Where were we? Ah, yes. I was fleeing Nashville in defeat after my mystery car ate its water pump on Mile 417 of a 1,210-mile journey. But what was that mystery car? I couldn’t reveal it at the time, for reasons which will become apparent shortly, but now it can be told: I was driving a 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special “Talisman”. For the bargain price of about $14,000 (think $54K today, about the same as a loaded 335i or middling Audi A6) the most discerning among us could purchase the ultimate in full-sized luxury.

In the week after my return to sunny Powell, Ohio, the Firestone shop in Franklin, Tennessee swapped the water pump, thermostat, a few hoses, and the blown-out valve cover gaskets. All was in readiness for me to fly in Saturday, July 2, and pick up where I’d left off. Drama McHourglass promised she would pick me up at the airport:

I will be there. with bells on!

Honestly, dear readers, I had my doubts, particularly given my arrival time of 8:45am, but as I rolled my SKB Strat case through the big glass doors and out into BNA’s Arrivals area, I saw her ’96 Taurus in the lane ahead. She was radiant in a nearly sheer peasant dress and as I took my seat next to her, she said, “You see? Bells.” She wiggled — no, she shimmered — and I heard the strings of bells draped over her wrists, and I felt the solid ground drop away beneath me, the way it does when you hit the coping and tumble all the way down the halfpipe, or hear the jury read your verdict, or fall desperately in love.
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Our patent-pending China sales oracle has spoken, and it says. The only bubbles in China are in the heads of some self-styled experts.

Looking at the June and half year results of GM China, one can only conclude that all is well in the Middle Kingdom. What’s good for GM China is good for America: China is GM’s largest market. GM’s sales in China are up 9.9 percent in June and 5.3 percent for the half year. But there is a much more important lesson: (Read More…)

You’ve seen them before, photos from some godforsaken place of insurgent warfare. A half dozen rag tag soldiers, if you can call them soldiers, bristling with Chinese Kalishnikov knockoffs, piled into a Toyota Hilux with a heavy machine gun or some other armament like a recoil-less rifle or ack-ack gun mounted on the roof or in the bed. The Toyota Hilux has been the choice of low level combatants around the world since the 1960s. As noted by China Car Times, when Muammar Gaddafi (is there a world leader whose names, first and last, are spelled in so many different ways?) had one of his snit fits and invaded Chad in 1987 to overturn the government, both sides used so many Hiluxes that Time magazine dubbed it the Toyota War. In the early 90s, the war in Somalia brought us the term “technical”, interestingly enough derived from the NGO practice of hiring local gunmen to protect their employees, and paying them with funds earmarked as “technical assitance grants”.

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Steve writes:

My 24 yr old daughter had been living on her own and driving an ’01 2 door Accord she’d totaled and had repaired. Not a safe car (air bags not replaced), but her choice– until she had the world’s most beautiful baby, our first and
only granddaughter.

We are not poor, and our granddaughter’s safety was at stake, so 18 months ago we bought her a new ’09 Elantra. Our reasons were it had a 100k warranty and modern safety systems.

Last week she totaled it. Nobody hurt, thankfully. She’s getting $12k+ for the wrecked car. We’re not particularly inclined to get her yet another new car, as you might imagine. But, there’s the world’s most beautiful toddler to consider. She says she wants something bigger and has been looking at Accords, but in her price range they’re much older and I presume less safe. Actually, she wants a small CUV, but with her driving I’m even less inclined to support that.

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Today, I went on a very early morning Shinkansen to Nagoya. The idea was to have me kind of certified as a Toyota-accredited journalist. I don’t know whether I qualified. I flunked the required rattling-off of the 12 Toyota plants in Japan. However, I was invited into Toyoda’s house. (Read More…)

Since 1994, the California courts have banned defendants from using scientific evidence to challenge certain charges for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). To foil defense attorneys who had become increasingly successful with juries, the state created a “per se” DUI charge that made it a crime to have 0.08 reading on a breathalyzer machine regardless of whether an individual was actually drunk or had a 0.08 percent blood alcohol content (BAC) level. Because of physiological variability among individuals, some people with the same blood alcohol level might read higher or lower on the breath machine. Challenges based on these differences are known as “partition ratio” arguments. The California Court of Appeal on Friday loosened what had become effectively a ban on scientific criticism of breathalyzer reliability.

