If you’ve been reading the news surrounding cars and politics, you might have heard the leader of our nation say something about “Japan’s bowling ball test.” In the President’s retelling of the test, a bowling ball is dropped on a car’s hood from 20 feet, and if the hood dents, the cars fail. Apparently, this is a form of non-tariff “cheating” because American cars can’t pass it, maybe?
Matt wrote an excellent Morning Dump covering news about how the Slate Auto EV is built. It also notes that the ‘Bowling Ball Test’ isn’t a thing, but some countries do simulate hitting a pedestrian using a rounded object, but dents are actually a good thing. Reader 4moremazdas had great insight:
Ooh, This article is great for my previous life at Honda.
1. No paint and no stamping – this is potentially a really groundbreaking cost-savings. Most stampings that make up a complete whitebody come from outside suppliers. However, OEM’s tend to keep the “A-class” surface stampings in house – meaning the door skins, hood, roof, etc that a customer sees. Then all the welding and paint has to be done in-house as well. “No paint” isn’t quite right, as they’ll still need to do E-coat on the whitebody, but this might make it so they can have a stamping supplier weld up and e-coat components before shipping.
2. “Bowling ball test” – This is one that was really difficult for us for reliability/durability, especially on the hood. There is a pedestrian safety standard which uses a bowling ball shaped indenter that is pressed in a grid across the entire surface of the hood. It’s to simulate a human head contacting the hood in a pedestrian collision and the requirements are that each location be “soft” enough that it will minimize risk of injury or death. This was a very difficult test to work with as a reliability engineer, since we needed more rigidity, not less. Anyway, any new Honda meets these requirements already.
Mike Harrell gets two COTD nominations today. Mike first appears in David’s piece about how his old BMW i3 has a Steyr-Puch Pinzgauer as a best friend now:
David: Now THAT’S a great two-car garage right there — one great commuter and one that is the very opposite!
Mike: In fairness, the i3 is probably also okay as a commuter.
Mike shows up again in Jason’s review of the Chevy Blazer EV SS:
Jason: …a Lotus isn’t going to take six months’ worth of Costco smoked salmon and a bale of Kirkland-brand underpants back home with your partner and two kids in the car, is it? No, it isn’t.
Mike: Well, no, not with that defeatist attitude it isn’t.
Finally, the Jeff Bezos-funded Slate Auto is already getting hit with Amazon jokes. Fez Whatley comments in Huibert’s excellent Slate truck suspension piece:
Been saving up all my Amazon gift cards for this truck.
Have a great evening, everyone!
He has conflated the “bowling ball” test with the Fred Thompson’s “Japanese inspection” speech about letting lettuce rot on the docks. Id bet a weeks salary that you will find “Days of Thunder” in Donnie’s Netflix history.
Two nominations? Two? Thanks!
The problem is that we have a president with a hyperactive 8 year old’s understanding of the car biz- He thinks the rest of the world will build new McMansions just so they’ll have ‘Merican pickup sized garages and not even 5 foot tall Asian adults will buy 100+ cubic inch Harleys!
Admit it, you’re giving him the benefit of the doubt cause he’s the prez and all.
As long as vehicles the size of the F150 and so on are the standard vehicle that sells in America, American cars will not sell in any substantial number in Japan or elsewhere. Just too big, too wide and thirsty. And build quality…
Japanese vehicles made in Japan aren’t perfect but given a choice smart people buy Japanese. We have three.
And when Japan needs to build US-sized cards, they generally build them in Ohio and Alabama, knowing full well there’s not much appetite for them elsewhere.
Size is 90% of the equation, build/quality/handling is the other 10%. Remember, our best-selling sedans of the early 2000s like the Accord weren’t even sold in most markets…the Accord in Europe was the US Acura TSX and it barely cracked the public consciousness there. Should Japan and Europe be fighting over the latter’s lack of acceptance of the former? Or should we just accept that the world is a complicated place, and as long as goods are able to be purchased fairly across borders, we should let the free market decide?
I wish there were some kind of pro-business political party who could weigh in on this.
Thanks for the COTD! I’m honored!
And a little aside since this does relate to Donald Trump and his complete misunderstanding of issues: the fact there is something that could be referred to as a “bowling ball test” that is also somewhat of a trade barrier does not somehow justify Trump’s idiotic trade “policies”.
This is a great example of him hearing something (potentially even from someone who knows their shit!) and being completely incapable of understanding nuance and instead trying to set some “policy” that he imagines a big, tough, autocrat type might make.
And a note direct to Mercedes so you know where I stand: Fuck this whole administration and anyone who’s trying to strip away humanity and dignity from trans people. Trump could be a goddamn trade genius and I would stand against him for being so shitty to trans folks.
I’ve been following you since your days commenting on the german lighting site and have always enjoyed your writing. You are one of the most detailed and passionate auto (and motorcycle and RV and airplane!!) journalists out there and this hobby is so much better for having you.
Well deserved COTD, a great read. Kudos.
My theory is he’s confusing a TV commercial from the 80’s/90’s with an actual test.
“They have this test, they put the car on a ramp and stand up glasses on the hood, beautiful glasses – stood up on the hood. Then they drive the car, eighty, ninety miles an hour. The glasses don’t move. Don’t move. And if the glasses move then the car fails.“
Roseanne Roseannadanna “It’s always something”
I’d love to know his thoughts on Joe Isuzu.
Does anyone remember “the lines are our friends” commercial of around the same time, maybe a few years later?
Well do I have news for you! The “champagne waterfall” test is notorious among corrosion prevention engineers. It really limits the number of cars we can export to the Heard and McDonald islands.
Ugh, your tone and meter is terrifyingly accurate. Thanks I hate it.
It is filled with logical holes (they [who are “they?” put the car on a ramp to put glasses on it [why?] and then the car is driving 80-90 miles an hour [why? and what was the ramp for?] and if the glasses fall over the car fails [what in the hell could this actually prove? wind resistance exists?]), vagaries so vague they’re undeniable because they have no basis in fact, redundant sentence fragments, a firm assertion of a baseless claim, needless elaboration on irrelevant details (“beautiful” glasses?).
How that illiterate, gibbering orange goblin has a non-zero approval rating is beyond the range of reason and into the hinterlands of delusion.
tl;dr: well played
Volkswagen has a service, very beautiful, very good service, where they un-pimp your auto if you modify it badly and wrongly. This guy, Geman guy, drops a very big container on your car and he goes up to you, and he says “Mr. Trump, sir, we’re un-pimping your auto.” and then a new car, rolls out of the container and that’s your new car. It’s beautiful to see and many people ask me if we can get that done here, so many want this. They say all the time we need the auto un-pimping service here. It’s actually very sad the German people are so unfair to us and treat us so badly in tariffs that we can’t do it. Can’t do it. Would like to un-pimp autos but without tariffs we can’t. Very sad.
And then a Lexus guy walks up to the camera, big tear running down his face..
And if a glass falls?
An engineer walks towards the camera, big tear running down his face…
And says you win Mr. President
Pretty sure he is thinking of an old episode of Letterman when they used to throw stuff off the roof of the building.
AFAIK they actually did perform this test but it was turned into a commercial. A commercial that resulted in Toyota selling A SHIT TON of really good motor vehicles.