2010 Toyota Camry SE, an AW Drivers Log:

COPY EDITOR CYNTHIA L. OROSCO: A couple of nights in the Camry were fine, but nothing to write home about. The looks didn’t do much for me, the interior was fine and the power was just OK.

Farewell, Big Prince: Lamenting the end of the Mercury Grand Marquis

After 18 years of loyal, albeit uneventful service, the Mercury Grand Marquis is going the way of the Kaiser Henry J and the Hupmobile Skylark. Mercury, of course, is also set to go extinct come 2011 following in the footsteps of other well loved but ultimately redundant brands like Plymouth, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. Why Mercury’s headed to the great junkyard in the sky is another blog post, but in a word: badge-engineering. Mercury products were just Fords with different grilles. Customers knew it, non-customers knew it — hell, dogs knew it — and after many years Ford finally copped to this fact.

However, the Grand Marquis, says me, is special. See, back in 2008 Ford made the decision to stop selling the Marquis’ Panther platform mate — the Crown Victoria — to the general public. The big Ford became fleet-only, meaning unless you’re a cop or a cabbie, no big Dearborn rear-driver for you. Sure, you could still buy the Lincoln Town Car, but that’s another price point, largely stretched and mostly for livery use. Meaning that the Mercury is the last in a very long line of full-size, V-8 rear-wheel drive Blue Oval sedans for the masses.

Realizing all this, on a recent trip to New England my good buddy Murilee Martin and I decided to go Grand one last time. For just $45 more than “Chevrolet Aveo or similar” we rented ourselves an Ultimate Edition Grand Marquis. Mind you, that’s not $45 more per day, but $45 more for all four days of our trip. Talk about money well spent. Instead of rubbing shoulders in a beaten up rental car edition of a penalty box, the two of us were able to plunk our sizable backsides down in some genuine American near-luxury.

The first leg of our trip was Providence, Rhode Island, to the most southern tip of Maine and a town called Kittery. Why? Lobster rolls! There’s a place called Bob’s Clam Hut that sells some really excellent ones, complete with a soft white roll that can barely contain the dual-mountain of yummy pink crustacean meat. Especially after you slather it up in melted, heart-stopping butter. I recommend the clam chowder, too, as it’s much more about the clams than it is milky white broth.

The Grand Marquis soaked up the 110-mile jaunt with ease. Special kudos go to the fat, leather-wrapped bench seats. Sure, they are split down the middle (as opposed to a single bench) and almost fully adjustable (some lumbar support however, would have been swell), but in an age when even station wagons are getting rigged up with hip-hugging Recaros, it’s refreshing to wiggle about on top of some big flat benches. After all, we weren’t planning on getting the Mercury sideways. At least not yet.

Which raises a key point. Unlike the bulk of both pro and civie Crown Vics out there, the Grand Marquis is no Police Interceptor. Even in Ultimate Edition form. Meaning you won’t find cop shocks, cop tires, cop brakes, cop engine (well, cop engine oil cooler) or any of the other special parts that allow Police Interceptors to run over curbs at more than 50 mph without flinching. No, our powder blue Grand Marquis was set up like a proper Mercury: real soft.

That fact suited the two of us just fine as we cranked the AM/FM and enjoyed the waft. One gripe is that we had absolutely no way to connect an iPod or a smart phone to the totally Sync-less Merc, and neither of us thought to bring any compact discs. But hey, New Hampshire has some of the most extreme, right wing talk radio in the nation, so we stayed quite entertained. Most importantly, we stayed comfortable, with that kinda-big, nearly powerful 4.6-liter V-8 peacefully humming along as if in a dream state.

Our next stop was Stafford, Connecticut, and the renowned (in short track NASCAR circles at any rate) Stafford Motor Speedway, a half-mile bullring of an oval. We’d arrived for that weekend’s 24 Hours of LeMons race. Thing is that motorized circus wouldn’t start until Saturday, today was Friday and boy that track sure looks empty. Yes, we took the Grand Marquis on the track.

