Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from Medium, The New York Times, and States Of Motion.
The Disastrous Movie Career of America’s New Stealth Fighter – Medium
This tidbit from David Axe's "War Is Boring" by Robert Beckhusen hits at one of the downsides of using your new jet fighter as a plot device.
But the F-35's career on the big screen has not been a charitable one. From Man of Steel, The Avengers, Green Lantern to the fourth Die Hard movie, the F-35s have been ineffective at best, and criminally destructive at worst. They’ve indiscriminately attacked American cities or crashed during testing. They’ve been ripped apart by superheroes who’ve swatted them away like King Kong versus obsolete biplanes. And the one film that could have redeemed the jet’s image to the mass movie-going public was cancelled after the director committed suicide.
Automakers Push Back Against Consumer Protections – The New York Times
The Supreme Court upheld a rulling that corporations can use arbitration to avoid class action lawsuits. This is an older article from the NYT that explains how this impacts car buyers.
That recourse may not be available for car owners in the future, as some automakers have started to challenge class actions — and to a lesser extent, lemon laws — by trying to force consumers to agree instead to a binding arbitration process.
Gates of Eden – States Of Motion
Our old friend Patrick Frawley takes a look at Lamborghini transmissions.
Which leaves me with a quandary, because I am flat thrilled that Lamborghini has kept the faith and stayed with a proper manual gearbox option for the new car in the face if its abandonment by so many others, especially you-know-who, and in doing so has made a mess of my traditional favorites structure. (Caveat: So far as we know, at least; magazine predictions are rarely guaranteed, although the stack of weights and measurements that Autocar used gives their reporting at least a deeper sense of credibility.)