This week: Most weeks the news is about what's new. This one is about what's ending. Diageo shelved a 25-year whisky tradition, Compass Box closed the book on Hedonism, and Tesla put an end date on the Cybertruck.

In between, there's a watch machined from Le Mans brake pads, a 1988 design icon reborn in ceramic, and a 75-year-old nameplate that shows how longevity is actually earned. Let’s dive in!

Diageo has paused its annual Special Releases collection, effective immediately, so there is no 2026 edition [1]. The company says it is taking time to review feedback so future bottlings meet what drinkers want, and it has not committed to a 2027 return [1]. Whisky Advocate isn't hedging: it ran a farewell treating the 2025 collection as the last [2]. That's a quiet ending for a series that started in 2001.

The numbers explain why collectors care. Over 25 years the series put out 219 expressions from 40 distilleries, including 55 bottlings from closed distilleries [2]. Early Port Ellen and Brora releases built followings strong enough to help justify Diageo reopening both distilleries in the 2020s [2]. Lagavulin was the most prolific name, with 30 releases [2], and its annual cask-strength 12 Year Old became a cult bottle in its own right [3].

This one stings for me, because the three distilleries I reach for most, Oban, Talisker and Lagavulin, were the backbone of the series. The final 2025 lineup, Horizons Unbound, had all three. Oban 12 was matured entirely in bourbon casks [3]. Talisker "Molten Seas" (53.7%, $185) was the first time Talisker used volcanic rock as an element of maturation [4]. Lagavulin "Grain & Embers" (56.4%, $180) layered PX and Oloroso sherry casks over the smoke [3][4].

Why now? For the year ended June 30, 2026, Diageo reported a 27.2% drop in operating profit, and North American organic net sales fell 8.4% [1]. Whisky is a chemistry experiment with a decade-long lag: what goes into a barrel today is a bet on demand ten years out. When that bet sours, the most expensive, most labor-intensive releases go first. Diageo had also leaned hard into price and novelty, raising prices sharply from 2012 as flippers resold bottles and later chasing mezcal finishes and volcanic-rock-toasted casks [2].

The same week, Compass Box announced that Hedonism 2026 is the final edition of its annual series [5]. Hedonism was Compass Box's very first release, and it made the case for grain whisky when nobody was asking [5]. The science is why it worked. Grain whisky usually comes off a continuous column still at a much higher strength than pot-still malt, which strips out more of the heavy congeners. The spirit enters the cask lighter, so the oak does more of the talking: vanilla, coconut, custard.

The final edition is a blended grain at 46% ABV, 13,218 bottles, no chill filtration and natural color [5]. Its components include 30-year-old Strathclyde and 20 to 24-year-old whisky from Port Dundas and Cameronbridge [6]. CEO Nishat Gupte summed it up: grain whisky "deserves a place at the top table" [5]. A limited number of bottles remain through Master of Malt and, in the U.S., the Compass Box website and select retailers [5].

Remus Repeal Reserve is MGP's annual limited bourbon honoring the repeal of Prohibition on December 5, 1933, and Series X marks its 10th anniversary [7]. It's bottled at 107 proof with a suggested price of $79.99 [8]. Master distiller Ian Stirsman blended batches aged between 2008 and 2017 [8]. For the anniversary, Remus also released its first-ever rye, made from 2015 and 2016 stocks of a 95% rye mash bill and bottled at 111 proof [8].

Run the weighted math and the average age lands at about 11.3 years. The headline change is the 18-year-old component, which doubled its share from Series IX [7]. That oldest slice is the classic 21% rye recipe, while the bulk of the blend sits on the spicier 36% rye bill. A third recipe swaps malted barley for malted rye, which brings its own starch-converting enzymes and tends to push spice and dark bread rather than sweetness. Remus says this is the first time its rarely seen LISV recipe has appeared in the series [8].

The Goods: This is a must buy for me. If you’re looking for something that was as good as V, this is it. It should be 80-100, and honestly, it’s fantastic for that price. This is a top contender for my bourbon of the year for sure. And I will be recommending this to a lot of people for the holidays. I will also be breaking into it a lot this holiday season.

Lorige builds watch cases out of the carbon/carbon brake pads of actual race cars, and its latest has a pedigree most "racing watches" can only borrow. The Lorige x InterEuropol Competition BL-Endurance is machined from pads off the team's No. 43 and No. 343 cars, which finished one-two in LMP2 at Le Mans in 2026 [10]. It's limited to 50 pieces at CHF 29,750 before VAT [9].

