Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from CNN Money, The New York Times, Hooniverse, and Quartz.
Tesla's Fight With America's Car Dealers — CNN Money
Tesla has been making headlines lately with its unique, direct-to-consumer style of selling cars. It's more Apple than GM, and a lot of people are taking issue with it, especially state governments.
Tesla Motors doesn't want to sell its cars the way every other car company does, and that's making a lot of traditional automobile dealers mad. And those dealers are fighting back. Both sides insist they're only trying to protect car buyers.
Why My Heart Aches When Worthless Cars Go To The Crusher — The New York Times
Sending a car to the crusher, no matter how new or old, or what it meant to the owner, is typically tough for a car guy to understand. Former Jalopnik scribe and current NY Times writer Ben Preston describes it perfectly here.
Anxiety and regret gnawed my insides as I watched this perfectly good piece of machinery loaded onto a forklift and placed amid a pile of decrepit Caprice Classics, Ford vans and rusted-out Toyota trucks. I asked why, why for God’s sake they were casting it away. Apparently, the car’s owner had lost the title and lacked the energy to deal with the paper trail associated with getting a new one. Without really thinking about what I was saying, I heard myself offering $200 for the car. The forklift operator looked at the guy who was draining the fluids from the engine.
Greenwich Concours Parking Lot Is Basically Its Own Car Show — Hooniverse
Sometimes the best part of a car show isn't the show itself, but what people drive to see the show. The Greenwich Concour is one such event.
A lot of classic car events claim to have a visitor parking lot filled with cars just as interesting as inside the show itself, but few events pull it off quite as deftly as the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance. The annual event, which takes place every June in Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in Greenwich, Connecticut, brings together not only the best cars in the northeast, but also one the most zealous and diverse crowds of car enthusiasts that I have ever seen. And that means that the selection of cars in the parking lot is going to be just as eclectic.
Americans Are Driving Less And Have Been For Years — Quartz
Not just the young folks, but actually everyone. Quartz breaks it down.
Driving, the quintessential US mode of transit, has not increased in half a decade, even though the economy and population have continued to grow. That’s the longest slump in vehicle usage since the early 1980s.