Author: Jonathon Ramsey

Some Seattle-area Mazdas’ media systems bricked by a radio transmission

Every car forum has threads devoted to broken infotainment systems. As vehicles pile on the tech controlled through infotainment systems, it's inevitable that every automaker will get its time in the spotlight — or the courts — to deal with the innumerable traps hidden in ginormous amounts of code found in the average modern car. Now it's Mazda's turn, but only for certain Mazdas from the 2014 to 2017 model years, and only those in the Seattle area able to pick up National Public Radio station KUOW.

A piece in the Seattle Times explains that something in the HD Radio signal KUOW sends is nearly bricking the infotainment systems in these vehicles. The common thread is that after the inciting incident, the radio will only play KUOW. And, since the screen will only play the Mazda wake-up animation repeatedly, owners have lost access to their navigation, Bluetooth, reversing camera and vehicle information. 

No one believes it's an NPR conspiracy. Yet. The Seattle Times spoke to a few owners, a couple of dealers, Mazda and Xperi, a company making the software HD radio runs on. Mazda fingered the culprit as the station transmitting image files without an extension, say for an album cover, that Mazda's media software tries and fails to process, with tragic results. Mazda didn't say why this issue is only happening on the model years at issue, nor why this specific software can't work around a file extension error, which have existed as long as there have been files.

The story is one of those that might make you shake your head and offer a tragic chuckle for the unfortunate, then look at your car outside and wonder, "How long until you do me like this?" The little snafus seem likelier every day, given that we weren't joking about the amount of software in today's cars. Way back in 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers wrote, "It takes dozens of microprocessors running 100 million lines of code to get a premium car out of the driveway, and this software is only going to get more complex." That's about four times the amount of code needed to operate the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, almost 70% more than all of the code that runs Facebook. This was before the all-out race for driver convenience features, vehicles becoming digital nodes and the industry's quest to catch up to consumer electronics software cycles. Imagine how many more lines have been compiled in 13 years, and how many more are to come (Level 3 autonomy, anyone?).

Before you do that, though, check out the Seattle Times story. And kudos to Mazda for stepping up take care of affected vehicles while everyone tries to figure out what's happening.

Related Video:

Sherp The Ark is the dream we weren’t brave enough to have

Sometimes what hurts most is realizing your dreams weren't big enough. Here we've been lusting after #VanLife, when we should have been imagining the possibilities for an overlanding Sherp. The Ukrainian go-anywhere 4x4 began trundling over and through everything on 63-inch tubeless tires in 2016, the compact four-seater good for perhaps a few days in the back of beyond. Now its makers have revealed their get-off-the-grid version called Sherp The Ark. This puts an upgraded Sherp on tractor duty, pulling a 15.75-foot trailer that rides on six driven wheels, creating a 10x10 that almost makes us wish for a less-than-total Apocalypse.

Note, this isn't a Sherp simply hooked up to a trailer at will – Sherp The Ark is a complete unit. Whereas the Sherp uses skid steering to turn, like a tank, Sherp The Ark gets three-axis steering like an airplane. That means turning the steering yoke can lift the tractor's front end, and raise and lower the tractor's rear end independently. The technique helps the minidozer climb over five-foot-high obstacles, traverse 6.5-foot-wide ground openings, and up and down 40-degree inclines. That grade angle is five degrees more than can be climbed and descended with the standard Sherp Truck and Sherp Pro. Switches in the cabin permit the driver to disconnect any of the driven wheels on the trailer individually, and to disconnect the four wheels on the tractor so the trailer becomes a push vehicle.

The standard, 8.26-foot-long Sherp is powered by a Kubota 1.5-liter, four-cylinder diesel with 44.3 horsepower and 88 pound-feet of torque, charged with moving 2,866 pounds up to 25 miles per hour on land, 3.7 mph in the water. The 31.6-foot-long Sherp The Ark, with a dry weight of 10,500 pounds, gets a Doosan 2.4-liter four-cylinder diesel with 74 hp and 206 lb-ft, and can run up to 18.6 mph on land and 3.7 mph in the water. The Sherp can hold 76.2 gallons of fuel in five tanks, Sherp The Ark hauls 213 gallons in one tank and ten auxiliary canisters, good for around 82 hours of running. 

There are three trailer units available – a flat load platform, a liquid tanker, and an enclosed box – all with 6,600-pound load capacity. The box unit can be turned into a personnel carrier with up to 21 seats. We are naturally more interested in the Dwelling Module for "long expedition projects in hard-to-reach areas" that is "properly isolated with energy-saving materials." For an example of what looks like, check out this video from last year, which we'll guess was a prototype run for The Ark. Glorious. With two of these in convoy, there'd be no such thing as the end of the Earth. About the only thing that can stop the non-street-legal Sherp The Ark is a paved road.

