Friday, February 11th, 2011
With our redesign comes the return of Morning Shift, our one-stop daily morning roundup of all the auto news that's actually important to you — right here on Jalopnik every weekday at 9:00 AM. It's all of the most important automotive news on the internet wrapped up neatly with a bow for you every morning.
1st Gear:Rolling in cheddar, Ford says it will pay off $3 billion in debt, part of the plan from CEO Alan Mulally (shown here in sharing-is-caring mode) to pay off the credit card that carried it through the Carpocalypse. White-collar workers at the Detroit Three may do the same — some could get bonuses equal to 50% of their pay.
2nd Gear: Worried that European fans were getting too excited about the possibility of a facelifted Evora, Lotus tamped down those crazy ideas by sharing its big Geneva auto show reveal — a Mansory edition Evora. Also, issue two of Lotus magazine is now available. Actual new models? Still several years out.
3rd Gear:Tesla Motors opened its first dealership in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, marking the occasion with this Amerigasm'd Roadster and supplying a rewritten Pledge of Allegiance. The new showroom is on K Street, the traditional place for businesses seeking favors from the government.
4th Gear:The next James Bond movie is just getting off the ground, but the estate of Ian Fleming has pushed the eject button on a new novel, "Carte Blanche," in which author Jeffrey Deaver has given Bond a bespoke Bentley, supposedly all the easier to fit into the novel's setting in Dubai. But we know what the most popular cars are in that part of the Middle East...
5th Gear: Fans of the carburetor will be disappointed by more confirmation that fuel-injection is coming to NASCAR in 2012 with the help of McLaren Automotive. When they said "Car of Tomorrow" they meant "The Car of Tomorrow if you were in a time machine and went back to 1968."
6th Gear: Though we're missing the DeLorean from the Arthur remake, the new trailer does show him in an awesome Batmobile. Also, who isn't attracted to Ben Affleck's wife?
Reverse:
⏎ Hey, there's an Orlando with a Chevy badge in at least one country. [Just Auto]
⏎ Good news, fatty, there's no correlation between sprawl and obesity. [Planetizen]
⏎ An entire story about NASCAR's problems doesn't mention the major problem: lack of convertibles. [Yahoo! Sports]
Today in Automotive History: General Motors signs the first union contract with its workers in 1937 following a six-week sit-down strike in Flint, paving the way for middle-class America and/or the collapse of capitalism, depending on your point of view. [History]
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