How was it? Shockingly fun. In fact, more fun than the last few supercars I’ve banged around a track. How is this possible? Always remember what P.J. O’Rourke said, “here’s a lot of debate on this subject — about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car.” I experienced no compelling reason to disagree with this thesis. Besides, body-on frame brutes go with ovals like chocolate gets along with peanut butter.

The Mercury also performed one other amazing feat, one that 99.9 percent of other modern cars simply can’t do as well. I went ahead and prepaid for a tank of gas. Meaning that if we returned the Grand Marquis on anything more than an eighth of a tank, they’d be getting both my money and my gas! As it happened, Connecticut experienced record-breaking heat that weekend — 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity. So, we left the car idling all day with the A/C set to Max. Whenever any of us felt a heat stroke coming on, we’d simply dip into the near-frozen Grand Marquis for a quick cool down. And this may have been the sun talking, but after a few hours I swear the windows began icing up.

While no human being on earth will shed a tear over the demise of say, the Mercury Mariner, many of us will be bummed about the loss of the Grand Marquis. Talk to any car-pundit these days and they’ll tell you that the future of personal transportation is all about choices. The automotive landscape will soon be a big potpourri of gasoline, corn-o-line (ethanol), hybrid, plug-in hybrid, range-extended hybrid (think Volt), pure electric, diesel, fuel cell and whatever else gets you from A to B. I just think it’s a shame that one of those choices won’t include a graceful old heavyweight like the Mercury Grand Marquis.

Photos by Murilee Martin

Obama Touts Auto Industry Revival as a Leading Economic Indicator

Can manufacturing save us? When President Obama bailed out Chrysler and General Motors, sending them to bankruptcy court last year, the nascent administration touted the Detroit Three as the last bastion of big-time manufacturing in the United States, a necessary part of our economy. Now that the economic recovery is stalling, GM, Ford and Chrysler are still growing. All three are profitable for the first time since 2004, Obama told a crowd of cheering United Auto Workers Friday. The bailouts saved about 1 million jobs, and the auto industry has added 55,000 more in the last year, he said.

This was a midterm election campaign rally, held at Chrysler’s Jeep Grand Cherokee assembly plant on Detroit’s Conner Avenue. This is what presidents of either party do as the midterms approach.

“We were in the midst, when I took office, of a deep and painful recession, that cost our economy about 8 million jobs. And took a terrible toll on communities like this. Our economy was shrinking about 6 percent per quarter. Now, this morning, we learned our economy grew by about 2.4 percent for the second quarter of the year. So that means it has been growing for one full year.”

The growth is slowing. That 2.4-percent growth in the second quarter is about one point below economists’ projections, and down from 3.7 percent in the first quarter and 5 percent in the last quarter of ‘09. It’s up from 0 percent in 2008. Overall, according to Commerce department figures, the economy shrank about 2.6 percent in 2009, mostly in the first half of the year.

But Obama reiterated the three options his administration had in dealing with the failing American auto industry. Three options that the Treasury department’s manufacturing chief, Ron Bloom, outlined for me in an interview earlier this year. The new administration rejected one, the unmitigated federal bailouts; two, letting GM and Chrysler fail; for three, the bailouts as we know them today. The bankruptcies left many investors and creditors with nothing, UAW workers with a two-tier wage formula and union-owned retiree benefits and many fewer jobs, and thousands of dealerships without franchises. GM’s bankruptcy cut itself nearly in half, and I’m still amazed how quickly and effortlessly the General went from eight to four brands in North America.

Here’s part of the campaign pitch: “our strategy was to get this company and this industry back on its feet … take a hands-off approach, saying ‘you guys know the business, we don’t. We’re going to give you a chance, but we know you’ve got a chance.”

He shot back at opponents of the GM and Chrysler bailouts, which at the time, and probably to this day, seems to include anyone outside Michigan and a few struggling cities elsewhere in the Midwest.

“The fact that we’re standing in this magnificent factory today is a testament to the decisions we made and the sacrifices you, and countless stakeholders across this industry and this country were willing to make. So today, this industry is growing strong. It’s creating new jobs. It’s manufacturing the fuel efficient new cars and trucks that will carry us toward an energy-independent future.”

