Last week I wrote a pithy little article about my experience driving a Suzuki Cappuccino, a 660 CC kei car, when I was teaching in Japan. I followed the discussion that resulted with some interest and one of my favorite contributors and fellow motorcycle enthusiast, Syke, raised and interesting issue when he wrote: “I’d happily sign whatever paperwork necessary exempting myself (and my heirs) from personal injury lawsuits, or whatever other crap the lawyers can come up with, to own one. The impossibility of getting such cars is just another example of what a country full of cringing wimps we’ve become.” It’s something I have thought a lot about over the last few days and to me it comes down to a simple question: Should the government have a role in setting safety standards?
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It’s no secret that over here at TTAC, we like to pay for it – at least when it comes to test cars. Sure, we do go to the press fleet frequently, but when time and budget allow, abusing our Hertz #1 Club Gold membership is a great way to get behind the wheel of […]
It was in late March that I found myself among the disinfectant smells and cracked tiles of an oncology clinic in western New York. This was the clinic where TTAC contributor and long-time member of the B&B, David Drucker, lost his fight with cancer. This was the clinic where he faced his final shots at chemo, the poison burning his arm, the duct-taped old vinyl recliners in a row, the enforced stillness that must have been agonizing for a man whose quick fingers on the guitar and brilliant singing voice entertained everyone he met. In these dismal corridors, in the long walk from the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, in the elevator that creaked and groaned on the way up to the third floor. I didn’t get there in time. I arrived in western New York to find him already gone, his passing announced without fanfare by his son on Facebook along with a link to a video of his last public folk-music performance. It would have been the first time I met him in person; I’d “known” him for years through TTAC and Facebook, but I never shook the man’s hand, never heard his voice. This would have been the first time.
David would chide me any time I bought a new acoustic guitar. “Why didn’t you go to Maury’s?” he’d say. “It makes NO SENSE to buy a Martin from anywhere else.” Well, today Maury’s is selling some of the guitars that David owned and played. The proceeds will benefit his family, which suffered financially from the full-throttle assault of his cancer and its necessary treatments. So I’d like you to take David’s advice as well, and I’ll do my best to make it worthwhile.
All it took was one little article in CAR magazine for the auto blogosphere to light up with a million different re-purposed versions of the same report. And what a joyous bit of news it is; Alfa Romeo is going to be rear-drive only from now on.
We decided to run the piece because it comes from Georg Kacher, a respected journalist who is known for having his finger on the pulse of the industry. If he says Alfa is planning to move to rear drive platforms, they probably are. But the big problem is that they are planning it. Nobody said anything about actually doing it.
Please welcome the return of former guest columnist and industry insider Bark M. His piece on buying his Boss 302 turned out to be awfully popular, so I’ve asked him to return with a regular column. His first “Bark’s Bites” is a tale of a fairly bizarre trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats in which your humble Editor-In-Chief pro-tem makes an appearance or two — JB.
Salt Lake City is the most unique major metropolis in America. As somebody who travels for a living, who has visited nearly every state in the union, and who has just spent 72 hours in the capital of Utah this week, I feel qualified to make this statement.
It’s home to the spectacular Miller Motorsports Park, which is easily the most versatile motorsports facility in America. Every single person in the city is friendly-even the homeless man who helped me parallel park my 15-mile-on-the-odometer rental Chevy Captiva downtown. It’s virtually impossible to get drunk here-due to the seemingly 100% Mormon population, it’s illegal to sell a double, and the beer can’t be any more than 4% alcohol by volume. Upon my ascent to the highest lookout in the city, Ensign Trail, I was greeted by dozens of happy young college students who were debating the specific intent of biblical passages.
Clearly, I needed to get the f*** out of there.
The Chevrolet Volt may be the most maligned and least understood car on the market. After a week of strange questions and bipolar reactions to GM’s plug-in hybrid, I came to a conclusion. GM’s marketing of the Volt stinks. By calling the Volt an “Electric Vehicle (EV) with a range extender,” a huge segment of […]
A U.S. District Court judge gave final approval of the settlement of a lawsuit filed against Toyota on behalf of owners of Toyota vehicles who claimed that the car maker’s recalls related to unintended acceleration caused their cars to depreciate in value.
