Theodore writes:

Here’s one for you: what’s the best way to secure a parked manual transmission car? I leave mine with the parking brake on and the shifter in first. My cousin puts the brake on and the shifter in reverse. My brother-in-law puts the brake on and the shifter in neutral. So putting the brake on appears to be universal, but where should the shifter be? Is there any extra wear and tear from leaving the car in gear?

Sajeev answers:

Definitely park the vehicle, apply the parking brake and leave in gear. Engaging the clutch ensures the car won’t roll in the time between disengaging the parking brake and putting your foot on the brake pedal. Kinda makes sense when you think about it, no?

Leaving the car in gear won’t increase wear on the engine or clutch, unless you like to crank ‘er up without depressing the clutch pedal. Which assumes you hacked the system to allow the starter to crank without the clutch switch activated. If you went to all that trouble, perhaps you should find another hobby.

As far as your chosen gear, that’s irrelevant: all you care about getting the clutch connected to the engine. Since you mentioned it, I like second gear: it’ll slide in with a mere slap of a wrist from my billet short-shifter.

[Send your technical queries to mehta@ttac.com]

I’ll never forget my first ride in a BMW. I remember the excitement, anticipating a high speed run in an [echt] autobahn-tuned automobile. The driver never broke Nixon’s double nickel. In fact, he stayed in the right lane for the entire trip. Flash forward to two hours ago, G-forcing through the S-curves into Providence. In the middle of the second bend, a Nissan GT-R zipped by my minivan like it was standing still. Hakuna matata. What a wonderful phrase. Hakuna matata. Ain’t no passing craze. The GT-R driver was there. In the moment. In control. Safe?

I know: all things being equal, the higher the differential between vehicle speeds, the greater chance of a collision or loss of control leading to an accident. Well, yes, all things are NEVER equal. Driving safety depends on a huge number of variables: vehicle type and condition; road construction, condition, width, and camber; weather (as it affects grip and visibility); traffic; driver age, experience, sobriety, skill, general psychological makeup and specific mental state. And so on, including dumb luck.

To say that a speeding GT-R is inherently dangerous is both true and relative. Yes, the mustachioed enthusiast caning the über-Nissan would have been less of a danger to himself and those around him if he’d observed the speed limit. But the question must be asked: safer than what? A caffeine-deprived father in his minivan fighting over the radio with his 11-year-old step-daughter while his five-year-old demands that he retrieve her missing crayon? The kid stunting and flossing in a beat-up Buick Century in the Italian astronaut driving position? What?

I’m not trying to defend a Baruthian speeder with moral relativism. The GT-R driver was breaking a law designed by society for society; he has no moral foundation upon which to base his behavior. Besides, blind eye be damned; he was weaving through traffic at warp speed. Guilty as charged. In terms of the whole actions > consequences deal, I’m with Baretta: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” And that’s from someone who’s done the time, and slowed right down.

Although not necessarily to avoid legal sanction (aging, testosterone levels, children . . . connect the dots). Be that as it is, here’s the bottom line: anti-speeding absolutism is feel-good nonsense. It does nothing to make our roads safer.

Anyone who reads this site knows (if not acknowledges) that there are speeders and there are speeders. There is speeding and there is speeding. Once upon a time, police officers made the distinction between “simple” speeding and dangerous driving. These days, radar technology and an ATM-based law enforcement philosophy has removed informed discretion and eliminated simple common sense.

The fact that we’re debating speeding—rather than road safety—shows how far we’ve strayed from cause and effect. Hyper-speeding is rare and therefore relatively unimportant. Inattention due to fatigue accounts for far more accidents than high-speed hooliganism.

Again, I’m not defending adrenalin junkies who use public roads as a private playground. Not cool. Not safe. Not legal. Call me a hypocrite, but I consider balls-out driving four-wheeled cocaine. I tried it. I liked it. I learned the drug’s downside the hard way. I would NEVER do it again. I would NEVER advocate its use. I would NEVER want ANY of my children to even THINK about trying it.

