Friday Frankness

I have to admit I am haunted by the last words Larry Lucchino wrote to me. “I miss you, believe it or not.” With his death we will never again be able to speak or to meet face-to-face.

 

From The USA Wealth Report 2024 by Henley & Partners via The Arizona Republic:

 

“Scottsdale’s millionaire population more than doubled over the past decade, making it the city with the second fastest growing population with residents worth at least $1 million in the country during that timeframe, according to The USA Wealth Report 2024 by Henley & Partners.

The national firm tracks wealth in communities across the United States. Its most recent report showed that Scottsdale’s millionaire-or-wealthier population skyrocketed by 102% between 2013 and 2023, the biggest uptick of any American city aside from Austin, Texas, which experienced a 110% increase during that period.

The community of about 243,000 residents is now home to 14,500 millionaires, 63 centi-millionaires who are worth at least $100 million, and five billionaires.”

 

Of course, living in a place like this partly explains why my wonderful wife and I are happy when eating breakfast out of the house, and not at McDonald’s, costs less than $40 including tip. For the nth time, virtually everything in life is a trade-off, neither all good nor all bad.

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This Mac’s Motor City Garage piece is about the 1954 Nash, the last of the Airflytes. From the article:

 

 

While I think continental kits look tacked-on in almost every application, the overall styling of these cars–introduced for the 1949 model year–intrigues me. I have read that the partial front wheel skirts were an attempt at making the cars more aerodynamic, but I have also read that they were simply the strong preference of Nash-Kelvinator Chairman and CEO George Mason.

Objections by some automotive historians notwithstanding, and since all of the principals are dead we may never know the whole story, the consensus is that Mason knew, as early as 1946, that the Independents would all have to merge into one company if they were to survive against The Big Three. From the wonderful book, The Fall of the Packard Motor Company, by James A. Ward:

 

“The second [merger] proposal [in 1947], from George Mason, president of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation, was more seriously considered at the East Grand [Packard] headquarters…Mason probably suggested a merger of their two companies and by September, 1947 their informal discussions had proceeded far enough that Macauley [Alvin, Packard Chairman] brought Packard’s general counsel, Henry Bodman, into the talks and the companies inspected each other’s facilities.”

 

This merger was actually proposed to Packard’s board at a special meeting in February, 1948, but–ultimately–was not accepted. James Nance, President of Packard and later Studebaker-Packard, once told an interviewer, “I don’t think [Studebaker] could have made it alone. I wouldn’t have wanted them if I didn’t see them as part of a bigger picture.”

History can’t be re-written and no one really knows, of course, if the Independents would still be in business if the four-way merger (Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, Packard) had happened. It is not a stretch, though, to think that if the merger had taken place, then more than one of those makes would still have been alive by the end of the 1950s. The one still alive, Studebaker, stopped producing cars in 1966.

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Not long ago, Ford announced it was “postponing” $12 billion of investments in battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). Yesterday, FoMoCo dealt another blow to the EV delusion.

The company announced it was “postponing” development and production of its long-touted three-row electric SUV and large electric pickup truck. Instead, the company announced additional investment in the development of hybrids. Recently, Ford CEO Jim Farley also said that the company would continue to produce a V-8 version of the Mustang for the foreseeable future, especially given the car has little or no competition in its class. (The Camaro and Challenger have been discontinued. The ICE-version of the new Dodge Charger is/will be powered by an inline 6-cylinder engine.)

The market share of BEVs in the US is barely growing, while the share of hybrids is exploding. The latter now account for about 15% of all new vehicles sold in the US, twice the market share of BEVs. For the amount of mining and materials needed to build one BEV, 25 hybrids can be built.

Toyota’s US market share of hybrids exceeds 50%. Toyota President/CEO Akio Toyoda has long been a critic of the blind march to an all-BEV fleet of passenger vehicles. Maybe his leadership is a key reason why Toyota is the largest manufacturer of motor vehicles in the world.

Of course, Lexus is the luxury make of Toyota. Here are two Lexus models, one of which could end up in my possession at sometime in the future.

 

 

Is the (B)EV revolution dead in the US? Maybe, but I still maintain using synthetic, non-petroleum fuels in ICE-powered cars would be the transition with the least friction and best benefit-to-cost ratio.

 

#FridayFrankness