Sherp hasn't released a price yet, but the $119,999 price for the Sherp Pro gives one a good floor to start looking upward.

Related Video:

Video ID:
c8719a8a-26e7-347f-9381-95115a3fa0a5

Playlist ID:

Autoplay:
false

Mute:
false

Continuous:
false

Ad Key:

Ad Value:

Full-size Pierce Arrow Pikes Peak car built out of gingerbread

Fancy hotels love a big ol' fancy gingerbread sculpture this time of year. Forbes Travel lists a few of them, the exhibitions including a 10-foot-tall streetcar in at the Four Seasons New Orleans and an 18-foot-tall lighthouse at Ritz-Carlton Bal Harbour. The Broadmoor, Colorado's luxury resort near Pikes Peak, has been in the gingerbread extravaganza game since 1964 and lately put together some stunning creations. In 2017, the hotel's pastry team built a 12-foot tall, 3.7-million-calorie gingerbread church, then followed that in 2018 with a 13.5-foot-tall replica of the original 1918 resort. This year the dimensions grow but in the horizontal, and the subject matter into our wheelhouse, with the resort's pastry team creating a 14-foot long replica of The Broadmoor Special, a 1918 Pierce Arrow Touring Car converted to race in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb eight times through the 1920s.

A gent named Spencer Penrose built the Pikes Peak highway to the mountain's summit, founded the hill climb race in 1916, and the resort that opened in 1918. To whip up interest in the ventures, he gave the The Broadmoor's master mechanic, Angelo Cimino, and his chauffeur, Harry McMillen, his Pace Arrow Touring Car and directions to turn the limousine into a racer. The car that became known as the Yellow Devil climbed the 14,433-foot mountain eight times from 1922 to 1932, finishing fourth in 1926 and 1930. The hotel submitted the Yellow Devil to a two-year restoration in time to run the race's 100-year anniversary in 2016. The car is now on display in the hotel's Penrose Heritage Museum.

The Broadmoor's done us all a favor by providing the recipe for the 14-foot Yellow Devil gingerbread replica. It took the 15-strong pastry crew two weeks to create, leaving any amateur chef plenty of time to get another one built before the holidays. Sourcing the recipe's 375 pounds of all-purpose flower, 482 pounds of sugar, 300 pounds of dark chocolate and 700 egg whites shouldn't be difficult. Locating the more arcane ingredients like "10 lbs of Joy" and "2 Magical Wood Workers" could prove a tad more challenging.

‘Shelby American’ documentary tells the outsized truth about Carroll Shelby

The cineplex version of Carroll Shelby's generalissimo charge into Europe with Ken Miles and a Ford GT40, otherwise known as "Ford v Ferrari," won the weekend box office. Due to a desire to put the best story on screen within the allotted run time, that film edited some of the events and facts out of the tale. If there's one thing Carroll Shelby's life didn't need, though, it's creative license. The story of how the son of a rural mail carrier became an enthusiast icon is just as outrageous as any movie because it's true, and a new documentary by Adam Carolla and business partner Nate Adams called "Shelby American" tells the man's biography straight. 

In 2016, Carolla and Adams released the doc "The 24 Hour War," their telling of the Le Mans showdown between the GT40 and Ferraris. While putting that film together, the two learned so much about Shelby that they approached the Shelby family about doing another film focused on the Texan's story. Adams said, "The more research we did, the more we learned Carroll Shelby was an amazing character. It wasn't just him; it was Phil Remington, Peter Brock, Charlie Agapiou, and the others he surrounded himself with. They were all incredible. We knew we had to devote an entire doc to him."

The film team worked with Carroll's relatives for another 18 months to get more detail on his life, and carried out more interviews with the man's colleagues and competitors. The two-hour-long "Shelby American" has new vintage racing footage. There are interviews with members of Ferrari's Le Mans team including Piero Ferrari, John Surtees, and Mauro Forghieri, a vital part of the history often overlooked with the hubbub around the race. There are more interview clips from Henry Ford II and new interviews with Edsel Ford II, as well as designer Peter Brock, Bill Krause, who raced drove the Cobra in its first race, the late Dan Gurney, and longtime Ford exec John Clinard who'd go on to father the original Cars & Coffee event, and more. 

Two of the comments made by viewers at a private screening were, "Brutally honest," and, "One of the upcoming films will be entertaining and the other will be factual." But the best quote is this, from the man himself in the "Shelby American" trailer, after winning Le Mans and referring to the heart issue he'd had since the age of seven: "They told me I had five years to live. I figured, so what? I might as well try to build the car that I'd dreamed of." 

There's every reason to see both films. When you're ready for the factual version head to Carolla's Chassy Media site, where the documentary is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and as a streaming download. While you're there, you might as well pick up "The 24 Hour War," too.

