Confiscating automobiles has become a significant source of revenue for cash-strapped California cities. Last Tuesday, the state legislature gave preliminary approval to legislation to impose limits on the practice.

Under current law, municipalities run sobriety checkpoints funded almost entirely by $30 million in federal grant money. The drunk-driving (DUI) roadblocks catch comparatively few drunk drivers, so officers often focus on issuing as many tickets as possible for minor violations while cars are stopped. Assembly Bill 353 separates vehicle inspection checkpoints from DUI roadblocks and prohibits impounding of vehicles unless the alleged offense meets certain criteria.
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Some time ago, I made the unpleasant discovery that Oprah Winfrey publishes a magazine devoted entirely to herself. It’s called “O!” and every month there is a photo of Oprah herself on the cover. It’s almost impossible to imagine the kind of people who would buy such a magazine, but the same could be said about a variety of products from Kenneth Cole’s Indonesian garbage shoes to “Four Loko” alcopops.

The Chevrolet Volt is TTAC’s Oprah. Not only is it overweight and despised by most right-thinking people (in a few senses of the phrase), it appears on our front page more than any other car. We’ve reviewed it at least three times, discussed it endlessly, and even attended an owner’s gathering.

We’ve recently heard that GM wants to be like Apple. Here’s the problem: GM already is like Apple. Not the current Apple, mind you, but the divided, contentious, collapsing (Cr)Apple of the early Eighties. That company had a “Volt” of its own. It was called “Lisa”, and I was there on the day it was unveiled.

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My former wife was an artist. One of her shows was for the benefit of Washington DC’s National Zoo. At the opening, a society dame walked up to her.

“Love your boobies.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The lady referred to the depiction of a school of the sula nebouxii, a.k.a. the Blue Footed Booby, a water bird. Boobies can cause all kinds of misunderstandings. That thought crossed my mind as I watched the picture above.

I found it at Chinacartimes. Apparently, the picture is spreading like wildfire through the Chinese interwebs. Says CCT: (Read More…)

Today, Porsche officially disclosed top-secret pictures of the new “Neunelfer”, a.k.a. the 2012 Porsche 911. Most of these pictures have already been all over the webs. In a year, you’ll find them on Wikileaks.

In the name of completeness, here is the whole take, released today, along with the news that:

“At 48, the Porsche 911 Carrera is younger than ever: The completely redesigned generation of the sports car icon is stepping into the limelight with its flat, stretched silhouette, exciting contours and precisely designed details, yet from the very first glance it remains unmistakably a 911. True to the 911 tradition, the distinctive Porsche design language with its tendons and muscles exudes power and elegance.”

Who’s writing those lines?

Due to the state of the economy and the price of gasoline in America, it’s no small wonder small car sales are on fire. For those that wish to hide the fact that they have downsized for sensible reasons like lower operating costs, there is a segment of the market just for you: small retro […]

The 1st generation LH sedans. Dodge Intrepid. Chrysler Concorde. Eagle Vision. These three beautiful masterpieces took Chrysler from an amortizing also-ran to a technological front-runner.

They offered everything back in the day. An optional 214 Horsepower engine that used the twice as expensive Acura Legend’s engine as a benchmark. Cab forward styling that transformed Chrysler’s bread and butter cars from staid three-box K car creations to coveted sleek machines. Oh and the features? Unbeatable for the time. Traction control. Leather seats that were angus thick. Infinity sound systems. They were hard to beat… and yet so easily beaten.
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Today’s announcement of a memorandum of understanding between Ford and Toyota, uniting the two firms’ pickup truck hybrid drivetrain efforts, took quite a few industry-watchers by surprise this morning. As the industry leader in hybrid technology, Toyota has limited past hybrid cooperation to licensing its drivetrain wholesale to Nissan and a patent-sharing agreement with Ford. Moreover, the last big alliance aimed at developing hybrid technology for full-sized pickups, the Two-Mode V8 hybrids developed jointly by GM, Chrysler, Mercedes and BMW, have been a huge flop on the market, with the German partners walking away from the technology after using it in only a single application each (X5/X6, and ML Hybrid). Though Toyota and Ford have worked together to prevent a messy patent war over hybrid technology, there was little to suggest that they would take the cooperation any further, let alone join forces to hybridize full-size pickups. But if you’re looking to the marketplace to explain the Ford-Toyota tie-up, you’re looking in the wrong place: this is all about the freshly-announced CAFE standard and its generous credit system.
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Those who have followed TTAC’s coverage of China’s car electrification plans in general  and BYD’s track record in particular will have noticed a degree of healthy skepticism. Actually, we had declared that the electric car only has a chance if you for all intents and purposes outlaw regular cars, as it is the case in Beijing. I have been out there today, and haven’t seen any: If there are no EVs to buy, then none will silently prowl the streets. As far as BYD goes, last March we called them a “down and out car company that should qualify for a handicapped parking sticker.”

