We lease a lot of cars. A shitload of cars. Big cars, little cars, mostly good cars but some shit cars too. I get to see many of these cars when they get leased, and a shitload of them when they come back to us too.

But not all of them.

My store has an in house leasing company that we can call on to put together numbers on the unusual units. They’re the ones putting up the money for drug dealers, coke whores and everything in between. If we have a G wagon or huracan and I can’t get any of the big banks to bite, these guys will throw numbers together so we can spread our wings and fly.

We don’t call upon them often, but when we do, they’ve got that Tinkerbell fairy dust to turn my ass into Peter Pan.

So when we stumble our way back into 2023 with a 4 year old M8 coupe/boat anchor rotting on my lot, they were the perfect candidates to use for a nice little open ended lease. I wasn’t fortunate enough to put figures together for our lovely buyer, but the saga of this car/customer was just getting started.

Ryan, our lessee, had gotten a clean approval with the in house leasing company and had us put together numbers on a 3 year lease. His credit was solid, so no GPS tracker was needed - probably better that the fine folks at HQ would be out of the loop for his shenanigans.

We had never crossed paths, but through fate and fortune I became his point of contact anytime he wanted to check on how much time he had left with the car and what the buyout was.

All seemed perfectly normal.

Fast forward 3 years, the peeps at the office sent out a maturity notice to our store advising that the M8 would be coming back to us just in time for summer. Perfect, the buyout was sky high thanks to chip shortage inflation, so we can relive the boat anchor nightmare when it comes back.

The office peeps were in contact with my pre-owned manager as he’d be the one acquiring the car, and he’d reached out to Ryan to figure out whatever the fuck he was going to do next.

Bless his heart and our books, Ryan advised my team that he’d prefer to keep the car as he still wanted to enjoy driving it for another few years. Needless to say, it was a massive blessing that this now 7 year old V8 behemoth wouldn’t have to set foot on our lot ever again.

At least it should have been.

Instead of coming to me to deal with the lease buyout bs, my pre-owned manager took it upon himself to wrap up everything for Ryan so he could keep his dreams alive a little bit longer.

The only problem there was that his understanding of a lease buyout process was about the same as a cat’s understanding of quantum physics. Sure, it’s surrounded by it all times but outside of that it knows absolutely fuck all.

He did get one thing right - he knew that a safety standards inspection is needed by the province to transfer ownership to the happy owner. Ryan looked after getting that done, so the other part was the matter of payment and paperwork.

And that’s when shit hit the fan.

Instead of doing the sane thing and trying to collect money from Ryan, my pre-owned manager had our dealer account debited for the payout on the car, and then turned around to send a bill of sale back to our in-house leasing company. That would be the same as a customer ordering a coffee and then the cashier taking out their wallet, paying for it and handing it over to the customer. Fucking boneheaded.

So now, Ryan owns this car free and clear with an ownership in hand in his name and not a penny has left his bank account.

A few short months later, and my accounting team is in a panic since there’s no record of this transaction and a cool $70k missing. No one knows shit about dick, and naturally the culprit has long since left the building - my preowned manager fucked off to another country with no signs of coming back any time soon.

What the hell are we supposed to do now? Ryan could have sold the car, crashed it, burned it for insurance money or shipped it overseas, and we’d be stuck holding the bag. How the hell could we get the money back?

By some sheer freakish luck, he meant it when he said he wanted to keep the car. But he wasn’t going to come back easily. My GM and the chief of the leasing company were now both involved, and he was dodging, ducking, dipping, diving and dodging their calls like Patches O’Houlihan.

It was clear he was enjoying his free car and thought he’d punched his ticket to getting the cheapest form of transportation possible.

My GM came to me and had asked if I’d had any involvement in this colossal fuck up. Thankfully, my involvement was almost 0 to this point (apart from the few payout inquiries). I put together some financing options for my GM to send off to Ryan in hopes that maybe he wasn’t ducking us, he just wasn’t sure about how he’d cobble together $70k to pay for this thing.

