• SEC filings on Wednesday revealed Elon Musk sold $3.6 billion more in Tesla stock.
• Analysts speculate the proceeds will help cover Twitter’s deficits, raising concerns.
• Dan Ives stated that Musk is ‘using Tesla as his own ATM machine’ to fund Twitter.

The impact of Elon Musk buying Twitter on Tesla is getting scarier for investors. For the third time, after saying in April that he had “no further TSLA sales planned,” filings made on Wednesday revealed Musk sold 22 million more shares of Tesla, valued some $3.6 billion. That brings the total amount of Tesla stock that Musk has sold this year to $23 billion.

Just a few days ago, Musk promised that in the long haul, Tesla would benefit from his ownership of Twitter. But there’s growing skepticism from analysts that will happen. Dan Ives at Wedbush wrote in a report on Thursday that Twitter remains a nightmare for investors because Musk has been using “Tesla as his own ATM machine to keep funding” the social network. 

Tesla’s falling electric vehicle sales as countries around the world face their own recessions amid the ongoing fall out of the pandemic isn’t necessarily a shock. But it does present a problem for Tesla and its owner, who continues to use its shares to fund his refashioning of Twitter for his ventures to build out ‘the everything app’ that he refers to under the name “X.”

Ultimately, Elon promised Tesla shareholders they’d benefit from Twitter. He also promised he wouldn’t sell any more Tesla stock. It’s up to Tesla investors to decide whether he plans to keep his promise.

“Elon is Tesla’s brand. He needs to pull it together,” Loup Ventures’ Gene Munster told Insider earlier this week. Some, like major Tesla shareholder KoGuan Leo, have gone so far as to suggest that Musk has “abandoned” his duties at the carmaker, and called for a new CEO to replace him.

Meanwhile, Insider has reported on a slate of problems for Twitter that include: advertisers that have suspended their activity on the platform; the failure of Elon’s reimagined Twitter Blue; growing concern around the rise of bigotry on the platform; and Elon’s troubling political tweets that seem to be adding to the non-stop swirl of controversy around the company. 

In his note to clients, Ives maintained an outperform rating for Tesla, indicating that he expects Tesla’s rate of return to do better than its peers despite signs that it won’t be the best performer in the batch.

Munster, for his part, further admonished that Elon would cause long-term damage if he does nothing about the number of issues arising from the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter. 

The broader market is also worried. Tesla’s stock has dropped 31% since Musk bought Twitter at the end of October. When you track how the stock has held up since Musk’s offer to buy Twitter in mid-April, it’s down 52%. It should be noted that tech stocks lost trillions of dollars in value this year due to a drop in consumer demand, inflation, and the overall market correction from the astronomical multiples seen the year before.

Tesla faces other issues besides Musk’s Twitter problems. The company is no longer the main electric car maker on the block in multiple countries. Since new entrants have carved out their own market share and traditional automakers have successfully launched a series of hybrids and their own EV models, Tesla has seen a rise in competition in the US, China, and parts of Europe. 

It was only earlier this month that Bloomberg reported that Tesla was slashing some of its production output in China by 20% to 30%, a sign that the reality of sales didn’t live up to what they were projected to be. It’s been also reported that the EV maker lowered the cost of its cars in China in an attempt to boost sales. It worked, but Tesla ultimately lost out to its Chinese competition, BYD.

“More activism and growing investor frustration will force the Board of Tesla to confront some of these issues head on in the near-term. This is a moment of truth for Musk and Tesla,” wrote Ives.

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Paragon Motor Finance has appointed a senior regional sales manager and two regional sales managers to support its growth strategy.

Adam Hammond has been appointed as the new senior regional sales manager and will focus on Southern England. He has worked in the motor finance industry for 17 years and has previous experience as a key account manager with Close Brothers Finance and business development manager for Mann Island.

David Hughes and Sam Winter have joined as regional sales managers. Hughes will oversee the North West of England and Winter’s territory will be the Midlands and South Wales.

Winter previously worked for The Compliance Guys as a key account manager. Hughes was business development manager for Volkswagen and before this, regional sales manager for Creative Funding Solutions.

