Car News Articles

Just the Facts:

• Toyota announces the two-year lease terms for its 2011 Lexus LFA.
• A total deposit of $60,000 and two credit checks is required.
• Lessees must then pay all 24 lease payments prior to delivery.

TORRANCE, California — Would-be owners must really, really crave the new 2011 Lexus LFA — and have a lot of money and great credit — if they hope to spend any actual seat time in one. That’s because Toyota plans to make prospective buyers — make that “lessees” — jump through proverbial hoops before letting them take delivery, sometime after the $375,000 supercar goes into production in December.

With only 500 cars being produced for global markets, including 150 earmarked for the U.S., Toyota now says that “customer response has exceeded the number of available cars [and] it is possible that not all customers who expressed interest will have an opportunity to order a Lexus LFA.”

That’s the good news. If you make the first cut and get selected to order (notifications will go out between now and the end of June), you’ll have to pass not one, but two credit checks — one before you’re allowed to even place an order and a second before you’re permitted to take delivery.

Once you’re notified of your “opportunity to order,” you have 10 days to submit a $10,000 deposit — that’s before obtaining the first credit approval. Provided your credit passes muster, you then must deposit an additional $50,000 with your dealer and then hope your credit doesn’t go south before your car gets built.

The best news, at least from Toyota’s point of view, is that because of the demand, it can virtually dictate terms on pricing and financing. And we do mean dictate.

Although the automaker has established a $375,000 base price for the LFA, you won’t be able to buy the car. Lexus has created a lease-only program (through the company’s own Lexus Financial Services) with some stunningly inventive details.

The program is called 1Pay 24. That’s a euphemism, which translates as: “We’re letting you lease the LFA for 24 months and, by the way, you have to make all the lease payments up front, in a single lump-sum payment.”

That lump sum on a base $375,000 LFA with no extras (we’ll get to that later) is $297,562.56, which Toyota says works out to a monthly payment of $12,398.44, leaving you with a projected residual value after 24 months of $93,750.

Toyota, which refers to 1Pay 24 as a “special reduced lease rate,” says your deposits will be deducted from that up-front lease payment. They also caution that dealers will add a $700 “acquisition fee,” as well as the usual “tax, title, license and registration” charges.

The company very generously is offering lessees the opportunity to purchase their cars outright at the end of the lease period. There is, of course, a catch. You’ll be charged extra for any excess mileage over 30,000, and you are responsible for “excessive wear and use,” even if you elect not to purchase.

Now about those extras. The LFA comes in three different configurations at the basic $375,000 price level, but customers “will have a tremendous amount of customization opportunity,” according to Toyota. Which translates as: “We’ll have a tremendous opportunity to charge extra for all kinds of little things.”

These include special paint ($3,000 for special solid or metallic colors, $20,000 for matte finish); polished wheels ($2,500); painted brake calipers ($1,000) and special interior colors ($1,000 extra for stitching, $2,500 each for seat front, seatback, instrument panel/door trim).

Inside Line says: We’ll hazard a guess that, even with production capped at 500 units, Toyota is going to make money on this car. — Paul Lienert, Correspondent

While we still don’t know what happened to and in James Sikes’ Prius, the recent runaway raised a question for law enforcement: Do state and local police have a protocol for dealing with out-of-control cars? The answer seems to be largely no, according to an informal survey conducted by The New York Times.

Officers in states with large populations and a great deal of traffic — such as Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Texas — all had similar takes on the issue. Mechanical malfunctions are so rare that police have to worry more about dishonest drivers trying to avoid a ticket than out-of-control vehicles.

In the Sikes incident, highway patrol officer Todd Neibert was credited with quick thinking by telling Sikes over a loudspeaker to push on the brake and emergency brake simultaneously. Neibert then pulled in front of the Prius and matched that vehicle’s speed of 80 to 85 mph. He then put his bumper firmly in front of the Prius to keep it from going anywhere. Toyota has challenged Sikes’ account, and the cause of the incident remains undetermined.

Whatever the case, police have few options in the unlikely event of accelerating vehicles over which drivers have lost control. They can deploy “stop strips” to blow the car’s tires, but this has the risk of sending the vehicle spinning out of control. Due to changes in conditions, terrain and traffic speed, officers are left to make judgments on the fly — decisions that must be made instantly and under extremely dangerous circumstances.

Little Police Protocol for Out-of-Control Cars (New York Times)

Who can we sue?

Toyota, of course. Mr Toyoda’s misspelt mega-corporation is this season’s fashion.

And why wouldn’t it be?

The company has now recalled so many cars, it has run out of its own and has had to start recalling other people’s.

