Drivers in Newport News, VA will be monitored by red light cameras as soon as next year– maybe. The snag? Money. The Daily Press reports that installing red light cameras at 18 intersections will cost the city around $882k. Just to recoup the initial investment, Newport News would need to snag 17,640 red-light runners at $50 a pop. Assistant Police Chief Dawn Barber puts a finer point on it: "And these are not tickets, but convictions.” City Manager Randy Hildebrandt gets the drift. "It won't be a money maker. I don't think we will be able to afford to have the equipment on all 18 intersections." 

Want to join the E85 generation but can’t stand/afford the flex-fuel vehicles on offer? CarJunky.com reports that XcelPlus International will sell you a small black box that converts any car or truck to run on ethanol. Designed by AGE Technologies in Brazil, the FlexTek system includes a controller unit and chemicals which “permanently plate internal engine parts to protect them from wear and oxidation.” To assuage the skeptical, FlexTek offers a free warranty covering the box (of course) and (more importantly) the vehicle's engine. While the article proclaims ethanol as a widely available fuel, it isn’t. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, there isn’t an E85 pump within 75 miles of Saluda, Virginia, where XcelPlus is based.

Right after taking control of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi formed a panel to look into global warming. Now she's locked in a battle with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell over proposed CAFE standards, seeking to preserve a rapid rise in the new requirements. Domestic automakers haven't hidden their opposition to Pelosi's plan. Cerberus' Stephen Feinberg claims her approach would raise Chrysler's vehicle prices by $7K apiece. GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz estimates it would cost GM $8K per vehicle. They're all predicting that drastic increases in CAFE would cripple or kill the U.S. auto industry. The result: cutbacks, layoffs and bankruptcies throughout industry. Thousands of industrial workers would lose their jobs. People who belong to labor unions. Labor unions that contributed to Nancy Pelosi's election fund, to the tune of $63K in 2006. In fact, according to Freedom Works, Pelosi ranks ninth overall in contributions from Big Labor AND her largest single contributor was Occidental Petroleum, another industrial enterprise that relies on the auto industry for income. The Nance better watch that whole environmental zealousness shtick– she's biting the hand that feeds.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, Sergio Giron is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, a member of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang (a.k.a. MS-13) and a convicted felon. Having served a 346-day sentence for assault with a deadly weapon after shooting a gang defector (charges since dropped), Giron awaits deportation hearings. To pay for an immigration lawyer, Giron’s fellow gang members began stealing cars and chopping them for parts. The admission illustrates the direct link between car theft and organized crime and, as this report from The Boston Globe points out, international terrorism. It's high time the states stepped-up their cooperation with federal authorities in this area.

As one of our regular commentators recently pointed out, Lexus owes much of its success to their dealer experience. The recently opened Newport Lexus in Newport Beach, California raised the luxury automaker's retail game to the next level. Designed and built by by Sauers Construction Inc., the $73m pleasure dome offers customers a putting green, game room, multiple lounges with giant-screen TVs, restroom stalls with smaller (though plasma TVs), wireless Internet, executive workroom, Wolfgang Puck cafe and Tommy Bahama boutique. Oh, and cars. The only thing Newport doesn't have is an attractive building. In fact, the Seattle Times coverage of the refurbished Lexus of Bellevue dealership confirms the trend: bland, monolithic surfaces adorning large pedestrian shapes. While Lexus' "L-Finesse" design language is moving their cars away from cod-Mercedes shapes, the Japanese automaker's dealership architecture remains heavily influenced by parking garages, government buildings and maximum security prisons.   

The San Jose Mercury news reports that the California legislature has pulled over Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the good intention-paved road to Hell. If that sounds confusing, that's because it is. The headline: Sen. Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield accused the Governator of rigging state contracts to favor GM products. The story behind the story: federal laws forced the state to buy alternative-fuel vehicles; only "flex-fuel" Chevrolet Impalas and Silverado pickups met the contract requirements. (So Kalifornia bought 1,138 of 'em.) The story behind the story that's behind the story: there's no place to fuel these vehicles with E85, save a privately owned station in San Diego (that the state doesn't use). When confronted with the facts, Florez wanted to know why the State didn't apply for a waiver that would have allowed them to buy "real" green machines. The man who OK'ed the contract had a simple reply: "Demand creates supply." Who knew?

In 1998, Volvo was SUV deficient. As they didn't have a truck chassis upon which to build, those crazy Swedes grabbed a station wagon, raised it a couple of inches and added all wheel-drive. Since then, the XC70's ground clearance has risen, transforming a slightly jacked-up joy rider (6.5") to a Jeep-wannabe (8.2"). The move leaves Volvo with a fully-fledged… something. Whatever it is, it is what it is. And now that Volvo has a "proper" SUV, the question must be asked: is the XC70 an anachronism whose time has come and gone?

