July 5th proved to be a great Open Line as Chelsea and Michelle interviewed Mark Dill, VP of Marketing and PR for the Indianapolis Speedway and took calls and chatted about cars well into the night. We even had our first participant in China! Discussion ranged from new technologies in electric cars to the good ol’ traditional gas guzzler talk.
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Today’s version of the Nissan Versa is one of the most popular cars in the B-segment. Its low cost and form-follows-function attitude appeal to a lot of consumers in the market for affordable, efficient and reliable transportation. The car has been completely redesigned for the 2012 model year. With this update the company is further refining it to deliver even more of what customers want.
Buyers expect a lot from flagship luxury cars. Anything with a six-figure price tag should do it all. The hybrid version of the BMW 7 Series fits the bill pretty well, except for one thing. John McElroy found a glaring annoyance during his week behind the wheel, and it could be a deal breaker.
Bill Ford recently announced when Alan Mulally retires someone within the company will take his place. But who? There’s a laundry list of skilled candidates for the position. Autoline host John McElroy puts his money on the line in the race to replace Alan Mulally.
The internet has turned us into a world of impatient, gotta-have-it-now people. Our short attention spans are only fueled by online services like Twitter, where everything has to be condensed into 140-character nuggets, lest it become actual complete sentences. Peter De Lorenzo, the Autoextremist, breaks the state of today’s auto business down into smaller, more manageable bites.
In Open Line’s first podcast episode we talk to Eric Fitch from PurposeEnergy. He creates fuel from, of all things, beer! What other ways can we cleverly repurpose byproducts for energy in a world without a viable EV infrastructure?
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Coming up on Roundabout . . . a hybrid car was banned from racing because it was too fast. Hard to believe, I know. Russian President Dimitry Medvedev nearly mows down a crowd of onlookers, “Grant Theft Auto” style. And we come at you with another blockbusting installment of Versus! Stick around for all of this excitement and much, much, much, much, much, more, only on RoundAbout! Our special guest this week is Christiaan Conover of WheelSpin.tv.
RoundAbout records LIVE on Fridays at 6:30PM ET/3:30PM PT. Visit RoundAboutShow.com and click Watch Live to watch our webcast and look in on all the antics.
Who would make the perfect automotive CEO? What if Alan Mulally was already taken? How about a chief designer — would you try and lure Ed Welburn away from GM? That’s the game we’re playing this week as we perform the first-annual Autoline After Hours Automotive Draft. Just as in fantasy football, we’re assembling our top executive teams, and once a coveted executive has been picked, he or she is out of the running. Our team owners for the 2011 Draft are John McElroy from Dymaxion Motors, Peter De Lorenzo from Renzo Motors, Ed Lapham from DeWard Auto Group and Jim Hall from Automobiles Bistango. On site in our War Room will be Scott Burgess from The Detroit News and Mark Phelan from the Detroit Free Press with their play-by-play analysis of the draft picks. Our master of ceremonies will be none other than Frank Markus from Motor Trend. So tune in and get ready for the battle to begin; this is gonna be good!