FEBRUARY 18, 2026

The original - and still our favorite - Autoextremist logo. 

The AE Quote of the Century: Everybody loves The High-Octane Truth. Until they don't. -WG 

SPECIAL EDITOR'S NOTE: We'd like to remind you that Peter's first work of fiction, "St. Michael of Birmingham" is out now. Make no mistake, it doesn't resemble anything you've read from him before. In fact, it is quite a dramatic departure. It is mystical. It is sexy. It is funny. It's moving. And it is a flat-out wild ride unlike anything you've experienced. Having said that, it is definitely not for everyone, but then, it is from PMD, so that probably shouldn't come as a surprise! Check it out on Amazon Kindle here. -WG

(Toyota images)

Toyota has totally reimagined the Highlander for 2027, embracing the EV "thing" with a conviction that must leave its competitors scratching their heads. The highlights? Besides the all-electric powertrain, the new Highlander has three-row seating for up to seven passengers; 45-cubic feet of rear storage with the third row folded flat; it is equipped with Toyota's latest audio multimedia and Safety Sense systems; battery modules are assembled at the newly opened Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina Battery Plant and Partner Supplier in the U.S.; two grades, Limited or XLE, with available Front- or All-Wheel Drive; XLE AWD and Limited AWD Models equipped with 95.8-kWh battery Have 320-mile manufacturer estimated total driving range rating; up to 338HP (combined system) and 323 lb.-ft. of Torque; equipped with North American Charging System (NACS) Port for wide access to thousands of DC fast charging stations in the U.S. The Highlander is the fourth BEV in the U.S. Toyota Lineup and Toyota’s first three-row BEV Model in the U.S. It will be assembled in the U.S. at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky. Sales of the new Highlander are expected to begin in late 2026, continuing into early 2027. The MSRP will be announced closer to on-sale date. Editor-in-Chief's Note: This is a huge deal for the EV "thing" and an even bigger test of Toyota's marketing might. A giant "we'll see" as we like to say. -PMD

How bad is it for Ford? From Michael Martinez at Automotive News, late last Tuesday afternoon: "Failed investments in money-losing electric vehicles and a late-year disruption of aluminum supplies for F-Series pickups drove Ford to an $11.1 billion net loss in the fourth quarter, resulting in the automaker’s worst financial performance since 2008. Fourth-quarter revenue declined 5 percent to $45 billion, and adjusted earnings before interest and taxes plunged by more than half to $1 billion. For the full-year, Ford lost $8.2 billion, largely because of its EV write-downs and $2 billion in tariffs. The automaker’s 2025 tariff bill ended up roughly doubling its previous projection following a late-year change to offsets by the Trump administration. It was Ford’s third-worst performance ever and third full-year loss in the past six years." Editor-in-Chief's Note: All together now - Not. Very. Good. And, hard after this news comes word that Ford's salaried workforce will get their biggest bonuses in years because the company achieved goals in improving vehicle initial quality. Just a reminder, Ford has recalled more vehicles in the last five years than any other automaker. -PMD

Editor-in-Chief's Note: Another automaker has reported a huge hit to its bottom line. Stellantis, the foreign-owned company with operations based here – and make no mistake, even though it is referred to as part of the "Detroit 3" it most definitely is not – has reported a hit of €22 billion to "primarily reflect a strategic shift to put freedom of choice – from a growing range of EVs, hybrids and advanced internal combustion engines – at the heart of the Company’s plans," according to its PR minions. Yeah, sure. Park this in the "It Won't Be Long Now!" File. -PMD

As Team USA takes the stage at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, Honda has unveiled a short documentary providing a behind-the-scenes look at its innovation-driven partnership with USA Bobsled/Skeleton (USABS). Watch it here.

Editor-in-Chief's Note: Our video this week is about Richard Seaman and the Silver Arrows Grand Prix machines. Watch it here. -PMD

Editor's Note: As Peter references in this week's Rant, here is an excerpt from one of our favorite pieces of automotive prose, which poet, critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist James Agee wrote for the September 1934 issue of Fortune. -WG

The characters in our story are five: this American continent; this American people; the automobile; the Great American Road, and the Great American Roadside. As an American, of course, you know these characters. This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky against the bulk of the world. This curious people. The automobile you know as well as you know the slouch of the accustomed body at the wheel and the small stench of gas and hot metal. You know the sweat and the steady throes of the motor and the copious and thoughtless silence and the almost lack of hunger and the spreaded swell and swim of the hard highway toward and beneath and behind and gone and the parted roadside swarming past. This great road, too; you know that well. How it is scraggled and twisted along the coast of Maine, high-crowned and weak-shouldered in honor of long winter, how like a blacksnake in the sun it takes the ridges, the green and dim ravines which are the Cumberlands, and lolls loose into the hot Alabama valleys . . . Oh yes, you know this road….All such things you know….God and the conjunction of confused bloods, history and the bullying of this tough continent to heel, did something to the American people -- worked up in their blood a species of restiveness unlike any that any race before has known. Whatever we may think, we move for no better reason than for the plain unvarnished hell of it. And there is no better reason. So God made the American restive. The American in turn and in due time got into the automobile and found it good. The automobile became a hypnosis, the opium of the American people...