The UK’s CAR magazine’s Georg Kacher is reporting that Alfa Romeo will be going exclusively to rear wheel drive models as it drops the Mito and Giulietta FWD hatchbacks around 2015.
When we last reported on France banning some Mercedes-Benz vehicles because the company refuses to use the now mandated R1234yf refrigerant, representatives from all 28 EU member states were scheduled to meet with the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles to discuss the matter, particularly as it regards the sale of M-B vehicles in the 27 other EU countries besides France. That meeting has since taken place and according to a memo issued by the European Commission, those representatives have confirmed that all new vehicles sold throughout the EU must use R1234yf, and that any vehicles with the now banned R134a must be withdrawn from the market in all EU states. The dispute is over the fire safety of the new refrigerant. R134a was banned because it is considered a greenhouse gas. (Read More…)
TTAC Commentator jco writes:
Sajeev,
I have a quick but also possibly interesting question: in new VWs with DSG, the LCD info on the dash will tell you exactly what gear number you are in. Obviously with this particular transmission it’s necessary to do this. but why can’t other cars with conventional transmissions, either automatic or manual, have this small but useful feature? have other cars featured this?
Given the sudden multiplication of available gears in upcoming transmissions which have been a hot topic on TTAC recently, maybe it should be mandatory in a future sedan with an 8 speed transmission.
Also, FYI, my phone autocorrected your name to Sanjeev.
The default power choice for many resto-mods is the popular 350 from the General. They are plentiful, affordable and can be built into a beast of a motor. But for many non-General car guys, the idea of a Chevy engine under the hood of their non-General Motors ride is simply a great reason to run it directly over a cliff.
warning: the song in the video (“A Mistake” by Fiona Apple) contains strong language.
When I announced that fiction would be verboten on these pages, more than a few readers suggested that it might still have a place if it could be clearly marked and separated from the usual content. So here we go: “Sunday Stories” will be the place we put fiction. The usual TTAC loose restrictions on length and content will be further loosened for Sunday Stories, so read at your own peril. We’re welcoming submissions for this. If you readers don’t send me anything, you’ll be forced to see “fiction” about Tennessean hairdressers and Nevada strip clubs and whatnot, so get cracking! – JB
Kenny Huynh awoke alone in his room on the thirty fourth floor of the drab grey tenement. It had been a fitful sleep but it would be enough. He had a job to do. Only his great skill could ensure that the people he cared about had enough to eat. Fortunately he was the best. His skill would prevail. (Read More…)
Charles Maher, Bloomfield Hills, MI
We seem to be in a bit of a museum mood, what with Thomas Kreutzer’s report on the expanded Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, NY., the continuing story about the Petersen Museum selling off part of their collection, and speculation on what will happen to the valuable art, cars and other items that belong to city-owned museums in the wake of Detroit’s filing for municipal bankruptcy. In the comment thread to our second post about the Petersen, the relationship between the world of cars and the world of fine art was raised by narcoossee, and 3Deuce27.
Perception is a funny thing. It especially shows up when you’re sitting on the fence between two cultures, seeing the world through the eyes of both at once. As a European with close relation to US car culture, I know something about that, and I’ll show it to you with two wagons. Each of them […]
In March Ford announced another recall for their Ford Freestar minivans. The last time this happened I took my Freestar to my local dealership for transmission work and a few weeks later ended up replacing the entire transmission at my own cost when the part suffered an “unrelated problem.” This time Ford tells me that my van may suffer from corrosion in the wheel wells and that the affected areas include the third row seat mount. Presumably, the metal under the seat rusts out which could prevent the seat from latching properly. The condition, they continued, affects about 196,500 vehicle registered in the United States and that the vehicles most at risk are in states where salt is used on the roads to melt snow in the winter. I made note of the recall but then life intervened and my best laid plans to take the van in for a quick repair evaporated.
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