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Michigan Car Salesman Cost FCA $8.7 Million Due To Fake Employee Discounts

If you visited Apollon Nimo at his Detroit-based Parkway Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership, you might have walked out with a damn good deal. In fact, your deal might have been too good to be true. That’s because Nimo was illegally using employee discounts to cut customers good deals, even when those customers failed to qualify for that discount, Auto News reports. In fact, he scammed FCA—now Stellantis—out of about $8.7 million.

In many cases, Nimo nabbed the discount codes from various Facebook groups of which he was part. Here’s more from the article:

In the majority of transactions that prosecutors allege were fraudulent, buyers claimed to be the brother-in-law or sister-in-law of an FCA employee to get a 5 percent discount. The discount codes, known as Employee Purchase Control Numbers (EPCNs), were often bought and sold through private Facebook groups.

Nimo frequently topped the list of auto sellers who sold cars using employee discounts and was handsomely rewarded for being a top salesman. He reportedly received $700,000 in bonuses directly from FCA since 2014, when he first started using his codes—and that’s in addition to dealership-specific rewards.

Out of the 268 unauthorized EPCNs that have been analyzed, every single one was linked back to Nimo. And there could honestly be more, as per FOX 2 Detroit:

A manager at Sterling Heights Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram told federal investigators that Nimo sold about 250 cars in January 2020. The same manager said Nimo sells more vehicles than entire sales departments at most FCA dealerships.

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So, how did Nimo get away with it for so long? One man who leased three cars from Nimo in December of 2018 stated that Nimo claimed FCA doesn’t review the use of ‘in-law’ relationships with EPCN purchases. So, you could claim to be the mother-, sister-, father-, or son-in-law of an FCA employee, and FCA would be less likely to catch it—possibly because it’s not as intuitive to identify relationships with people who don’t share blood or direct legal ties.

The investigation kicked off after several FCA employees complained that their personal discount codes were being used without their consent. This is where that 268 number comes from; these were just from people who complained. It’s possible many other people had no idea their EPCN was being used.

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This German Company Is Making The Carbon-Fiber Camper Of Your Overlanding Dreams

Fans of off-roaders like the new Ford Bronco and Jeep Gladiator are soon to have an attractive option for a camper to bolt to their rigs. GEHOcab is bringing its flashy carbon-fiber campers to America.

GEHOcab is a pretty new player in truck and SUV campers. The German outfit has been making campers only for the past few years, but its futuristic campers look like an attractive choice — if you can handle the price.

GEHOcab planted its stake in the market in Europe with the Kora, a camper that replaces the bed of a Volkswagen Amarok pickup.

But the Amarok was only the genesis of GEHOcab, and it quickly got started with designs for vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, Jeep Gladiator, Ford F-Series, Land Rover Defender and yep, even the new Ford Bronco.

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The folks at Autoevolution got to speak with GEHOcab about its expansion into the U.S. market, and it sounds pretty rad. The brand, distributing under the name GEO-Cab in North America, is bringing its Badger campers here.

The Badger camper brings some luxury to overlanding. The camper shell is a monocoque design and is made using a modular mold system. This lets GEHOcab build the campers in a variety of sizes to fit an array of off-road vehicles. Take a peek at the interior of what these are supposed to look like:

Illustration for article titled This German Company Is Making The Carbon-Fiber Camper Of Your Overlanding Dreams — Image: GEHOcab

Inside, you get sleeping for up to two adults and one child in a living space that looks more like a luxury apartment than it does a camper hanging off of the back of a truck. The interior furniture and fittings are lightweight, like the camper itself. You can get them in either fiberglass or carbon fiber, and they are laminated into the interior rather than bolted down. You can even get one of these with a full bathroom.

The smallest Badger ST comes in at around 1,014 pounds, while the largest Badger XT comes in at 1,653 pounds before customization. Those numbers are impressive, as a typical American truck bed camper can easily be 1,000 pounds heavier than even the Badger XT.

GEHOcab also says that its campers are extremely customizable. The company works with each buyer to help them build the camper of their dreams.

One thing I was curious about is how the company manages to build a camper for a Bronco, G-Class or Defender. GEHOcab’s pickup-based campers clearly replace the existing bed, but a Bronco doesn’t have a bed.

Installation of the campers to those SUVs involves opening up the vehicle aft of the C-pillar and grafting the camper onto the back.

