We must all be ghouls at heart – the most-read story on just-auto this week: what got bent on the Heogh Osaka, the ship that recently enjoyed an unscheduled port of call on a Southampton sandbank.
The most obvious item initially, once the ship was righted and towed back to port, and the rear door opened, was a giant piece of quarry gravel mashing equipment so we’ll leave that to just-constructiongear.com. What I saw later, in long-lens videos, seemed to be coming off largely undamaged, on its own wheels and driveable; the exception being one white Range Rover that looked like it had bonked against a pillar leaving minor dents and a broken door window on one side. It’ll buff out.
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The reality check is whether or not customers will be allowed (or want) to take delivery of cars that have sat for much of two weeks at 45-50 degrees in a salty atmosphere with sea water sloshing round where sea water should not be sloshing round – and then what do you do with them? We know what Mazda did a few years back. All reports are here.
Another popular read was news Land Rover has re-created the 1948 Defender assembly line (I know, it wasn’t called that back then) at its original Solihull plant. What intrigued me was the GBP45 (US$68) admission fee, the first time I have heard of an automaker charging day-in-a-theme-park money for a plant tour.
We also have a new research report on cockpits and instrumentation up for your delectation.
Some weeks ago, I wondered in this column if Honda and Takata would be the new Ford and Firestone and there was a sign this week I might have been right – Honda has apparently ditched its long-serving supplier for a rival to supply the next generation of US market Accord and other pending redesigns. And now we’re hearing the US NHTSA is offering potential whistleblowers immunity if they can reveal alleged wrongdoings at the supplier over what appears to be a lengthy period. This cannot end well for Takata and, again, we have all the coverage of that issue grouped here.
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By GlobalDataHave a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
