Part 14: The Power of a Tesla, Dreamers, Turbine Trains, Indian Cars in America, Lincoln's Mad LS and The Return of the Roadmaster
General Motors advancement of hybrid technology and electric cars in the 2000s, starting with the revolutionary GM EV1 and Chevrolet Volt in the 1990s and the advancement of better hybrids in the first decade of the 21st Century led to more hope for advancement of the advanced car genre. In the early 2010s, however, all of the Detroit world got a taste of that....but it didn't come from them, much to their distate.
Magna was the largest new North American car maker of the early 21st Century, but 2007 also saw the establishment of two other American-based car makers in the green car world. The first was Fisker Automotive, based in Irvine, California, started by famed car designer Henrik Fisker, and the second was Tesla Motors, founded by South African dot-com billionaire Elon Musk. Both recruited a number of good directors, designers and engineers from the North American and European automakers, and both had wild designs in store to introduce to the automotive world and big dreams for the future - though the dreams were more grounded in reality than many had figured.
Fisker Automotive was set up in 2007 in Irvine, California, to build a new series of luxury cars, starting with the Karma luxury sedan and the Karma Surf station wagon. The Fisker Karma was similar in engineering to other gas-electric hybrids, being driven entirely by electric power but with a smaller gasoline engine to generate power when the vehicle's battery pack was run down. The car was originally powered by the General Motors Ecotec engine, but that got a curveball in 2011 when American Motors bought out Williams International and made an investment in Fisker Automotive, and Williams, seeing business for its jet engines declining, made an unsolicited offer to engineer a pair of very small gas turbine engines for the Karma, offering to make for a major increase in efficiency. Fisker accepted the offer, but switched to the use of 2.0-liter Renault powerplants after the AMC buy-in so as to not alienate General Motors. The Williams project worked surprisingly well, though it required a considerable front-end re-engineering to allow the required airflow for the turbines into the front of the car, and it was said that turbine Karmas have such airflow out of the vents on the leading edge of the windshield that they do not need windshield wipers. (They do have them, though.) The Karma II began production in 2014 in both sedan and Karma Surf versions, and the turbine-engined cars were matched with a new carbon-fiber body and other weight reduction efforts, both of which had a marked effect on the car's performance and its fuel efficiency. The Karma originally began production at Valmet Automotive in Finland in 2009, but from April 2011, the Karma began production at the former GM plant at Wilmington, Delaware after re-tooling the facility. The Karma II was complemented the year after by the Fisker Sunset convertible and in 2017 by the Atlantic luxury sedan. The Karma II dropped in weight from 5,300 lbs to 4,650, and the new engines went from 204 horsepower to 286, enough to massively improve the electrical generating capacity of the car by 60% despite very little fuel economy penalty - and the car came with dealer options to switch it from gasoline fuel to ethanol or biodiesel if the customer wished, and Fisker in 2018 showed off a version of the Karma Surf running on liquid hydrogen. The Karma made its mark quite clearly - by 2018, they were selling over 20,000 units a year of the car, of which over half were exported.
But Fisker's success, as good as it was, had nothing compared to the other newcomer, Tesla Motors. Despite an early altercation with Fisker, Tesla quickly established themselves in a rather different way. Tesla soon established that they would only build all-electric cars, even after early rumors of hybrids, and their first work, the Tesla Roadster, was based (very loosely) on a Lotus Elise chassis and had design assistance from General Motors, while at the same time Daimler and Toyota bought batteries from them and worked with them on battery technology. The first generation Tesla Roadster was introduced in September 2007 and sold out its anticipated 4000-car production run in April 2011 - just in time for the new machine from Tesla to hit the road, that being the Model S sedan.
The Roadster had broken the credibility barrier, but the Model S, introduced in September of 2011 and with the first units delivered in April 2012. The Model S was a handsomely-styled four-door luxury sedan meant to compete against cars like the Cadillac CTS, BMW 5-Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and the new-for-2013 Chrysler Imperial. Available with three different battery pack capacities and different drivetrains, the Model S was also equipped with state-of-the-art charging and electrical systems and first-class interiors and was capable of incredible performance - Motor Trend's Model S test put a 0-60 figure of just 4.4 seconds, fast even by sports car standards. The car's most striking feature other than the performance was its "Tesla Supercharger" feature, a DC charging system which was capable of recharging half of the battery pack, giving one 150 miles of range, in just 30 minutes. Tesla backed up the introduction of the Supercharger system by building a number of charging stations at various places around the United States, with the GPS system in the car telling owners where the one was if it was needed, and made it clear that the network was free for Tesla owners. Tesla also made it clear in early 2013 that they were working with other companies on better-still charging technology, and that all Tesla cars on the road could be modified to use the Superchargers.