The AE Song of the Week:

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer's out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
I'm driving by your house
Though I know you're not home

But I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream
Now I don't understand what happened to our love
But babe, I'm gonna get you back
I'm gonna show you what I'm made of

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
I see you walking real slow and you're smilin' at everyone
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

Out on the road today, I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back. You can never look back"
I thought I knew what love was
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever
I should just let them go but-

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
You got that hair slicked back and those Wayfarers on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

"The Boys of Summer" by Don Henley from the album "Building The Perfect Beast" (1984).* Written by Mike Campbell and Don Henley. Watch the original Music Video here. 

*After Eagles split up, frontman Don Henley tried his hand at a solo career and found some success. His biggest hit came in the ’80s with “Boys Of Summer,” with lyrics that both look back on a failed relationship and perfectly describe the final days of summer. But Henley has fellow musician Bob Seger to thank for what became the song’s finished version.

 

Mike Campbell, the lead guitarist for Tom Petty, originally wrote the music for “Boys Of Summer” and presented it to Petty himself. However, Petty passed on it, as he felt it didn’t fit in with the album he was working on at the time, Southern Accents. Campbell eventually played it for Henley.

“We sat at opposite ends of a long table, and he put the cassette on,” Campbell said in an interview with Classic Rock. “He didn’t tap his foot or move his head. Just sat there, with his arms folded. He listened all the way through. I thought he hated it. He goes, ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do with that.’ And I left.”

Henley then wrote the song’s lyrics and took it into the studio. After it had been recorded and cut as a single, with seven-inch vinyls ready to go, Bob Seger stopped by the recording studio to visit Henley, which producer Niko Bolas recounted in an interview with Inside Blackbird.

“Everybody’s having drinks and celebrating, the record’s almost over, and Bob looked at Don and said, ‘Why didn’t you sing it higher? Chicks love it when you sing high,’” Bolas said. “Could have heard a pin drop. And Don looked at me, and he said, ‘What can we do?’”

Bolas then used his new AMS, which allowed for pitch changes, to make a cassette of the song’s instrumental with increasingly higher pitches. He and Henley spent the weekend experimenting with Henley singing the song in different keys before landing on one that felt right. The song was recut and remixed Monday morning, all without interfering with the release date.

“And I still hear it on the radio and I still smile,” Bolas said. “It’s a great, great record.”

The title comes from a 1972 baseball book by Roger Kahn called Boys of Summer, which is about The Brooklyn Dodgers, who broke the hearts of their fans when they moved to Los Angeles. That book got its title from a Dylan Thomas poem called I See the Boys of Summer, which was published in 1939.

The music was written by Mike Campbell, who was Tom Petty's right-hand man. The two were together in Mudcrutch, then in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Campbell co-wrote a lot of songs with Petty, including "Refugee," "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," and "Don't Do Me Like That." Campbell offered his track for "The Boys of Summer" to Petty, but he turned it down and the song went to Henley, who wrote the lyrics. Campbell played guitar on the song and also produced it.

In a Songfacts interview with Mike Campbell, he talked about recording this song: "I used to have a 4-track machine in my house and I had just gotten a drum machine - it's when the Roger Linn drum machine first came out. I was playing around with that and came up with a rhythm. I made the demo on my little 4-track and I showed it to Tom, but at the time, the record we were working on, Southern Accents, it didn't really sound like anything that would fit into the album. The producer we were working with at the time, Jimmy Iovine, called me up one day and said he had spoken with Don, who I'd never met, and said that he was looking for songs. He gave me his number and I called him up and played it for him and he called me the next day and said he put it on in his car and had written these words and wanted to record it. That's kind of how it started. Basically, he wanted to recreate the demo as close as we could. We ended up changing the key for the voice (as noted above). We actually cut it in one key, did the whole record with overdubs and everything, and then he decided to change the key like a half step up or something, we had to do the whole record again, but it turned out pretty good."

The video for this song was the big winner at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards, just the second year the awards were held. It won for Video of the Year, Best Director, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The director was Jean-Baptiste Mondino, a French graphic designer/photographer who had made a video for the song "Cargo de Nuit" by a French singer named Axel Bauer. Mondino sent that video to Jeff Ayeroff, an executive at Henley's label, Geffen Records. Ayeroff flew Mondino to California and had him meet with Henley, who was baffled by the pitch but decided to go with it and let Mondino do his thing. (Knowledge courtesy of Songfacts.com, with additional insight from Janelle Sheetz)

Editor's Note: Click on "Next 1 Entries" at the bottom of this page to see previous issues. - WG