Exercise caution when renting the car of your dreams, warns exotic rental company

New York, New York - The exotic rental car industry is growing to meet consumer demand, but Gotham Dream Cars warns enthusiasts to exercise caution and know what to ask before you rent a luxury or super car. "Renting a Ferrari or Lamborghini for the weekend is quite different from renting a normal economy car at the airport," said Noah Lehmann-Haupt, Gotham Dream Cars CEO. "It's important for those thinking about taking the plunge to do their research and know what questions to ask up front."

Gotham offers the following tips for exotic car rental:

• Make sure the car you are renting is actually owned or leased by the rental company, and is not a private owner's personal vehicle. Several fly-by-night operators use privately-owned cars to get around the legalities and difficulties of insurance and financing. If you rent a car that isn't legally insured as a rental, you could be held liable and possibly sued for damages by the owner, and your personal insurance carrier will not cover you.

• Beware of the stock photo, and make sure the car you reserve is the one you're getting. Many small or start-up rental companies trade cars with other companies, or list cars that they do not own in order to appear larger and more established.

• Ask for an on-site walk-through of the car. Luxury or super cars may have extremely advanced technology, so make sure the rental company gives you a proper introduction to the vehicle and make sure you know how to use the safety features, how to operate the transmission, and how to avoid a potentially dangerous drive.

• Know the terms and conditions of the agreement prior to renting the vehicle. Know how many kilometres or miles are included, what happens if the car breaks down, any roadside assistance, or any refuelling requirements.

• Check the vehicle's condition. If the vehicle has been borrowed from another company or a private owner, it may have worn tires or mechanical failures.

• Have realistic expectations. Although it's an exotic vehicle, it's still a rental car, and will probably have normal wear and tear.

Honda breaks ground for jet engine plant and headquarters in North Carolina

Burlington, North Carolina - Honda Aero Inc. has officially broken ground on its new corporate headquarters and jet engine plant in Burlington, North Carolina. The property is adjacent to the Burlington-Alamance County regional airport. The company also announced that it has successfully run a proof-of-concept version of its GE Honda HF120 turbofan engine, and that it has exceeded the company's targets for both thrust performance and specific fuel consumption on its first test run. The company has a goal of engine certification in 2009, followed by the start of mass production in late 2010. "Today, we break new ground for Honda and our efforts to enter the business of aviation," said Satoshi Toshida, senior managing director of Honda Motor Company Ltd. "The GE Honda Aero engines built here in North Carolina will power a new class of advanced light jets." The company is investing approximately US$27 million in the headquarters and manufacturing facility, including equipment, and will employ some 70 people. The plant will have an initial annual capacity of 200 engines within about one year of production start-up. The engines will be used in two products in the "very light jet" market, the Spectrum Aeronautical Freedom and HondaJet, which will be produced in nearby Greensboro by the Honda Aircraft Company, a separate Honda company.

Mercedes-Benz builds its one-millionth vehicle in Alabama

Tuscaloosa, Alabama - Mercedes-Benz U.S. International has announced the production of its one-millionth vehicle at its plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ten years and nine months after the first M-Class rolled off the production line in 1997. The milestone vehicle, a white M-Class 350, came off the line on November 27 at 7:59 a.m. CST.
The plant currently builds the M-Class, R-Class and GL-Class. "Our entire organization is extremely proud of this accomplishment and the global teamwork that has made it happen," said Bill Taylor, plant manager. "Alabama has provided us with an excellent workforce and this state has been committed to the success of our business. Because of that commitment to our plant, we plan to donate this vehicle to a non-profit within the state." The company will make a final decision on the recipient in the coming weeks. During the eight-year life cycle of the first-generation vehicle, more than 570,000 M-Class SUVs were produced in Tuscaloosa, with about half of them sold in the U.S. The plant includes two assembly shops, two paint shops and one body shop; its 4,000 employees produced 173,6000 vehicles in 2006, sold in more than 135 countries. A recent study showed that the plant's total economic and fiscal impact on Alabama's economy, along with plant suppliers, is US$6.8 billion.

