Serious Civil War reenactors have a term for folks who don’t measure up to those activists’ high standards for authenticity. They call them “farbs”, as in “far be it from me to criticize another enactor but if they want to be authentic they should be wearing hand stitched woolen underwear that hasn’t been changed or washed for two months, not BVDs”. Every hobby has its one-uppers. One of the things that I like about car culture is that it’s a mosaic of subcultures. Diversity can be a good thing and I’m a big tent car enthusiast. You may be a trackday fiend who would never slam a lowrider or restore a Messerchmitt microcar, but you can appreciate the folks who would and you can find common ground with them in your shared love of things automotive. Still, none of us like folks who put on airs. Every hobby, though, has its snobs.
We all love our cars and can bore even other car guys with minutia about our favorite marques and models, but at a car show with prewar Packards, don’t you think that it’s a bit pretentious to put “historical’ license plates on a Chrysler K-car?
When I bought my Impala, I knew that its 300,000-mile 283 engine wasn’t long for the world, what with the near-nonexistent oil pressure, clouds of oil smoke under acceleration and deceleration, and fixin’-to-toss-a-rod sound effects. Still, due to thin-wallet limitations, I was determined to squeeze one last year of property-value-lowering 283 driving before obtaining a junkyard replacement engine. This plan went well until I decided to seek chemical assistance for the oil-burning problem. (Read More…)
“We’ve now been able to secure production capacity to safely say that we will surpass 600,000 units,” Mike O’Brien, Hyundai’s vice president for U.S. corporate and product planning, told reporters here Tuesday.
The South Korea-based company said in January it didn’t have enough production capacity to meet that level of U.S. sales.
Since then, Hyundai has raised output at its Montgomery, Ala., plant that makes Sonatas and Elantras, and it will also have a larger supply of the new Accent subcompact from South Korea than initially planned
The Chevrolet TrailBlazer and its many sibs are extinct. The Ford Explorer nameplate survives, but it’s now attached to a car-based crossover. Only one family of domestic midsize conventional SUVs remains—and, quite ironically, it’s based on a Mercedes platform. We’ve examined the five-seat Jeep Grand Cherokee before. For those more focused on people hauling than […]
A group of businesses that are owed anywhere between $198 and $744,083 could force ailing Saab to declare bankruptcy. They have turned to the Swedish Enforcement Agency, better known (and feared) in Sweden as the “Kronofogden.”That agency introduces itself as follows:
“Is there a bill you cannot pay? Or are you not getting paid by someone who owes you money? In both cases, it will be Kronofogden that you come into contact with. A debt that is not paid ends up in Kronofogden´s register. This register is open for all to consult. As a result, anyone wishing to find out how someone else manages their finances can check the register. If a person´s name appears in the register, he/she can find it difficult to buy on hire purchase, borrow money or rent an apartment.”
Currently, there are 48 entries on that list that claim that Saab owes them. Lots of suppliers. A few bill collectors. A patent attorney. One of the world’s largest CPA firms, Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, demands $104,904.
Swedish online newspaper GT published a list of all the claims allegedly reported up to Tuesday. Here it is: (Read More…)
Reuters reports that Boston Consulting Group has revised its projections for EV market penetration downwards, concluding that plug-in electric vehicles (including EREV and PHEV models) will make up no more than five percent of the US market by 2020. And ironically, the recent increases in gas prices have actually driven the estimate downwards, as Xavier Mosquet, the global head of the group’s autos practice, tells The WSJ [sub]
Electric cars will undoubtedly play an increasingly large role in many countries’ plans in the decades ahead as energy independence and environmental concerns intensify, but they will gain only modest ground to 2020. Gas- and diesel-powered vehicles are improving faster than expected and will continue to dominate the global landscape.
Having kept a relatively low profile since the disastrous “My Tank Is Full” series of ads, Ram is fighting to help keep Chrysler profitable with a new series of ads highlighting the Ram’s connection to “Wild West” values. And like nearly every bit of advertising approved by Chrysler Group ad boss Olivier Francois, it’s heavy on the hyper-sincere schlock, which makes the spots end up feeling like they’re selling a political candidate rather than a truck. And this just as it seemed like truck ads were slowly moving away from some of their previous cliches. Does doubling down on sincerity and the mythical Western ethos make sense as a way for Ram to catch back up on volume it’s lost over the last few years? Or should Ford’s stunning 50%-ish take rate on EcoBoost V6 engines in F-Series be pointing towards a more pragmatic, consumer-needs-oriented marketing campaign? Watch as many of the ads as you like and be sure to let us know where you see the Ram brand and its marketing effort heading.
