Each week I bring you the top stories in the auto industry along with my commentary or sometimes amusing thoughts about the craziness that goes on in the world of cars.
Stories you’ll find today:
Ferrari Still Doesn’t Want You, Lindsey. Ferrari has always been picky about who gets the keys to its cars, but Lindsey Lohan remains firmly on their permanent blacklist, which is impressive considering she has been sober for a decade and is no longer the tabloid disaster she once was. Still, Maranello does not hand out forgiveness like a welcome gift bag, and Lohan’s past DUIs and reputation for chaos are apparently enough to keep her from ever stepping into a Ferrari dealership with a checkbook. The irony is she has a garage full of other exotics and could buy a Lamborghini, McLaren, or Bugatti tomorrow, but Ferrari acts like she committed a personal crime against Enzo himself. The brand is legendary for its strict rules, forbidding owners from flipping cars too quickly, making wild customizations, or generally embarrassing the brand, and Lohan checked enough of those boxes in her younger years to earn a lifetime ban. It’s the automotive equivalent of a high school mean girl clique, where no matter how much someone changes, they are still reminded they can’t sit at the cool table. Ferrari protects its image with the same intensity it protects its Formula 1 budget, and for Lohan, that means her dream of driving a prancing horse is still stuck in the paddock.
EV Sent for Recall, Returns as Scrap. Your EV gets picked up for recall work, which you hope doesn't take more than a few days. But instead your car vanishes like it entered the witness protection program, months go by with no updates, and then it resurfaces not in pristine condition but as a wreck with airbags blown and panels mangled, sitting in a scrapyard auction with a bargain basement price tag of four grand, which is basically what the battery pack is worth. This is exactly what happened to a Fisker Ocean Extreme in MotorTrend's long-term garage. It was supposed to be getting fixed but somehow went joyriding straight into the great beyond, because when the carmaker itself has gone bankrupt there is apparently no adult supervision left in the room. Instead of careful recall work someone either lost track of the SUV, crashed it, or decided dismantling it was more fun than repairing it. The lesson here is that even if you're a high-profile automotive media outlet, once you hand over the keys you’re not guaranteed to get your car back at all. In this case, the Fisker Ocean ended up being sold at auction with a salvage title after being totaled by an insurance company. Its selling price: $4,350.
Law and order but make it pedicure edition. A Tennessee attorney was hired to fight what looked like a routine speeding ticket, the kind of case that normally ends with a fine or maybe a day in traffic school, but instead he uncovered a bizarre scandal hiding in plain sight. When he pulled the dash cam footage for court, the stop started out normally enough, with the officer approaching the car and asking for license and registration. Then the attorney noticed something unusual. The officer’s body language shifted and the camera caught him angling his phone, not at the driver’s face or the car itself, but at the driver’s bare feet, which were propped up on the dashboard. The audio captured the officer and his partner laughing and making comments about how gross the toes were, with one even suggesting sharing the pictures, as if the traffic stop had turned into an impromptu foot photo shoot. What should have been an ordinary case instantly became a circus, with the driver’s toes now more documented than the actual speeding violation. The attorney pushed back, the tickets were dismissed, and suddenly the department was answering questions about why its officers were behaving like paparazzi at a pedicure convention. Now there’s an internal investigation underway, the city is on damage control, and everyone involved has learned a strange new truth about traffic stops in Tennessee. Forget speeding or rolling a stop sign, the real risk is ending up in a police officer’s secret foot photo album.
Feathered snipers take aim at your hood. Almost a third of Americans truly believe birds are not just randomly pooping but are intentionally aiming for their cars, which means the average robin is apparently out there with a grudge and a targeting system NASA would envy. The survey says nearly sixty percent of people have been hit multiple times in a single day, which feels less like coincidence and more like a coordinated squadron strike, and about a quarter of respondents admit they spend more than five hundred dollars a year cleaning up the mess and fixing paint damage. That is five hundred dollars that could have gone to gas, tires, or even a vacation somewhere without seagulls. The data even shows birds seem to prefer darker colors like black, red, and brown, which makes you wonder if they are color snobs or just like their art to pop on a deep background. Some drivers have even gone so far as to move parking spots or build entire garages just to avoid avian revenge, proving birds are the only creatures who can make a rational adult spend thousands of dollars out of fear of a digestive accident. In the end maybe birds really do have it out for us, because they never miss your freshly washed car, they never hit the beater parked next to you, and they never seem to strike until you’re late for work, which makes them less random wildlife and more like feathery pranksters with impeccable comedic timing.