That was fast. Barely has it been announced that China’s Hawtai/Huatai will take an interest in Saab, new Saab 9-5s are already arriving at Chinese Hawtai dealers. CarNewsChina has the picture, while neither Saab nor Hawtai have the necessary permits. Permits-shmermits … (Read More…)

His mother’s father was Wilhelm von Opel, son of the Opel founder Adam Opel. His father’s father was the enemy of the fixies: He invented the freehub. His company was a major supplier of auto parts. But that’s not how the world remembers Gunther Sachs, who shot himself on Saturday in his house in Gstaad, Switzerland. (Read More…)

The Index of Effluency goes to the LeMons team that accomplishes a feat far beyond their vehicle’s purported abilities, and the chances for an IOE go way, way up when you race a General Motors product. The IOE chase in the Loudon Annoying 24 Hours of LeMons devolved into a Chevette-versus-Storm battle early on and stayed that way all weekend. (Read More…)

Most of the time, the winner on laps of a 24 Hours of LeMons race takes the checkered flag with a nail-biting half-lap cushion, but that’s not how it went for the Goin’ Nuclear 1989 Honda Civic. This team built up a double-digit lead by Saturday afternoon, defended it all day Sunday, and ended the day with 14 more laps than the second-place car (an Accord). (Read More…)

It’s Mother’s Day, when a young man’s thoughts turn to the long-suffering woman who birthed and brought him up. Unfortunately, my mother is on a road trip today so I won’t be able to see her today, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss the cars our mothers lust after. In my case it’s easy: my Mom has been sighing over the Fiat 500 for years now, talking about the feisty little Italian in ways that I’ve rarely heard her use to describe cars before. A year ago she might have sprung for a Nissan Juke, but if I just got a big bonus and wanted to surprise her with a car, only one will do and that’s the Cinquecento. But the perfect present is about knowing what someone wants and then exceeding those expectations: in that spirit, I’d skip the basic Cinquecento and place an order for the just-announced 500 Cabrio. Between her aging Forester and dad’s Mk1 xB, the parents have practicality covered… what Mom wants is something small, efficient and reflective of her independence from the tyranny of child-rearing. So here’s to you, Mom, and here’s hoping someone who can actually afford it springs for that Cinquecento (no pressure, Dad). God knows you deserve it.

What car would you buy your mother today?

Ford is tooling up for what is likely to be a tough UAW contract negotiation in light of its return to hefty profits. And in hopes of shifting the conversation from its strong financial performance, Ford is highlighting the fact that it still pays $8 more per hour than its competition. Of course, there has been improvement, as Ford notes at its fordahead.com website

Ford’s average hourly cost per employee for wages and benefits in the U.S. reached about $75 per hour in 2007, prior to the negotiation of a new national contract. By negotiating an agreement with the UAW that year, and by adding modifications in 2009, we were able to substantially improve the competitiveness of our labor costs. Had we not reached this agreement, our average hourly wage rate would have remained simply unsustainable — and utterly uncompetitive — and Ford would not be in a position to create new jobs or bring new work into our U.S. plants.

But Ford has only itself to blame for some of those higher labor costs, as some $2/hour of its labor cost disadvantage is a result of its record-high profit-sharing checks, according to the DetNews. And, says Ford, once new “second tier” hires enter the Ford workforce, it expects wages rates to drop to parity with the transplants. In short, Ford is making the case to stay the course, working through existing contract changes to get to parity with the transplants. But given the fact that Ford is already making hefty profits, don’t expect the UAW to simply roll over. The battle lines have been drawn… but nobody knows  how the conflict will actually play out.

So, will this MIT-developed “virtual dashboard” render that car you’re about to hit? After all, a three-dimensional representation of the world on your dashboard seems like it would be at least as eye-catching as… you know, reality. And, believe it or not, according to PopSci this is actually a development of a program that was determined to be too distracting. This system, named AIDA 2.0, was developed from

a little robotic dashboard companion called AIDA (for Affective Intelligent Driving Agent), an MIT creation that essentially read a driver’s facial expressions to gauge mood and inferred route and destination preferences through social interaction with the driver. Apparently that was deemed too distracting, so now MIT is back with AIDA 2.0, which swaps the dashboard robot for a massive 3-D interactive map that covers the entire dashboard–because that’s not distracting at all.

“Eminem Helps Save Detroit’s Fledgling Auto Industry”

Headline in DrJays.com, purveyor of sneakers, jeans & urban clothing, for a contrived story on how the “Imported from Detroit” ad has helped Chrysler post a $116 million profit in the first three months of the year. Let’s not even go there.

Rather, let’s recommend that DrJays uses some money to support fledgling writers who know a bit of the English language. (Read More…)

There is one positive aspect to the Japanese tsunami: It seems to lift resale values. Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index just rose to another record in April, says Automotive News [sub]. Manheim has been keeping track of used car prices since 1995. Pushed by tighter supplies and higher demand, the index climbed to 126.6 last month, up from 124.2 in March and 120.7 in April 2010. (Read More…)

In late December, Ed Niedermeyer reported that Hyundai’s “Euro-market midsizer, known as the i40, will debut as a wagon at the Geneva Auto Show in March, with a sedan version coming later next year:” Ed was right: The sedan will be shown at the Barcelona Auto Salon, May 14 to 22.  Hyundai is taking aim at a big target: Volkswagen. (Read More…)

Today was a long, grueling day of racing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, with the occasional break for lightning storms and cleanup of oil from multiple catastrophic engine nukings. (Read More…)

When I agreed to drive a Honda S2000 in Atlanta’s SCCA National Tour event, I didn’t realize that, not only would this close a three-year-long gap in my autocross career, that I would be competing at the site of the last autocross I ran, back in 2008. (My review of the F-250 PowerStroke six-speed manual I used to tow a car there and back can be found here, by the way.)

Well, I sucked back then and I sucked today. Until the very last runs of the day, I was actually DFL in a ten-car field, although I feel compelled to note that two of the other nine drivers were 2010 SCCA National Champions and all of them had a few years’ experiencing autocrossing S2000s. With my third and final attempt at the course, I managed to incompetently bounce my way up to eighth place.

Unfortunately, that places me in the Jorts Zone.

(Read More…)

So you thought all the fuss about the Royal Wedding was over for good? Wait for it… no it’s not! What better opportunity will I ever have to bring you up-to-date on the British car market?

About one a day. But then, the alternative would have been another Toyota Hilux series to celebrate the other occasion of last weekend.

Should you be well and truly over anything remotely connected to British royalty, that’s ok, I understand. And there are 153 other countries to explore in my blog. You will enjoy it because it is grand.

Back to the Queen and all. (Read More…)

In a cautious climbdown from Volkswagen’s previous anti-electric stance, Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winternkorn said electric cars might not be the work of the antichrist after all. The statements were made at the 32^nd Vienna Motor Symposium. After announcing that the Volkswagen Group will be producing plug-in hybrid in 2013/14 (didn’t they previously say it was 2012?), Winterkorn said: (Read More…)

The UK new car market fell by 7.4 percent to 137,746 units. This was the 10th successive monthly decline in volumes and the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) that keeps track of those things thinks its just cushty. (Read More…)