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You find some interesting historical documents in junked cars, and sometimes they’re glued to an engine’s valve cover. (Read More…)

When I used to go to Cannes for the Cannes Lions International Festival, it was more to hang out with friends at the bar of the Carlton or the Martinez, and to boo at the choices of the jury, after the more interesting topless attractions at the beach had gotten dressed. Volkswagen had a serious reason to go. They went home with a whole safari park of the coveted “Lions.” Volkswagen received a total of 34 Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions. (Read More…)

[Editor’s note: the initial draft of this piece misunderstood the structure of the deal. Youngman and PangDa have paid over $350m for a 51% of Swedish Automobile, Saab’s parent company (which has a market cap of $68m). Funding for the New Product Joint Venture (50% owned by Youngman, 50% owned by Swedish Automobile) has not been disclosed. See comments for more background.]

Just when the lights seem to be going out all around Saab, with employees calling for bankruptcy, suppliers in revolt and even the Swedish government pretending like nothing was happening, Saab always seems to find away to prolong the agony. Selling, then leasing back the factory was one step that’s been approved by the EIB. Getting the suppliers to take ten percent down on deliveries? Well, it turns out that management has some time to sort that one out, as the factory’s annual vacation starts in a week, and Saab is letting its employees go a week early rather than starting up and then shutting down the line. And the company is certainly hoping that it won’t have to restart the line simply to restore confidence, as it’s announcing the “final agreement” with China’s Youngman Auto and the dealer group PangDa for  €245m (about $365m) which it hopes will clear up the perception that Saab is a sneeze away from death. Needless to say, this agreement fits squarely into the “stringing along” category rather than the “game changing” category…

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A New Age?

Jeremy writes:

I would like to thank you for your website it is one of my primary sources for automotive information, I read new articles basically every day. And with that covered, this is for the most part a piston slap:

I currently own a 93 Ranger STX approx 108k on the 4.0L V6. I bought it used in about 2000. It has been a good truck and has served me well other than feeling quite sluggish and there being some slack in the transfer case (nothing abnormal from what I am told) It is in good shape and serves me well for driving around town and taking some miles off my 05 Focus ST.

I have been looking for and thinking about purchasing a used full size 1/2 ton pickup, so that I would have a truck more comfortable for road trips (I live 50 miles from the nearest 1000+ population town) and I would like to be able to lay 8’ panels flat. My current requirements are V8 (I need some pulling power for a boat, etc) anything other than a regular cab with an 8 foot box. Its tough to find such a machine being they end up so long and unwieldy. It would be in the garage more often than not and would be used more for the big jobs than anything.

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A 1991 Chevy Caprice in faded battleship grey went for $3000 at last week’s sale. It had only 37k miles. But none of the bells and whistles that would make such an old timer truly desirable. Now the 1996 Chevy Caprice with 71k and leather was a completely different story. Garage kept. No paint fade. All the bells and whistles in good working order. I was expecting around $5000 for this ancient beast.

It went for $5100. Truth be told this was the first auction with relatively decent prices in a long time. The 4th of July makes at least some of the dealers go away which was more than OK with me. I got four cars today. None of which were anything special.

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In the battle for market share, Detroit is making something of a comeback. After decades of decline, the unprecedented taxpayer investment in Detroit seems to be yielding dividends in the form of solidifying signs of recovery. Of course, these firms still have a long ways to go before they’re done reversing their long declines, and the turnaround has doubtless been fueled by temporary phenomena like the Toyota recall and the Japanese tsunami. Still, these are some of the first big-picture signs of a serious change in fortunes for Detroit, and deserve the attention of market watchers (graphs can be found in the gallery after the jump, along with a graph of June and Y-T-D market share).