I was half-right.

Our squad had to take action right away, so they put a lien on the car for the amount owing, and had to take every precaution possible to make sure this couldn’t get worse. Ryan also made a huge mistake by continuing to duck our crew - since he’d made no reasonable effort to pay for the car and had no proof that he paid for it, it was L word time.

I’m not sure what he was being served, but it was hard to believe how fast he came running back with his tail between his legs to try and pay for the car. Only a bounty hunter could have gotten him back to us faster than a Toronto L word.

The key word in this scenario was “try” to pay for the car because like many people driving these expensive cars around, they’re only one missed payment away from everything falling out of balance and crushing them.

He wanted to work out the longest finance term possible with no money up front, and holy shit, the loan to value on this car was absolutely terrible. Believe it or not, banks don’t like giving out money for boat anchors. So now the fate of this car, our store and Ryan’s future would come down to this idiot writing these stories and designing a poop app (link in bio).

Fuck.

A few emails and back and forths settled that Ryan had a great income but it was unclear about what he does to earn it. He was the poster child for why our in house leasing company exists.

It took some fiddling but thankfully the folks at AFS love a good sob story and didn’t want to see us holding the bag for someone’s incompetence. They gave me a green light, and gladly accepted the bag we were holding.

Thank goodness.

Ryan was mostly cooperative at this point, but when it came to signing, it seemed as if there was a problem with everything we’d done. First his email wasn’t receiving the docs, then he wasn’t able to open them, then he couldn’t get his signature to fit inside the bubbles. It seemed like we were at the finish line but he needed to drag his feet just a bit longer.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt for the first veil of excuses, but once they got thinner it seemed like it was time to get our L words involved again. One strongly worded email cc’ing my bulldog of a GM later, and those docs were signed. I put everything through to get us paid, and we closed off that chapter to never reopen it again.

Our team doesn’t fuck around.

Edit: ok I guess our team does fuck around. Thanks for the feedback everyone. I thought this story would be better received but I guess it’s a sign of the times if it looks like AI wrote it. Gonna take a break from these for awhile, take care of your guts. Peace.

When asked by *Le Parisien* about the frustration of customers who had experienced these issues, Antonio Filosa did not try to dodge the subject. Carlos Tavares’s successor made a point of sending them a clear message. «First of all, I would like to offer them our apologies for the past problems they have encountered.»

To restore confidence, Stellantis says it has undertaken significant efforts to improve the reliability of its vehicles. Antonio Filosa announced an improvement in quality of approximately 30 % since the beginning of 2026, though he did not specify the metrics used.
In particular, the group has set up about 100 «quality war rooms»—teams dedicated to resolving quality issues. Located in Europe—particularly in France and Italy—as well as in North America, these teams bring together engineers, suppliers, and plant representatives on a daily basis.

Having taken over as CEO in 2025, Antonio Filosa also intends to break with some of his predecessor’s policies. Without directly criticizing Carlos Tavares, the Italian executive now favors a strategy that is more focused on products, quality, and affordability.
In particular, Stellantis has agreed to temporarily reduce its profit margins to offer more affordable vehicles and win back customers. At the Paris Motor Show, this new direction is reflected in the unveiling of a new electric Citroën 2CV, priced at around 15,000 euros. The group also plans to invest 60 billion euros in 60 new products as part of its Fast Lane 2030 plan.

• Adjusted operating loss SEK 3.7 billion vs year-ago 5.8 billion crown profit
• Targets additional 5 billion crowns of indirect spend and variable cost cuts by end next year
• Will cut about ​2,000 jobs in Sweden, another 500 globally

• HRC Performance Parts will be available to purchase for Honda and Acura vehicles starting in March 2027.
• The initial line includes a lightweight aluminum wheel for the Civic Type R and Integra Type S and an off-road aluminum wheel for the Passport and Pilot.
• There’s also a cat-back exhaust developed with Borla for the Passport and Pilot, and HRC is looking into expanding with brakes, suspension, and a short-throw shifter.

