While You Were Sleeping: July 16, 2014

How is it that one man can play a Brecker Brothers tune all by himself, but Volkswagen can’t match Kia’s profitability and Acura can’t manage to sell cars? Could it be that the more talented people you put together in a room, the fewer good ideas come out of that room? But if that’s the case, how do you explain the Brecker Brothers in the first place?

Maybe Have The Guys Who Made The Mk4 Coilpacks Make The Rest Of The Car: Martin Winterkorn is calling for action that is “clear, effective, and sometimes painful” to save 5 billion euros on core models by 2017. What is it with the German VW guys and the whipping and the bondage and the pain and whatnot? VW’s captive labor representative applauded the move. Winterkorn states that he wants to make it possible to profitably build cars in Germany, probably because saying anything else would be tantamount to mailing in his resignation letter.

But Someone Is Building Cars Profitably In Germany: “All two-door Porsche models will come from Zuffenhausen in the future.” That’s straight from the head of the works council. This goal will be accomplished by additional investment in the old triple-decker factory and also probably through reducing output by continuing to ensure that the 911 is both slower and less reliable than that hick-ass Corvette.

My Uncle Has A Country Place, That No One Knows About: Steering wheels will be gone by 2035, according to the always-profitable and interesting IEEE (geeks call it the Eye Triple E). The results of a study they mailed to their members confidently predicted the death of the human-directed vehicle within just twenty years, which is precisely the time gap between the 1979 Crown Victoria and the 1999 Crown Victoria. Other completely batshit-crazy things from the study: IEEE members believe that the show “The Big Bang Theory” is probably based on a real apartment in Los Angeles, and seventy-four percent of them expect the eventual vindication of the “Firewire” standard, with one member writing-in “Universal Sucky Butts! Am I right, or am I right?”

I Want To Believe That This Is From The Same Freakin’ Press Conference As The Other Wacky Statements: Incurable optimist Mike Accavitti told the Detroit News that the upcoming TLX sedan would be awesome. “Finally the moment is here that we’re going to unleash that TLX sedan, and we’re very confident it’s going to bring us the same kind of success we’ve experienced with the MDX and RDX.” Mr. Accavitti declined to state whether the “unleashing” would cause the same kind of side effects associated with other unleashings, ranging from my neighbor’s German Shepherd all the way to Kobe Bryant. Remember the days that you could actually walk into an Acura showroom and buy an Integra Type-R? In the words of my future ex-wife, Este Haim, those days are gone.