a theoretical beach-buggy variant of the brand’s Ami electric city car, a model that’s due to arrive in the United States as part of the fleet of vehicles used by the car-sharing service Free2Move.

Although Citroën is mum on the My Ami Buggy’s powertrain details, the French brand likely carries over the run-of-the-mill Ami’s lone 8-hp electric motor and 5.5-kWh battery pack to this tough but tiny safari-style Ami. Given its knobby tires and additional kit, such as its roof-mounted light bar and spare tire, we wager the My Ami Buggy is even slower than its stock sibling, which leisurely accelerates to a top speed of 28 mph. Same goes for the My Ami Buggy’s driving range, which we imagine falls a bit short of the Ami’s estimated 43-mile figure.Even so, the My Ami Buggy concept makes up for its likely acceleration- and range-related shortcomings by looking so damn cool. Credit the car’s safari-style treatment that makes this little electric vehicle look ready to take on the world’s toughest terrain (whether it’s capable of successfully doing so is a different story).
It also helps that the My Ami Buggy ditches the Ami’s doors to make way for chic tubular decor along the sills. Don’t worry, Citroën fits the My Ami Buggy with a set of deployable transparent canvas covers to keep occupants dry in the event of a rainstorm. Both driver and passenger, meanwhile, ought to find the My Ami Buggy a more comfortable place to while away miles relative to the standard Ami. Credit its seats’ 2.8-inch-thick seat padding, which is nearly 1.4 inches thicker than those of the Ami. Other noteworthy features of the My Ami Buggy concept include its removable exterior mirrors and various integrated clamps for a variety of personal devices, such as cellphones and speakers. Unfortunately, Citroën makes no mention of plans to offer a production variant of the My Ami Buggy concept other than to state that it “illustrates one of the many faces that could be developed for Ami, the atypical vehicle developed by Citroën, ready to explore new horizons.”Well, we think it ought to. After all, just imagine picking up a My Ami Buggy through Free2Move to stylishly cruise the streets of Miami (or is that My Ami?) Beach with neither a pair of doors nor a worry to ruin the vibe.
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Nissan U.K. has modified a 1986 Bluebird (we know it as the Sentra) and made it into an electric car.The electrifying parts are added from Nissan’s Leaf EV.Fortunately, changes to the exterior were very minor, and the 1980s-vintage graphics remain.The trend of automakers putting modern electric powertrains into their vintage vehicles continues, this time with Nissan. The Japanese automaker’s British arm has performed the swap on a 1986 Bluebird (our Nissan Sentra) to commemorate 35 years of U.K. auto production. Just as Nissan established a U.S. factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, in the 1980s, the company also set up a U.K. assembly plant at Sunderland, which began churning out Bluebirds in 1986. Today, Sunderland builds the Nissan Leaf, so a Bluebird/Leaf mashup neatly bookends the factory’s history.

david shepherd, Nissan

The repowered Bluebird hatchback uses a Leaf motor and 40.0-kWh battery pack, with the cells divided between the cargo area and under the hood. Additional modifications extended to the car’s HVAC, brakes, suspension, power steering, and lighting. The charging port is located behind the original fuel-filler flap, and the stock fuel gauge shows the battery’s state of charge. The exterior is largely unchanged other than LED taillights, LED backlighting for the Nissan badge, and a set of unmistakably ’80s graphics.

david shepherd, Nissan

The Nissan Newbird joins a parade of vintage cars that have been restored and converted to battery propulsion by their makers. They include Hyundai’s 1970s Pony and the follow-up ’80s Grandeur, the Opel Manta GSe, the Ford F-100 Eluminator pickup, and Chevy’s K5 Blazer, the latter two being SEMA builds that showcased an EV crate motor. While Nissan’s Newbird EV may not be an original idea, it’s fun to see another addition to a neat trend.
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