My wife and I are considering replacing one of our cars. I drive a 2007 Honda Fit Sport (125k miles) and she drives a 2002 Subaru Forester (135k). We both have long commutes and I drive 30k per year and she drives over 20k per year.
Her Subaru is well cared for but aging. While is overall has been a pretty good vehicle, we’ve had to make the following, fairly typical, repairs over the last few months:
• New ball joint
• New CV joint.
• Timing Belt/Water pump/Thermostat/Camshaft and crankshaft seals.
• New tires/battery
Recently the CEL has come and gone, reporting that the catalytic converter is not operating optimally. This has been replaced once already in 2007. Thankfully, we’ve had no transmission or head gasket issues thus far with her Subaru.
Why don’t more mass-market brands offer diesel engine options? After all, the evidence suggests that the passenger cars that offer diesel options enjoy a healthy take rate for oil-burner engines. So would a brand like Ford ever consider bringing diesels to its US offerings? According to the Blue Oval’s Product Boss Derrick Kuzak, the answer is absolutely not. And, according to Automotive News [sub] he’s got an interesting reason for nixing a US-market diesel option.
With rising petroleum prices, one European journalist asked if Ford planned to alter its powertrain strategy and sell cars with diesel engines in the United States. The journalist mentioned that some European automakers offer diesels in the United States.
Kuzak said Ford “could easily bring diesels to the U. S. market.”
Then he quickly added: U.S. “customers, I think, are pragmatic.”
Too pragmatic for improved efficiency? Huh? (Read More…)
About two and a half years ago, Aston Martin started talking very seriously about bringing back its “four door, four seat” Lagonda brand, arguing that the move
would allow us to develop cars which can have a different character than a sportscar, and therefore offer a perfect synergy.
But, because Aston already had a four-door in the works, the Lagonda Concept turned out to be a bloated abortion of a luxury SUV-cum-Crossover. And having been met with resounding derision from fans as well as high gas prices and an economic downturn, Aston wisely hustled the Lagonda Concept out of sight and proceeded to embarrass itself by rebadging a Toyota. But now that the world economy is looking a little bit better and gas prices are headed up again, Aston Martin is back to touting Lagonda. And this time it seems the British sportscar firm is imagining a whole line of SUVs aimed at the most refined and tasteful buyers on the world luxury market.
Are there any winners of carmageddon? You bet there are: The Germans. They were sheltered from the American meltdown by virtue of a minuscule market share. At home in Europe, they were saved in 2009 by European cash for clunkers largesse. Following that, they could not make enough cars to power the insatiable export machine.
Development pretty much came to a halt in the U.S. and Japan in 2009. It yet has to reach full revs. Flush with cash, German manufacturers never had to stop the development of new cars. Due to the long development cycles, we just begin to see the beginnings of this effect. (Read More…)
A North Carolina lawmaker on Thursday introduced legislation that would make it a crime to operate a red light camera or speed camera. State Senator Don East (R-Pilot Mountain), a twenty-year veteran of the Winston Salem police force, believes that it is not enough to pass a law that merely outlaws photo enforcement.
“It shall be unlawful for any person to operate a traffic control photographic system in this state,” Senate Bill 187 states. “A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor and shall result in the forfeiture of any photographic system used for traffic control.”
Plenty of interesting street-marked machinery in my Denver neighborhood; on the same block as the Subaru GL hatchback coupe is this huge survivor of three major fuel-price upswings. It didn’t get crushed after 1973 or 1979, and so we can assume— or at least hope— that it won’t get crushed now. (Read More…)
WIZARD… NEEDS… FOOD! Okay, only some of you are the right age to remember where that phrase originated, but if you are, just imagine that same voice saying, SOUTH… CAROLINA… NEEDS… CASH! There’s an $800 million hole in the state budget. If I ran the state, I’d slap a $400 tariff on every smartphone from China that crosses the border and get David Boies to argue that the interstate commerce clause shouldn’t be any part of “the living Constitution”. That’s my awesome idea and I’m excited about it.
Since most of you live in the so-called “real world”, however, you’ve no doubt realized from whence some of this missing money is going to be extorted: the hapless, helpless American motorist.