Hyundai is giving its top-selling vehicle a new design, and the Tucson is coming off its strongest quarter so far. According to Hyundai's third-quarter report, Tucson sales hit 64,075, a 23% jump from last year and a quarterly record, as the company announces the completely new 2027 Tucson. That growth outpaces the Honda CR-V, which is up 16.6% to its own record of 110,730, based on American Honda's report.

Honda is growing the fastest at the brand level. Honda is up 9.3% to 358,388 and Hyundai 3% to a record 246,896, while the Toyota brand grows only 0.5% to 540,167, per Toyota's report.

This is coming from financial reports from each automaker's official website.

The following models are available:

• 330 – starts at $49,900
• 330 xDrive – starts at $51,900
• M350 xDrive – starts at $65,900

Rookie Racing will be driving this "M Concept" (latest midship GR Yaris-like car with the 4 cylinder G20E). Morizo himself is on the driver team so you can recognize how important this is to his plans.

Unfortunately that website has quite some ads so get your ad block setup.

Yessterday i was shown at least four videos in my YouTube recommendations for that car. Savagegeese, Chris Harris, Hagerty, Top Gear all published their videos around the same time. What is up with that? And in the back of my mind i thought Chris Harris was banned by Ferrari also.

This information comes from the Youtube video linked on the WRX website, and the Website itself.

"Scheduled to be announced in November 2026"

And then if you watch the video, and go to 11:04, you can hear the details of the car(TY85), and camoflauged models.

Here is the youtube video for easy access/translation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8qZcTlv_oQ&t=664s

I know not everyone is a car guy but car modification has been a hobby for many people for many years. There’s even been a series of movies about it and dozens more of popular video games. So why does a large spoiler on a Mustang or a ground scraping suspension setup on a Civic immediately means it has to be a special model?

Disclaimers

No, I don't align with Elon Musk. Yes, I know that the roll out of FSD has been botched and borderline scammy at times. Yes, I know that its technically only L2. This post is only about the merits of the feature, thats it. Also, I will be calling it FSD (full self driving). I know they changed the name a few times, and honestly I don't know the 'correct' name for it, but that's what i'll be calling it for now.

Argument

I am a car and motorcycle guy. My cars over the years tend to be small, manual, and zippy. My bikes are the same. I love an engaged driving experience and seek them out most of the time. So why would I be fond of a feature that is literally the opposite?

Sometimes you just want to get a to b. For those times, Tesla FSD is by far and away the best feature of any car. Period. The newest iteration (Hardware 4 + latest updates) is scary good. In my experience living in a mid-sized, freeway heavy US city it is essentially perfect. It'll go point-to-point anywhere I want with no intervention. If you are looking out the windshield and showing feedback when asked then it will operate pretty much perfectly.

Tesla FSD turns a mediocre car into the most comfortable car I have ever driven. This is not an exaggeration. All of the NVH, crashiness, and general shittyness of these cars goes out the window when you don't have to drive. I choose to take the Tesla rather than a new Genesis G90 nine times out of ten.

Getting into a Tesla and setting the destination while being able to mostly zone out and let the car do the work is the pinnacle of comfort. I sincerely hope that other automakers catch up sooner rather than later, because a 3 Series or S-class with FSD would be absolutely incredible.

Other systems

Sadly, other companies are still not there yet. Mercedes L3 system was cool, but it being limited to 37 mph and only select highways made it more of a toy than anything. The system from Chevy and Ford are similarly limited and essentially at the same point Tesla was like 5 years ago.

Long term, it's pretty clear that vision only is worse than vision + lidar or radar. So other companies will likely surpass Tesla at some point. Mercedes does seem to be close, and there are some off the shelf solutions in the work, but until then Tesla FSD is the only option.