As you can imagine, these conversions are definitely more permanent than a camper that replaces a truck bed. The company is offering both options, as it seems potential buyers are split between a camper that replaces a truck bed and the full-on conversion.

Then there’s the price. While these campers use high-tech materials and are seriously light, they’re also seriously expensive. The smallest Badger ST starts at $129,000, far more than a traditional truck bed camper. That price doesn’t include customization, shipping or installation.

Despite the high price, I love these things. I wish more camper manufacturers cranked out eye-popping designs rather than boring swoopy decals.

Formula One Suspension: Explained

Pro tip: for the most effective suspension, the wheels must be connected to the car at all times.

If you’ve ever driven a car with shitty suspension, you know how important a decent quality ride is for doing things like, not hating your life. And if you think it’s important in your road car when you’re driving your kids to school, you know it’s crucial in a race car. That’s why we’re going to be breaking down suspension in Formula One today.

(Welcome to Motorsport Explained, the series where we break down racing rules and concepts in easily digestible ways for all the beginners out there. If there’s something you’ve always wondered about or something that has never made sense, leave your topic in the comments or email me at eblackstock [at] jalopnik [dot] com.)

In theory, Formula One suspension isn’t all that different from the suspension in your road car, where your tires are the only thing holding you to the asphalt which therefore means you want to optimize that grip as best you can. It’s still designed to do the same things: provide solid handling and a comfortable ride. But there are three components to F1 suspension you need to know about: inboard suspension, outboard suspension, and the suspension bits that are in the air flow. It’s that aerodynamic component that makes F1 so different from road cars—or even other race cars where suspension parts aren’t critical to air flow.

Basically, the suspension regulates weight distribution across all four wheels, which in turn will determine whether or not it stays stable. For a very fast car, you can imagine suspension is absolutely crucial to, y’know, maintaining reliable and comfortable handling.

Inboard Suspension

The inboard suspension elements are those that are hidden under the car, the ones you can’t see. The inboard suspension components are the springs, dampers, rockers, torsion bars, and anti-roll bars.

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We’ll start with the dampers. These often come in the form of a hydraulic piston absorbs energy from the suspension. After all, when you go over a bump, you want to minimize the energy that’s being translated into the chassis and, therefore, the amount of bumpiness that you feel. Dampers absorb all that excess energy because of how hard it is to move the hydraulic piston, making for a smoother ride and thus better handling.

The rockers are mountings that can rotate around an axis, which in turn facilitate steering.

The torsion bar features one end that turns with the rocker and one end that is rigidly fixed to the chassis. The torsion bar is made of materials that can be twisted—so, as the rocker turns, the torsion bar twists. That comes with a lot of resistance, since this metal bar does not want to twist. When you release the torsion bar, it’ll pop right back where it belongs. So, it functions in the same way a spring does, but it’s a much more efficient part.

The square U-shaped anti-roll bar is both an in- and outboard suspension component; it connects one wheel to the other so that, if one wheel lifts up, the the other one does as well. It prevents the car from rolling when one wheel is forced up higher than the other.

Outboard Suspension

The outboard suspension components are those that are built onto the exterior of the car but that are still tucked away from the direct flow of air. Outboard suspension includes the uprights, axles, and wheel bearings.

An upright serves to connect the wheel, brake rotor, hub, brake caliber, and steering arm together. It allows the front wheels to turn. In F1, the upright also has to house three wheel tethers, which are designed to keep the tire connected to the chassis in the event of an accident.

Axles are fairly self-explanatory: it’s a rod that connects and rotates the wheels and supports the weight of your car.

And wheel bearings fit tightly inside the wheel hub; they reduce friction while the wheel spins.

Airflow Suspension

There are some bits of the suspension that are kind of in-between; they’re not under the car, but they’re also not hidden behind the tires. Which means they’re getting the full brunt of the airflow. Therefore, they need to be both effective when it comes to making for a smoother ride, but they also need to kind of be designed in such a way that air can easily pass over them. These bits are the wishbones, pull rods, push rods, and track rods. These are, in large part, the six arms that you see connecting an F1 wheel to the chassis.

The wishbones are four structural components that connect the wheel to the chassis. That is the sole job of the wishbone: to hold one piece onto the other.

The track rod, or steering arm, is a single arm that moves horizontally through the chassis, which pushes and pulls the wheel mount around a pivot point supported by the wishbones. That’s how you steer.