I’m not alone in my hypocrisy. To those who would string up fast drivers in fast cars without a moment’s hesitation, I say mote. Beam. Eye. Remove. Proceed. The vast majority of American drivers routinely break the speed limit. The same majority that considers themselves safe drivers. Well consider this . . .

If drowsy drivers cause or experience more accidents than speeders, who’s a larger menace: the guy blasting along at twenty or thirty or more miles per hour above the speed limit, focusing his mind on the illegal task at hand, or the driver who thinks he’s safe because he’s driving at the speed limit and so fails to engage mentally in his vehicular progress?

Of course, the safest driver is the one who’s driving at the speed limit who IS mentally engaged in the act of driving. I’m guessing that most of the commentators who excoriated Jack Baruth’s guide to street speeding answer to that description.

In an ideal world, everyone would be like you. You’d never share the road with our speed-crazed, morally lax editorialist/reviewer. In the same ideal world, there wouldn’t be any drunk drivers or soccer moms in SUVs yakking on their cell phones as they blow through suburban stop signs.

Here in the real world, there’s a sliding scale of dangerous “others.” Next time you get in your car, ignore the speedo (for a moment) and check your look in the mirror. Forget about “them” and say hello to the most dangerous driver of all.

[NB: This is not an article about TTAC’s editorial stance or style. Click here for a post on that topic. All comments that raise meta-points about the site will be deleted.]

If speed killed, we would all be dead. After all, we are rotating around earth’s axis at up to 1038 mph (1670 kmh) and Earth is zipping around the sun at a whopping 66,660 mph (107,279 kmh). Speed’s not a problem. The problem is when we collide with objects that are moving at speeds that are substantially different than our own.  Jack Baruth would have us believe that if we follow the advice he imparts in his “Maximum Street Speed Explained” series, that we can safely navigate American highways and byways, day or night while traveling at two or three times faster than the prevailing traffic norm. Unfortunately, his advice ranges from the obvious to absurdly dangerous (if he’s trying to be ironic or funny, he has very poor timing).

When the misguided double-nickel national speed limit was revoked, freeway accidents and fatalities declined.  When this change went into effect, faster drivers tended not to drive much faster than they already were.  However, the more compliant drivers sped up to the higher norms, narrowing the dissonance between the faster and slower drivers. Accidents declined even though the average speed on roads increased because traffic was moving at relatively constant and predictable speeds.

So when writing a series on how to drive faster, why not impart some advice on the best times and places to avoid traffic, animals and cops so we don’t make a menace of ourselves while indulging an automotive adrenaline fix? I guess addressing this didn’t occur to Jack. Here are a few examples of what we did get:

The obvious:

Your car needs to have its fluids at the appropriate levels, its tire pressures checked and its suspension components torqued. Your tires need full tread, no plugs, no camber wear.

But wait, there’s more:

You, as the driver, need to be alert, sober, rested, and ready to look all the way down the road.

This is brilliant stuff, folks! They really need to start teaching this to high school kids in driver’s ed.

Now for the absurdly dangerous:

Stay to the right . . . We come up on a car-to-be-passed from directly behind. We do this to attract the driver’s attention into his rear-view mirror.

And we mustn’t forget this pearl of wisdom:

Get in the habit of driving on the shoulder. We learn to drive on the shoulder because we’ll have to do it many times in the future, both to avoid panic-swerves and to pass recalcitrant lane-blockers.

Yes, the shoulder, a good place to pass because on US highways there is never any tire shredding debris that one cannot easily see and avoid while hurling along faster than 150 feet per second.

And for night driving, remember:

We don’t use the shoulder at night unless we have to. Confused deer . . . tend to hide out there.

Thank goodness that confused deer know the difference between the road shoulder and main lanes of the freeway. If they didn’t, it could be a problem for someone driving faster his ability to brake or maneuver around in the distance illuminated by headlights.

This next humdinger’s neither obvious nor absurdly dangerous. It is in a category all by itself. I’ll let you categorize it:

Cops expect you to speed in the left lane and they tend to look down the left lane. Stay to the right.