Regional sales managers are the first point of contact for Paragon’s introducer panel. The team are responsible for providing the highest level of account management to Paragon’s customers in the motor finance sector. Building new and maintaining relationships with both dealers and brokers in the Motor, LCV and Leisure markets is a key feature of their roles.

Paragon Motor Finance head of sales Ian Haddon said: “We’re delighted to have Adam, David and Sam join the restructured external sales team and look forward to them increasing our presence in their respective territories and getting out into the market and helping to deliver on our growth strategy.”

The company’s car retail lending soared during the first half of its financial year. A total of £75.7 million was lent by Paragon Banking Group’s motor finance division during the six months to the end of March 2022, over twice the amount loaned in the comparative period in 2021 and 6% greater than the value in the second half of 2021.

More recently, Paragon expanded its electric vehicle (EV) finance offering to include vans, in response to customer demand.

Finance is offered on hire purchase and lease purchase agreements, with loans available to both consumers and businesses through intermediaries.

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Just like the last generation, the introduction of the 2023 Honda Civic Type R means that there’s a new TCR-class race car based on the same hot hatchback. It has just been revealed, and it looks mighty mean. Honda claims it performs even better than before, too.

Despite that claim, Honda didn’t reveal many specifics. It mostly just noted that it should produce more downforce, and that its new chassis offers better handling. Under the hood is a race-prepped version of the Type R’s turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder coupled with a racing transmission. Based on the old TCR, power output is probably around 340 horsepower, give or take a few depending on tune.

As with the old model, the Type R TCR will be built and developed by JAS Performance in Italy (yep, they’re Italian race cars). In the U.S., they’ll be available through HPD. A variety of options are available such as driver cooling, a rapid refueling system, fancier driver information display, ABS and more lighting. 

Pricing hasn’t been announced yet. The old car was around $170,000 with no options. HPD will open ordering on February 1, and the race debut for the car will be in April in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.

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Over 50 million vehicles in the United States have unrepaired safety recalls, according to the National Safety Council. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urges all vehicle owners — including fleet operators — to follow any interim safety guidance provided by the manufacturer and to contact their local dealership to fix the recalled part free of charge.

Recently, Ford Motor Company recalled an estimated 18,808 2017-2018 Super Duty F-250, F-350, and F-450 4×4 vehicles due to a driveshaft issue. Specifically, a radial damper inside the driveshaft may move out of position over time, which can cause a driveshaft imbalance and result in a fracture.

This is a serious situation as a fractured driveshaft can cause a loss of drive power. Moreover, the vehicle could roll away if the parking brake is not engaged. Both scenarios increase the likelihood of a collision.

To fix the problem, dealers will replace the driveshaft, at no cost to customers. Owner notification letters will be mailed Jan. 9, 2023. Owners can reach Ford customer service at (866) 436-7332. Ford’s number for this recall is 22S74.

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Lego has announced its next automotive release, the Nissan Skyline GT-R from “2 Fast 2 Furious.” The 319-piece kit is part of the Speed Champions series, Lego’s line of officially licensed car kits.

Like the car used in the movie, the kit is based on an R34-generation Nissan Skyline, built between 1999 and 2002. Lego’s version does a fairly good job of depicting the actual JDM supercar. It’s instantly recognizable as an R34, especially with its squared-off headlights and iconic stagger-sized afterburner taillights. Overall, it’s one of Lego’s more accurate adaptations to the low-resolution medium of plastic bricks. 

In addition to the base car, both the film and the plastic car have six-spoke aftermarket wheels, a body kit, and gigantic wing on the trunk. There’s even a nitrous oxide bottle where the passenger seat should be. The kit also comes with a figure of Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, the series’ cop turned street racer turned secret agent protagonist.

Lego has offered other picture car kits, such as James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, the “Ghostbusters” Ecto-1, and “Back to the Future” DeLorean. They’ve also made the 1969 Dodge Charger from the original “The Fast & the Furious” installment. Many of these have been sold in both smaller kits in the Speed Champions series, and as larger standalone kits. 

In 2019 an R35 Nissan GT-R Nismo became the first Japanese car licensed by Lego. They haven’t done much with the Nissan relationship since (Datsun 240Z, anyone?). Though the movie tie-in makes for good marketing, we’d prefer to see a regular Skyline GT-R kit without the Y2K-era graphics. Nevertheless, it makes a good addition to the many Corvettes, McLarens and Lamborghinis they’ve already made. The Skyline GT-R goes on sale in January 2023.

