AD #4051 - OMG, They’re Bringing Back the Yugo!; Bollinger Files for Bankruptcy; Corvette Interior Gets A New Look

Speaker 1: This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to all of you enthusiasts of the global automotive industry. Believe it or not,

a group of investors in Serbia want to bring back the Ugo. Everybody remembers the Ugo, but for all the

wrong reasons. The car was so underpowered and so unreliable

that it kicked off a slew of jokes. Why do

Hugos have rear window defrosters to keep your hands warm when you push them? What do you call a Hugo

with a sun roof a dumpster? And yet, despite being

the butt of a lot of jokes, an evy startup called Electromobile nost Balkanika, which is working with engineers and designers who used to work at Zostava, which was the government owned company that originally built the Yugo, are going to launch a compact BEV hatchback that will be priced under fifteen thousand years and they're going to call it the You Go Next. It's a modest car with a

forty kilowatt hour LFP battery that will deliver somewhere between two hundred and fifty or three hundred kilometers of range.

Let's call it one hundred and seventy miles. Zero to

sixty takes twelve seconds, which is rather slow. Top speed

is only eighty seven miles an hour, but you know, just for driving around town. Who needs more than that.

Years ago, back when the factory was still part of Yugoslavia, I was invited to take a tour of the Zastava factory in Kraijyujevak. You couldn't take any pictures outside of

the plant because it was part of a giant industrial complex that also made artillery pieces and ammunition. The car

assembly plant was like stepping back in time by at least half a century. It was dark, dirty and noisy.

I did a walking tour with the manager and I was actually able to point out a few simple things of how he could improve his quality and productivity. At

the end of the tour, he thanked me profusely, and for years after that I always got a card from him around Christmas time saying I was welcome to come back to the plant any time I wanted. I never

did get back there, but always appreciated the gesture. Okay,

back to the news. When the Caaight Corvette came out,

it earned all kinds of accolades, but some critics felt the interior wasn't quite up to snuff, like the center screen looking kind of cheap and the center console grab bar having way too many switches. So the twenty twenty

six Vet gets a thoroughly refreshed instrument panel with a larger center screen, a larger instrument cluster, and an additional touch screen added to the left side of the steering wheel.

All the switches on the grab bar are gone, and a couple of cup holders are added to the console.

The displays also feature cleaner graphics and new animations. There's

a heavy emphasis on improving the quality look of the interior, with double stitching everywhere, more finely crafted details, and brighter colors.

The enhancements go across the entire Corvette lineup, including the Stingray, the E Ray, the Z six, and the ZR one.

Looks like another EV startup could be about to bite the dust. The Detroit News reports that Bolinger Motors is

filing for bankruptcy. A court appointed receiver will take control

of the company's daily operations and assets because it's having trouble making payroll and it faces eight lawsuits from suppliers that are owed money. The guy who founded the company,

Robert Bolinger, is also suing the company to recoup ten million dollars that he l loan to it. Mullen Automotive

is now the effective owner of Bolinger Motors, but it's accused of not providing enough funding for day to day operations.

The current CEO, Brian Chambers, claims the company is committed to keeping the business going and he's optimistic about the future.

But Raush Industries, which has contracted to make the trucks for Bolinger, stop producing the vehicles in January, and earlier this week it locked Bolinger out of its facility and it's moving to evict it because it's owed one point eight million dollars. So it sounds like we're coming to

the end of the road for Bolinger.

Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with heavy metal, hey, light enough, but with world class composit material taching automotive technologies makes vehicles lighter, safer, and more eco friendly.

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Speaker 1: Europe has new regulations that require automakers to reduce brake dust by ninety percent, so Brembo's coming out with a new type of disk and pads that cut those emissions at the same time that it boosts performance, durability and gets rid of rotor rust. The Euro seven emission standards

that go into effect next year tackle break dust because it includes microscopic particles that can embed themselves deep into your lungs and cause all kinds of respiratory pride problems.

Brembo says it was able to achieve that thanks to a new process that applies two layers of nickel free coding on the disc rotors by using a laser beam that reduces surface whereby eighty percent compared to an uncoded cast iron disc. Brumble says the new brakes can be

used on any kind of vehicle. European automakers just got

a big break. The EU officially approved rolling back CO

two emission rules to a degree automakers can now meet the twenty twenty five CO two targets over the next three years instead of having to hit them this year.

Automakers aggressively lobbied to soften the rules because they claimed they faced fines of up to fifteen billion euros by missing those targets. And while the ACA, which represents European

car makers, applauded the approval, it says the industry actually need a lot more long term support from the EU in terms of charging, infrastructure and incentives for purchasing evs if it's ever going to meet those CO two targets. Well,

you know, we just can't let a day go by without doing an update on the tariffs since they're having such an impact on the industry. Here's the latest. Ford

is raising the prices of the Maverick, Bronco Sport and mack E by two thousand dollars. That's because they're all

made in Mexico and are now hit with a twenty five percent import tariff. But Ford is clearly eating a

big chunk of the cost because we ask to meet the Bronco and Maverick are getting hit with at least a five thousand dollars tariff, and the Machi is probably double that. As we already reported, Ford says the tariffs

will add about two and a half billion dollars in cost this year. GM says it's going to be between

four and five billion dollars. And this morning Toyota announced

the tariffs will shave its profits by at least twenty one percent, which is staggering. Last year, Toyota posted a

thirty one billion dollar operating profit, which means the tariffs could cost it six billion dollars. Here's one bright spot.

President Trump is announcing today that he secured a trade deal with the UK, and we think that probably means that cars imported from England, including Jaguars, Land Rovers, Minnie's, Bentley's, Rolls, Royce's, McLaren's, Aston, Martin's, and all those other small specialty marks will only get hit with a ten percent tariff, not twenty five percent.

Since they were already paying a two and a half percent tariff. That's only a seven point five percent increase,

which I'm sure is something they can all live with.

And you know, even though those tariffs are only getting slapped on new imported cars, they're actually starting to have an impact on used car prices. According to Cox Automotive,

wholesale used prices in April we're at their highest level since October of twenty twenty three because dealers bought more used vehicles at auction because they expect more shoppers to buy used as new car prices go up because of the tariffs that started a bidding war that drove up prices for used cars. Cox Automotive does not expect prices

to decline much in the second quarter because wholesale inventory is tight right now and retail sales of used cars are running stronger than normal. Hey, before we go, be

sure to tune into outline after hours later. Today, we're

going to have Kuibert Verhoven from Harmat Automotive talking about the latest developments and digital cockpits and cars. Paul Wadi

of Auto Pacific will also be on the show. We're

going to be digging into the car brands that could be forced out of the US market because of the tariffs, how they might try to salvage the situation, and the new car sales hangover that's sure to hit around July anyway.

With that, we wrap up today's show. Thank you for

tuning into Autoline Daily.

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