Never Stop Driving #120: Grab Bag!

 This week, I want to catch up with you on what we’ve been up to here at Hagerty Media and share some other interesting tidbits.  

Let’s start with our biggest hit of the month: an article about a mine Ford has used for decades to store cars. The lead photo, a historical image of early 1970s Ford Mavericks, had been bouncing around the internet for a while before we ran it in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, and we later did more digging. The mine is in Missouri, a state that seems adept at finding other uses for man-made underground lairs. Earlier this year, while my son and I were in St. Louis to race micro sprint cars, we floated on an underground lake below Bonne Terra, MO. The world is full of curiosities.  

I’ve long been curious about Ford’s River Rouge manufacturing complex. The massive site alongside River Rouge, which flows into the nearby Detroit River, was famous a century ago for ingesting raw materials at one end and popping out finished cars at the other. It was Henry Ford’s vertically integrated masterpiece. I got a close look at the complex via boat while doing volunteer “Trash Fishing.” My friend Tom Nardone started the nonprofit to clean up Detroit’s industrial shoreline. The Ford complex is mostly idle except for F-150 production and an operation that distills coal into coke, an ingredient for iron production (blast furnaces make molten iron which is the base material for steel). From a bobbing Boston Whaler we saw the glowing red coke ovens and every cell in my body yearned to go ashore and explore. Sigh. I wasn’t up for trespassing, but others are and these folks recently posted a video of the Rouge powerplant.  

Is Jaguar dead? The company that gave us cars like the brilliant XK120 that we featured on our Bull Market list, the D-Type, and the E-Type is at a major crossroads. What’s next? Frequent Hagerty contributor Jamie Kitman explains Jag’s Hail Mary future. 

VW is also in a pickle. This week the company informed employee representatives that it wants to close at least three German plants. This massive shock comes on the heels of our first drive of the new VW I.D. Buzz, the electric minivan that evokes the style of the original Microbus, a vehicle I’ve long called the “Freedom Van.” That’s not because the Microbus is so often associated with hippie culture and Grateful Dead followers but because it’s the one vehicle that is most likely repairable around the globe. Its appeal, its emotional draw, is that it can take you everywhere for however long you want to stay on the road. Of course, that’s pure fantasy! We love our cars, however, for often irrational and imagined reasons. Jason Cammisa, our resident VW expert, produced an engrossing video about Ferdinand Piech that helps explain how VW got here. Also, last week Cammisa reviewed the I.D. Buzz and explained the ups and downs of VW’s fortunes in the U.S. marketplace.  

Volkswagen also introduced the first two products from its new Scout division, which of course sent Hagerty’s Valuations experts to their data sheets to prognosticate whether the new Scout models will lift the prices of the original International Scouts. Find out here.  

And here’s this week’s reminder that Tesla’s use of the term “Full Self Driving” is false advertising: The system failed to detect a deer. What’s interesting to me is the number of Tesla fans who jumped onto the thread to defend the system. Is Tesla a cult?  

One of my enduring frustrations with the car industry is its aversion to standardization. For example, why do we need so many different types of fuses? There are several EV charging systems: the Tesla one and the others. Dumb. We also have several types of coolants—a vital engine fluid. They often do not mix. This explainer will help you keep them straight.  

Here in the U.S., we buy about 15 million new cars a year. In China, they purchase twice as many and, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley, the country has the capacity to build 58 million cars. Those are just a few of the fascinating figures—another is that EVs have 40% fewer parts than gas-engine cars—I learned listening to this Farley interview.  

Before I sign off, check out this heartwarming tale of a young cash-strapped car nut who found a way to cheaply crash cars in his driveway.  

Have a great weekend! 

Larry  

P.S.: Your feedback and comments are welcome.   

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