When I rolled into Camden, South Carolina, in preparation for judging at the third annual 24 Hours of LeMons South Spring race, my friend Walker Canada handed me the keys to his rough-but-functional ’87 BMW E28. “Go ahead and use it as your Judgemobile!” he offered. The dash lights and most of the gauges didn’t work, but I only had to drive 20 miles to the track. The engine sounded great, the suspension was still tight, and Foghat’s “Slow Ride” was on the radio. What could possibly go wrong? (Read More…)

When you’ve driven your $500 Citroën ID19 race car from San Diego to Miami and raced a Mini Moke-based Apollo Lunar Rover, where do you go from there? Why, you buy a furiously underpowered, 40-year-old Chrysler of Europe product and race it for 24 straight hours at a high-altitude road course packed with BMW E30s and V8 Detroit bombs. What else could you do? (Read More…)

I put in four years and thousands of posts at Jalopnik, writing about most of my formative cars… but never once did I write the story of the car that served me longest, gave me the most miles, endured the most engine swaps, and generally laid claim to a bigger piece of my heart than all the rest of my motley lifetime fleet combined: a 1965 Chevrolet Impala sedan, built at the long-defunct South Gate Assembly Plant in Los Angeles, equipped with a 283/Powerglide drivetrain, and painted Artesian Turquoise. Today, at last, the story begins. (Read More…)

The previous day’s usage had left me in a pickle. With the 12 miles left and only nine-and-a-half hours charging time at 120V. Of course if I constantly had to remind myself, if I had a 240V charging station at home this would be a non-issue as the Leaf would have been completely full. However, […]

Speaking at Nissan’s Smyrna, TN electric car factory, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood noted that his staff is working with Congress to make federal tax credits for plug-in car purchases available as a rebate on the dealer level, saying

We’d like for people to get a $7,500 rebate on the day they buy the Leaf. We’re doing a lot of talking about it. When you give people that incentive to buy a battery-powered car, they’ll do it. We know these incentives help.

Speaking to Automotive News [sub], LaHood even went as far as to argue that the new direction for the tax credits, which were previously only claimable when filing taxes, would be successful for the reason that it would make the credits more like the Cash For Clunkers program. Apparently LaHood has completely forgotten how riddled with waste, inefficiency, fraud, confusion, delays, unintended consequences and all-purpose madness that program was. And that’s just scraping the surface. Foolish as it is to subsidize vehicles during the “fleecing the early adopters” phase of a new technology rollout (perhaps we should be saving stimulus for the inevitable “trough of disappointment”?), making those credits available at the dealer level is even worse, increasing the hype and incurring C4C-like downsides along the way.

TTAC commentator Sinistermisterman writes:

Hi Sajeev and Steve,

I asked a question about my aging and ailing Ford Escort last year along the lines of “Do I bother to repair it or not…” and after reading all the advice everyone had to give, I didn’t bother to repair it. Now with close to 200k on the clock, a whole host of issues have now come to the surface including:

• Exhaust manifold gasket leaking (I’m guessing because I never bothered to fix the jelly like engine mounts)
• Front two shocks gone
• Both front wheel bearings worn
• A/C failed
• Car eats oil (valve stem oil seals?)
• Getting harder and harder to put into first gear (synchro going?)

(Read More…)

Pickuptrucks.com reports that you may not have to wait for Mahindra to work through its legal issues to get an efficient diesel-powered pickup, as the DOE has funded development of a four-cylinder Cummins diesel engine which is being demonstrated in a Nissan Titan. According to the report

Cummins refers to the engine by the codename “LA-4” with a 2.8-liter displacement (170 cubic inches). Initial power figures on the engine dyno have the mule test engine producing 350 pounds-feet of torque at around 1,800 rpm. A chart in the presentation shows targeted power levels to be approximately 220 horsepower and 380 pounds-feet.