There’s the nod to factory workers and environmentalists who helped Obama win the presidency in 2008. If a good number of them, more than the number who usually come out for mid-terms, vote in November, Democrats may stem the expected shift to Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

Obama announced Friday that Chrysler will keep open past 2012 its Sterling Heights, Michigan, assembly plant, where it builds the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger. Chrysler/Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne told reporters after Obama’s speech that the factory, which Chrysler was planning to shut down in the first quarter of next year, will build the facelifted midsize sedans, and then the full redesign scheduled for the 2014 model year.

After the Jeep plant, Obama appeared at the Chevrolet Volt assembly plant in nearby Hamtramck, where GM announced it would boost Volt production by 50 percent in its second full year, 2013. That’s from 30,000 units in calendar ‘12 to 45,000 in ‘13, pretty good numbers for a car on which GM will lose money because of the cost of the high technology. This stuff doesn’t come cheap.

Obama even took what GM describes as an “impromptu” 40-foot drive in a production Volt at the Hamtramck plant. GM’s event seems a subtle jab at Rush Limbaugh’s confused attack on extended-range hybrid. (At one point, he told his radio audience, according to reports, that the Volt goes just 40 miles before running down its electrical charge.) Limbaugh said that the Obama administration had to offer a $7,500 tax credit in order to get anyone to buy the Volt.

The 0-$7,500 tax credit was renewed in Obama’s 2009 economic recovery act, but that was after the Bush administration renewed the tax credit in 2008, from its own Energy Policy Act of 2005. Don’t tell me Limbaugh’s against renewing a Bush-era tax break?

The Volt is getting it from both sides. Days before Limbaugh’s uninformed rant, the self-important Hybrid Owners of America put out an email comparing the Chevy Volt with the Nissan Leaf. “How can you have a ‘battle of the electric cars’ when there’s only one electric car in the match?” it asks, while going on to point out that the Volt will require “pricey premium unleaded” for its gas-powered generator.

Ah, well. No matter what GM, Chrysler, and even Ford build in the next several years, it’s going to take some time before the U.S. auto industry gets the kind of respect Asian and European brands have enjoyed, including from the automotive and non-automotive press.

The president may have been campaigning Friday, but he had good reason to crow about the auto industry. It’s smaller and healthier today, able to make a profit at lower volumes, which are volumes that indicate how weak the economy remains. I don’t know whether a majority of Americans today would say they’re better off today than they were a year ago. I can tell you that one factory-full of Chrysler workers would say “yes,” and those still working at GM and Ford, and a good number of those of us who live in and near Detroit would agree.

2010 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG, an AW Drivers Log:

MOTORSPORTS EDITOR MAC MORRISON: This is one bad boy right here.

2011 Infiniti M37S, an AW Drivers Log:

MOTORSPORTS EDITOR MAC MORRISON: I’m quite disappointed with this Infiniti. For all of its sporting pretensions, it felt slightly better than average–at best–to me.

2010 BMW 328i Sedan, an AW Drivers Log:

ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR CHERYL L. BLAHNIK: If you’re a car enthusiast, how can you not like this car? OK, well maybe I’m a little biased because ever since I was in high school, I wanted a BMW 3-series BMW.

The 2010 Ford Flex Limited EcoBoost, an AW Drivers Log:

EDITOR WES RAYNAL: This is a nice people mover but, man, $46,000 is a lot of loot. I kept wondering whilst I drove it: Since the Flex walks and talks pretty much like a minivan, why don’t I just save the coin and get a Dodge Grand Caravan?

Joe Bortz’s 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne

Motor Trend Classic readers know Joe Bortz. He’s the Chicago-based restaurant mogul and car collector who has been buying and restoring concept cars from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s for nearly four decades. I’ve been fortunate enough to drive five of Bortz’s cars and write about them for Classic. His 1953 Buick Wildcat I and 1954 Pontiac Bonneville-Special GM Motorama cars were on the cover of Issue 5. His 1955 Chrysler Falcon, 1957 Chrysler Diablo and 1966 Duesenberg Model D, all Ghia-built Virgil Exner designs, were in this summer’s Issue 10.

