The long battle over the red light camera program in Houston, Texas ended Wednesday. The city council voted 14-1 to repeal the ordinance that granted American Traffic Solutions (ATS) the right to issue automated tickets at fifty intersections throughout the country’s fourth largest city.

“This is a total victory for the voters of Houston,” Citizens Against Red Light Cameras spokesman Philip Owens told TheNewspaper. “The only shame is it took too long to get where we are. Today was more of an exercise in political theater but a win is a win.”

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On Wednesday, your humble author had the opportunity to drive several of the newest Volkswagens on an identical 14-mile loop around rural Virginia. By adding a few unauthorized extensions to this loop, I was able to walk away from the day with a reasonable understanding of a few different VW models. Naturally, the four most […]

Forecasting the success of game-changing technologies is like predicting the weather. Despite a mediocre success rate, it is done every day. Ask me what the weather will be in 2017, and if I want to be absolutely right, I will say: “During the summer months, we expect sun with occasional rain, whereas in the winter months, some snow can be expected.” This prediction would protect my career in any company, but it won’t get me any press.

If I want press, I need to say: “In 2017, fire and brimstone will rain from the skies, which will cause a great conflagration, because all rain will have stopped a year earlier.” These predictions can be made with little risk. Six years down the road, who will remember the nonsense I said today? That thought crosses my mind as I read studies that predict the adoption of electric vehicles. Today, we have two of those. They couldn’t be more apart. We commissioned a third one. (Read More…)

I never thought I’d ever find an Oleg Cassini Edition AMC Matador in the junkyard. Oh, sure, I’ve seen Givenchy Continentals, Mark Cross New Yorkers, a couple of Etienne Aigner VW Golfs, even a Levis Gremlin… but even with all I’ve written about the Oleg Cassini Matador I’d given up hope of actually seeing one on its way to The Crusher. That changed yesterday. (Read More…)

Michelle Krebs and Lacey Plache of Edmunds.com, decorated heroes of the TTAC “rate the analysts” contest (to be repeated) are raining on the parade of good sales forceasts, definitely for August, possibly for the year. Edmunds thinks that August sales will be flat. Customers are hearing mixed signals, and being confused, they do nothing. Says Lacey Plache:

“Stronger buying conditions are telling consumers to go ahead and make their car purchases, but a weak economic landscape is telling them to wait until later this year, or even longer. This is the battle that will determine exactly how much the auto industry will grow this year.” (Read More…)

Now we know the truth behind the rebels routing Kadafi in Libya. “British, French, Qatari and other special forces working inside Libya?” Bollocks! It was the skilled deployment of fine Chinese weaponry that turned the tide. Chinese guns made the Colonel collect the last cadres of his female bodyguards and head for wherever people head to for a last get-together with their bodyguards before their bollocks are removed in a less than surgical manner. (I am getting sidetracked. Where were we?) Ah, yes, Chinese weaponry!

Tycho over at Carnewschina found the picture above in Huanqiu.com, a Chinese site dedicated to the military side of China, and, to provide proper balance, to barely dressed members of the fairer sex. If you are into uncamouflaged Chinese guns & girls, this site’s for you! (Someone is trying to undermine my morals, and my writing focus.) (Read More…)

Last week, the Impala roared into 1992 with more refinements and spun quite a few digits on its Buick odometer. Late in ’92, with Bill Clinton packing up his Astroturf-enhanced El Camino and heading for the White House and the days getting shorter, I decided to celebrate my escape from the looming menace of an academic career by tricking out the Impala’s hood with some Fiat X1/9-sourced scoops… and getting back to Interstate 5, where I belonged. (Read More…)

“I mean, this car is dead, right? The only people who bought the last one were fifty-year old Sally Schoolteachers, and they’re all sixty years old now. There’s no volume in this car. Can’t be any volume. The buyers are almost dead. And it isn’t fun to drive AT ALL. What would you rather have, […]

Edmunds’ always dead-on Autoobserver brings us the shocking news that Americans don’t drive enough. That, or they use the wrong cars. Whatever it may be, Americans are about to lose the carefully cultivated title “world’s biggest gasoline oinkers.” Gasoline consumption hit rock bottom in July!

Says Edmunds:

“U.S. demand for gasoline last month was at its lowest for July in a decade as the slower-than-expected economic recovery appeared to cause many people to either cut back on driving or buy more fuel-efficient cars. U.S. refinery gasoline production in July dropped 2.3 percent from a year earlier, marking the first year-over-year drop for 2011, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said in a report released late last week.”

There are multiple reasons for people taking a pass on gas. Let’s investigate. (Read More…)

After sharing this beater Torino wagon I photographed back in the early 1990s, I ran across a series of shots of an even Malaise-ier machine. Just as silver miners often find lead mixed in with their metal of choice (or maybe it’s the other way around), I keep discovering long-forgotten car photos as I scan the negatives for the 1965 Impala Hell Project series. Here’s a car that I believe has a 0.00043% chance of having avoided The Crusher during the 18 years that have passed since these photos were taken. (Read More…)

Apparently, this is Camry week. TTAC has already thrown two of its most feared and revered auto testers, Michael “Hard  Plastic Killer” Karesh and Alex “Yellow Fever” Dykes, into the battle – with similar, yet finely nuanced results. Yours truly has arrived in Tokyo, where he cools his heels (as much as a thermostat set […]

The new Mercedes B-Class has been extensively discussed here, it was shown at the Shanghai Auto Show, where it found itself upstaged by the requisite Chinese copy. Slowly, it is time to show the production model. Which will happen at the Frankfurt Auto Show. After the rest of the world has seen the B-Class, now […]

Old cars, euphemistically known as “end-of-life vehicles” or ELVs are turning into a menace. It’s because of the increased used of new materials, also known as plastics. Whereas the scrap of older cars was welcome fodder for the furnaces of steel and cast iron makers around the world, the plastic piles up on landfills, or is burned. Mazda says it has “become the world’s first automaker to successfully recycle scrapped bumpers from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) into raw material for new vehicle bumpers.” (Read More…)

Back in 1994, I bought a brand new Toyota Camry. It drove like an underpowered Mercedes with an advanced sixteen valve, four-cylinder engine. Unbelievably quiet, refined, and durable beyond compare. The Camry offered a level of quality back then that most other automakers couldn’t match at even twice the price. This good news spread throughout […]

In addition to unearthing the 1993 photograph of a beater Torino wagon hauling junk while scanning old 35mm negatives for the Impala Hell Project, I ran across this shot of junkyard-find toy vans on a spice rack in my slacker abode of 1993. (Read More…)