So cops are blind to cars traveling two to three times faster than the rest of traffic just because they are traveling in a lane 15 feet to the right. Uh huh. Maybe Ohio needs to get new cops with better eyesight. In Texas, they’re not so handicapped.

I could go on . . .

Here’s a clue, Jack: this ain’t Germany. American drivers tend to be poorly trained, distracted, easily startled, and unpredictable. Our highways aren’t maintained with the meticulousness required to make them Autobahn safe.  And most of our roads lack the extra high fencing to keep large mammals from using the interstate as a game trail.

When traffic is traveling at a consistent pace and drivers are acting predictably, driving at high speeds on the freeway is a relatively low risk endeavor. But when some jackass thinks that he can weave through the flow at speeds 200 to 300 percent faster without introducing extreme risk to everyone else, no matter how skilled a driver he thinks he is, he is delusional.

Five years ago I attended the funeral of a friend who killed himself in a single vehicle accident while horsing around on his motorcycle. At least he had the decency not to involve other motorists by utilizing seldom-traveled country roads. Of course, that was little consolation to his devastated wife and the autistic child.

If you must prove your mad driving skills, join a club and take it to a track.

While its Detroit rivals unravel with publicly-funded gusto, Ford continues to enjoy nearly unanimous praise from the media and industry commentators. And why not? Free from the public funding, bankruptcy, dealer slashing and attendant bad publicity plaguing its competitors, Ford is clearly the healthiest of America’s automakers. But it’s impossible to forget that Ford’s buoyancy is but one of the final boons of the pre-collapse credit markets. Mortgaged to the hilt, Ford finds itself facing new CAFE and emissions standards without a certain deep-pocketed uncle standing by to pay its way into the new, green automotive paradigm. As a result, Ford seems to be trading long-term opportunities for short-term survival.

It’s no coincidence that, in the lead up to their bailout bonanza, Chrysler and GM embarked on ambitious (to put it kindly) alt-energy vehicle programs. The more we learn about newly-proposed CAFE/emissions standards, the more Chrysler’s ENVI vapor and GM’s Volt moonshot seem like winning propositions. Yes, really. Gaping loopholes in the proposed legislation point to a credit-trading scheme that seems to have been designed to create a Potemkin auto industry.

Bankable, tradable carbon/efficiency credits (and, especially, so-called “super credits”) create massive government incentives for Detroit’s automakers to build electric and alt-fuel vehicles regardless of their viability in the free market. Since these credits offset (and in the case of super credits, multiply) the efficiency ratings of an OEM’s fleet, tomorrow’s mass-market offerings must be subsidized by EVs with inflated mpg ratings.

Chrysler and GM are perfectly positioned to capitalize on the auto industry’s political New Deal. As the projects of an independent automaker, the ENVI and Volt projects amount to shocking hubris; as dependents of the state however, these “advanced technology” projects are the only incentive for ongoing government subsidies. With the public investment in GM and Chrysler expected to crest $100 billion and with nothing promising a short-term reversal of fortune for these firms, the government has no choice but to continue to invest in the politically-expedient in hopes that it someday becomes financially viable.

Assuming electric vehicles will someday become a workable business model, this puts Ford at a massive disadvantage. By carefully and strategically spending its $23 billion privately-funded do-over fund (acquired in early 2007), Ford has survived without resorting to a government bailout. And though this helps the media in glossing over the uncomfortable details on the way to crowning Ford the winner of “Survivor: Detroit,” it doesn’t change the underlying reality: Ford doesn’t have the capacity to position itself for the post-bailout market.

The curse-blessing of Ford’s survival is perfectly illustrated in the contrast between the media coverage and the reality of Ford’s Focus EV program. Ford has wisely kept its PR field day rolling by announcing that its Michigan Truck Plant will be the new home of the Focus, including future EV and hybrid versions. Dazzled by the vision of electric cars replacing reviled Explorers and Expeditions in a Michigan factory, the media has dutifully repeated and amplified Ford’s message of transformative change.