All Motorama cars would have been crushed or drawn-and-quartered, if not for the crafty purveyors of Warhoops, the junkyard about 10 miles north of GM’s Tech Center, where the concepts — “dream cars” in ’50s vernacular — were to be destroyed.  All except the ‘54 Bonneville; Bortz proudly calls the Pontiac the “most original” concept extant. It was titled to a GM employee after it made the showcar rounds, and Bortz bought it from that employee 30-some years ago.

The Buick Wildcat wasn’t so lucky. Bortz’s long-time car handler, Paul Peterlin, told me in 2006 that he could find only three of the car’s original roto-static hubcaps (they remain steady, the Buick logo stays upright as the wheels turn). A fabricator took two years to make the fourth out of a Weber grill cover.

That’s the way one- or two-off dream cars are restored. There are no parts cars, although many production pieces can be used. The Wildcat and Bonneville-Special are powered by production Buick and Pontiac engines, and the Chrysler Falcon and Dart have production Hemis.

Same with Bortz’s latest re-creation, the 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne. It was designed to show off Chevy’s new small block, and it’s now powered by a 265 cubic-inch V-8 from a vintage production car. Warhoops had to cut the Biscayne into three parts; the top and front clip were in separate pieces. Bortz’s son found the car at Warhoops in 1988. It wasn’t until GM sent original blueprints for the car in ‘96 that Bortz had Hopperstad Custom of Belvidere, Illinois, begin restoration. They had to build a chassis for the fiberglass body, and add structure inside.

It looks great.

The Motorama Biscayne is far from the most handsome concept ever built. The bugeye headlamps point skyward when the hood is opened, of course, while the denture-like maw below it lacks the cuteness of the Austin-Healey Sprite that debuted three years later. The Biscayne’s side scallops hint at the ‘56 Corvette’s, though they’re reversed and run from the front door back.

The 2+2 four-door hardtop (the ‘55 Buicks and Oldsmobiles introduced this bodystyle, but Chevy wouldn’t get it until ‘56) has frameless suicide doors, one particular area where Hopperstad had to add structure. While the Biscayne has a front-mounted V-8, its tail also hints at the 1960 Corvair.

Bortz showed the reconstructed, but unrestored Biscayne at the Pebble Beach Concours a couple of summers ago. Last weekend, he unveiled the fully restored, mint green-on-mint green Biscayne at the Concours d’Elegance of America, at Oakland, Michigan’s Meadow Brook. He called his display a “mini-Motorama,” featuring the Buick Wildcat I, Pontiac Bonneville-Special and 1953 Pontiac Parisienne.

Ed Welburn, the sixth and current GM design chief, was pretty excited to see the 55-year-old Chevy, and he showed his weakness for Buick, asking Bortz if he could sit in the Wildcat. Welburn is busy getting GM design in order. He’s made great strides with Buick by referring to its past — especially its early ’50s heyday — without going retro. The Chevy Cruze owes nothing, as far as I can see, to the Motorama Biscayne. Except, as analyst Jim Hall pointed out to me, this: it’s a semi-premium compact Chevy. There’s nothing in the Biscayne’s design that suggests the compacts Detroit would introduce in the following decade should be priced below full-size deluxe models.

Will the Cruze’s dynamics and feel match its image? I’ll find out when I drive it (Frank Markus already has written his review, so call mine a “second drive”) in a couple of days in Washington, D.C.

Photographs by Donna Lassa

2010 Lexus HS 250h Premium, an AW Drivers Log:

EDITOR WES RAYNAL: For all that’s going on underneath the car–the electric motors whirring, the regenerative brakes regenerating, the engine shutting off and turning back on–this sure is a boring car to drive.

Me and My i-MiEV: Mark’s daily blog:

Seniro Editor (West Coast) Mark Vaughn is spending the summer in a Mitsubishi i-MiEV. he’s chronicling his days and nights in the car in this blog.