The engine is likely a derivative of the four-cylinder ISF architecture that Cummins builds overseas, with 2.8-liter and 3.8-liter displacements. The overseas 3.8-liter is rated at 168 horsepower and 443 pounds-feet of torque…

To meet U.S. clean-diesel standards, the 2.8 would use diesel exhaust fluid to scrub nitrogen oxide emissions, like Ford and GM use today in their heavy-duty diesel pickups. It would also feature a so-called passive NOx storage system that would capture and hold NOx during cold starts, releasing the gas when temperatures rise to levels of max efficiency for DEF. The passive system would save fuel used today to jumpstart NOx scrubbing when the system is cold.

The upshot? 28 MPG combined, according to pickuptrucks.com. Given the discrepancy between EPA fuel economy numbers and the CAFE method, that means this engine could make a Titan (which gets 13/18 MPG EPA with its stock V8) more than compliant with the 2015 30 MPG truck standard. And because the DOE spent only $15m, this probably qualifies as one of the more promising government fuel-economy improvement programs in some time. After all, improving truck efficiency is one of the toughest aspects of CAFE compliance… and if a Titan can get nearly 30 MPG combined (about the same as current four-cylinder family sedans), the government’s $15m just bought it a crushing blow to the industry’s anti-CAFE carping.

As we all know, 99 and many more nines percent of VW-pan-based fiberglass kit cars were never completed, instead clogging up garages until enraged spouses and/or landlords gave them the heave-ho. That makes the ones that actually got finished extremely rare… and well-built, good-looking examples? There’s probably one per time zone. (Read More…)

Cincinnati motorist Thomas H. Starks spent nearly a year fighting a $150 speeding ticket he received from the Ohio State Highway Patrol. On Monday the arguments he made on his own behalf were vindicated by the state’s second-highest court. A three-judge panel threw out evidence provided by a Laser Technology Inc (LTI) UltraLyte laser speed gun on the grounds that state officials never bothered to certify its accuracy. Instead, they just assumed the certification of an older model, the LTI 20-20, would suffice.

Starks would not let that difference slide past the judge. On June 24, 2010, Trooper Eric Witmeyer had accused Starks of speeding on Interstate 75 in Franklin Township where the speed limit had been reduced to 55 MPH. Starks was put on trial on July 23, 2010. Starks insisted that the state had to prove the device was properly certified.

(Read More…)

If there’s one thing you get here at TTAC, it’s diversity. Well, it’s actually sarcasm, but you also get diversity. Here’s an example: This week, we tested two different cars. Out on the West Coast, Alex and his partner were rolling around in a completely electric Nissan Leaf. Imagine them, gliding silently down the road, […]

For people with a sober mind, for people who do not suffer from a Stockholm Syndrome where hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, the shotgun marriage between Saab and Chinese car distributor Pangda left many questions open. What was related through Spyker channels did not sound like business the way it is done in China.

Pangda’s CEO and founder Pang Qing Hua talked about his plans for Saab in an interview with the Chinese website, Auto Sohu. ChinaCarTimes supplied the translation into English, you can read the full version here.

What you will read will make much more sense than the breathless announcements by Victor Muller.

The interview answers some questions we had asked all along, for instance the question of the miraculous arrival of €30 million by last Tuesday. Pang Qing Hua explains: (Read More…)

Once the word gets out that a 24 Hours of LeMons judge has a thing for oddball toy cars, racers will scour the earth to find increasingly obscure and/or terrible examples. What goes with a Leyland P76 and a Nissan Prairie? (Read More…)

The ripple effects of the March 11 tsunami keep bouncing around the globe. The is good news and bad news. (Or bad news and good news, depending on the side you are on.) (Read More…)

Japan has hit on the world’s most effective energy conservation program. It is three words long: “Conserve, or else.” With 32 of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors down in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan must get through the hot summer without a total breakdown of the infrastructure. It looks like they will do it by sheer willpower. (Read More…)