The push rod and pull rod are the same, final arm—but it all depends on your setup. Most folks prefer the push rod system at the front of the car, which connects to the wheel mount, enters the chassis, and connects to the rocker that we mentioned before. If you lift the wheel up, the rod pushes against the rocker (see where it gets its name?). The rocker is connected to the dampers, which will absorb all that excess energy. The benefit here is that it translates lateral, back-and-forth motion into rotational motion, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to package up in a small space.

The pull rod system is the same, but in this case, if you lift the wheel, the rod pulls against the rocker.

Putting It All Together

While all of those components are complex separately, shit really starts to get real when you connect them all together. How this suspension is set up depends on the driver, the car, the team, the track, the temperature, and the race length. So, on a grid of 20 cars, every single one will have a very different suspension setup.

A ‘softer’ suspension setup is designed to have more give, which means you’ll have a smoother ride because the suspension will absorb a lot of the energy from the track before it hits the chassis. But you run the risk of having less receptive handling; you’ll feel the outside forces that push your car to the side when you turn or push you forward when you brake hard.

A ‘stiffer’ setup will feel more stable and give drivers a sense of confidence in its responsive handling. That being said, you’re sacrificing comfort.

If you’re part of an endurance race at a bumpy track on a really hot day, you may want a smoother setup, since it’ll take less physical effort for you to control. If you’re doing a qualifying sprint, you might prefer a stiffer setup that can jar you around a little bit more but will respond to rapid steering input.

I’ve Got A Bone To Pick With Bentley’s Pikes Peak Race Car

What you see here is Bentley’s newest race car, the Continental GT3 Pikes Peak, built explicitly to attack the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this June. This is the third time in as many years that Bentley has launched a factory effort at PPIHC, following a production car record in a Continental GT in 2019 and a production SUV record set by a Bentayga. This time Bentley is aiming for the Time Attack 1 record, a lofty goal, with mountain regular Rhys Millen at the wheel — Millen also drove in ’18 and ’19. There’s only one problem: this isn’t a GT3.

Cup Grand Touring Cars, colloquially known as GT3, is a set of regulations developed by SRO and maintained by the FIA for grand touring racing cars. Street cars are strictly homologated to the class with limits on horsepower, minimum weight, and aerodynamics. In order to run in the class, Bentley has to build all of its Continental GT3 racers to the same specification and it will receive adjustments to its performance relative to other cars in the class with series-mandated ballast or engine air intake restrictors.

While Bentley specifically calls its Pikes Peak machine a “GT3” it has been modified above and beyond the spec of the class so that it simply cannot be GT3 any longer. While it may have started as a car intended for GT3 homologation, it has been prepared and bastardized beyond the scope of that name. With a huge rear wing, the deepest diffuser I’ve ever seen, and a massive dual-plane front splitter flanked by gargantuan canards, it’s already beyond GT3, but then Bentley tuned the 4-liter twin-turbocharged engine to produce well more than the GT3 class allows. Come on, Stowe. Get your shit together.

Bentley’s Member of the Board for Engineering, Dr Matthias Rabe, comments:

“We are delighted to be returning to Pikes Peak for a third time – now powered by renewable fuel, as the launch project for another new element of our Beyond100 programme. Our powertrain engineers are already researching both biofuels and e-fuels for use by our customers alongside our electrification programme – with intermediate steps of adopting renewable fuels at the factory in Crewe and for our company fleet. In the meantime, the Continental GT3 Pikes Peak will show that renewable fuels can allow motorsport to continue in a responsible way, and hopefully it will capture the third and final record in our triple crown.”

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Pikes Peak doesn’t subscribe to any particular sanctioning body’s ruleset, preferring a run-what-you-brung approach, which is refreshing in today’s motorsport. I’m not knocking Bentley for building this truly badass Continental, but I do take umbrage with the use of GT3 in the name. I’m a stickler for things doing what they say on the tin.

To me, this car feels like the ultimate extension of a production-based machine. It’s kind of the GT version of what Porsche did with the 919 Hybrid Evo a few years ago. It took a car built to a very strict specification (in Porsche’s case the FIA’s LMP1 category) and removed the restrictive power and aero rules to see what it was capable of at full chat. If this had been called the Continental Evolution or some such thing, I wouldn’t even be writing this blog.

