Category Archives: Cars & Trucks

Bringing the Land Rover Defender back?

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“British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe hopes to resurrect the iconic Land Rover Defender (that’s no longer in production). The goal is to develop a vehicle like the Defender minus shortcomings such as poor drivability and outdated emissions and safety standards, and have it ready in the next two to three years. […] The company is hoping to build between 15,000 and 20,000 units annually. It’s too early to talk pricing but Ineos has hinted at a starting price of less than $65,000.”

Nope. Wouldn’t be the same (for me).

Will demand for oil plummet?

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It would be like a game of Risk that’s been going on for three days and your three-year-old comes in and gleefully turns the board over. [CNBC]

RethinkX co-founder and Stanford University economist and professor Tony Seba told CNBC’s Street Signs that the rise of self-drive cars will see oil demand plummet, the price of oil drop to $25 a barrel, and oil producers left without the political or financial capital they have today.

“He says we are not going to stop driving altogether, just switch to self-drive electric vehicles, which will become a much larger part of the sharing economy. And these electric vehicles are going to cost less to both buy and run. […] There will be no more petrol or diesel cars, buses and trucks sold anywhere in the world within 8 years. Which also means no more car dealers by 2024.”

“China wants to get electric, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell cars to account for 20 per cent of all auto sales by 2025, while India aims to electrify all vehicles in the country by 2032.”

Arkonik Custom Land Rover Defender

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This morning I heard about Arkonik, a company in the UK that does custom restorations of vintage Land Rovers. I submitted my name and email address on their website and within 5 minutes got a call from Tom Maxwell who might just be the best phone salesman I’ve ever encountered. He talked for half an hour but it was all good stuff. A full-on core dump. Where I could get no information from the Cool & Vintage guys, I got more from Tom than I could process. (D90 below is just a sample image from their website)

It’s becoming clear I’m gonna drop a bundle if I want to own a Land Rover D90. Did I mention the 12 month wait? This is clearly a seller’s market. Much more like buying/investing in fine art than driving a new Prelude off the lot. Or a bespoke suit on Savile Row. Deep water for a small town boy like me. But I’m hooked. Unless I get unhooked. From the jump Tom (and others) have stressed how much are and attention a 25 year old vehicle demands. It’s really more like buying a Golden Retriever than a truck. So why the hell is the Defender worth so much?

“I’ll tell you why: because it’s so damn cool. Yes, it’s loud, and rough, and slow, and unreliable. Yes, the Jeep Wrangler is better than the Defender in every objective way. But that’s the point of the Defender: it’s unique. It’s special. It’s unusual. The Jeep Wrangler is for people who leave their dealership license plate frame on. For people who drive past six gas stations to get to a Texaco two miles from their house because gas there is three cents cheaper.” (Jalopnik)

Stay tuned.

Cool&Vintage Interview

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That is how Ricardo Pessoa — the founder of Cool & Vintage — decides which cars to restore. I found several interviews and articles about Ricardo and his company.

“We are a couple of creative guys that have marketing/photography/fashion/filmmaking backgrounds and this is our take on cars. We were already dealing with restorations since we were driving mainly classic cars in our everyday life. We try to create the environment that will inspire people to use the cars, whether you buy it from us or not. The concept behind the company is to enjoy life through experiences and cars do that for us because we love to travel by car.”

That works for me. As does this:

“The new generation doesn’t want to buy from big, mainstream companies — they’re selective and look for small businesses who really care about their product and have a brand they can connect with”, comments Founder Ricardo Pessoa.

I’ve found lots of photos of the cars and the workshop but none of Ricardo yet. I’ll see if I can get one of him and the boys with “my” Land Rover.

Cool&Vintage: Land Rover D90

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UPDATE: (May 17, 2017) After two weeks of struggling to get email and phone calls returned, I’ve decided to look elsewhere for my Land Rover D90. The folks at Cool & Vintage are talented marketers and they’re probably pretty good at restoring Land Rovers, but I found their communication skills wanting.