In reality though, the “Ford-ness” of the Focus EV is highly suspect. Rather than develop an electric car of its own, Ford is licensing a vehicle built by supplier giant Magna with a Focus shell on top. In fact, Magna showed up in Dearborn with a Focus EV prototype based on its modular EV platform, the mila ev.

Ford spins the cost-savings and “innovation” of the supplier-led development as a positive, but the move speaks only of desperation. Ford is mortgaging its future (again) by outsourcing its EV development because the project does nothing to improve Dearborn’s in-house capabilities. Furthermore, it’s outsourcing on the cheap. Ford did not insist on an exclusive contract for Magna’s technology in order to avoid paying for the platform’s entire development.

This means that not only has the Focus EV failed to prepare Ford for the electric future, it has also helped finance a platform that other OEMs can now use to compete with the Focus EV. By buying into Magna’s “any OEM, any car” platform, Ford dooms its Focus EV to competition with identical (save for the body shell) vehicles at even the hint of success. Think cross-OEM brand engineering.

Ultimately, Ford had no choice but to develop an EV on the cheap. Although it enjoys short-term sales prospects that its rivals can only dream of, it’s highly unlikely that Ford will see profits soon enough to spend any more on long-term development. Its limited (if honorably come-by) cash pile is already forcing Ford to punt on EV development, while its cross-town competitors are gearing up to spend billions of taxpayer dollars developing future vehicles with little apparent concern for their short-term oblivion. Recent automotive history (aka the Prius) proves the value of developing long-term capabilities. Ford could well be winning the battle but losing the war.

The Web as we know it is a teenager, but car makers seem to think it’s a baby: cute, with much potential, but inscrutable and insomnia-inducing. One could think of numerous, obvious new applications for automotive marketing, but we don’t see them in practice. Click on a manufacturer’s site to get an instant, confirmed test drive appointment for a car of your ideal configuration? Nope. Can you publicize your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a dealer on a maker’s site (similar to what yelp.com is enabling for all kinds of services)? No dice. Indeed, most commercial car stuff on the web is conventional, and boring. But recently I’ve heard of some Web-based brand-building that is supposed to be better. Here are three examples from the UK.

Volkswagen has created an online racing game for its new Golf GTI. Players can take to a 30ft by 25ft slot car track and negotiate hairpins, straights and narrow bridges. (They use the UK term “Scalextric” in the game, but you don’t have to worry about this). In other words, it’s a simulation of a racing simulation from the 1950s. If you’re not miserable at it, then be prepared to get a message saying “you’ve registered a lap time of x seconds and you’ve qualified for a chance to win a GTI for 3 months!”

It sounds incredibly lame, but the implementation is quite charming (in an English way). I doubt it works in non-British cultures though, and I am sure it wouldn’t translate into any real-world sales if the VW GTI weren’t so good. Playing slot cars is fun when you’re spending two hours with pals, whooping and drinking; but as a video game, it gets sad after about 15 minutes.

It’s a marketing maxim that men like games but women like stories. In that vein, Renault TV is less about how James May would spend an afternoon and more about trying to make a brand sympathetic to a general (i.e., more female) audience. The French manufacturer says it’s an alternative to advertising. Apparently, it offers “more varied messages, creating deeper audience engagement,” by focusing on people, through features on Renault enthusiasts and celebrity drivers. (Renault enthusiasts? I didn’t know they still existed.)

Launch programs include a BBC star driving his vintage Renault 4 from London to Mongolia, entertainingly telling us how some Kazakhs who helped him en route were “absolute idiots”. Another of several well-produced clips is about a bird sanctuary in the Camargue. (Anti-SUV note of the day: you don’t need one to transport injured flamingos or building beams).

I also enjoyed the report on the the cars that a former Renault head of R&D has collected, featuring as it does delectable Alpines and Spyders. Included, and not to be missed: footage of the legendary F1 Espace, a minivan that did 0-60 in two seconds. Along with a feature on the R5/LeCar (believe it or not, we Europeans loved that car), it tries to reinforce the brand’s heritage. Conceivably, this sort of entertaining storytelling can strengthen a brand.