The confrontation between modern, Western societies and deeply traditional lifestyles in Afghanistan creates a healthy supply of fascinating car stories, as we’ve already heard about such uniquely Afghan manifestations of car culture as the Taliban’s Toyota Hilux-inspired maple leaf tattoos. And now here’s another one, fresh off the Reuters wire: Afghans are reportedly in a tizzy over (get this) license plates containing the number 39. Yes, really.
Afghanistan’s booming car sales industry has been thrown into chaos by a growing aversion to the number “39”, which almost overnight has become an unlikely synonym for pimp and a mark of shame in this deeply conservative country.
Drivers of cars with number plates containing 39, bought before the once-harmless double digits took on their new meaning, are mocked and taunted across Kabul.
“Now even little kids say ‘look, there goes the 39’. This car is a bad luck, I can’t take my family out in it,” said Mohammad Ashraf who works for a United Nations project.
Other “39” owners flew into a rage or refused to speak when asked whether their car was a burden.
I did not think it would matter when I got my car,” said Zalmay Ahmadi, a 22-year-old business student. “But when I drive around all the other cars flash their lights, beep their horns and people point at me. All my classmates now call me Colonel 39.”
We’ve heard of huge demand for certain-numbered license plates before, such as the craze in Arab countries for the lowest possible license number… but we’ve never heard of a taboo number when it comes to license plates. So what gives?
Mitsubishi wants to attack one of the biggest problems of EVs: Their lofty price. Mitsu’s i-MiEV EV retails for 3.98 million yen ($49,200). Government subsidies will slash a million (yen) off that price. Converted to dollars, that $36,900, still steep. The Nissan Leaf costs 3.76 million yen ($46,500) before subsidies and sells much better than the Mitsumobile. Now, Mitsubishi wants to lop a million yen off the i-MiEV’s sticker price. (Read More…)
As the industry (or at least parts of it) and the federal government face off over forthcoming 2017-2025 CAFE/emissions standards, a Center for Automotive Research study is getting more play than ever from an industry that seeks to portray the high cost of fuel economy improvements as being not worth the additional costs to consumers. CAR has yet to publish its full study, but it’s clearly intended to counter an offensive from groups like the Consumer Federation of America, which uses its own study to show that CAFE regulation will actually save consumers money. This battle, over the cost to industry and consumers of passing a 62 MPG standard for 2025, has been playing out for months now, and will continue to go back and forth over the rest of this summer. And sure enough, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Resources Defense Council have both hit back against the CAR study, calling it “industry-advocate propaganda” in the Detroit News and arguing that it underestimates future reductions in technology costs.
Japanese carmakers are battling the power shortages after the March 11 tsunami. Often, they are asked why they didn’t move more of their production abroad, like to China. A lot of them did, only to face bigger power problems in China. China is heading for what Reuters calls “its worst power shortage since 2004.” While the lights stay on in Japan, cities in Southern and Eastern China have regular blackouts. (Read More…)
Blowing into a breathalyzer weakly is grounds to convict someone of the crime of refusal, according to a May 26 decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Refusal carries penalties nearly as severe as a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). On November 29, 2007 at 2:36am, Sergeant Joe Morgan of the Woolwich Township police department pulled over Aaron P. Schmidt after noticing that he was driving 10 MPH under the speed limit. Morgan administered the usual field sobriety tests and decided to bring Schmidt to headquarters for a breath test.
China’s Gasgoo says that “Dongfeng Nissan has already begun preparations for domestic production of the Nissan Leaf pure electric hatchback.” Domestic as in Made-in-China. They quote Dongfeng Nissan CEO Fumiaki Matsumoto, who allegedly said: “We have already finished preparatory work for the Leaf. We hope that we can cooperate with the government and suppliers to bring over the Leaf as soon as possible.” That of course piqued our interest. After some calls, we can say with certainty: Instead of millions of Leafs roaming the streets of China tomorrow, we have a case of Lost In Translation with a French-Japanese-Chinese cast. (Read More…)
Japan’s major automakers appear to recover faster from the impact of the March 11 tsunami than previously feared (or hoped.) Nissan’s Executive Vice President Takao Katagiri said today that Nissan’s Japanese vehicle production in May was the same or greater than its output in the same month in the previous year.
“We will also probably be able to maintain a normal level in June,” Katagiri told The Nikkei [sub]. At the annual results conference in May, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn had predicted that the company would be back to normal by October. This remains the official party line at Nissan. (Read More…)
The street-parked old cars I photograph in my Denver neighborhood live at one mile elevation, give or take a few feet. Drive about 100 miles southwest from here, however, and you’ll end up in Leadville, which stands at two miles above sea level. Last weekend, I ventured out to Leadville and found this painfully original 1947 Dodge brush fire truck parked downtown. (Read More…)
Photos courtesy of Cars In Depth
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