Regardless of how it ends, I’ll probably mark today as the beginning of my Land Rover D90 adventure. It really started last week when spotted a nifty looking vehicle on one of the websites I frequent. They had linked to www.CoolVintage.com’s photo spread of a restored vintage Land Rover (D90). I’ve always liked the looks of these but never gave a thought to owning one but that day I filled out the webform (“Will I have to rob a liquor store to purchase one of these?”)I promptly received an email from Francisca, the Product Manager at Cool Vintage.com.

Turns out the Land Rover with the hot model is not available for export to US but they were restoring a few D90’s that would be ready in September. I fell in love with the 1993 D90 in Nardo Grey with Rugged Interior Trim. I finally got the company founder, Ricardo, on the phone today and while “my” car is still being restored, he promised to send me some photos next week. (This is where you take a few minutes to limber up your eyeballs because you’re gonna want to roll ‘em in a few seconds.)

According to Francisca, I send them 60% of the money up front and the remainder when the car arrives. If this goes down it will probably be my largest online purchase for a while. I’ve already answered a few questions from friends: Can’t you get one of these in the US? Can’t you get one cheaper? Are you out of your fucking mind? Have you thought this through?

No to that last question. Total impulse buy. I fell in love with the look of this car and the idea of some some guys/girls in a garage in Lisbon, Portugal, restoring a vintage Land Rover from the ground up. (“Everything either restored or new down to the last bolt. Probably better than new.” Says Francisca.)

I’ll chronicle this adventure here if you want to following along. Photos next week. And I’ll try to find out a bit more about Francisca and Ricard and CoolVintage.com

UPDATE: I’ve never tried so hard to send a bunch of money to strangers in a foreign country. It is not certain I will be able to purchase one of these. A very “tough ticket.”

How self-driving cars could change real estate

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Driverless cars could become a reality in five years, and will profoundly affect real estate within eight or nine years. A few possibilities:

  • Roughly 15 to 20% of your living space constructed in the average home is devoted to the garage
  • Each urban area will have a hub, but it won’t be in the expensive part of town — it will be in the cheaper part of town, right off the freeway
  • Fewer parking lots. In 2016, in the D.C. area, commercial underground parking garages added 10-12% to the cost of office construction. In residences, each additional parking space increased the cost of development per unit by 25%. Driverless cars could make these parking lots a relic of the past
  • There are 125,000 gas stations in the United States in prime real estate, you won’t need those anymore

Flying about to change completely. Because of cars.

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10 to 15 years from now, the flying experience could look vastly different because of self-driving cars.

In Europe, high-speed rail wins 50% of all traffic when the journey length is less than 4.5 hours, according to the French National Railroads, and wins 90% of traffic when the journey is two hours or less.

Bags will get picked up in the city and travel separate from you and land at your destination. People won’t be traveling with their luggage. Perhaps it’s picked up by a self-driving car or a specific baggage robot instead.

And if an airline is controlling your ground transportation, it’ll be able to provide other services as well. “They come pick you up, they load your baggage, and potentially, your bag will be screened while sitting in the vehicle.

No more car chase movies?

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Everything I’ve read to date about autonomous vehicles has led me to believe this technology is inevitable. Not if, just when. But something (finally?) occurred to me a couple of days ago that has me reconsidering. This would mean the end of car chases in movies, wouldn’t it? The horror! Think of all the great car chases in the last fifty years.

“The consensus among historians and film critics is that the first modern car chase movie was 1968’s Bullitt. The revolutionary 10-minute-long chase scene in Bullitt was far longer and far faster than what had gone before, and placed cameras so that the audience felt as though they were inside the cars.” (Wikipedia)

Terminator, French Connection, The Blues Brothers, To Live and Die in L.A., The Bourne Identity, The Italian Job, Mad Max: Road Warrior (okay, we’d probably still have that), Vanishing Point, The Matrix Reloaded (will we have autonomous motorcycles?). And the list goes on and on.

You’re gonna tell me it will drone chases or something like those vertical “highways” in Minority report or The Fifth Element but, man, it won’t be the same. Is it too late to stop this train?