California trial to determine if Toyota is responsible for traffic death

Stockton, California - A jury in San Joaquin County, California is expected to hear opening arguments today in Singh v. Toyota Motor Corporation, a lawsuit that alleges Toyota failed to test the design for the Corolla in real world conditions. Lawyers will argue that the lack of testing makes the vehicle "a fire hazard and the seatbelts a death trap." "When consumers purchase a car they have a reasonable expectation that the seatbelts will work properly and that they will unlatch in a 40 miles per hour crash," said lead attorney Lou Franecke. Nearly five years ago, Raminder Singh burned to death in a car crash when his Toyota Corolla was forced off the road by another vehicle. His son Gurinder Singh, who was also in the car, claimed in depositions that he released his seatbelt and escaped the car, but that he and bystanders failed in unlatching the elder Singh's seatbelt before the car was engulfed in flames. The lawsuit filed by Singh's family alleges that Toyota did not design nor test the Corolla in real-world conditions for a fire hazard in a driver's side head-on collision. "By placing the battery and electrical components in proximity to the fuel line, the Toyota Corolla is designed to be a potentially explosive device upon a driver side head-on collision, leaving you vulnerable to being trapped and burned to death," said family attorney Mohinder Mann. The lawsuit also alleges that Toyota did not follow standards used by a majority of American car manufacturers in designing the car's seatbelt latch. "Toyota is one of the few remaining manufacturers still using a rigid metal seatbelt latch in their Corolla that bends and makes it impossible to unlatch the seatbelt and escape the vehicle," Franecke said. "Toyota never tested their seatbelt design to see if the latch would work properly in the real world."

Swiss team takes Mercedes-Benz Global TechMasters 2007

Stuttgart, Germany - A team of automotive technicians from Switzerland has taken this year's Mercedes-Benz Global TechMasters award for the best service station team for passenger vehicles. The team won against 75 in a final round whittled down from an original 10,000 participants from 15 countries, including Canada. "To provide customer-focused high-quality after-sales service, you need competent and service-oriented employees," said Günther Fleig, Daimler Board of Management member for Human Resources and Labor Relations Director. "Because of our state-of-the-art technologies and comprehensive range of products, it is crucial that we provide our employees with high-quality training and continuing education in order to maintain the competitiveness of our company. The Mercedes-Benz Global TechMasters competition helps to motivate the technicians and service staff at our workshops worldwide to deliver top performance every day and thereby contribute to the brand's success." The international competition, held for the third time, serves as a key training tool and is designed to boost the qualification and motivation of the employees, and to underscore the brand's claim to providing top-quality premium products and services by ensuring global excellence at workshops as well. Technicians and service consultants from 15 participating markets participated in the event, with the winning team from each country going on to the final round in Stuttgart. The teams were tested on their theoretical and practical skills in the professions defined by the company for the after-sales sector, including discussions with the customers, repair work and subsequent return of the vehicles.

