Automatic transmissions obviously require some upkeep to keep them in good condition. What about manual transmissions? What sort of maintenance needs to be performed on them, if any, to maximize their life? Is the reliability of them higher enough that more drivers should be considering them? I’ve owned five cars with manual transmissions (transaxles really), and only one of them ever gave me trouble. It was a 1990 Hyundai Excel (I can see the readers’ eyes rolling already). With almost 190,000 km on the clock, it became impossible to downshift into second without double clutching. I have learned enough about manual trannies since then to think that it was probably a failed synchro, and my mechanic’s advice at the time (“Live with it.”) was probably good, considering the likely cost of correcting it and the value of the car.
I drive manuals because I like the control, and the lower purchase cost is a bonus, but I imagine in my head that I’m going to get a longer service life, too. I wonder how accurate my assessment is.
Don’t look at me. I already gave at the office. Gentlemen, I refer you to the $5 billion already allocated to prop up automotive suppliers attached to domestic car makers with an umbilical chord made of piano wire. OK, that particular area of the bailout buffet table is shrouded in red tape at the moment. But do the suppliers seriously expect Uncle Sam to stump-up some $8.3 billion per year for the next four years to help them keep the lights on? That’s how much cash they’ll need, according to a new study by A.T. Kearney. And Kearney’s boys reckon they’ll get it. “A disorderly wind-down of key suppliers could also potentially shut other OEMs,” A.T. Kearney partner, Dan Cheng, said in the PR release accompanying the tome. And he expects the government will do “everything it can” to help the industry. Ready for the kicker?
Dante Giacosa’s original 500 was an industrial design master class for mobilising Italy’s poor after the war. Fiat’s nuova 500 springs from no such noble sentiment; it is meant to convince the foccacia buying classes there is an alternative in the baby premium market to the ubiquitous neue Mini.
Chrysler has come within 11 dealers of confirming media reports that it would terminate 800 US dealers (dowload pdf list of 789 terminated ChyrCo dealers here). This as the bankrupt automaker steps-up its efforts to satisfy its federal overlords and prepare for Fiat’s command and control. Oh, and emerge from C11 as a viable automaker. Automotive News [AN, sub] has intercepted a memo from the corporate mothership highlighting the company’s care and concern towards the dead stores not selling. “Dealers are learning of their fate via UPS letters to be delivered this morning, the memo says. Dealers will get 23 business days for a ‘court review’ of their cases, according to the memo, from a sales manager to district dealers. ”All of this information is subject to change,” the memo says. Music to the dealers’ lawyers’ ears, presumably. Meanwhile, NADA . . .
Conceived in a desperate search of EPA credits, the Ford Escape has walked in the shadows of its bigger brothers, Explorer and Expedition. Despite the Escape’s loveless upbringing, it prevailed, providing easy cream on Ford’s SUV gravy [train]. In the last fuel surge, the Escape found favor: a future president escaped his Chrysler 300C for a gas/electric version of the venerable Fordette. In the ongoing clamor for right-sized, fuel efficient vehicles, one would think the Escape’s inner virtue would shine through. Instead, Ford stifled its middle child by birthing a clusterf*ck of overweight CUVs (Edge and Flex). For 2009, the Escape, again, eats from the scraps.
You may remember that TTAC almost just about virtually proved that Chrysler CEO Bob “I Heart Pasta” Nardelli jumped on a corporate jet to fly from Motown to the City of Brotherly Love (then was driven in an EV mule to D.C.), to attend the second round of bailout hearings. This after The Big 2.8 execs (as they were at the time) flew straight into “jet-gate,” where reporters hammered them for Gulfstreaming to the bailout buffet. Far be it for me to repeat such lazy journalistic innuendo (oops), but the thick plotzes, as the Detroit Free Press reports that ChryCo is asking permission to terminate its leases on not one but two mighty fine Gulfstreams: a $38 million Gulfstream 450 and a $55 million Gulfstream 550. Leases, eh? “Chrysler took possession of them Jan. 1, 2008. It put up a $3.6 million security deposit on the 450 and a $5.3 million deposit on the 550. The automaker is seeking to apply the deposits to its seven-year lease obligations.” Awesome.
