This is The Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that's actually important — all in one place at 9:00 AM. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parse it out to you one story at a time. Isn't your time more important?
1st Gear: Ford's 1.0-Liter Engine Is Coming
As we've told you for some time, the 2014 Ford Fiesta is definitively getting the 1.0-liter Ecoboost engine that's so small it fits in carry on luggage.
This, after winning the "International Engine Of The Year" again. Chris Harris, too, showed us why we care.
Why not? it's smaller and lighter than the 1.6-liter engine that's currently in there and produces more power and a lot more more torque. Should be a hoot.
We also learn from Karl Henkel that GM is also considering it.
This will be the first major three-cylinder engine in a regular passenger car since the last Geo Metro, unless there's something I'm missing.
2nd Gear: Why Porsche Has To Stop Making Cayennes And Panameras
Josep Tito used to make sure that, if Yugosloavia built a tank, one part of the country would produce the tracks while another would produce a body and another would make the turret. This way he could keep his ethnically, linguistically, and religiously heterogenous country together. No one could make shit if they weren't together.
It didn't always work, but Porsche is learning about the cost of globalized production structures due to European flooding. None of its plants are underwater, but the car bodies built in Bratislava can't make it by train to Leipzig for construction.
This means a stoppage of final assembly for the Cayenne, says wire reports. This will also impact the Panamera, for different reasons, which has final assembly there.
3rd Gear: About Those Jeep Fires...
Bounty Man stunt double Reid Bigland ain't taken any shit about the government's call for a Jeep recall. We explain the issue here.
Per the Freep, here's what Bigland told suppliers:
“Our vehicles are safe and we have said why,” Reid Bigland said during an annual conference of suppliers in Windsor Wednesday.
He also acknowledged that he worries about the company's reputation if this continues to be a public fight instead of a private one. That's why, right or wrong, NTHSA has an edge on Chrysler. That genie ain't going back in her bottle.
4th Gear: As If Germany Didn't Have Enough Problems
From The Wall Street Journal we learn that, in addition to massive flooding, new-car registration data in the biggest car market in Europe dropped by 9.9%, this is after going up last month.
Worse, still, the luxury brands we usually think of resistant to bad economies had their own problems. Year-over-year, Audi dropped 9.7%, Mercedes dropped 7.6%, and BMW sunk a full 11%.
The news doesn't get better for the French, who are just skating by, or for GM, who owns automaker Opel and continues to lose money there.
5th Gear: Speaking Of Engines, McLaren Makes A Nice One
McLaren's M838T engine, better known as the 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 that powers everyone's favorite McLaren 12C won an "International Engine Of The Year" award in the 3.0- to 4.0-liter category.
What's interesting here is, despite the name recognition, McLaren is a rather small company mass-producing a fantastic engine.
Also interesting is how underwhelming the photo of the engine they sent out is. Not very pr0ny.
Reverse: The First Drive-In
On this day in 1933, eager motorists park their automobiles on the grounds of Park-In Theaters, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Crescent Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey. Park-In Theaters—the term "drive-in" came to be widely used only later—was the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, a movie fan and a sales manager at his father's company, Whiz Auto Products, in Camden. Reportedly inspired by his mother's struggle to sit comfortably in traditional movie theater seats, Hollingshead came up with the idea of an open-air theater where patrons watched movies in the comfort of their own automobiles.
[HISTORY]
Neutral: Where Do You Want A 3-Cylinder? Where do you want Ford to put their 3-cylinder engine? Where do you want to put it?
Photo Credit: Getty Images