Bieber poses for Best Buy
Super Bowl commercials this year were fun and packed with celebrities as usual.
Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber took lead roles in a Best Buy spot. Faith Hill helped a tactless young man write a love letter in an ad for Teleflora. Last but not least, Kim Kardashian stared in a sexy Skechers ad in which her derrière was the driving force in selling the Shape-ups line of shoes.
Funny looking pets doing funny things is always a win. Doritos enlisted a pug dog to crash through a glass door after being taunted by a Dorito wielding human.
Pepsi, Coca-Cola and various auto manufacturers had plenty of good ones too. Check out the list of favorites in OK Magazine.
Toyota announces Lexus recall
Toyota announced it will voluntarily recall roughly 250,000 Lexus cars sold in the U.S. because of an issue with fuel sensors. Models in the IS and GS lines are affected. In simple terms, it has been discovered that the fuel sensors may not have been tightened enough in the manufacturing process which, over time, may lead to fuel leakage. No accidents have been reported as a result of this.
Fuel delivery pipes are said to be the issue in a separate Toyota recall that affects 1.2 million cars outside of the U.S.
Just in the last few years, Toyota has recalled at least 10 million cars and trucks worldwide.
GM's going to issue stock again, but it's unlikely new shareholders will get awesome certificates this time around, as much as they might want them. This time around, they'll probably just settle for middling returns and no more bankruptcies.
Word has just come out that General Motors, fresh off its 2009 bankruptcy filing and subsequent government ownership, has filed terms for an initial public offering of stock. It looks as if GM is looking to raise about $10 billion selling 365 million shares at $26 to $29 each. The new GM is now profitable, and demand for the offering is apparently strong.
Even with this hot vehicle lineup, we’re impressed that people are so excited to get a piece of the new GM so soon. After all, last time you could buy GM stock, everyone who owned it was completely wiped out. Why the new confidence?
Continue reading ‘General Motors Wants to Sell Stock Again. Remember What Happened Last Time?’
With this kind of youth-oriented, forward-thinking styling, it's shocking that Ford decided to shut down Mercury.
We know we’re a little late to the party here, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to lament the loss of another proud American brand. Yes, it seems like the axe has finally fallen on Ford’s Mercury line. While we’ll keep the storied brand in our Autos section, we hope Americans keep Mercury’s legacy in their hearts.
Sure, there were some rough times (the late 1990′s Cougar with its insanely uncomfortable seats comes immediately to mind), but Mercury deserves credit for naming a car the cougar back when it just meant a large wild cat. Furthermore, Mercury stuck with ridiculous names like the Grand Marquis long after they’d gone out of fashion. Sure, it was just a slightly fancier Crown Victoria (another ridiculous name), but it was also the star of the greatest Mercury ad ever, and one for which we’ll remember the brand long after its cars have vanished from the road. The first half of the ad is ok, but the courtroom scene, in our estimation, is one of the most brilliant moments in advertising in the past twenty years. A brand that can laugh at itself like this doesn’t deserve to die.
We’ll miss you, Mercury.
They might stop making new Volvo wagons, but older models like this one will transport hippies and hipsters alike for decades to come.
Yesterday, the fine folks over at Jalopnik got their hands on a Volvo memo revealing that the automaker was going to be exiting the station wagon business it has dominated for the last 50-odd years by 2011. Today they have a touching retrospective that brought back a lot of fond memories of sitting in that “way-back” rear-facing seat and waving at cars behind us.
It’s not all bad news though. There’s no time like the present to get your hands on a Volvo V70 or V50 wagon. These babies are the last of a storied breed (in the US at least, they’ll still be available in Europe for a while), and thus destined for collector’s item status. Maybe. Regardless, they’ll be missed, so pour out one of whatever they drink in Sweden (Punsch? Glögg? Ikea?) for your old friend the Volvo wagon tonight.
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