The Karma was a solid seller, but it was soon clear that the Model S was a better one. Starting at a price of $58,000 and going up to a maximum, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink price of $107,000, the Model S was positioned as real rival to the established luxury car market - and it scored immediately, most notably with many of the country's famous elites. Sigourney Weaver, James Cameron, Tom Hanks, David Letterman and Tommy Lee Jones were among the first batch of Model S owners - and Sigourney Weaver took great pride in a April 2013 TV interview in pointing out that she had an EV1, a Volt, a Karma, a Roadster and a Model S, which led Jay Leno to comment back to her "so, firemen can't fight a fire at your house, then?" The Model S was by mid-2013 being made at a rate of 600 a week at Tesla's facility in Fremont, California, and Tesla stunned a great many people by opening up a second plant for production of the second generation Roadster in 2015 - they did that by building an all-new facility in the lower-income Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood and offering first crack at the assembly line jobs to local residents. This proved better than many had expected - the wages paid at the plant were far above normal, and as a result the workers, in many cases not used to well-paying manufacturing jobs, took to their new jobs as well as most and better than many. (The decision to do this also earned Musk a variety of civic awards and the Key to the City from the Mayor of Los Angeles.) Tesla soon expanded its lineup to include an SUV, the Model X, which was also made on the lines at Fremont. Tesla's sales soared to easily make them the #6 of American automakers by 2020, by that point selling nearly 200,000 vehicles a year.
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Tesla Motors is an example of the spirit of innovation that has always driven this nation and are what will make our world a better place, and cars like the Model S are the sort of innovation that should make us all proud."
-- Governor Jerry Brown of California, on a campaign stop at the Fremont Tesla Plant, August 2014
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Fisker is the sort of firm that this company was born from, a bunch of brilliant guys with a dream, who have worked as hard as a man can to advance their dreams and the world of cars at the same time. Investing in Fisker may be one of the best decisions American Motors makes, and speaking as a Karma owner, I am very proud to be here now."
-- American Motors President Mitt Romney, at the press conference to announce AMC's investment in Fisker Automotive, July 2011
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The mere fact that the Tesla Model S exists at all is a testament to innovation and entrepreneurship, the very qualities that made the American automobile industry the largest, richest and most powerful in the world. That the 11 judges unanimously voted the first vehicle designed from the wheels up by a fledgling automaker the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year should be cause for celebration. Henry, Billy, Walter, George, you have a guy named Elon who has joined your club."
-- Motor Trend magazine, stating their opinion of the Tesla Model S in naming it their 2013 Car of the Year, November 2012
The 2013 Tesla Model S
The 2014 Fisker Karma II
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What amazes me is the fact that there are people whining about the government providing money to help get Tesla and Fisker going, stating that electric cars are a dead end that will never work. You know, that's what people said about gasoline cars once upon a time. It's what they said about air travel, nuclear energy, television, mobile phones and the internet, too. But somebody dreamed and decided to try it, just to see if they could. Somebody might also want to point out that that is human nature, and if the founding fathers they revere so much hadn't dreamed, this country would never have happened."
-- Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, speaking against a bill to freeze loans to Fisker Automotive on the floor of the United States Senate, May 2013
Fisker and Tesla joined a steadily-growing number of smaller American automakers with a dream. DeLorean had been in the business for many years, having introduced their smaller (and cheaper) MR17 sports car in 1997 and then their awesome MR21 supercar in 2002. Steve Saleen, known for years for tuning Ford products into much faster cars, had entered the business of making cars on his own in 2003 with his Saleen S7 supercar, and while the S7 was not a huge success, selling only 205 units, the less-pricey S5S Raptor, which first saw the road in 2008, was a much bigger one. Vector Automotive, which had had two failed attempts at sports cars in the 1980s and 1990s, returned to the fray in 2007, but development of their WX8 design stalled, only to have a new car come back to life in 2011 thanks to new investors and go into production in 2013, the new car being known as the Vector R22. Warren Mosler's incredible Mosler MT900 was also out there, though by the 2010s it was getting somewhat long in the tooth - mind you, the MT900, which combined a 450-horsepower V8 engine with a curb weight of 2300 pounds, was no slouch in the performance department.