Now at last, Forbes’ resident China expert Gordon G. “I hate China” Chang wakes up to the matter and writes: (Read More…)

TTAC commentator mistercopacetic writes:

Dear Mr. Mehta,

Big fan of TTAC and Piston Slap. I have a 2001 Honda CR-V with a cloth interior which I would like to switch out for a leather interior. I am doing this mostly because I am too cheap to buy a new car, but want to feel like I am driving a new car with leather seats. I found a store online selling a Roadwire leather seat kit for $595, on sale until June 15 from $962 list. It looks like this is a replacement interior, not just seat covers, so I will be pulling out the old seats, removing the cloth from the seat frame, and installing the leather. My question: is this something I can do myself, or is it better to get a professional installer? I would like to save some cash, but if it is a job that requires expertise I would rather pay someone who knows what they are doing. I’ve searched some forums online and my impression is that an aftermarket leather interior can either look terrible or meet or exceed a factory leather interior in look and quality, depending on the skill of the installer.

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Portland’s 82nd Avenue is one of those streets that exists in nearly every American city. Unofficially demarcating Portland proper (“the right side of the tracks”) from the extensive working-class suburbs that bleed into Gresham (“the wrong side of the tracks”), “Shady-Second” is home to a vast strip of wall-to-wall buy-here-pay-here lots, used-car hustlers, and small repair shops that line both sides of the road from Sandy Boulevard all the way down to Division. Like every other used-car strip in every other town in America, it’s where folks go when they need a car and don’t have much money to spend. Unlike most other low-cost car Meccas, however, 82nd Avenue is also home to Oregon’s last remaining Saab dealership. And it’s something of a symbol of the hell that Saab dealers are going through right now.
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After we wrote a bit about that new supercar company called Eterniti, and the people behind it, while Twitter was infested by odd operators, my phone started to ring in Beijing.

“Don’t you know who Kenny Chen is?” If you’ve spent some time in the auto biz in China, you can’t avoid that.

“Didn’t you hear that he bilked people out of their down-payments on cars?” We had heard such nasty rumors. (Read More…)

Ford and Toyota will “equally collaborate on the development of an advanced new hybrid system for light truck and SUV customers.”  A memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the product development collaboration, was signed today, with the formal agreement expected to be inked by next year. Both have been working independently on their rear-wheel drive hybrid systems. They have decided that it makes more sense to share the significant burden. (Read More…)

The California legislature last week sent legislation to Governor Jerry Brown (D) designed to boost the number of citations issued for for driving while talking with a cell phone in hand. The measure also increases the maximum possible fine to $528.
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Yesterday, we talked a little about Volkswagen’s latest small car, the up! We walked down memory lane, and compared the 2012 up! with the Polo of 1975. The up! is nearly as short as the Polo of ancient times (3.54 meters). The heftier bumpers don’t leave a car designer much choice. And speaking of heft: We wondered how the up! is doing in the weight department.

When the Polo was launched in 1975, it weighed in at 685 kg (1,510 lbs) – with four guys, you could solve parking problems manually. We didn’t have much entertainment in those years, and sometimes carried a Polo to spots that were a bit inaccessible on wheels, like up a flight of stairs. This was a source of a lot of fun, especially when viewed from a beer garden across the street.

Volkswagen did not disclose the curb weight of the new up!, so we called up! Herr Schröder in Wolfsburg on Monday morning and asked. (Read More…)

My 28-month-old son is a visionary. He can see things other people can’t. By “other people”, I mean “me”. He will point to the sky and say “airplane”. I see a dot that doesn’t look like an airplane to me until I realize it’s moving. He is currently very interested in garbage trucks, and he will call out “GARRTRUCK!” when the vehicle in question is swimming in the distant summer mirage of a flat Ohio freeway. I’m encouraging this interest, by the way. Trash-truck guys in New York City earn $144,000 a year. He can play a Fender Rhodes piano all night in the Village and collect garbage all morning if he wants to.

Honestly, I’d rather he be a garbageman than a race car driver. I don’t know if there will be much racing going on sixteen years from now. It probably won’t be like what we have now, with thousands of middle-class guys burning 200-300 gallons a NASA/SCCA/LeMons weekend in tow and race fuel and another few hundred millionaires running Grand-Am and ALMS. I’m not even sure how much driving we will have sixteen years from now.

Regardless, on the assumption that he is likely to drive a car at some point, I talk to him while we drive places, about what to look for, what to look at, what to deliberately ignore. It’s partially for his safety, although I don’t think driver “education” makes a huge difference in one’s chances in the big Auto Death Lottery. It’s partially so he will get places faster and with less stress. It’s partially so he will enjoy driving a bit, even if he chooses not to do it in a competitive or even aggressive fashion. And since I wish the same for all of you, I will tell you what I tell him, as we roll down the road in our broken-nosed Town Car.

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