Where has this week gone? Seriously…somebody tell me, I haven’t really been out of my room this week. I got one day in of house shopping in, then I got sick and I’ve been at home since. Luckily for you, readers, that doesn’t mean that the randomness that is automotive news stops…in fact, this week has been rather busy! I’ve sorted through the scraps, fried up what’s worth saving, slapped it on a bun and drowned it in hot sauce in the traditional manner of bad cooking. Here’s your Scrapple…eat up!
1. Merde Alors! Uber has been busted by the French for running an illegal taxi service!
Uber, that happy little company that allows a car owner to essentially whore out their vehicle as a taxi through a phone app, has been a very contested company in France, where taxi drivers have taken sincere offense to having privatized taxis running around, sniping their business while not paying licensing fees and generally following protocols. Naturally, in a very French way, this all boiled over like an unwatched kettle and bad things occurred. Violent protests from the actual cabbies have been making headlines for a little bit now, with Uber drivers beaten and their cars trashed. Even rock music embarrassment Courtney Love found herself at the wrong end of things when she hailed an Uber driver after landing in Paris. A mob swarmed her car, and a bashed-out window and some baseball bat therapy later, she tweeted, “”they’ve ambushed our car and are holding our driver hostage. they’re beating the cars with metal bats. this is France?? I’m safer in Baghdad.” (I sincerely doubt that, you vapid…) Anyways, following the violence, Agence France-Presse reported that Uber France CEO Thibaud Simphal and European general manager Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty had been jailed for running an illicit business. This is only going to get messier before things get sorted out.
2. So long, Toaster, you might be missed.
It’s true…after nearly 13 years of looking about the same (and nine years of looking exactly the same), the Scion xB is getting killed off. Out of all of the vehicles that have been under the mishmash sales umbrella of Scion, the xB was the middle ground: it wasn’t as mainstream as the tC coupe, it wasn’t a performance car like the FR-S, and it wasn’t a dog-turd shaped blob of misery like every other Scion. The xB was, for all intents and purposes, a 7/8ths scale van, and if it worked for you, cool. If not, meh, no big loss, since a lot of companies now make their own rolling refrigerator.
3. Pininfarina isn’t getting sold to Indians after all
A little while back we reported that Mahindra, the Indian truck manufacturer that has been trying to sell a frightening little crapbox of a pickup in the States for about ten or so years now, had put in a bid for Pininfarina, the Italian coach builder best known for about most every Ferrari ever conceived. However, in the 11th hour of the deal, three banks that own a stake in Pininfarina’s debt rejected Mahindra’s offer to eliminate $97 million dollars worth of Pininfarina debt. Now the coach builder is going to try a debt restructuring plan. We will wait and see what happens next.
5. A tasty bit: TVR is to the point of taking down payments on new cars! Hell yes!
TVR’s story of crawling back from the dead with the help of none other that Gordon Murray has been a story of cautionary optimism, but every time we think that it was just a dream, we get another bit of news to keep us going. This time around, starting July 7th, the new TVR will start accepting down payments that fall just under $8,000 for one of the new road-going models powered by a Cosworth V8. If you are a member of the TVR Car Club, you get a 50% discount on that deposit. While final pricing isn’t known, neither is anything about the cars past “Cossie V8” and “Gordon Murray”. Those two bits alone will have plenty of people paying for a place in line to secure one of Britain’s most sinister sports cars. Ahem, new TVR management: CKD kit for the USA, please? It worked for Noble. It will work for you.
I’m glad TVR have come to their senses – I remember not long ago some low life was turning out TVR clones with – you guessed it – the usual LS hunka shit!
Using a Cossie motor means that you’ll get out of your driveway without the engine puking its guts up like TVR’s own engines used to do at every opportunity!
Is it just me though – or does it look very like a Triumph GT6 on steroids…..
Geordie, that picture of the TVR is the old Sagaris. Not sure what the new one will look like. Although if they were smart, they’d bring back the Sagaris body with the new chassis and drivetrain
I am a little saddened to see the Xb go away. It was a solid car for A-to-B work in comfort, and a cool throwback to the first Toyota “Toyopet” cars to try and break into the US market after the Crown failed to gain ground in the early 60s. That was a car that showed us all that Goldstar wasn’t everything Japan had to offer, and the Xb was an attempt to revive that connection.
And before someone comments on my statement about the Xb’s “comfort”: at the time I was daily-driving a 40-series Land Cruiser with 4-wheel drums, a hard top with rotted weather strip, mismatched Jeep bucket seats, springs over the front axle and banana shackles on the rear.
The Xb may as well have been a Phantom, for all I cared.
The French getting overly upset about something? Say it ain’t so.