Vincent writes:

I’m having a bit of a dilemma in the car buying/selling front. First off, I’m a 21 year old college student. Last year, using money gifted to me by my wealthy grandparents (yes, I’m a spoiled brat. Sorry) I impulsively purchased a 97 Mercedes C36 AMG (yes, I’m an awful spoiled brat). It had a plethora of problems including the previous owner installing a faulty air intake, improperly lowering the car and damaging the suspension, and some thermostat issue. Several thousand dollars later, my mechanic got it back to speed. It hasn’t had any problems since, but I definitely can’t afford to fix it if anything else were to happen. Furthermore, premium gas is a bitch, especially here in Vancouver where gas is at an all time high. It doesn’t snow often here, but I’m not comfortable driving it when it does.  I am contemplating selling the C36 and purchasing something more practical (I’ve had it listed on classifieds for months, but eh, no bites)

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More than three years ago, on New Year’s Eve of 2007, our Beloved Leader, the dearly departed Robert Farago rattled the Best and Brightest with one of his thought (and sometimes aggression) provoking questions. This time, it was: “What’s the plural of Prius?”

Damned if I know, but a few days ago, the TTAC server reported repeated search terms for the very same  “What’s the plural of Prius?” I decided to do my journalistic duty and investigate. The results were shocking. (Read More…)

Today, a shocking pink, rose decorated 1964 Chevy Impala named “Gypsy Rose” will lead a funeral procession of lowriders through East L.A. It will follow its owner to the grave. Jesse Valadez, a founding member of the legendary Imperial Car Club in East L.A., died of colon cancer Jan. 29 at age 64. For those who don’t know: (Read More…)

Alberta is a province in Canada. A lot is agricultural, but what is much more important are the treasures beneath the soil. Alberta sits on more than 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen, better known as oil sand. That’s about equal to the world’s total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. Canadians are troubled that EVs might ruin these riches. (Read More…)

This is the fifth and last installment of the Pictorial History of the  Brazilian Car, a five part series, brought to you by our boy in Brazil, Marcelo de Vasconcellos. Part one one took you back to the beginnings, part two did let you revisit the turbulent 60s. Part three took your to Brazil’s malaise years, with nothing more than facelifts. Part four took you to a Brazil of change. The fifth and last part finally brings you to the past decade.

The 00s

The Workers’ Party finally elected their eternal candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as President. Before he took power, there was some panic and almost 5 reais were necessary to buy a dollar. Inflation seemed to be back. (Read More…)

Are you one of those who don’t watch the Super Bowl for the game, but for the ads? After taking mostly a leave of absence during carmageddon, carmakers will be out in force this time. There will be so many car commercials that “it looks like there will be auto gridlock in Super Bowl ads,” says USA Today. To get more impressions, carmakers are using YouTube to make the most out of the expensive airtime. Here comes a selection.
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It just occurred to me that my own A100 Hell Project hasn’t been featured on Whatever I’m Calling The Series Of Photographs Of Old Street-Parked Vehicles These Days. It’s a total nightmare to drive in the snow (particularly for a snow-country n00b like me), but it looks pretty good with the white stuff. (Read More…)

You have arrived. Through the sweat and brow of your efforts, you have achieved the rewards of upper middle class living. A nice job. A nice spouse. Two very quaint child like creatures, and of course… the car. A beautiful burgundy luxury car with opulent leather, elite walnut trim, a premium ‘Surround sound’ system with a quite advanced CD player, and a trademark waterfall grille on the front. In the late 1990’s your car stacks out at about $34,000 new. Fast forward 12 years, two recessions and 180k miles later, and you may be able to get a discount. How does $900 sound to you? With that in mind do you…

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Ars Technica has a fascinating interview with Kaveh Hushyar, CEO of Telemetria Telephony, who argues

I believe in 2020, the car will drive itself. The infrastructure will be in place, and that infrastructure will be very significant and hefty. But in that target environment, you and I don’t have to be sitting behind the wheel. In that environment, everyone will be a passenger, and you want to have full connectivity with full access to any media, or any person anywhere via the best videoconferencing available. So you need a rich media experience in the car.

At the same time, there will be a significant amount of safety applications that will be running in the car, making sure that the car is fully protected and is communicating through the infrastructure to other cars. That would be the nature of how I see the driving experience transforming in ten years plus.

