OK, Now, Let’s See Who’s Been Paying Attention
It’s been a while, but the Highway 1 Quiz was so popular back when we regularly ran it that we thought we’d revive it as part of our end-of-the-year celebration.
Besides, it helps fill space as we head into the post-holiday season, when our writers are working their fingers to the bone to bring you the best--live!--from the Los Angeles and Detroit auto shows. (Bonus question, name one thing more glamorous than downtown Detroit in January.)
Our theme this time is, loosely, automotive news of the year we are about to exit. And what a year it has been.
Consumers bought more new cars and trucks than in any other year in history. But several big auto makers wallowed through it deep in trouble.
Because of the Firestone debacle, we finally learned that tires are, indeed, important. We began to rediscover the station wagon. We found ourselves paying huge premiums for a little truck--Chrysler’s PT Cruiser--that has nothing special except looks going for it. (Are we shallow or what?) And we witnessed the first signs of a crumbling marriage. No, not Ford boss Jac Nasser’s--that one made news only in Detroit, where automotive executives are the local version of our movie stars and high-tech mavens--but the sudden souring of the merger that created DaimlerChrysler.
We could go on and on, but then there would be no room for the quiz--which concentrates on automobilia, Southern California style.
As always, grading is on the honor system, with 10 points for each correct answer. And, as always, opinions expressed (and any errors made) in presenting this quiz are entirely those of the management of Highway 1.
Score 60 or more and you probably have a handsomely bound Highway 1 collection prominent in your library; 30 to 60 and you read us pretty regularly but toss us out like old sushi at the end of the day and lavish your attention on more pressing issues like paying the bills; 30 or lower, you get your news from television and think a two-minute video clip is the height of investigative reporting.
Answers appear on G6, except for that one tough, final answer that could win you a coveted Highway 1 commuter mug.
1. Southern California is a hotbed of these businesses, which blend cutting-edge technology with human dreams and imagination to produce stuff that entertains us and transports us to new horizons. The latest opened its doors in North Hollywood at the start of the year. What is it?
2. Thanks in part to our relative proximity to their archipelagic nation and in part to the presence here of a large Asian community when the time came for them to expand eastward (and, yes, we are east of them), Japan’s major auto makers were unanimous in choosing Southern California as the home of their U.S. headquarters back in the 1960s. Others followed, and now all but one of the major Asian auto makers have their U.S. headquarters in either Los Angeles or Orange counties. Who is the holdout? And five extra points if you know in which state it keeps its U.S. offices.
3. Some think that Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie were the stars of this remake of a 1974 cult classic, but Highway 1 loyalists probably preferred a supporting player called Eleanor. Name the film and describe Eleanor.
4. Ford Motor is no stranger to Southern California. There’s been a Ford design studio in Valencia for more than a decade. And the Dearborn, Mich., auto maker’s Lincoln Mercury division relocated to Irvine in 1998 to break away from the Michigan mind-set and expose top strategists to the left coast’s freewheeling culture. Ford also plans to add the U.S. headquarters of its Premier Automotive Group’s European brands--Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo and Land Rover--to the Irvine campus. Lost in all the hoopla was the move late this year of yet another Ford unit to Southern California--this time to Carlsbad, in San Diego County. Ponder this for a bit, then name the company.
5. Southern California auto manufacturing by the Big Three ended with the closure of General Motors’ Camaro plant in Van Nuys in August 1992, but cars and trucks have been built here since before there was a formal auto industry. The Tourist runabout was made in L.A. from 1902 until 1910; then there was the Leach touring car, from 1920 to 1923, and the three-wheeled Davis, built in Van Nuys in 1948. Texan Carroll Shelby built the famed Shelby Cobra in a rented industrial building near Los Angeles International Airport in the 1960s. The most recent automobile to spring from the fertile mind of a Southern California car dreamer was unveiled in August. It seats two, goes more than 200 mph and is priced at $285,000. Its name?
6. Electric cars, gasoline-battery hybrids and fuel cells are part of the language in California these days as the state gears up for imposition of a mandate to produce zero-emissions and ultra-low-emissions vehicles in the 2003 model year. One of the first of the hybrids to hit the market was built in Japan but designed in Southern California. Name the car and its maker. Five extra points if you know the name and location of the design studio.
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And here’s the Contest: For the bonus baby:
Highway 1 commuter mugs go to the first 25 readers who mail the correct answer to Highway 1 Quiz, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Entries are due by Jan. 10 and the answer--and winners’ names--will be published in the Jan. 17 issue of Highway 1.
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Gentlemen, and ladies, as our quiz originator liked to say, start your brain cells:
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It would seem, these days, that the auto industry is consolidating into a dense mass that would make a Krispy Kreme jealous. Ford, as we’ve seen, owns or controls half a dozen other car companies; Chrysler was absorbed by Daimler-Benz and the resulting DaimlerChrysler now owns pieces of several other auto makers, including Mitsubishi. Renault controls Nissan. GM owns Saab and pieces of Suzuki, Subaru, Isuzu and Fiat. Hyundai owns Kia. Volkswagen is paterfamilias to Audi and Rolls-Royce. Is there no one left standing alone? The answer is yes, there are five, and we know who. Can you name three of them?
Quiz Answers
1. GM’s advanced automotive design studio.
2. Subaru, the car-making arm of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan; the U.S. headquarters are in New Jersey.
3. “Gone in 60 Seconds”; she was a 1968 Shelby GT Mustang. And pat yourself on the back if you also knew that the original Eleanor, in the 1974 film, was a 1971 Mach 1 Mustang.
4. Think Group, Ford’s electric vehicle and fuel-cell development unit.
5. Saleen S7.
6. Prius, Toyota Motor Corp. Bonus: Calty Design Irvine.