Actor Tom Hanks recently defended himself against the New Yorker, who called him out on his appearance in “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Here’s his letter to the editor:
Peter J. Boyer, in his otherwise spot-on piece about the car industry, assumes that I once leased G.M.’s sadly fated EV1 electric car and, like other drivers of that twin-seat rocket of a vehicle, watched the emission-free car be wrested from my garage, towed away, and busted up into pieces of metal, glass, and rubber smaller than razor blades (“The Road Ahead,” April 27th). Luckily, I did not. The source of Boyer’s slight inaccuracy may have been the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” which used a clip of a visit I made to the “Late Show with David Letterman,” during which I claimed to be saving America one electric car at a time. However, by the time I began shopping for an all-electric car, in 2003, the EV1 had already been yanked from showrooms as if the car had never existed. Instead, I found what was purported to be the very last electric car available for sale in the state of California—a Toyota EV. It had four doors, a rear hatch, room for my family, including a dog in the back, power windows, A/C, a great sound system, and the fastest, most effective windshield defroster known to mankind. When the car companies collectively, and, to some, diabolically, decided to take these cars back, the electric vehicles disappeared. But not mine. I have the pink slip. I own that car, and it is still driven every day, albeit by one of my crack staff of employees. My electric car recently crossed fifty thousand miles on the odometer with its original battery but without so much as a splash of gasoline.
New York state’s highest court ruled Tuesday that police can’t use GPS technology to track criminal suspects without a warrant in a decision at least one Long Island law enforcement official said would add an unnecessary step in an investigation. A spokesman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she disagreed with the decision of the state Court of Appeals, which ruled 4-3 that satellite tracking devices violate the rights of suspects unless authorized by a judge. But the ruling, in a case stemming from an upstate robbery investigation, won’t compromise current investigations in Nassau involving GPS devices, spokesman Eric Phillips said.
“Whilst? Are you actually British, or are you just an inbred Appalachian hillbilly moonshiner?” That one didn’t make it through the moderating process. Until now. In the normal course of events, I delete any comments that attack TTAC’s editorial stance or style, and invite the commentator to discuss our choices off-line. Rest assured, I can stand the heat. It’s just that meta comments rapping TTAC’s “bias” or piss-poor prose—rather than focusing on the content itself—drag the comment section off-topic. (It’s not all about us.) Normally, comments like “why did you publish that” and “your writing sucks” constitute a small percentage of the total number deleted. But as Detroit’s defenders have had something of a wake-up call, I’m not encountering as many “See you at Death Watch 23,344 asshole!” and “Fuck you you import-loving faggot” remarks. Which gives us a little breathing room to address the stance and style issues. I’ll explain myself after the jump. But feel free to diss our writing or content choices below without their consideration. And for this post, the no-flame rule is suspended (within reason).
The Chinese “home grown” automaker Geely had been widely rumored to be highly interested in snapping up Volvo or Saab. Or both. They either have lost interest. Or they employ the stratagem usual in a Chinese market: Shout “Tai gui le!” (too expensive), make an indignant face, and walk away. If they run after you, the next round of haggling ensues.
Geely “has not submitted, and has no plans to submit, any bids concerning the takeovers of ‘Volvo’ or ‘Saab’ as stated in recent press articles,” said Geely in a notice to the Hong Kong stock exchange, and their stock price promptly jumped 13.6 percent, Gasgoo writes. It doesn’t mean they were not or are not interested. They just didn’t hand in a—formal—bid. They sure had been talking. (Read More…)
There’s really only question remaining: can GM make it to the end of the month? As the artist formerly known as “the world’s largest automaker” augurs-in for its official face plant, the market is readying for a total wipe out, sending The General’s share price to a buck a pop. Which is, as we all know, about a dollar too much. “Experts have said that GM’s stock is overpriced,” USA Today reports, “considering that the automaker’s debt-restructuring plan will leave current shareholders with just a 1% stake in the reconstituted company.”
I’m beginning to like the environment. First, the greens spiked Charles “Double Nickel” Hurley’s nomination for the top slot at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). As we reported earlier, Hurley’s federal pension plans came a cropper for daring to suggest that larger cars were safer than fuel misers (at the IIHS, back in the day). Now, tree huggers have torpedoed the current cash-for-clunkers bill. Reuters reports that California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a friend of the Friends of the Earth, is not happy with the compromise cash-for-clunkers bill.
The Detroit News reports that Michigan’s congressional delegation has secured an agreement with House Democrats that could send three percent of the revenue from carbon emissions permits to American automakers starting in 2012. That would amount to billions of dollars every year, says DetN, and that’s not all. The new compromise also includes changes to carbon-cap proposals that “could ease the impact on states such as Michigan that rely heavily on coal for electricity generation.”
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