Obviously, as CEO of an in-car connectivity solution firm, Mr Hushayr is heavily invested in a driver-free future… but is his vision the product of more than just wishful thinking? I certainly have some difficulty imagining giving up driving before I turn 40… but then, I’m not sure that most of my peers would. Surf over to AT and read the whole interview before letting us know what you think.

You want the good news or the bad news first? OK, the good news is that Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told attendees at NADA’s annual convention that Fiat and Chrysler “may” be merged into a single company, possibly headquartered in the US. Which means the federal bailout may not have simply been a transfer of the firm to Italian ownership, news that many taxpayers likely find at least a little bit comforting. Now, about that bad news… while saying that he planned to “work his [rear end] off” to pay back taxpayers, Marchionne let slip a bit of the resentment he clearly feels at government ownership of Chrysler, saying

I am paying shyster rates. We had no choice… I am going to pay the shyster loans.

Jalopnik does a good job of covering the roots and associations of Marchionne’s choice of words (and clearly he could have chosen better), but we’re mostly irked by the victim complex embraced by executives of the bailed-out automakers, especially in Marchionne’s case. The Fiat CEO was given 15 percent in Chrysler for no cash down, and will be able to take control of the automaker for a tiny fraction of its actual value. All this was possible only because the government guided Chrysler through bankruptcy, crammed down its bondholders, demanded union concessions and injected tens of billions into the company… and now Marchionne wants to employ slurs to complain about the fact that some of that money must be paid back?

These comments cloak Marchionne in the gravitas and respectability of someone who believes he should be able to receive unemployment benefits without actually looking for a job. Especially considering that only yesterday Marchionne was slamming GM for turning down DOE loans, saying

I have neither the arrogance nor the cash to show any disdain toward the DOE process. It would be wiser to Chrysler to continue to try to secure that funding.

Given that public support for the bailout is still quite low, Marchionne’s comments could hardly have been more poorly chosen.

General Motors, Hyundai, and Volkswagen are all hungry for a much bigger slice of the North American compact sedan pie. Their past offerings didn’t do the trick. So all three recently introduced cars much different than their predecessors. Having reviewed the Cruze a few months ago, and the Elantra last week, I was eager to […]

The outgoing Ford Focus fell several spots in the C-Segment last month, and the Kia Forte bumped the Mazda3 down a bit… but as new products like the 2011 Elantra and Corolla, and the 2012 Focus hit the market, this crucial segment will see yet more turmoil.

Mahindra’s abortive plans to bring its rugged diesel-powered pickups to the US began back in 2007, just as gas prices were starting to run out of control. Now, after years of delays, steadily-increasing prices and general neglect of the compact pickup market have served only to whet our appetite for efficient little developing world-style trucks. Throughout the the last several years, Mahindra has battled with its US distributor, pulled out of other US efforts and generally failed to deliver… all while dangling the dream of a 30 MPG diesel pickup at hopeful enthusiasts. But, as it turns out, Mahindra’s problems don’t end with distribution: though its diesel engine was approved by the EPA, we hadn’t seen EPA confirmation for the long-held 30 MPG goal. Well, the EPA just released the window sticker for the Mahindra TR40 [via MahindraPlanet], a 4X4 four-door version of its 2.2 liter diesel pickup… and it gets nowhere close to 30 MPG.

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Most foreign-based automakers see the United States as a market first and a production center second: If sales are good enough, production will follow. Mitsubishi, on the other hand, seems to be taking the opposite approach. The Japanese automaker has announced [via Automotive News [sub]] that it will replace production its weak-selling midsized offerings (Galant, Endeavor, Eclipse) at its Normal, Il factory with one model: the Outlander Sport compact crossover. The Outlander Sport (known elsewhere as RVR and ASX) is Mitsu’s newest vehicle, but the firm still envisions only abput half of Normal’s planned 50k units of production to be sold in North American markets (a safe estimate considering it’s still not outselling the Lancer). The other half will be exported to Russia, Latin America and the Middle East. That’s right, Mitsubishi is keeping its only UAW-represented workforce in order to build compact crossovers for export.

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So, what really happened when two of the three hydrogen fuel-cell cars on Mercedes’s F-Cell World Tour ran out of fuel on an early leg? Previously we’d only heard the German perspective on events (not to mention Daimler’s non-telling of the story in the video above), but now TTAC Alum Jonny Lieberman has posted his extended take on the trip over at Motor Trend. Yes, you’ll have to give MT ten page-clicks to read the whole thing, but Lieberman goes into far more detail than any account of the mini PR fiasco yet published. Do give it a look.