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As the best-selling Detroit pickups evolved from no-nonsense two-doors with huge beds to luxurious four-door sedans with a small beds as toughness-enhancing styling touches, most pickup drivers lost the ability to haul 4×8 plywood sheets (and other long items) without that stuff sticking out of the bed. GM’s Chevrolet Division solved that problem in clever fashion, by designing a four-door pickup that could seat five adults in Buick-grade comfort and convert to a two-seater with an eight-foot bed. This was the Avalanche, built from the 2002 through 2013 model years. You could make the Avalanche perform better off-road (and, more important, look more outdoorsy) with the Z71 off-road package, but the early Avalanche also had an option package that made it better on-road: the Z66, available for 2002 through 2006 rear-wheel-drive 1500-series Avalanches. Here’s one of those rare Avalanche Z66s, found in a Denver-area yard recently.

The Avalanche didn’t sell as well as The General had hoped, but plenty of owners just loved the “midgate” feature that did what folding back seats did for some sedans in the 1970s. The Z66 package cost $835, same as the Z71 package (that’s about $1,370 in 2022 dollars), and provided a firmer ride plus smooth-on-the-highway all-season tires and a locking differential.

These badges told the world that you paid extra for a truck that handled better on pavement, rode more comfortably, and towed better than the Z71. That seems to make sense, but few Avalanche shoppers felt that way.

This one got hit hard by a junkyard shopper who wanted nearly all body components forward of the windshield, but I think it was in decent cosmetic shape when it arrived here.

The interior was stuffed full of parts discarded from adjacent vehicles, but you can tell that the cab was quite comfortable back in 2003.

The diamond-plate-influenced upholstery inserts look… industrial.

The engine is a 5.3-liter Vortec V8, otherwise known as “the truck LS” by drifter types looking to do a cheap driveway V8 swap into a title-challenged BMW E46. This one was rated at 285 horsepower.

You’ll find one in every car (or truck). You’ll see.

Pickup… and SUV. 

The TV commercials for the early Avalanche weren’t just macho. They were celebrations of cruelty directed at less masculine (i.e., non-Avalanche-owning) males.

What are you doing?

When some weenie coastal-elite-liberal type asks the rough-hewn Avalanche owner to break a dollar for parking-meter change in front of the New Sheridan Hotel in Telluride, the protagonist doesn’t clout the (presumably) vegetarian BMW E28 driver with an axe-handle and leave his twitching corpse in the gutter (because it’s a television commercial during prime time). Instead, he converts his Avalanche into a pickup and takes the dollar. These mean-spirited ads may have backfired with the suburban commuter demographic most likely to buy the Avalanche, however, so they ceased not long after the Avalanche’s appearance in showrooms.

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Toyota has teased a mysterious image of something called a Grand Highlander. It won’t be revealed in full for another few months, but there’s plenty of hints to make educated guesses about. The name, for one, implies that it’ll be a longer version of the Highlander, so split the difference between that and the Sequoia.

Another clue is the Hybrid Max badge on the new badonk. The last time we saw that, it was on the weird Crown crossover sedan thingy, and generated an impressive combined output of 340 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque, mated with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder. Toyota didn’t say what the Grand Highlander would pack under the hood, but it did describe it as “powerful.” 

The main draw of this vehicle, we expect, will be a longer cabin with more legroom in the third row and greater cargo carrying capacity. Toyota calls it the “ultimate road trip vehicle.” It’s likely that Toyota wants to compete with popular three-row rigs such as the Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade. The name also draws an obvious connection to vehicles like the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Grand Wagoneer, each of which have their own elongated versions called the Grand Cherokee L and Grand Wagoneer L, the latter of which was able to swallow all of Senior Editor James Riswick’s worldly possessions. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Toyota offered stretched versions of its vehicles. After years of begging, Lexus finally offered L versions of the RX, the RX350L and RX450hL. Toyota also used the name Grand Hiace in the late 1990s for a seven- and eight-passenger van, a play off of the popular Hiace minivan.

We won’t know the full details until the Grand Highlander is revealed on February 8, followed by an appearance at the Chicago Auto Show the following day.

