I was four the first time I rode across the country, from Menlo Park to Cambridge, sharing the back of the 1950 Studebaker with my older brother, Tom, and Mab, the 75 pound Airedale. Mab sometimes stretched across the back seat, pushing us onto the floor, but I digress, partly because I want the reader to know that I actually remember that trip. I also remember the aneurism in the tire, in Utah, and my fear as we approached the Holland tunnel, which my father had explained went under water, and my amazement as we sped dry through that marvel.
Side head and torso airbags have greatly boosted driver safety in left-side impact crashes, according to a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Side bags alone can make the difference between a “poor” result, and a “good” result, as they do in the case of the 2003 Accord, although structural integrity is also very important. Drivers in cars with a good rating were 70 percent less likely to die in such a crash than drivers in cars rated poor. Drivers of vehicles rated “acceptable” and “marginal” are 64 percent and 49 percent less likely to die in such crashes than drivers of poor-rated cars, respectively. (Read More…)
The last time I attended a ball game, JFK was running for president. My older brother tells me that Mickey Mantle hit a homer. He would remember. Tom was a baseball fan.
I loved cars, not sports. At age six, I asked my mother to count the days until I could drive. I loved especially the elegantly maternal Mercurys. Nonetheless, I saw brands as classification systems, like the species of my beloved butterflies, rather than as foci for tribal loyalty, like my brother’s Yankees.
But fandom–the word derives from “fanatic”–is a holy grail of marketing, and I was not immune. At age nine, I sacrificed my objective appreciation of cars on Madison Avenue’s altar. In choosing my favorite car, loyalty trumped aesthetics. We had a Chevy.
I’ve test driven new cars during three periods in my life. The first of those periods, the year before I bought the Saturn in ’93, I went out every couple of weeks with a friend to do test drives. The second period was in ’96, when the same friend had me test drive the cars he was interested in while he sat shotgun, telling me that if I didn’t scare him, that would mean the car had passed the handling test. He rejected a Volvo 850 and several others, and bought an Audi A4. Then, in ’00, I helped a friend buy his Boxster, breaking my personal Vmax record on Rt. 128, Boston’s beltway in the process. My testing procedure didn’t call for 115 mph; but the car felt so firmly planted–like the Pentagon!–that I had no idea how fast I was going until I checked the speedo. (Read More…)
Backup beepers are everywhere, it seems. Wherever the heavy metal–trucks, steamrollers, steam shovels, cement mixers, buses, or any other vehicle with substantial girth–is backing up, you know it, even if you can’t see it. Because like [monochromatic] laser light, monotone sounds carry further. And now, within the last couple of years, the backup beeper comes standard equipment on your Prius (and, pending passage of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, all electric-drive cars). But if you don’t like it, you can disconnect it. My brother Tom—who has always considered cars to be appliances, but LOVES his Prius—has not disconnected his. “I am not bothered by it particularly,” he says. TTAC Prius owners: what about you? Have you left it on? Disconnected it? Why or why not?
Megan McArdle initially opposed the GM bailout. But now, in an article in the November Atlantic Monthly, the magazine’s business and economics editor paints a positive picture—with a little bit of help from Jack Baruth and TTAC. (Read More…)
At least one of the institutions financing ads damning Democratic candidates this election season wants to put ethanol in your gas tank. The American Future Fund was founded by one Bruce Rastetter, the CEO of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the larger ethanol companies in the US, according to an article in the New York Times. The fund is financing ads aimed at Democrats in key positions to influence booze fuel… so is the problem their “liberal” policies, or the fact that they’re insufficiently supportive of the farm lobby’s beloved corn juice?