There was a few things similar between the dreamers - namely, every one of the cars above used a variant of a Detroit engine, with the Saleen using a supercharged Ford V8 while both DeLorean and Vector went with Chevrolet power. None of the cars were cheap by any stretch - the MR17 cost about $55,000, and it was cheap compared to the others - but they all found enough owners to make the projects worthwhile, and just like numerous sports car builders in other nations, the companies themselves all aimed to provide both a great experience driving but also tried to make the cars reliable - a job which most of the makers got fairly good at. The connections to Detroit didn't make it any harder - GM, Ford and American Motors had no real difficulties selling parts to the small car makers and providing technical assistance. It was good business for them, and there was little to be feared from companies which might make a thousand cars in a good year like Saleen or Vector or Mosler. But what the companies were able to do, however, was creating a bunch more of the sort of machines that would make grown men giddy, and for the car nuts running most of the firms, that made it all worthwhile to them.
Outside of the car world, America's growing wealth, rising fuel costs and airport congestion and debates over climate change made for the 21st Century being good to American railroads - not that the freight railroads needed a lot of help, of course, but by 2015 the high-speed train systems in the Northeast Corridor, Texas and Florida had proven themselves indispensable to those states, and so when Amtrak's Fast Midwest project began operation in 2013, much was expected of it. The first lines ran from Chicago to Detroit (via Fort Wayne), Indianapolis and Milwaukee, with the St. Louis line becoming operational in September 2014 and extensions to Cleveland, Columbus (both via Fort Wayne, which became a system hub) and Minneapolis (via Green Bay) by 2017. The system did well from the start, with the Detroit-Chicago route by 2016 being crowded to the point that Amtrak was having to couple two trains together to get sufficient space for passengers. It didn't hurt that Detroit's massive Michigan Central Terminal finished its $650 million redevelopment in 2018, and Canada's high-speed line from Detroit to Quebec City began operations later that year. Amtrak, however, faced numerous calls through the times to upgrade its services across many areas and municipalities, a problem that had become painfully obvious in the vote-rich Midwest and parts of the Northeast. The NEC by this point stretched from Charlotte and Norfolk to Boston, but they faced the additional problem of lines to places like Atlantic City, Harrisburg, Albany, Worcester, Dover and Roanoke which had considerable demand for travel, but simply hadn't the demand to justify the costs of full-on HSR lines.
Amtrak got around this problem thanks to a little help from Bombardier, the Canadian firm having worked on the same problem in Canada faced by VIA rail. Their solution was fairly simple - use the Acela platform design and fit it with a pair of Pratt and Whitney Canada PT6A-67 gas turbines, as well as two General Motors Duramax diesel engines for auxillary power. The idea was that the diesels would get the trains moving before the turbines, which had atrocious fuel efficiency at low speeds, would kick in to provide extra power. The use of high-end generators and superconducting wiring in the power cars allowed the trains to be quite similar in most ways to the existing cantenary-powered high-speed trains. It was a good solution to the problem at hand - and testing proved that the Acela Turbines were capable of speeds of up to 186 mph, as fast as any of the cantenary-powered versions. These test results convinced Amtrak to go to bat and fight with the FRA over some of the operating rules, as well as begin plans to make the necessary upgrades to lines to allow smaller cities to be served by the fast trains.
America's strong car market was an appealing one for so many that new car models were pretty much always on the move. The American automakers themselves still controlled in the mid to late 2010s over 70% of the car market, but that didn't stop others from trying nonetheless. The 1980s had seen the Koreans come, then Perodua and Proton came into the American market in the 1990s and Reynard had introduced South Africa in 2004, but by the 2010s the newcomers were coming from India, namely the Tata and Mahindra companies, both of which had spent huge sums on improving their offerings in preparation to sell them in global markets. Both firms began rolling into US markets in 2015, with Tata focusing on their car lines (though they did sell the Safari SUV and Xenon pickup truck) and Mahindra focusing on light trucks. Despite the efforts, the Indians were aware of the Koreans having moved upmarket and the struggling efforts of Proton and Perodua, and so they aimed for the bottom at first, wanting to establish their cars as inexpensive, reliable vehicles first before moving up the food chain. This didn't mean the vehicles were particularly spartan or low-tech, it just meant that they would cost less.