Michigan dealer turns a Jeep Gladiator into a Scrambler tribute

Motor1 discovered this gem buried on YouTube, a Jeep Gladiator made over into a tribute to the Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler. Built by Preferred Jeep in Grand Haven, Michigan — and still for sale at the time of writing — the Scrambler look-back just about nails one of the iconic Scrambler liveries from 1982. The only things missing are the brown hardtop and brown wheel cover for the bed-mounted spare tire.

The truck's based on a Gladiator S with the eight-speed auto. We'd prefer the six-speed manual, but the transmission isn't a misstep — the original offered a three-speed automatic. White wagon-wheel rims wear 35-inch tires under a two-inch Mopar lift, the custom roll bar is lined with enough lights to spook everything in the hills, and the spare tire gets a period-correct Y-shaped retaining bar. There's a basic infotainment system inside, and plenty of other features the Scrambler never offered like climate control, heated front seats, and Bluetooth.

Anyone who wants to take the dealer version home will start the negotiating at $52,270 before incentives. Sure, that's not far off Gladiator Rubicon asking prices, but frankly, it's also not far off some original Scrambler asking prices. In 2010 you could find OG Jeep pickups in the fancier Laredo trim under $10K. Dealers and private sellers are now asking anywhere from the mid-$20,000s to more than $40,000 for good examples of the one-time ugly duckling. Models with LS engine swaps have gone for close to $50,000 at auction this year.

Jeep created a Scrambler concept for this year's Easter Jeep Safari and "didn't rule [it] out ... for production one day." Until one day comes, Grand Haven's work might do the trick.  

Related Video:

Video ID: 9677a7a6-57b1-3e09-9739-cb2fec36de15

Playlist ID:

Autoplay: false

Mute: false

Continuous: true

Ad Key:

Ad Value:

The Subaru Outback is pretty much the entire wagon market

Last year in the United States, Subaru dealers sold a new Outback wagon every 2.94 minutes. Sales were brisker the year before, when dealers sold a new Outback every 2.78 minutes. It cracked the 50,000-units-per-year barrier every year but one starting in 1997, and has shifted more than 100,000 units annually in the United States every year since 2011. From 2013-2015, Kelley Blue Book said the Outback sat on dealer lots for less time than any other car on sale. Here's a starker set of numbers: J.D. Power, as quoted in a CNBC video, put the U.S. station wagon market at 1.4% of the total U.S. car market in 2018. However, the Outback alone was 1.2%, meaning the sales of every other wagon amounted to a minuscule 0.2% of the total car market. Or, as Road & Track put it, "Out of every 20 wagons sold here, 17 are Subaru Outbacks. Damn."

Without taking anything away from Subaru, we need to thank Audi again for bringing the RS 6 Avant and A6 Allroad here, even if the best the Ingolstadt brand can do is bleed marketing dollars to scrap it out with every other automaker for, well, scraps.

The CNBC vid doesn't get into how the Outback became the wagon heavyweight save for a mention about it being "part wagon, part crossover" and saying it has "evolved to incorporate more attributes of SUVs and crossovers" like all-wheel drive. That take overlooks the fact that Subaru debuted the jacked-up, bold-faced Legacy Outback at the end of 1994 as a 1995-model-year offering. Subaru designed the Legacy Outback to be a wagon/SUV tweener, well after Subaru was already known for its AWD chops, and before anyone had coined the word "crossover." The Toyota RAV4, now credited as being the first crossover, didn't show until early 1996. A Subaru exec said in 2014, "We could see the sales explode in SUVs and nobody else really produced a car-based SUV." That quote, by the way, came in a nifty article about the death of the station wagon, shortly after the author wrote, "The real culprit behind the disappearance of the middle class wagon in America (besides the entire American car-buying public) is, in my opinion, the Subaru Outback."   

It helped that Subaru knew its niche and built just the car its customers wanted, which is why Car and Driver named the Outback the best wagon for an active, outdoor lifestyle, why Autotrader calls it "the best of a few different worlds," and why CarMax has averaged more than two used Outbacks sold every day for 13 years.

But the marketing campaigns sealed it. Practically picking up where Subaru left off with irreverent DL wagon marketing in the 1970s - that was the wagon that "climbed like a goat, worked like a horse and ate like a bird" - Subaru has put Crocodile Dundee, Lance Armstrong, shaming the Germans, animals who want Ricky, honeymooners, and the "Love" of oh so many dogs to work in the wild, mountainous, rainy outdoors flogging its wares. Any CMOs looking for a case study in ROI, the Outback is that, too. Anyone looking for another sad story about the dim future for wagons, check out the video above.

driive.com
All about Smart and Sustainable Mobility

Archives

December 2024
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031