Just when we thought that EVs and hybrids might begin to make our city streets quieter, Congress proposes legislation—so unlikely not to be passed—that would require electrics to announce their presence with an external noise source. Section 109 of this year’s Motor Vehicle Safety Act [PDF here], reported out of the House Energy and Commerce committee in early July, requires new hybrids and EVs “to provide an alert sound” so that pedestrians, notably the blind, can hear them. Fortunately, it could take six years before we’re subjected to this, due to the creaky slowness of the bureaucracy. The secretary will have three years after the enactment of the transportation bill to issue the final rule, and “full compliance” won’t be required until September 1 or later of the calendar year that begins three years after the final rule is issued. (Read More…)
Mack had always admired Richard Milhous Nixon, starting with the Checkers speech, but especially after the disgraced ex-president had begun to emerge as an elder statesman. “The man won’t give up,” says Mack, noting that even President Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Rodham, had worked on the Watergate investigation for the House Judiciary Committee, had invited the former President to the White House for consultations. When Mack heard they were making the Frost/Nixon movie, he drove himself across the country and banged on doors in LA until they said he could try out for the lead role. He claims he almost got it, and that even Ron Howard admits that he–Mack–looks a lot more like Nixon than does Frank Langella. Now, back at the gas station in Maynard, Mass, if you tell Mack he looks like Nixon, you could almost swear the ol’ cuss is smiling.
It’s hard to fault the 2010 Lexus ES 350. There is no hint of rattle. The suspension feels as though it would take the worst New England washboard roads with aplomb. The steering is responsive and precise, and the handling crisp at modestly extra-legal speeds on Clifton VA’s marvelously twisty, hilly byways, despite 3,600 lbs of mass–almost parsimonious in this age of bloat–although you get the feeling you might begin to push the limits of crisp if you go much faster around here.
“Studies show that stating “studies show” will increase your chances of winning an argument.” That’s just one of 63 bumper stickers adorning a 2005 Prius, on scifi, the cosmos, numbers, philosophy, and political sentiments that cleverly question the status quo.
The owner is Amy Sutherland, a middle school history teacher who now home schools her youngest. The Prius, the family’s only car notwithstanding, the Sutherlands prefer to walk and take transit when possible, which in Cambridge, Massachusetts is most of the time, and on those odd occasions when two cars are needed, Hubby drives a Zipcar. Truth be told, Amy Sutherland doesn’t particularly like cars, not even the Prius. It’s a necessity, and one she’s not the least interested in fetishizing, unlike those nuts in Hollywood (and unlike a certain ICE-smoking automotive scribe).
I’d been wondering if I’d damaged the fuel pump when I ran out of gas a couple of months ago, for the only time in my 350,000-400,000 lifetime miles. Sometimes, after coasting in gear I’d feel the Accord 5-speed subtly hesitate as I gently pressed the gas. But this morning, the engine seemed to be gasping for fuel, and the check engine light–a species which is well known to cry wolf–was blinking at me as if it really meant it. Instead of to the espresso joint, I headed to the local mechanic.
Most people can’t concentrate on the road while talking on the phone, as Jack E. Robinson, a Boston businessman and former candidate for governor of
Our Fair State discovered when he became the butt of jokes after crashing his car while participating in a radio call-in show. But one in forty people can do both at once, according to a new study from the University of Utah. (Read More…)
It seems political forces are pushing us towards EVs long before EVs are ready for prime time. “California has enormous power over the future of vehicles in this country,” and California regulators want to dump carbon, Tom Baloga, of BMW of North America told a packed audience at a session on EVs at an MIT energy conference March 6th. Thus, we have the Tesla, and the Fisker Karma, and the Leaf and the Volt are due out this year, and I don’t know anyone who wants to buy one, do you?
That Bible of the intelligencia, Consumer Reports, has released its 2010 Annual Auto Issue, and once again, denizens of Cambridge, Austin, Berkeley, Eugene, and their sister university towns all over the land are parsing its pages, seeking cars that will maximize their utility. Or maybe I’m projecting. Anyway, with apologies to Michael Karesh and True Delta, here’s a summary of the work of the wonks from Yonkers and East Haddam. (Read More…)
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