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November 28, 2022

Easily one of the most controversial additions to cars in the past 10 years is the introduction of artificial powertrain sounds. And that’s entirely understandable. On internal combustion cars, it seems so needless, because the natural noises could be amplified instead of creating a digital facsimile. Worse, the fake sounds usually sound fake and unpleasant. In most internal combustion cars with such augmentation, I try to turn it off. And you would think that would be the case with electric cars, since they’re pretty close to silent.

And yet, I actually rather like the sounds in EVs. Let me explain.

While I dislike sounds that attempt to recreate natural ones, I don’t mind them if they’re trying to be something else entirely. Those internal combustion sounds live in a sort of uncanny valley where they’re so close to reality, the areas where they miss stand out and make them unpleasant. Many EVs, on the other hand, go with a completely artificial and imagined soundscape. Perhaps most successful are the latest BMW electric cars, such as iX, that feature sounds created by film composer Hans Zimmer. They have a futuristic, but growly noise that avoids being grating.

Additionally, the relative silence of electric cars takes away a helpful sensation for gauging what the car is doing. There’s no aural feedback for your acceleration and deceleration like you get with an internal combustion car. It can make it harder to determine how fast you’re going or whether you’re decelerating enough. Another instance where sound is so helpful in internal-combustion cars is with shifting. When I’m driving a car with a manual transmission, I  mainly shift by ear, unless I’m trying to shift at redline every time. Sound is a genuinely useful piece of feedback, and artificial noises can help with that.

Our long-term Kia EV6 hits these key points for me. First, the sounds are connected to your throttle and acceleration, so they add that helpful feedback. Second, they’re all unique and aren’t based in reality. And yes, I’m using “they” because Kia gives you three options to pick from.

Stylish

My favorite so far is “Stylish,” which is a slightly high-pitched whir or whistle that sounds high-tech and adjacent to motor whine. I also like that the frequencies tend to fade into the background of light wind and road noise at cruising speed, so it doesn’t get annoying at cruising speeds.

Dynamic

The second sound available is “Dynamic,” and it’s my least favorite. It has a lower, more mechanical sound, sort of like gears in a transmission. It sounds more aggressive and can be fun when driving hard, but at cruising speeds, it’s more dominating and can get tiresome. Check it out.

Cyber

Then there’s “Cyber.” I liken it to Stylish’s deeper-voiced cousin. It has similar noises, just all pitched down. It also has a more aggressive vibe than Stylish, but not as annoying to me as Dynamic. The lower sound stands out to me more at highway speed, so I prefer Stylish, but depending on your hearing, you may prefer it. Take a listen.

All of these have default sound profiles, but they can each be customized even further. You can adjust the maximum volume, as well as the sensitivity to throttle inputs.

And critically, they can be turned off completely. While I do enjoy having a little sound with my driving experience, the fact is that the relative silence of electric cars is a huge perk to many people. Adding back sound takes that away. So I genuinely appreciate that Kia offers the option to shut it off entirely.

I think some automakers, such as BMW may have slightly better soundscapes, but Kia has some darn solid ones. And the customization and option to toggle them off are exactly how such a feature should be implemented in new electric cars.

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There have been entire television series and film plots built on conspiracies around the imagery on United States currency, but some countries don’t have such clandestine symbolism on their money. While looking closely at a Cambodian 500-riel note, Tire Meets Road found that the bill features an interesting little Nissan crossover instead of a weird mix of Egyptian, Masonic or patriotic images.

The Nissan Juke is seen crossing a bridge over the Mekong River on the bill’s reverse side, and though Tire Meets Road points out a Camry in the same image, to our eyes, it looks a bit more like a Toyota Vios, which is also sold in the country. The 500-riel banknote hasn’t always featured Japanese car brands. Older notes show agricultural scenes, and others show different vehicles crossing the river.

Cambodia may have interesting currency with late-model cars, but they’re far from the only country with cool legal tender. Some Australian notes are waterproof and highly colorful, making them almost impossible to counterfeit. South African currency features detailed images of the country’s five most popular animals, and some bills feature Nelson Mandela. The Canadians opted for vertically-oriented bills, and the Cook Islands’ bills have detailed imagery depicting a woman and a shark taken from legends about the country’s origins.

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