The Highway 1 List: AN OFF-CENTER LOOK AT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE CAR : Going the Extra Mile With Retro Cruiser
Because They Can: That’s why auto nuts do the things they do. Of course, it helps to have skill and a backer with really deep pockets. Car parts ain’t cheap, especially the kind you have to build from scratch.
Take the case of the 1967/99 Toyota Land Cruiser built by race driver and performance specialist Rod Millen at his Rod Millen Motorsports shop in Newport Beach. The vehicle was the brainchild of Yale Gieszl, vice chairman of Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales USA, and his Lexus division general manager, Bryan Bergsteinsson, and came on the heels of another collaboration with Millen to build the Lexus Street Rod that debuted in 1998.
The Retro Cruiser looks pretty much like a 1967 Land Cruiser at first glance, but it sits atop the chassis and drive train of the current model. To make it fit, the crew at Millen had to widen the ’67 body by 6 inches and lengthen it by 10. That bodywork included lengthening the rear doors by 5 inches and adding 3 inches each to the grille and hood to keep things proportionate.
No word on the cost, but for what Toyota poured into the project, you probably could get two brand-new Land Cruisers and a garage to put them in.
Fearless Forecast: A favorite game of auto industry watchers is trying to figure out just when the curtain will come down on the market for pickups, SUVs and minivans--those vehicles the auto industry lumps together as “light trucks” and many Southern California sedan drivers lump together as “*$@#! obstacles you can’t see around.”
Well, if veteran executive Jed Connelly is correct, the end is nowhere near.
Connelly, vice president and general manager of the Nissan division of Nissan North America in Carson, says he expects light trucks, which account for about 50% of all passenger-vehicle sales in the U.S., to climb to perhaps as much as 54% in the next few years. And then, he says, expect the distinction between cars and trucks “to blur a little bit” as the number of hybrids such as the Lexus RX 300 increases.
Perhaps periscopes should be the next big option for the sedan crowd.
Freeway Fliers: Now here’s a great idea. Why not take all those high-energy Southern California business executives, all tensed up from a week at the grindstone, show ‘em how much fun it is to drive a really hot car really fast, pump ‘em full of adrenaline with a couple of 170-mph circuits in an Indy-type car over the weekend, and then stick ‘em back in traffic for the Monday morning commute to the office.
Hmmmmm. . . . Wonder how fast the ol’ Lexus really goes?
The program is called LAP, for Learning to Accelerate Performance, and it is offered by Championship Auto Racing Teams as an incentive for businesses to reward their best and brightest. A program for mere mortals (those of us who have to pay our own way) is also offered. Details, at high speed of course, can be had on CART’s World Wide Web site, https://www.driving101.com.
Hot Hondas: No, not that kind of hot. Hot as in horsepower, handling and looks (OK, you try to find a synonym that starts with an “h”). Honda’s cars have long been the preferred ride of the current generation of hot rodders, who pump thousands of dollars into nerve-deadening sound systems, fancy wheels and tires, new suspensions, tuned exhausts and engine performance equipment such as turbochargers and nitrous oxide systems.
But even as hundreds of companies out there are making millions of dollars on the hot rod Honda scene, Torrance-based American Honda Motors hasn’t done much to cut itself a slice of the pie.
That’s all starting to change, though. First came the 1999 Civic Si, a 160-horsepower “rocket-powered roller skate,” to use colleague Paul Dean’s phrase, aimed squarely at the SoCal import performance crowd.
And now Honda, for the first time, will set up a booth and display some tricked-out cars using Honda aftermarket parts at this year’s Specialty Equipment Market Assn. trade show in Las Vegas. The SEMA show is the place for the auto performance and appearance trade to gather each November to see what’s up for the coming year, and it has become the arbiter of what’s hot and what’s not.
The group’s initials have even entered the language--the trade journal Autoweek routinely uses SEMA as a verb or adverb, describing vehicles with lots of aftermarket additions as having been “SEMA’d.” The SEMA’d Hondas this November, in a display set up by Honda Parts and Accessories, will include the new high-tech S2000 roadster.
Www.whatzup: Those who use--or want to use--the World Wide Web to go car shopping might like to know that there’s a company out there trying to help sort out the myriad choices the Internet offers. It’s called Gomez Advisors, and it wants to be the J.D. Power of electronic commerce. It uses secret shoppers to try out Internet commerce sites and issues regular ratings, based on such factors as ease of use and quality of information.
Gomez senior analyst Adam Weiner said Los Angeles-based CarsDirect.com, the recent start-up whose investors include Dell Computer founder Michael Dell, got the nod as the best car-buying site online this fall “because it is the only site that provides consumers with an immediate guaranteed price and delivery date.”
But there are a number of competitors getting ready to do the same thing, including online pioneer Autobytel.com of Irvine, which is testing a direct pricing and delivery service, and InvoiceDealers.com, which is about to enter the fray with the next generation of its site, which will include comparative pricing so shoppers can see what each of the member-dealers in their area is asking for the same vehicle.
Concord, Mass.-based Gomez Advisors’ top five automotive buying sites for the fall:
1. CarsDirect.com.
2. Autobytel.com.
3. Cars.com, a product of Classified Ventures, a partnership of newspaper companies that includes Times Mirror, parent company of The Times.
4. CarPoint.com, a venture of Microsoft and, as of Monday, Ford Motor.
5. DealerNet.com, from the Cobalt Group, which bills itself as the nation’s largest publisher of automotive Web sites.
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John O’Dell can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.