And vultures – sorry, lawyers – know a golden chance when they see one.

When I last checked there were so many new lawsuits against Toyota in the US, they were considering a ticketed queuing system. One suspects some of these suits are on behalf of people who haven’t even driven a Toyota.

A man currently in a Minnesota jail – one Koua Fong Lee – is trying to have his 2006 conviction for ‘criminal vehicular homicide’ quashed. Apparently it was his Camry that killed three people, not him.

Lawyers have already dubbed this the ‘Toyota Defence’ and are furiously rifling through accident files looking for opportunities, sorry, injustices. After all, if a cashed-up corporation and not a penniless immigrant can be blamed for death and mayhem, well, pass that man a bigger cigar.

Accident victims are now talking about how their Corolla or Camry accelerated to 160 km/h ‘in an instant’ despite them standing on the brakes.

Who’s ever heard of a Corolla or Camry doing that even when someone is standing on the accelerator. With both feet. If a software glitch or errant floor-mat has really caused this extraordinary increase in performance, how can Toyota harness it and get back into Formula One?

Such filth and fury has been unleashed on others before. Remember Audi’s ‘unintended acceleration’ drama of the 1980s? The company was eventually exonerated completely when investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed in every case it was ‘driver error’.

Although the NHTSA didn’t use the term ‘stupid Americans’ I feel it was implied in the judgement.

Did that stop the lawsuits? Er, no. One man argued in court that his calamitous ‘pedal misapplication’ was Audi’s fault because the German car’s pedals were different to those in the Detroit models he was used to.

Audi dealers sued head office because their sales were down. Owners sued because their resale values had tanked. People walking past sued because it was cheaper than buying a lottery ticket and looked like it could be just as lucrative.

The company’s US sales fell by more than 80 per cent and didn’t recover their former strength until the 21st century. Amazingly, some of these lawsuits against Audi are still going.

I’m not suggesting car companies shouldn’t be held to account; many of them spent years arguing against safety legislation. Some of them still wouldn’t fit a single life-protecting device that the law didn’t require, or that they couldn’t gouge extra money from.

Nor am I denying that some lawsuits are justified.

But there is something ugly about the modern tendency to immediately look for someone else to blame – ideally the person with the deepest pockets. And there’s something weird about a place like America where people with a straight face sue because their 2 metre tall SUV has a greater tendency to roll over than a conventional car. Why don’t you sue Isaac Newton?

In his novel Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe wrote, “The Bronx jury is a vehicle for redistributing the wealth.”

It was a jury in the US District Court, however, that ordered Chrysler to pay $262.5 million for the 1994 death of Sergio Jimenez II. This six-year-old boy had been the unbelted passenger in a Chrysler minivan that his mother had driven through a red light.

Nope, can’t think of anyone but the car company to blame in that scenario.

Mark Bunim of Case Closure LLC (a New York mediation firm) recently told Reuters news agency that this first burst of Toyota lawsuits is just the beginning. ‘There’s going to be one of these cases in every town.’

What do you think? Should it be open season on Toyota? Or is there a whiff of opportunism in the air?

Tony Davis

Ever since American Idol burst into the American pop culture scene, Ford has been there right by their side. If you’re a fan of the show, then you would have noticed that for the past few years, the Top 2 finalists not only get a chance to compete for the title of American Idol, but each of them actually gets to ride off with a brand new Ford vehicle.

Not a bad way to finish runner-up, eh?

This year, Ford and AI have developed a new campaign where each of the Top 12 finalists were teamed up with four of Ford’s young hotshot designers to design their own Ford Fiesta, which will then be given away to fans of the show – on top of a chance to win a trip to the set of a Ford Music Video shoot - who enter the Ford Music Video Challenge.

The grand prize for the whole contest is a Ford Fiesta, which the winner can choose from any of the 12 AI-designed Fiestas, and a trip to the show’s finale.

Fancy a Ford Fiesta designed by your favorite American Idol Top 12 finalist?

Now’s your chance to scoop one. All you need to do is enter the Ford Music Video Challenge once per week from March 17 all the way to May 21.

Press Release after the jump

American Idol finalists team with Ford designers to create their own Fiestas

by Jeremy Korzeniewski (RSS feed) on Mar 17th 2010 at 10:01PM

Dario Franchitti just talked here at TMS media day about his close-but-no-cigar outings here at the speedway.

“We need a better handle on what I need from the car,” he said. “To win at Texas would be great. I’d like to fire those guns off. It looks like fun.”

Franchitti starts this IndyCar season on March 14 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.