Toyota dealer, elderly customers embroiled in long feud

Lawyers representing Toyota of Stuart, Florida, and 13 dissatisfied elderly customers sat down together with an arbitrator last October to discuss a truce, according to a report in the Miami Herald. The attorneys say they left the meeting with some hope for an out-of-court resolution to 13 lawsuits in which the former customers accuse the dealership of taking advantage of older customers by getting them to buy cars at marked-up prices and pushing them into overpriced leases. But nearly two months later, the customers’ lawyer vows to appeal the rulings of arbitrators who sided with the dealership. The dealership’s owners say they plan to continue a defamation suit they filed against the customers’ attorney, and both sides seem more entrenched than ever as even more attorneys are getting involved.
The current round of lawsuits dates to 2005. In the first case, the dealership reached a settlement with a 79-year-old Florida woman who claimed fast-talking salespeople tricked her into overpaying for the lease of a Toyota Camry. During the recent arbitration hearings, the customers’ lawyer thought the dealership was ready to settle again. ''They said they decided they were going to change the way they do business and that they wanted the whole thing behind them,'' the attorney said. The changes the dealership made, however, were additions such as video cameras inside salesrooms and special forms for senior buyers -- designed to protect the dealership against lawsuits, according to the Miami Herald article.
From the dealership’s standpoint, at the October meeting dealership representatives said that they were willing to sit down with the disgruntled customers, go through their paperwork with them, and negotiate the return of the cars they purchased if they were still unhappy. The sticking point seems to be that the dealership refused to pay the customers' legal fees. “Why would you pay the attorneys' fees if you feel you did nothing wrong?'' the dealership’s attorney asked.
The judge overseeing the case has ordered all of the 13 cases into forced arbitration, citing provisions in the contracts the customers signed. Toyota of Stuart won the first of the arbitrations in early October, after an arbitrator ruled that dealership officials did not defraud an 89-year-old woman when she first bought a 2000 Toyota Avalon and then traded it in for the lease of a 2005 Camry less than two weeks later. The dealership made about an $8,000 gross profit on the lease transaction, but its actions did not support claims made under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Corvette Z06 documentary to air on National Geographic Channel, November 29th

Detroit, Michigan - General Motors announced that the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and the Bowling Green, Kentucky Assembly Plant, where the car is manufactured, will be featured on National Geographic Channel's Ultimate Factories series. The hour-long show about Corvette and Bowling Green Assembly is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. (ET), Nov. 29th. Production of the show took much of the month of April, as a crew from Michael Hoff Productions Inc. in California spent time at GM's Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan; the Milford (Mich.) Proving Grounds and Bowling Green Assembly. Additional filming was done at Pratt & Miller, which builds the C6.R racing Corvette, and Dana, which makes the space frame for the Z06. "More than 50,000 people each year get to visit Bowling Green to see Corvettes being built," said Wil Cooksey Jr., Bowling Green's plant manager. "While the tours are an incredible experience, the Ultimate Factories crew was able to capture a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making this great vehicle." Workers at GM's Performance Build Center individually assemble each LS7 engine that goes in a Z06. Each 505-horsepower engine is signed by the worker who assembled it.

Dealership manager convicted on theft charges – he refused to give back a customer’s car after she backed out of a deal

A customer changed her mind about buying a new car. The sales manager said her trade-in was already sold. The case ended up in front of a jury.Cleveland’s Fox News affiliate reports that a jury convicted the former sales manager at a local Chrysler dealership on theft charges after he refused to return a customer’s trade-in after she backed out of a deal. After the verdict was announced, the judge ordered the former manager to pay a $400 fine, perform community service in lieu of three days in jail and write a letter of apology to the former customer. "It's a situation (he) feels terrible about, he's embarrassed by it, there's a lot of pressure in his job to sell vehicles," an attorney said prior to sentencing. During the trial, the customer testified that she went to the Chrysler dealership last February to look at a car. She was driving a 1996 Mercury Sable, but it had started to give her problems. The customer told the court she talked to a salesman for several hours, filled out a credit application, handed over her keys so her car could be appraised, but then told him she did not want the new car. Moments later the sales manager walked in. "He got very irate and threw up his hands, no, no it's a done deal, it's a done deal, no, no, no, there's no going back, it's a done deal," the customer testified. She also told the court that the credit application was the only document she signed. She says when she asked for her 1996 Sable back, the sales manager refused. "He told me, ‘your car is not even here,’ I said what do you mean my car is not here? How am I supposed to get home?” It turns out the woman’s Mercury Sable was still at the dealership. According to other testimony, after the customer’s son got into an altercation with the sales manager and the police arrived, the customer then got her car back.