It’s a good thing I came across this car. There’s a point in life where one starts to prune away the excess, getting rid of the stuff in the closets and basement that hasn’t been used in thirty years or more. And I admit that’s what I had done with the Dodge Royal Monaco: it just kind of got swept away with the detritus of the seventies. If one is going to have room for new car facts and impressions, it’s cars like this that get hauled off to the memory dump first. (Read More…)
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how cynical I was becoming about the sudden SUA syndrome with Toyota and how I found it amazing how quite a lot of these cases involve our more “mature” members of society. I used the story of Miss Myrna Marseilles, 76, who crashed her 2009 Toyota Camry (which was fixed the under the recall program), into the wall of a YMCA.
I inferred in the article that this was simply a case of driver error and nothing more and some people agreed with me. Peregrine Falcon bet $20 that this was down to pedal confusion. 210delray reckoned it had “all the elements of pedal misapplication”. Well, Peregrine Falcon, if anyone took you up on that bet, it’s time to collect. We were right. (Read More…)
GM’s government-installed Chairman/CEO Ed Whitacre hasn’t been wildly popular with Detroit insiders, earning dismissive raspberries from more than a few corners of the industry’s peanut gallery. But now that his reign of executive terror is over, Detroit seems to be learning how to stop worrying and love the former AT&T man. As Whitacre prepares for his first visit to Washington DC as head of GM, the local media and other members of “Team Detroit” are making their peace with Whitacre. So what lies beneath the new united front?
Whenever yours truly sings the long-term praise of the booming Chinese auto market, it elicits loud protests: “Can’t be! Bubble market! The environment! (Our gasoline.)”
The people who make and sell cars for a living have a different opinion. The AlixPartners consultancy asked 50 senior executives from both foreign and domestic players in China’s automobile industry how much they think the Chinese car market will grow between now and 2015. Guess what their answer is? (Read More…)
Read the full PDF of Toyota’s settlement with NHTSA [courtesy: The Detroit News] here.
Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to pay a $16.4 million civil fine levied by the U.S. government, reports The Nikkei [sub]. They will not admit any wrongdoing and can claim that they never admitted to knowingly hiding defects from regulators, said a senior U.S. Transportation Department official. On Friday, it wasn’t clear whether the DOT would accept the dough with a deal attached. (Read More…)
Did you ever drive in Milano, Italy? Take my advice: Don’t. Park your car, take a taxi. That must have gone through the minds of the boys in Wolfsburg, when they were searching for a name for their dedicated taxi prototype. “Mamma mia! Let’s call it Milano!” (Read More…)
Driving the Renault Mégane R26.R on the snow-covered L-10–a public road-cum-rally track near the famous Nürburgring–is an unforgettable affair. And not simply because summer tires and slush don’t mix. This particular Mégane is a stunning piece of machinery in any condition: no Stateside machine comes even remotely close. And unlike most European unobtainium, it’s no […]
No, the boys of the blue oval didn’t win any new J.D. Power kudos (yet.)
But the relatively obscure RDA Group of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. says Ford has the highest customer satisfaction among all major automakers. This according to Ford’s latest press release. Eighty-four percent of customers who purchased a 2010 model-year Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars and trucks are satisfied with the quality of their vehicle, says the study. (Read More…)
Three California city councils debated whether to keep or discard red light cameras last week. In Loma Linda officials on Tuesday voted to drop automated enforcement while South San Francisco officials voted to keep it on Wednesday. The debates followed in the wake of a decision by the city of San Carlos last Monday to drop cameras after the duration of the yellow light at the camera-enforced intersection was extended by one second, eliminating the system’s profitability.
End of last year, we reported that the Chinese government was publicly thinking about new regulations to shift a large chunk of cars bought by the government to home-grown brands. We are talking about a serious amount of money here. The government is the biggest customer of cars in China, with an annual budget of around $15b. Government purchases influence the whole market. To buy Chinese. (Read More…)
Just caught this picture of Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s funeral motorcade on MSNBC, and the front end of the hearse caught my eye. That would be the first time I’ve ever laid eyes on a Maserati hearse. Full side view after the jump: (Read More…)
Since one of the the themes today seems to be around old Ford trucks, with a minor in Communism, I present to you the living proof that Ford and Lenin did meet.
If politics is not your thing this beautiful Sunday morning, then maybe a more random curbside shot is: (Read More…)
Welcome to Havana, Oregon. Back in the eighties, living in tony Los Gatos, I used to gaze longingly at photos of old American cars and trucks still hard at work in Cuba. But within days of moving to Eugene in 1993, I came across this very truck, hauling its daily cargo of recycled cardboard. And it planted a seed in me, to document the old vehicles still earning their keep, which finally came to fruition with Curbside Classics. Although we’ve strayed from the strict interpretation of that mission a few times along the way, no other vehicle more perfectly embodies the original ethos than this 1956 F-350. (Read More…)
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