The Indians got a foothold fairly early, but they had problems of their own. As with the Malaysian (and the Koreans until the 2000s) makers, the cars simply hadn't been designed and built to the standards American car buyers demanded, and reliability problems didn't help some of the later cars. Both companies were quick to work on that, but it didn't take long for the Indians to realize the same thing that all of the other imports had - North America is its own market with its own requirements, and you need to build cars to suit those environments. The Indians learned this quicker than the Koreans and Malaysians had, and within three years of the first launches the first launches Mahindra and Tata had their first designed-for-America vehicles, the Mahindra Warrior and Tata Ascension, out in the American marketplace, though still built in India and using Indian-owned dealerships, though the Indians soon became apparent of the flaws in this system as well.
A Mahindra XUV500, introduced into the US in 2015
A Tata Safari SUV
Among the North American makers, things were changing there as well, with Chrysler, American Motors and Magna trying to shove their way up to the level of General Motors and Ford, though by now advancements in design and manufacturing technology and platform sharing allowed many cars to be built on the same platform, and one of the old marketing tricks of the Detroit makers had by then very much taken hold in Europe, and it showed in the explosion in the number of cars in the ranges of many European automakers in the 2000s and 2010s - Renault, for example, had seen its car lines swell from six models in 1990 to eleven in 2010, and that didn't count the new vans or SUVs. Stronger European emissions laws in the 1990s brought them into line with the American laws on the subject, and while the 2010s started with the age of the crossover, AMC, Chrysler and Magna - along with their partners in Renault, Peugeot-Citroen and Fiat - gunned hard to try and match the mighty behemoths in Ford and General Motors. By the late 2010s, this had resulted in some enormous lineups on offer to buy even from the smaller makers, and the problems of the past of the smaller automakers being unable to match the might of GM and Ford seemed to be gone forever, thanks to the Transatlantic connections.
With this, Japan's massively-increased competition and the continuously-improving Germans and Koreans, both GM and Ford were pushing hard on research and development and advanced design, both realizing that now more than ever if they wanted to maintain their big shares of the American automobile market they had to appeal to a lot of people in a lot of different markets, and staying ahead meant pushing the envelope.
Ford had started doing that by setting up a radical re-designing of Lincoln, with its new Zephyr and LS sport sedans, the Continental full-size sedan, Aviator crossover SUV and the mammoth Navigator full-size SUV - and Ford, after years of comments about the cars being basically up-badged versions of their more pedestrian Ford models, began in 2011 with the task of having Lincoln have its own assembly plants, turning over their plants at Wixom, MI, Louisville, KY and Avon Lake, OH, to exclusively produce Lincoln vehicles, and then began evolving the designs of them. The Zephyr, while it remains on the same chassis as the Ford Mondeo and Fusion, got well-engineered full-time all-wheel-drive as standard equipment, and the others soon had modified versions of their own chassis. But where Ford went nuts, however, was with the LS.
The new LS, which launched for 2014, was built with one goal in mind - to send the sport sedans from BMW, Audi, Cadillac, Infiniti and anyone else running for the hills. A choice of V6s ranging in power from 310 to 475 horsepower did the propulsion, and race-car like double-wishbone suspension with computer-controlled fully-active suspension, as well as ceramic brakes, fast steering and with adjustable assistance levels and sticky tires on all models, made for a car that drove and handled like no other Lincoln - or for that matter, pretty much anything that had ever come out of Detroit. The LS wasn't a cheap car, but it was a sign of things to come from Lincoln, and the vehicles soon got a reputation for excellent assembly quality, surprisingly-good fuel efficiency and excellent ride quality in addition to its performance and world-class handling. GM was sent scrambling to make the Cadillac CTS match up with its shocking rival from Dearborn, and the LS soon had even Jaguar, BMW and Mercedes-Benz taking a few lessons.
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We've seen one Lincoln concept after another that's had our tongues wagging, and we know that they can make a good sports sedan because Ford is very, very good at such things. But for years its been one gussied-up Ford after another, so why should this new LS, despite its Batmobile bodywork, be any different? That's what we thought, too. And then we drove it. And drove it some more. And drove the hell out of it, marveling in Beemer-busting cornering, steering feel so good you know what flavor of soda was in the can you ran over and style that BMW and Audi couldn't match if they wanted to. Trust us, folks, if Cadillac's transformation wasn't enough to scare Germany's autobahners, this had better make them pay attention. Welcome back, Lincoln. We missed you."