The materials science is the story. Carbon/carbon is carbon fiber set in a carbon matrix, engineered to survive the brutal thermal cycling of endurance braking. That same heat melts the resin binding the carbon particles, leaving the used pad porous, which is the opposite of what a water-resistant case needs [11]. Lorige's fix is to machine two rough cases from each pad, re-inject resin, then repeat the whole process to finish them [11].

That makes the supply the limit, not demand. Each case takes about 30 hours to machine, and a pad yields only one or two of them, with every pad's track history documented [11]. aBlogtoWatch puts the yield at two, perhaps three per pad [9]. New for this edition is a gradient sapphire dial that slips in the team's green and yellow [9]. It's a material with a past, the same idea as a whisky cask: what it went through is what you're paying for.

Louis Vuitton went the other way, looking back to 1988. The new ceramic Monterey remakes the LVII, one of LV's first watches [12]. The original was designed by Gae Aulenti, the architect who had just turned a Paris train station into the Musée d'Orsay [13]. The Monterey II was also one of the very first ceramic watches [14], so the material choice here is a homecoming, not a gimmick.

The new version comes in polished black or deep green ceramic, 37mm wide, with no lugs and the crown at 12 o'clock [12]. Inside is LV's in-house LFT MA01.02 automatic [12], with 45 hours of power reserve at 28,800 vibrations per hour [13]. It costs $22,900, and the head detaches from its strap to clip onto a bag or a jacket like a pocket watch [12].

The lugless case is the clever bit ergonomically: without lugs overhanging the wrist, the strap sets the fit, and a pebble wears smaller than its diameter.

Final Thoughts:

The Cybertruck has an end date. On Friday, November 6, Elon Musk posted on X that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas around mid-2027 to make room for more Cybercab production [15]. Tesla hasn't said how long it will sell remaining inventory or supply parts [15]. Musk's own reply to a post calling the truck discontinued: "True, but the Cybertruck fleet will be around for a long time" [16].

The numbers tell the story. Tesla's original goal was 250,000 trucks a year [15]. Cox Automotive estimates U.S. sales of 3,519 in Q1 2026 and 3,744 in Q2 [15]. Annualize that and you get roughly 14,500 trucks, under 6% of the target. The price drifted the wrong way too: the 2019 reveal promised $39,900, $49,900 and $69,900 trims, while the dual-motor now starts at $74,990 after an August increase [15].

Tesla doesn't break out Cybertruck sales, lumping them into "Other Models" with the already discontinued Model S and Model X; that bucket delivered 8,295 vehicles in Q3 2026, down 48% year over year [15]. The lesson isn't that bold design fails. It's that a vehicle built around a manufacturing bet still has to find buyers, and no exoskeleton makes up for a price that landed nearly double its promise.

Nissan announced this week that the Patrol name is coming back to the U.S. for 2027, 57 years after it left [17]. The twist: there's no separate Patrol. The off-road Armada PRO-4X simply becomes the Armada Patrol PRO-4X, timed to the nameplate's 75th anniversary [17]. Nissan's U.S. sales chief Tiago Castro says the Patrol has "defined adventure for 75 years" [17], and the history backs him up. It debuted in Japan in 1951, arrived here in 1962 as the first Nissan-badged vehicle sold in America (with Roy Rogers as pitchman), and left after 1969 [17]. That same year, 1962, a Patrol became the first motorized vehicle to cross Australia's Simpson Desert: 12 days and more than 1,100 sand dunes [17].

Under the new badge it's the same truck, which is the point. The 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 makes 425 hp and 516 lb-ft [17] through a nine-speed automatic [18]. The off-road kit includes an electronic locking rear differential, optional adaptive air suspension, all-terrain tires, eight drive modes, metal underbody protection, an off-road front bumper for a better approach angle, and an "Invisible Hood View" camera that shows what's beneath the nose [17]. It tows up to 8,500 pounds and starts at $78,990 plus $2,275 destination, or $81,265 before options [17]. Production starts this month, it debuts publicly at the LA Auto Show (November 20 to 29), and NISMO rock sliders and a roof rack arrive this winter [17]. For context, the rest of the 2027 Armada lineup now starts at $64,290 for the SL, after Nissan dropped the base SV [19].

That locker is the piece worth understanding. An open differential sends torque to whichever wheel has the least resistance, which is why a truck with one wheel in the air can sit there spinning it. Locking the rear axle forces both wheels to turn together, so the one with grip does the work. Tesla engineered a truck around a vision; Nissan engineered one around a problem it has been solving since 1951, and this week it finally put the name back on it.

Outro: I’ve been busy that last few weeks cooking something up. Stay tuned for something I haven’t released since 2023! See you all next week.