Get Ready For Another Potential New Car Shortage

It’s been a rough few years for anyone trying to buy a car. From supply chain shocks during COVID to elevated prices and the disappearance of base models to how all of that affected the used car market, the road back to anything resembling normal has been rocky to say the least. While we’ve spent nearly two and a half years trying to get back to a decent place, setbacks occur, and a rail strike in Canada has the potential to cause another new car shortage.

At the same time, NHTSA has closed an investigation into Cruise, the controversial autonomous vehicle division of GM. It’s a minor win for the company in troubled times, but it certainly isn’t out of the woods yet, for it has a whole lot to answer for.

Oh, and not only is the Aston Martin Heritage Trust looking for any remnants of the firm’s first ever car, Cadillac has rolled out a line of shoes with each pair costing nearly as much as an entire Cimarron. All this coming up on today’s edition of The Morning Dump.

Blame Canada

Canada builds an enormous variety of extremely popular cars for the North American market, and a smaller variety of less popular ones. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of Toyota RAV4 crossovers, a buttload of Lexus RXs and NXs, half-ton and heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverados, Honda Civics and CR-Vs, oh and that’s before we even get into engines and parts. General Motors builds both the fifth-generation V8 and the gearboxes for its C8 Corvettes in Canada, Ford builds the 7.3-liter Godzilla V8 and five-liter Coyote V8 in Canada, Honda builds engines in Canada, the list goes on. However, Automotive News Canada reports that a huge number of rail shipments on that nation’s two largest railways are on pause due to a labor dispute that could cause a small yet significant shortage in the new car market.

In the culmination of months of increasingly bitter negotiations, Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. (CPKC) locked out 9,300 engineers, conductors and yard workers after the parties disagreed on a new contract before the midnight deadline.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association said the stoppage “will have an immediate impact on the domestic and North American automotive supply chain.”

“The highly integrated North American auto industry depends on efficient and predictable rail service to deliver vehicle assembly components, transport service parts, and deliver finished vehicles to domestic and international markets,” CVMA CEO Brian Kingston said. “This disruption will impact production schedules, jobs, finished vehicle inventories, and affordability for consumers.

Obviously, this could be resolved if CN and CPKC paid workers more and gave their workers better benefits, but depending on how long this lockout lasts, it could have some serious effects on America’s new car market, up to and including a car shortage. Since cars are shipped long-distance almost exclusively by rail, supply of new models from Canada may, at least temporarily, result in a shortage. It’s the same deal with parts, and with major components for popular models like the Ford Super Duty potentially affected, even some American plants might not be able to build the vehicles Americans want. It’s a delicate situation that may keep new and used vehicle prices slightly elevated for at least a short period of time, and in an era where affordability is a huge concern, anything that may slow progress on price reductions and cause a shortage is something to be taken seriously.

NHTSA Declares Cruise All Good

Cruise, GM’s autonomous car unit, has been in all sorts of shit over the past few years or so. From blocking streets to having issues turning left to dragging a pedestrian 20 feet and pinning them underneath the car with serious injuries, GM’s robotaxi experiment just didn’t seem ready for prime time, but instead packed with inherent flaws. Well, it seems like one of those flaws may have been fixed, because according to NHTSA, it’s all good, man.

That’s right, Reuters reports that NHTSA is dropping its investigation into hard braking and immobilization in Cruise autonomous vehicles because a recall has met the agency’s concerns during hard braking and in events of immobilization. You know, the newfangled software update kind of recall. Anticlimactic, yeah? Well, if you’re looking for something a bit more amusing in this part of the arc, well, I’ll just drop the quote in here.

The regulator also said none of the immobilization incidents it analyzed had resulted in a crash or injuries.

Well, it’s a bit difficult to hit something while you’re standing still, but someone’s welcome to give it a shot. In any case, while this is one hurdle cleared for the embattled AV brand, there are absolutely several more to go, such as DOJ and SEC investigations for last year’s pedestrian dragging.

Have You Seen The First Ever Aston Martin?

It’s relatively rare for history to go missing. However, a vehicle that can be considered the proto-Aston Martin was sold for £50 back in 1924, then disappeared completely. The 1914 Bamford & Martin A1, nicknamed the “Coal Scuttle” after its resemblance to the receptacle, hasn’t been seen in decades, and now the Aston Martin Heritage Trust is launching a global hunt for the car that started it all.

Trust Treasurer, Garry Taylor, said: “We are very fortunate here at the AMHT to have the oldest known Aston Martin in existence, now known as A3, along with extensive records from the earliest days of the company and priceless artefacts from across the history of the brand, but, to date, ‘Coal Scuttle’ has eluded us.

“Now, as we prepare or our annual festival when hundreds of Aston Martin owners from across the world will join us for our annual celebration of the brand, we are appealing for car enthusiasts to help us find that very first car, or discover definitively what became of it.”

If any of it survived, any of it at all, and you happen to know where it is, drop the Aston Martin Heritage Trust a line. The team there would love to know what became of A1, whether it was damaged and parted out, rebuilt into something else, or less likely, has simply spent decades rotting in a barn.

Cadillac Wants To Sell You A $5,000 Pair Of Shoes

When Cadillac unveiled its electric Celestiq flagship, people had doubts as to whether or not customers would pay Rolls-Royce money for a Cadillac. Today, similar doubts surround a line of products Cadillac commissioned to go on your feet. Automotive News reports that Cadillac has teamed up with sneaker designer Dominic Ciambrone to roll out a line of $5,000 pairs of shoes, and my, is that price tag ever dear.

The bespoke kicks borrow design elements of the Cadillac Lyriq, Celestiq, Optiq and Escalade IQ, including upholstery patterns, materials and colors. Sales begin Sept. 8 on CadillacSignature.com and are limited to five pairs for each of the four nameplates.

“Cadillac’s design philosophy celebrates transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, individualizing what is common into something that is distinctively yours,” Bryan Nesbitt, executive director of global Cadillac design, said in a statement. “Cadillac has the desire to set the standard for American luxury, just as Dominic and his team have set the standard for American craftmanship and bespoke design in the sneaker industry.”

Now, I like shoes. I custom-ordered my latest pair in my own colorway, but for $5,000, I think I’d rather spend an extra $100 and buy that pristine Cimarron I wrote about the other day. Those who can drop six figures on a new Celestiq can definitely afford the matching shoes, but the rest of us? Five grand on some kicks is a bit of a stretch.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Does genre have meaning in the age of streaming? Sure, you still have major categories like pop, country, rock, gospel, what have you, but when the majority of tracks are listened to as parts of playlists rather than parts of albums, why have such rigidity? As someone who grew up on such varied influences as the Burnout 3: Takedown soundtrack, the thundering beats of the dirty south, and the ethereal shoegaze of Cocteau Twins, Diveliner’s particular brand of genre-bending scratches a certain itch. It feels like the logical evolution of the softer side of Warped Tour in the solo, bedroom, electronic production age. A lot of it’s not melodramatic in a largely pointless way like many acts branded emo rap, but rather, actually emotive and reflective. Here’s “Basketball.”

The Big Question

In the spirit of Cadillac’s $5,000 pairs of shoes, what’s the most ridiculous piece of automotive merchandise you’ve ever seen?

(Photo credits: Toyota, Cruise, Aston Martin Heritage Trust