-- Motor Trend, talking about the 2014 Lincoln LS Millenium, which finished as runner-up in their 2014 car of the year contest to the C7 Corvette
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Not since the Navigator has Lincoln made something which could stun us all like this. We know Ford's working on lots of new Lincoln designs and has given them their own assembly plants, but Jesus, we didn't expect this at all. A Lincoln that looks like a car for Darth Vader, goes faster than most sports cars and corners like a slot car, while still riding great and being great to ride in? We had to do a few extra drives to prove it to ourselves, too."
-- EVO America in its review of the Lincoln LS, October 2013
A model of the 2014 Lincoln LS Millenium
While Ford was giving Lincoln a new reason to live, GM was working hard at Buick. Buick had really sank in the United States to the point that by 2015 the average age of its buyers was over 60, a fairly sizable market at the time but one which had no real future with the baby boomers starting to die off. Buick's salvation had been their success abroad, particularly in China, where it had been the most successful luxury car brand in the country, and in India, where it was also growing rapidly. GM was milking that for all it was worth, but they were also aware that with Cadillac moving into the sport sedan / performance car world and with Magna aiming their new Pontiac and Oldsmobile models at that same market, GM had to do something about Buick, and with Lexus, Chrysler (and its Imperial sub-brand) and others going for the same market, they needed an answer to it.
The answer started with the import of designs from Opel and Vauxhall in Germany, where GM began using the Opel Insignia as a Buick Regal in 2011, after launching it in China in 2007, southeast Asia in 2008 and India in 2009. The Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac Seville, both launched in 2013, shared the same platform (and assembly plants) though they had quite different bodywork, suspension tuning, engines and interiors. But where GM did its crazy move was in bringing back the Roadmaster wagon, it first being shown next to the LaCrosse and Seville at the 2013 North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Built on the new Chevrolet Caprice chassis, itself also used by the Australian VF-series Holden Commodore, the Roadmaster concept was a full-on homeage to the past, complete with portholes (the LaCrosse and Regal had these, too), woodgrain trim and whitewall tires, though the car also had a nearly full-length glass roof and was quite huge, with a 122.5-inch wheelbase and an overall length of 210 inches, powered in the concept by GM's 6.2-liter LT1 Corvette engine and driving the rear wheels.
The response to the Roadmaster stunned GM, with it being decided within six months to make it come to life for real - though it has to be said that part of the push was the announcement at the same auto show that Magna would be selling a wagon version of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme which they would call the Custom Cruiser. The production car left the wood trim behind (though it was available as an optional extra), but was designed as a family hauler with style and performance, with the smallest engine offered being GM's 3.6-liter High Feature V6, while the Corvette V8 was an option, as was the VM Motori turbodiesel V6 and Duramax turbodiesel V8, but even more shocking was the fact that the Roadmaster would be able to use Cadillac's newly-developed 7.2-liter V12 as an option as well. The Roadmaster also paid homage to the past in that while dealer cars would be available, buyers would be encouraged to work with the salesman and design their car exactly as they wanted it, providing a very long list of options, features, trim choices, paint choices and design pieces to do their car exactly to their specifications.
The 2013 Buick Roadmaster Concept
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You remember when a few years ago we said we thought GM should make a new Roadmaster? Well, they listened to us. No, seriously, they actually listened to us, and here it is!"
-- Rutledge Wood of Top Gear USA, introducing a 2015 Buick Roadmaster onto the show, June 2015
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GM's marketing brilliance in this one is hard to overstate. Lots of people age 40 or older probably remember riding around in the family station wagon, long before the age of minivans and SUVs and crossovers, and while many things could describe those experiences, cool would not be one of them. But now, here comes GM, managing to say with a straight face that the cool option now for a family hauler is no less than a full-size station wagon. But dammit, it does actually work, and the idea of having the customers design cars exactly to their specification is a good idea, and the thought of a family hauler with available Corvette V8 or Cadillac V12 power is, well, cool."
-- Sam Mitani, talking about the Roadmaster to the Detroit Free Press, April 2015
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Go back and read that again. A two and a half ton, eighteen and a half foot long seven-seat family wagon, and it goes from zero to sixty in five seconds flat. And then think about the fact that we got twenty-seven miles to the gallon in it. Five seconds to sixty. twenty-seven miles per gallon. In an enormous family station wagon. 'Bloody hell' about covers it."
-- Car and Driver in their review of the Buick Roadmaster, July 2015
The fast and furious developments of the automobile world, fueled by five companies which had a combined yearly revenue of nearly $800 Billion worldwide, continued unabated into the 2010s and into the 2020s, driving forward into a different future, one which was leading to greater and greater things for those who loved personal transportation....