Today, Akio Toyoda presented Toyota’s „Global Vision“ to the press in Tokyo. Sure, there are the usual affirmations to “continue to furnish world-class safety,” and to “continue to contribute to environmental quality and to human happiness.” But what are they really up to? (Read More…)
According to Steve Rattner, Chrysler was such a sick puppy in the immediate pre-bailout period that it would have only generated about $1b had it been liquidated in bankruptcy. Thanks to around $14b in government assistance, however, Chrysler is now worth a whopping $4.8b according to a Reuters analysis of its filings. But wait, you say, how does Chrysler have a valuation if it hasn’t yet launched an IPO?
Chrysler arrived at the valuation to set pay for its top executives, including Marchionne. Senior executives are paid partly through so-called deferred phantom shares, which will convert to shares in the company at a later date.
In June 2009, each share was worth $1.66, according to the filing. By the end of 2010, the value of each share was $7.95.
Back in 2001 VW was the comeback kid . Sales had grown over seven-fold in only eight years from less than 50k in 1993 to over 350k and change. It seemed like the company was offering everything an aspiring Yuppie wanted to buy. At least here in the States. Cute Jettas and Beetles for the successful young female (and a few males). Turbochargers, stickshifts, and GTI’s for those who coveted a sport model. Diesels for the frugal and the long-term owner. Even wagons and convertibles for those who were flipping between becoming a ‘family man’ or a mid-life crisis. VW was hip and profitable… but then the market woke up.
Letting go is hard. You can delete all traces of a former love from your life, cut contact, stop looking at old pictures, resolve to hit the gym and move on to something better, but the memories will always linger. You realize that what existed was good, but what the future holds is better… but the moments where you reflect that maybe the bliss ended too prematurely still manage to haunt you, no matter how much you occupy yourself with new thrills and diversions.
Another day, another way to die in a car… and this time, the IIHS blames weak safety standards for semi-truck underride guards for this mangled Malibu [report PDF here]. The IIHS argues that
Under current certification standards, the trailer, underride guard, bolts, and welding don’t have to be tested as a whole system. That’s a big part of the problem. Some manufacturers do test guards on the trailer. We think all guards should be evaluated this way. At the least, all rear guards should be as strong as the best one we tested
But the best underride system they tested (a Wabash) still would have likely decapitated the Malibu driver in a 30% offset hit at 35 MPH. So even if government enact the stricter standards endorsed by the IIHS, you’ll still have to hit the rear of a semi truck fairly square-on in order to reap the benefits. But of the 2,200+ passenger car occupants who died in crashes with large trucks in 2009, we have no idea how many were square-on rear crashes like the one tested. And until the IIHS gets the government to regulate bumpers height, crash test-derived standards will always be less effective when they leave the lab and get into the messy real world of the American road.
When Chrysler Group first announced that it would be spinning off its Ram truck brand in order to allow the Dodge brand to “come out of the shadow of the trucks,” there was at least some logic to be found in the decision. After all, there used to be more to Dodge than truck-inspired styling and marketing, and concentrating “Ram-ness” into the trucks made a certain amount of sense. But then, Chrysler Group announced that Ram would be moving into the commercial vehicle business with a pair of European-style deliver vans, raising the question of how these distinctly un-Ram-like vans would fit in with the brand’s bro-magnon image. But now the Ram brand has a new problem: before it even challenges its fans with front-drive Euro-vans, it’s dropping a windowless Ram Cargo Van based on the Dodge Caravan. Because what separates a spun-off brand from its previous brand like shared product? Whatever Kool Aid they’re drinking over at the Ram Brand, my tank is just about full of it.
My memories of ‘charity cars’ are not fond ones. Back in the late 1990’s the dirtiest public auction in metro-Atlanta would line up about 50 of these vehicles for the beginning of their sale. The acrid smell of blown head gaskets and leaking oils of every type would soon emanate the auction as most of these vehicles were pushed past the block. Back then you could buy a non-running car for about $20, and a running one for no more than $250. The high bidders were usually dealers, who would then bring back the same vehicles the following week and try to sell them for huge markup’s. (Read More…)
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