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Mini’s Electric Hot Hatch Might Debut As A Formula E Safety Car

We’ve known that an electric Mini JCW hot hatchback is in the works from the Brit brand by BMW. It’s an exciting proposition, one many of us are looking forward to, and it gets more exciting as the day draws nearer. In a tweet on Wednesday, Mini released the above teaser image with the caption “Feels like it’s time for a boost. Watch this space… #ElectricThrillMaximised” Does that mean Mini will be pacing the field at future Formula E events?

The current Formula E safety car is this unique roofless BMW i8 with a giant wing. The hybrid i8 sports car has been serving in this role since season 1 way back in 2014 when the i8 was a brand new car. It makes sense that the company would want to replace the aging i8 as the face of safety in one of the most advanced and forward-looking series in the world of motorsport. Not least because the i8 will be ending production soon, but also because BMW will be leaving Formula E at the end of this season.

With BMW out, and Mini’s commitment to electrification, this swap would make perfect sense. You can see from the light bar on the roof of the Mini that it matches the one currently in use on the BMW. Therefore, one could infer that this is the specification which will continue onward into Mini’s tenure as safety car.

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I have high hopes for the electric JCW. The Mini Cooper SE electric is already considered one of the best handling electric cars on the market, so by extension the better handling JCW version should deliver more power and more on-track speed. Because Formula E tracks are typically quite tight, the Mini should be able to deliver on the job of safety car. Electric torque and nimble handling should be enough tools in the box for the effort.

Dammit, I’m going to have to buy one of these things, aren’t I?

With Mini almost sure to be running the Formula E safety car in the near future, how long will it be before Mini enters the sport as a manufacturer? While it’s certain that BMW is leaving FE, there’s nothing saying its compact car brand can’t pick up where it left off. It wouldn’t be the first time in this series, either, as Nissan’s FE program came out of Renault’s abandoning the sport.

I, for one, would love to see Mini racing in Formula E.

We Want To Hear Your Electric Car Ownership Stories

Did you own a Ford Ranger EV back in the ‘90s? Do you have a Nissan Leaf in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from a fast charger? Do you keep your Tesla Roadster in Manhattan, even in a blackout? The world of EVs is full of interesting stories, and we want to hear yours!

Every week, we’ll be posting an interview with an owner of an electric vehicle. We want our coverage of EVs to be practical. We want it to represent reality, not the hype that comes from Silicon Valley startups, or the untethered hope of over-eager politicians, or the pessimism of head-in-the-sand retrogrouches who think you just can’t own an EV in this day and age.

That means we want to hear from rural EV owners, from apartment-bound EV owners, first adopters, and veteran drivers.

But to get those stories we need to hear from you! We want to interview you for this site and get your story out. Maybe you worked at one of the California utilities that got EV fleet vehicles decades ago, or you were part of that BMW 1 Series lease program. Half of the world has forgotten these things even existed.

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We want:

Your name
What car do you own? (If you owned a car in the past, let us know what years!)
Where do you live with it?
How and where do you charge it?
How was buying it?
How long have you had it?
How has it lived up to your expectations?
A photo of your car

If you want to be interviewed, please let us know an email with an re: EV Ownership Stories to tips at jalopnik dot com!

The Maruti Gypsy Is The Suzuki Jimny’s Final Form

Truck YeahThe trucks are good!

The Jimny is one of the coolest off-roaders bar none, but did you know that there’s room for improvement even for the Jimny? This is what peak performance looks like, and its name is the Maruti Suzuki Gypsy.

The Jimny already rocks, and I’m bracing myself for my first sighting of the Mexican market Jimnys. But I’ll confess that I arrived to the Jimny by way of the Samurai and its overseas cousin, the Maruti Gypsy. Sold in India, I first fell in love with the Gypsy from the only secret agent that gives James Bond a run for his money, Jason Bourne:

The Gypsy in this The Bourne Supremacy scene is a Gypsy King which is really just a Jimny with a longer wheelbase and a taller roofline. Bourne’s off-roader sports a hardtop but the Gypsy was available with a soft top and it even came with rear bench seats!

You could almost call it a Defender knock off but in this case, it would only be a compliment because the Gypsy King ends up being as cool as any Rover.

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It was nigh unstoppable off road but kind of sucked on the road. That sounds like the modern Jimny, except the modern version has some creature comforts while the Gypsy and Gypsy King had nothing in the way of amenities. Though, if you ask me, that’s a plus for a truck like this.

