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Toyota GT86 engineer Tada recounts how sports car came to be

Because the Toyota GT86, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ coupes are now a reality, it's almost hard to imagine the struggle that had to happen within the large, conservative corporate structures at both automakers for the joint project to even get off of the ground.
Speaking to those struggles on Toyota UK's Toyota Blog, GT86 Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada enlightens us with a recap of the sports car's earliest origins. For Tada, the first stages of the project must have seemed almost as dreamlike as the final product is to drive.
Said the Chief, "I had been working in the minivan department engineering new product, but a month after the meeting I was summoned. 'Forget about minivans,' they said, 'you are now working on the sports-car project.'"

Subaru suing CA dealership for alleged false customer surveys

Whenever you buy a new car from a dealer these days or sometimes even go in for service, you can expect to fill out a customer satisfaction survey at some point down the road. The responses are actually quite important to showrooms because automakers require the businesses to keep things at a certain level or face penalties. However, a Subaru dealer allegedly found a way to game that system, at least briefly, and now the Subaru of America has filed a lawsuit in US District Court for breach of contract. South Coast Subaru in Costa Mesa, CA, reportedly falsified 224 customer satisfaction questionnaires in 2014, according to Automotive News. The scheme wasn't that hard to figure out, though. All of the faked surveys were allegedly submitted through the IP address of an Acura showroom managed by the same dealer. Under normal circumstances when someone buys a Subaru, the dealer is supposed to collect the customer's email address and submit it to the automaker. However, South Coast allegedly presented false addresses, and then managers had employees fill the forms out during lunch. Subaru claimed in the suit that by doing this the dealer harmed the company's product reputation and its goodwill among customers. "Defendants prevented Subaru from discovering the actual customer satisfaction level of Subaru retail customers at South Coast Subaru by providing sham customer surveys to [Subaru]," the complaint said, according to Automotive News. Related Video:

Autoblog Podcast #370

Episode #370 of the Autoblog podcast is here, and this week, Dan Roth, Michael Harley and Craig Fitzgerald of BangShift and Boldride talk about the 2015 Jeep Renegade, the Consumer Reports list of Cars to Avoid, and the Geneva Motor Show, which opened today. We start with what's in the garage and finish up with some of your questions, and for those of you who hung with us live on our UStream channel, thanks for taking the time. Check out the new rundown below with times for topics, and you can follow along after the jump with our Q&A. Thanks for listening! Autoblog Podcast #370: Topics: 2015 Jeep Renegade Worst Cars of 2014 Geneva Motor Show preview In the Autoblog Garage: 2014 Volkswagen Jetta SE 2014 SRT Viper 2015 Subaru WRX Hosts: Dan Roth, Michael Harley Guests: Craig Fitzgerald Runtime: 01:28:37 Rundown: Intro and Garage - 00:00 Jeep Renegade - 27:28 Cars to Avoid - 41:46 Geneva Motor Show - 59:54 Q&A - 01:11:04 Get the podcast: [UStream] Listen live on Mondays at 10 PM Eastern at UStream [iTunes] Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes [RSS] Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Feedback: Email: Podcast at Autoblog dot com Review the show in iTunes Podcasts Geneva Motor Show Jeep Subaru Volkswagen Concept Cars worst cars