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Honda scores big in Automobile Advertising of the Year Awards [w/videos]

This year the Detroit Auto Show didn't just celebrate the automobile, it celebrated how we find out about the automobile, too. Partnering The One Club, this year introduced the 2014 One Show Automobile Advertising of the Year Award to Cobo Hall, celebrating winners in five different categories of advertising: broadcast television, online, interactive, experiential, and print/outdoor. Winners in those categories were judged by 50 creative directors and journalists, while a Public Choice category was chosen from among nearly 20,000 online votes.
Honda walked off with three of the six awards, its Hands spot taking Broadcast honors, its Sound of Honda getting the Online category and Illusions winning Public Choice. Hyundai made the grade in Interactive with Driveway Decision Maker, Fiat captured Print/Outdoor with its "Letters" ad, and Toyota's Tundra Endeavor Campaign spot and BMW's A Window into the Near Future were co-winners for Experiential.
You can watch all of the press release and winning videos below or check out all of the finalists, announced last month, for a refresher.

Jaguar solution to keyless start could save lives

UPDATED: An earlier version of this story indicated the Jaguar keyless start function was meant as a safety feature, when in fact, it is meant as a convenience one and will not work as described if automatic stop/start is not engaged. Today, The New York Times published an article about more than two dozen deaths related to drivers accidentally leaving their cars running, closing their garages and later succumbing to carbon monoxide that flooded their homes. The reason has been identified as "keyless start" features, or proximity entry and push-button start, where owners don't need to physically handle a key or fob to gain entry into the vehicle or start it. It is the latest, and deadliest, issue raised with this system after those related to security and simple inconvenience (for instance, leaving the car at a valet or car wash with the fob in your pocket). From my personal perspective, The New York Times had a rather harsh "evil carmakers" tone throughout the article. This is not a matter of a known faulty component, as with the GM ignition switch recall. This has as much to do with user error where people leave their car without pressing the "off" button and without noticing the engine is still running. About half of the cars in question are produced by Toyota and Lexus, brands that have offered keyless start longer than most. They are also brands with high rates of elderly owners, who seemingly made up a majority of reported deaths and injuries. One fire department in Florida even started a campaign alerting those in the area of the dangers of leaving your car running when it noticed a correlation between an increase in cars equipped with keyless start and calls related to carbon monoxide poisoning. I see several contributing issues at play, most of which go well beyond this particular issue. First is insufficient training of owners by dealers and/or owners not paying close enough attention during this training. Cars are complicated, but you should at least know how basic functions work. Second, woefully inadequate driver training in this country. Third, and with apologies to the AARP, insufficient testing of elderly drivers and/or insufficiently low standards for elderly drivers. If you don't know you have to shut the car off or cannot hear that an engine is running, perhaps you shouldn't be driving. Fourth, re-examining keyless start systems.

Jim Lentz exposes more details behind Toyota's move to Texas

Toyota's North American CEO Jim Lentz has already given us a rough idea of what prompted the company's surprise move to the Dallas suburb of Plano, TX from its longstanding headquarters in Torrance, CA. A new story from The Los Angeles Times, though, delivers even more detail from Lentz on the reasoning for the move, what other cities were considered and why the company's current host city wasn't even in the running.
Of course, one of the more popular reasons being bandied about includes the $40 million Texas was set to give the company for the move, as well as the state's generous tax rates. According to Lentz, though, the reason Toyota chose Plano over a group of finalists made up of Atlanta, Charlotte and Denver, was far simpler than that - it was about consolidating its marketing, sales, engineering and production teams in a region that's closer to the company's seat of manufacturing in the south.
"It doesn't make sense to have oversight of manufacturing 2,000 miles away from where the cars were made," Lentz told The Times. "Geography is the reason not to have our headquarters in California."