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With every holiday, I marvel at the passage of time, and at the twists and turns my path has taken here at TTAC. In reflecting on the recent past, I can’t help but feel an immense gratitude to the inscrutable workings of fate which have conspired to keep me eagerly engaged in this site’s unending quest for automotive truth. And on this, the holiday of American independence, gratitude seems to me a highly appropriate theme. One of the deeply-removed gears of destiny that has created the opportunity that is TTAC is surely this nation’s fundamental belief in public discourse and a free press, the constitutionally and culturally enshrined belief that the open exchange of ideas can make life, and its most necessary evil, government, at least a little bit better. Even those who disagree on a fundamental level with the opinions that TTAC espouses must concede not only that we have the right to our opinions, but also that our criticisms ultimately give strength to their objects. Our founding fathers did not protect speech out of mere principle, but because they knew that free discussion is the dialectic of progress. Through what they saw as the divine power of reason, we could form more complete ideas about the world and be better equipped to take on the challenges of liberty, self-government and the free market.

Today I am not just grateful that our founding fathers created a culture which allows me to live in the world of ideas, and in pursuit of truth. I am not just grateful for legal protections of my free speech. I am not just grateful that I can serve consumers and industry alike by shining the light of discourse on the dark places of poor logic, market malfunction, and willful ignorance. Today I am most grateful that my fellow Americans continue to value their free speech enough to patronize sites like TTAC, where they may find ideas and opinions that challenge their view of the world, where these ideas are more important than advertising revenue, and where perspectives from around our shrinking globe can be compared and contrasted in an atmosphere of respect and rigor. In an era when the value of ideas and discourse seems to be losing ground to slickly-packaged distraction and ideological rigidity, it gives me faith that so many still crave the thrilling uncertainty of a tough debate, and a deep-seeded hunger for a better understanding of the world (if “only” the world of cars).

As we celebrate American independence today, I am grateful not only for this nation’s providential founding on the enduring principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (which I would define as being generally synonymous with the Pursuit of Understanding), but the fact that those values have endured in you, our ever-demanding, every hungry-for-knowledge readers. Let us endeavor, together, to live up to the lofty ideals the American spirit as we unflinchingly pursue the truth about cars.

While I was celebrating my independence from TTAC on a camping road trip through the wilds of Eastern Oregon this weekend, it seems that quite a little debate was stirred up by Bertel’s publication of the top 10 best-selling American-market cars in June. In hopes that more information will lead to a stronger debate, I’m dedicating a good chunk of my Independence Day to an overview of the American car market in the first half of this year, starting with this chart of the top 25 Year-To-Date performers. I’ve omitted year-ago numbers in the interests of chart cleanliness, but a snapshot of last Summer’s sales studs can be found here. The contrasts are… well, I’ll let you fill in that blank. With the exception of incentive and fleet sales mitigation, the numbers speak for themselves…

The transition from exclusively gasoline-powered vehicles to the new panoply of permutations of gas and electric power has not been easy on the old emm-pee-gee. The imperfect-yet-universal (in the US market) measure of efficiency finds itself at a loss to compare an electric car’s efficiency with that of a gas-powered car, and completely falls apart as a relative measure of efficiency between plug-in-hybrids which use gas and electricity in different ways (see the ongoing battles over the Chevy Volt’s efficiency). Into the breach have stepped several challengers to the emm-pee-gee’s supremacy, including the weak MPGe (which was responsible for the Volt’s disastrous “230 MPG” introduction), and the “Kilowatt-hours per 100 miles” measure championed by Motor Trend in a rare display of admirable pointy-headedness. But the Gordian contradiction of efficiency measures is that they must be both accurate and easy-to-understand… and if the MPG’s history tells us anything, it should probably err on the side of the latter prerogative.

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