The platform the Gypsy is built on, the SJ410, was available with a long-wheelbase and a pop-top (plus a slew of other combinations) globally, according to Suzuki Club UK and Motor Trend. But the Maruti trucks were exclusively LWBs and either soft or pop tops. I think it may be because this was a military and first aid vehicle, so standardizing production would save money. Also, they were the only ones in the family with bench seats. I suspect the benches are why the Marutis came with the LWB, to maximize passenger capacity.

It was very successful with Indian law enforcement and the Indian Military and it enjoyed quite a run in Indian motorsport. Of course, those trucks running in rally events had upgraded drivetrains because the stock motor started at a modest four-cylinder 1.0 liter which did not exceed 80 or so horsepower and 76 lb-ft of torque, even in its last iterations.

The Gypsy sold in its home market for over three decades, from 1985 – 2019, per Autocar India, but it could be set for a return! There are reports of the Jimny being reintroduced into the Indian market — maybe even as a Gypsy — and I think it was only a matter of time given its popularity.

And also because the Jimny is currently produced in India. Maruti Suzuki may not have a hard time selling it in its country of origin and the carmaker is considering its viability, per Autocar India. I really hope there’s a new one with the long wheelbase and tall roof.

Of course, I should mention that the Gypsy has a nameplate that may be offensive to people of Romani heritage, so if Maruti does revive the iconic off roader it might be time to give it a new badge. But, hey, Jimny King has got a nice ring to it.

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The Volkswagen ID.6 Is VW’s Bigger, Uglier EV SUV

The latest MEB-based EV from Volkswagen has leaked, and oh boy, this thing is ugly in all the right ways.

This is the new Volkswagen ID.6, and photographs of it have been released in Chinese regulatory filings, Electrek reports. The photos also leaked on Twitter and Reddit, and the EV they reveal looks so uncool it loops back around and is cool again.

If the ID.3 is a compact and the ID.4 is a crossover, then the ID.6 is a full-fledged SUV, at least in the common 2020 usage of the term. For the past few years, SUVs have been little more than bigger crossovers. That’s been unfortunate for body-on-frame fans, but when it comes to EVs, I think it’s a viable shift in the segment.

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The ID.6 has plenty of room as a seven-seater, and not just as a nod to the VW Roomzz, which was unveiled in Shanghai in 2019. The ID.6 is based on that design, and the lineage is clear. But it kind of sucks to see a cool design diluted for the sake of mass production.

If the ID.6 follows the dimensions of the design it’s based on, it should be at the top of the current range (as its name would suggest) for passenger volume. And VW has landed on a sensible naming scheme, which is a lot better than the what the concepts were given.

Illustration for article titled The Volkswagen ID.6 Is VWs Bigger, Uglier EV SUV — Photo: Volkswagen

The current production design looks interesting, however, and it strays slightly from the design of the other ID family members while keeping some resemblance. The headlights have certain angles going for them; the ID.6 is most handsome when seen head-on.

The ID.6 base model will be outfitted with a 75 kW (100 horsepower) RWD drivetrain. The upgraded model, the ID.6 X, will double that with an AWD drivetrain producing 150 kW (201 HP). The new EV will reportedly carry the same 82 kilowatt-hour battery slated for the Roomzz, which VW stated had a range of 450 kilometers (WLTP) or about 280 miles.

Not only is that a pretty wide disparity between the ID.6 models, but it’s also a low number for what is supposed to be the largest of the new MEB-based cars. As a reference, the ID.3 produces roughly 200 HP but it’s a much smaller car. There has to be some interplay here with the size of the ID.6 and its range and motor output. It’s very possible VW is prioritizing range over output.

But the only thing truly wrong with the ID.6 is the color. A car like this needs a color that can live up to its awesome premise. EVs have finally stopped being awkward but quirky little cars, so why are we still painting them in bland tones? It’s more baffling that this is a Volkswagen finish, too, given its surprising recent EV colors and past practices.

Much of the time I’m drawn to practical small cars, but when I need room to carry passengers, a larger car is a good luxury. In some ironic way, I think this new ID.6 makes the ID.4 redundant. In a line-up with all three IDs, I would be between the 3 and 6, but such a comparison is only possible in a market where all three would be sold simultaneously. The U.S. is unlikely to be such a market.