Nutson's Weekly Automotive News Digest - August 22-28 2016: Ford Recall, Tesla Punch, Color Matters, Pony Drive Home, RX-9, Nissan Minivan, Pebble, Canyon Nu

AUTO CENTRAL - Chicago, August 28, 2016: Every Sunday Larry Nutson, Senior Editor and Chicago Car Guy along with fellow senior editors Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell from The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau, give you TACH's "take" on this past week's automotive news in easy to digest mega-tweet sized nuggets. If you wish to know more just click on the link that will take you to the full story as published here on The Auto Channel.

If you are a car and driving fan like we all are here at The Auto Channel, you can easily wish to "catch up" on these stories as well put them in context with the past 20 year's 1,990,111 automotive news, automotive stories, articles, reviews, archived news, video, audio, rants and raves. Just search The Auto Channel's Automotive News Archive.

Hey Boston TV viewers, you can now enjoy The Auto Channel TV Network "Free and Clear" on WHDT Channel 3 in Boston and on your local cable systems. Just added Naples Florida, along with all South Florida auto fans who can continue to watch The Auto Channel TV Network on WHDT-TV Channel 9 in West Palm Beach as well as cable channel's 17 and 438, channel 9 Miami. WHDN launched its full schedule (including The Auto Channel)of broadcasting in the Naples-Fort Myers market on digital PSIP channel 9.1 channel. Enjoy and thanks for the positive feedback and ratings. See You Next Week, LN.

Nutson's Automotive News Factoids Week Of August 22-28, 2016

* Tesla is adding punch, range and speed to its top model, the $134,500 Tesla Model S P100D sedan. Now you can go from zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds and drive for 315 miles on a charge. The "Ludicrous" mode will cost $10,000 if you want to upgrade your existing P90D model. .

* Long time World of Outlaws sprint car champion Steve Kinser is calling it a day at age 62. Kinser won 876 feature races including 577 World of Outlaw feature wins, 20 Outlaw championships, seven Kings Royal wins and 12 Knoxville Nationals championships.

* Harley-Davidson introduced an all-new engine, the Milwaukee-Eight, named for the city where the company was born. Harley says it’s only the eighth time in the company’s 113-year history that it has done a complete redesign of its classic V-Twin engine. The Milwaukee-Eight will power the company’s 2017 touring bikes and trikes. Harley says it’s the biggest engine product launch for the company since 1998, when the Twin Cam engine made its debut. Three versions of the Milwaukee-Eight, two of them liquid cooled, will produce more torque, be quieter and have less vibration.

* Delphi Automotive and Mobileye, two leading suppliers of autonomous vehicle technology, will collaborate on a broader system that should enable vehicles to achieve full, or Level 4, autonomy by 2019. Mobileye is the Israeli-based developer of computer vision systems, mapping and machine learning algorithms. Delphi, with a large technical center in Troy, Michigan, has already created a system of driving software, sensors and radar that has guided a fleet of Audi SQ5's on several cross-country autonomous trips.

* Ford is recalling more than 88,000 cars and SUVs in North America because the engines can stall without warning due to a fuel pump problem. The recall covers certain Ford Taurus and Police Interceptor sedans, Ford Flex wagons, Lincoln MKS sedans and Lincoln MKT SUVs from the 2013 through 2015 model years. All have 3.5-liter turbocharged six-cylinder engines.

* ISeeCars.com analyzed the sales of 1.6 million 3-year-old cars of all colors and concluded that orange, yellow and green were good choices for less depreciation. It found that the average depreciation of the vehicles was 29.8 percent over a three-year period. Orange cars depreciated 21.6 percent, yellow cars fell 22 percent, and green vehicles dropped 24.5 percent. Meanwhile, white cars depreciated 29.5 percent, black vehicles dropped 30.2 percent, and silver ones fell 30.6 percent, the survey found.

* Nissan Motor Co. launched its revamped Serena minivan in Japan, becoming the first Japanese company to release a vehicle with autonomous driving technology in the Japanese domestic market. The Serena can run without steering, acceleration or braking by the human driver, thanks to its ProPilot self-driving system, although its use is limited to single-lane traffic on expressways.

