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Automakers need to stop stalking celebrities

Since the invention of the automobile, cars and stars have gone together like paparazzi and the Kardashians. During this season of starlet-adorned award ceremonies, from the Golden Globes through to the Oscars, you will find a lot of car companies all vying to loan out their vehicles to any celebrity with a recognizable face who happens to be heading to a red-carpet award ceremony. There is, however, none so coordinated, consistent and aggressively playing the Fame Game as our friends at Audi. Since the invention of the automobile, cars and stars have gone together like paparazzi and the Kardashians, so by association getting a celeb behind the wheel of your car brand gives it an instant image boost that must make the car more attractive to buyers. Celebrity tales equals dealership sales. That's the logic, anyway. But surely the millions of dollars spent giving free cars to rich stars is a waste of precious and increasingly smaller marketing budgets. It's time to make the car the star, not the other way around. Lets be clear, we are not talking about the very obvious dropping of famous faces into big budget ads. That has its place in the marketing toolbox, but in a very media savvy world it's clear most of us get that play-for-pay concept. Today, the use of just a famous name in an ad yields very little influence on whether you or I will buy that car. No, this awards-ceremony loaner deal is a subtler, but higher risk, idea that if you see a "star" with "their" car in "real life" then surely that adds to the car's appeal. We, the audience, are expected to start salivating like Pavlovian puppies in our desire to have same car in our own, less red-carpeted driveway. Geoff Day has been called the "Pied Piper" of the auto industry, leading auto journalists on wild rides around the globe in his position as former director of communications for Mercedes-Benz USA. Before that, he worked at DaimlerChrysler UK on its PR efforts, and rubbed elbows with the Queen of England in his role at the Buckingham Palace Press Office. His phone is filled with the numbers of the great, the good and the bad. His head is filled with dirty little secrets hiding in many corners of the auto industry. There is no doubt that the publicity that comes with a well placed story, picture or feature can help raise awareness of a product – Oprah proved that with her "Favorite things" – especially if you are launching a line of wrinkle cream or juice bars.

24 Hours of Le Mans an on-and-off love affair

There was little usual about this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans - intermittent rain in the weeks before the race meant cars didn't get on track as much as they wanted, and intermittent rain during the race meant cars went off track a lot more than they wanted. The race started with a wet track, and one of the records broken because of the random downpours was the number of times the safety car led the field - 11 times this year - although the record of two hours and 53 minutes of lapping behind the safety car, set in 2011, was not eclipsed.
None of that served to dampen the action. With little more than an hour left in the race there were cars still only a few seconds apart fighting for position, leads still changing because of pit stops and everyone drafting anyone they could.
Things didn't go the usual way up front, either - well, not exactly...

EVO takes flight in BMW's sultry i8

Electric cars and hybrids are here to stay, much to the apparent dismay of some auto enthusiasts, but that doesn't mean they have to represent the death of enjoyable driving. Granted, the initial run of hybrids in the US like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius weren't exactly tailor-made for aggressive folks behind the wheel, but things are clearly changing. In its latest video, Evo takes a look at three examples from Europe's new crop of electrified vehicles to show that the future of fun motoring is safe and sound.
Evo editor Henry Catchpole kicks things off with one of the most bizarre EVs of the bunch, the tiny Renault Twizy. Its low power and 50-mile-per-hour top speed might make it miles away from a hot hatch, but there's still fun to be had in extracting the most from this little city car. Next up is the Audi A3 E-Tron, which isn't technically available yet. It's a step in the right direction of eventually creating an affordable, fun-to-drive hybrid hot hatch.
However, the main event is Catchpole getting some seat time in the BMW i8. The Bimmer can really fly -literally in this case - and the butterfly-door coupe offers a clear look at the prospects for electrified sports cars. It might not have the power of hybrid supercar contemporaries like the LaFerrari or Porsche 918 Spyder, but the BMW doesn't cost nearly as much, either. See? Improved efficiency doesn't have to mean boring.