Winding Road reports that Subaru will begin fitting the Legacy with a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) in 2009, and all other models shortly thereafter. Given the poor reviews and slow sales of these "stepless" transmissions, the news is something of a shock. Ford recently abandoned the CVT in its quest to turn the Five Hundred into the Taurus. The Blue Oval Boyz and other mass market manufacturers are also busy gearing-up to install DSG (double sequential gearbox) or similar into their future products. Given the unlimited fun of a paddle-shift DSG gearbox vs. the whiny sloth of a CVT, it's hard to imagine many existing or potential Subaru drivers would trade spirited performance for an extra mile per gallon. [Note to Subaru: no one drives a Subaru for the gas mileage; they drive them in SPITE of the gas mileage.]

When it comes to the United Auto Workers (UAW) contract negotiations with The Big 2.8, employee and retiree health care is the 1000lbs. monkey on the automakers' backs. General Motors' health care obligations total $46b, Ford clocks in at $23b and Chrysler's looking at an $18b tab. And consider this: GM's 432k retirees pay roughly $750 per year out of their own pockets for medical care, while their former employer shells out $3.3b on their medical benefits. That's a Hell of a lot of bananas.

"We now know — beyond any doubt — that minority drivers are targeted for humiliating, degrading roadside searches even though there is no evidence that they have broken any laws." That's how Harvey M. Grossman, Legal Director of the Illinois ACLU interprets recent stats prepared by the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety for the Illinois Department of Transportation. According to the report, in 2006, Illinois police officers asked 0.68% of white drivers for consent to search their car during traffic stops, compared to 2.04% of minority drivers. The ACLU wants to redress this balance by eliminating ALL consent searches (i.e. a police request for a search despite a lack of probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity). "State police forces in California and New Jersey have ended the practice of conducting consent searches," Grossman said. "The Illinois General Assembly should examine this data and move quickly to bar the practice in our state."

The Smart Automotive Group [website "under construction," no relation to the SMART city car] got more than a slap-on-the-wrist for sending out "promotions" on behalf of Georgia car dealers. The Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA) whacked owners Michael and Ben Burst $1,660,320 each for violating the Fair Business Practices Act. Specifically, the Louisiana agency arranged ads that claimed ordinary sales were "liquidations" or "Georgia's only reprocessed vehicle event," told consumers they'd won cars they hadn't, misrepresented the monthly payments and the number of cars available for sale and claimed customers were preapproved for loans when they weren't. And this is AFTER they told the OCA they were no longer doing business in the state. Nice how the dealerships can shuffle off the blame to the advertising company, when they approved the ad copy and benefited from its mischaracterization. 

Autospectator reports that Volkswagen has raised the fuel mileage on its already stingy Polo BlueMotion. Powered by a 1.4-liter TDI [diesel] engine, Volksie's miserly machine deploys every mileage stretcher known to mankind, from special transmission ratios to low-rolling resistance tires. Baby Blue was sipping 3.9 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers. VW's boffins "optimized the engine configuration" to squeeze an extra tenth of a liter efficiency from the mini (small "m") mill, dropping consumption to 3.8 liters per 100 klicks. That's almost 62 mpg folks AND it exceeds all Euro-emission requirements for diesels. VeeDub pulled-off this mpg miracle without relying on hundreds of pounds of batteries and electric motors — if you know what I mean.

Earlier this year, GM admitted it was getting creamed on the coasts; the General promised to launch major marketing efforts to reclaim major metropolitan areas. Other than Chevy's recent tie-in with Rolling Stone magazine, we've seen little of what could be called bi-coastalistic marketing. Meanwhile, Toyota continues to target their new full-size Tundra pickup at the American heartland. Tomorrow, visitors to Minot's North Dakota State Fairgrounds will get a chance to put the Texas-built pickup through its paces as part of Toyoya's "Tundra, Prove it!" campaign. The high touch experience includes a limited slip diff demo, an "acceleration run" and a "braking zone" test with and without load. GM would be well-advised to watch its back.  

True story: as a kid, every fall I’d ride my single-speed bike three miles to the local Chevy dealer. Inexplicably, the dealer staff let this mouthy, curious kid sit in their expensive, newly launched iron. In the autumn of 1968, I clambered into a brand spankin’ new ’69 Impala. Its lines were angular where the old ones were bulbous. As a “Chevy man” (boy), I was ready to show it some major love. But one detail grabbed my eye and just wouldn’t let go. Unlike previous Impalas, the dash and doors were covered with very large expanses of fake wood. A pet peeve was born.

Pistonheads lamenting the rise of the machine will not be heartened to hear there's a new acronym in town: ICAV. "Intersection Crash Avoidance, Violation" systems sound an alarm if a driver is about to run a stop sign, red light or other mission critical intersection warning. According to a pdf downloadable at Accidentreconstruction.com, researchers are set to field test practical ICAV systems. While enthusiasts may regret yet another attempt to "dumb down" safe driving, there's no denying the magnitude of the problem. In 1999, some 261k light vehicle crashes occurred at intersections where a driver was later charged with running a stop sign. That same year, 133k crashes involved traffic signal violations.