* Australia's Motoring.com reports that the Mazda’s board of directors has formally approved the design, engineering and production of the company’s long-awaited successor to the RX-7 and RX-8 rotary coupes, according to Japan’s Holiday Auto magazine which has also produced these new renderings. Expected to be called the RX-9 — a trademark Mazda has registered — the born-again performance coupe is not due on sale globally until January 2020, when it will be the centerpiece of Mazda’s centenary celebrations.

* Volkswagen is going to pay its 650 U.S. dealers about $1.2 billion for losses suffered due to the Clean Diesel fiasco. Amounts will vary but on average that will come to $1.85 million per dealer. Additionally, there's about 12,000 brand new VW diesels sitting unsold on dealer's lots that will be bought back.

* Autocross instruction will be offered at the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Arizona, using 2017 Fiat 124 Spider sports cars and 500 Abarth coupes made available through the school’s partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The program was announced recently during Concorso Italiano in Seaside, California, the perfect place to show off Fiat’s reborn 124 – the original Fiat 124 roadster was celebrating its 50th anniversary at Concorso – as well as introduce the Italian-style performance at Bondurant.

* The U.S. is seeking to limit how fast trucks, buses and other large vehicles can travel on the nation's highways. A new proposal would impose the nationwide limit by electronically capping speeds with a device…a governor, on newly made U.S. vehicles that weigh more than 26,000 pounds. Regulators are considering a cap of 60, 65 or 68 m.p.h., though that could change. The change is supported by the American Trucking Association. Note that on the famed German Autobahn trucks are limited to a speed of 50 mph.

* GMC’s 2016 Canyon has been named best midsize truck for the second consecutive year by Cars.com. In the Midsize Pickup Truck Challenge, the 2016 GMC Canyon went up against the Chevrolet Colorado, the 2017 Honda Ridgeline, the Toyota Tacoma and the 2016 Nissan Frontier in 18 separate categories.

* Our friends at Hagerty report what sounds like a big number - total sales at five classic and collector car auctions in and around Monterey last week reaching $344.9 million. But they also note this is the second consecutive year of sales drops year-over-year. The seven highest selling cars brought more than $10 million each. The first Cobra, owned its whole life by Carroll Shelby himself, brought a record (for an American car) of $13.5 million including auction fees.

* Self-driving taxis are plying the streets of Singapore beginning this week. In anticipation of a full launch in 2018 the developer, start-up nuTonomy began limited experimental service this week according to a Reuters report. The taxi is a Mitsubishi i-MiEv- based vehicle that is hailed by way of a smart phone app. This week’s rides included an engineer sitting behind the wheel just in case. The company expects to have 100 autonomous cabs in Singapore by 2018. Other companies like Ford and Volvo have announced plans for similar services.

* The renowned Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, oldest and by far most prestigious classic car show in the U.S. graced the famous golf course in Monterey capping off a week of high-end car events. Featured classes included Bizzarrini, 100 years of BMW, Chapron Coachwork, Indianappolis Race Cars, Ford GT40 and many others. Best of show honors went to a 1936 Lancia Asturia Pinin Farina Cabriolet, a rare Italian specialty car belonging to Richard Mattei of Paradise Valley, AZ.

* The California legislature just passed a bill, and the governor said he will sign it, to cut greenhouse gasses by an additional 40% above the current targets by 2030, bringing into question what automakers will have to do to accommodate the new goal. The bill did not specify how it would be done but it is likely to mean more mandates for electric cars. Even though the new standards technically apply only to California many other states and the Federal government tend to follow California’s lead.

* The State of Massachusetts is preparing to tax every ride initiated by a ride-sharring app in order to support conventional taxi services among other purposes. The 20-cent tax will go partly to the State and municipal governments with just 5-cents going to to taxi companies. The levy could add up to millions of dollars per year since Uber and Lyft, the two largest services, provide about 2.5 million rides per month in the state. The law has a sunset provision of 2021 on the taxi levy and 2026 on the whole tax, presumably to rethink whether it was a wise move.

* The North American International (Detroit) Auto Show and America’s Car Museum in Tacoma, Washington announced the planned repeat of last years project called “The Drive Home” featuring a 1966 Mustang, 1957 Chevy Nomad and a 1961 Chrysler 300G that drove from the museum in Washington to the auto show in the dead of winter. The new project, “The Drive Home II” will have the same three historic automobiles driven this time from Boston through New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and three Michigan cities with stops and events along the way.