However, the “Autotainment” section, where a PR lady pumps current Renaults, is mostly boring and unbelievable—the kind of advertising nobody wants to watch. So, it almost defeats Renault TV’s premise: to invest in the brand by humanizing it, and not just to push product.

Honda’s “C It Now” (CIN) is a world’s first: a dealership-to-home video technology that “promises to revolutionise car sales.” The idea: buyers in their homes can take a live, detailed tour of a new or used car via a camcorder held by someone at a dealership. A demonstration looks promising, but I’m not convinced this is the future.

What I need from a used-car salesman is his reliable word that a car is as described, or, alternatively, I need a scoring system à la eBay. A video can’t prove to me there is no dog smell, out-of alignment suspension or scratched paint. Also, despite a useful training video, I’m skeptical about the average used-car salesman’s willingness and ability to do a good video presentation.

Honda says a car can now be purchased without the buyer seeing it in the metal, but would you? On the other hand, Honda hints at the real reason why CIN might become popular: “CIN allows people to shop for cars at their leisure, a real bonus for those who don’t want to make the trip to a showroom.” In other words: if you don’t like the looks of that pesky salesman, don’t worry about him getting pushy. Just close your browser.

“To live outside the law,” Dylan sang, “you must be honest.” And so we come to the final part of a series that has offended some and delighted others. Just to provide some value to the querulous quislings of quaint quotidian travel, I’ll pass along one tip for the highway cell-phone snitch. Most highway patrol operations discount singular drunk-driving phone-ins, but they are not permitted to ignore reports of brandished firearms. Don’t like the speeder who just blew by? Call him in for waving a gun. Use a prepaid phone for this, as most cops have little patience for being used in this fashion. Some would say that snitching is bad; didn’t our mothers tell us not be little snitches? Still, you know what’s best for others, so go ahead and make that call.

The rest of us can take the offramp into the suburbs and exurbian roads and practice our maximum street speed here as well. We’d like to take most marked ramps at double the marked limit or above, and this will often lead us to interface with minivans, SUVs, and hybrids for whom the yellow advisory sign reflects a terrifying pinnacle of death-defying speed. Pass ’em on the outside of the lane. There are two reasons for this. The first is that you’ll maintain a higher speed for the same G-load. The second is that if you run out of talent or grip you will exit harmlessly away from the car you are passing, instead of inadvertently re-entering their lane and “PIT”ing them.

I’ve never had anybody acquire the presence of mind to block me in time when doing an offramp pass. It’s simply beyond the program of most road users. Don’t forget to wave in a self-deprecating, thankful manner as you go by. Most people will assume you’ve made some sort of mistake.

It’s nearly impossible to reach triple digits on surface streets, but that doesn’t mean we cannot flow at beyond traffic speeds. Forget about doing a series of back-and-forth lane-changes. That usually produces the same result it did in the movie “Office Space”. Instead, use the turn lane to run up to the end of traffic and then rejoin the main flow.

I’d be fibbing if I said that I always experienced perfect success with my “last-minute faux-forgetful merge technique”. Some drivers can be stubborn. To combat this, I purchased a 1991 Chevrolet Caprice Classic woodgrain-trim wagon, known as a “bubble” in the argot of the streets, and immediately experienced the freedom to merge without fear.

When operating vehicles at speeds of about 35mph or below, most motorists are alert enough to compensate for your traffic-defying behavior, up to and including temporarily driving in the oncoming lane. When I need to do something like jump a green light and left-turn an intersection before that traffic can start moving, I find it’s helpful to clutch a deactivated cell phone to my ear, as if I were enraptured by conversation. This fits into other drivers’ preconceptions—a distracted phone user—and they fail to take direct offense to aggressive action.

The fake cellphone is also a great aid to merging into occupied lanes. Move your car over, absolutely fail to make eye contact with any other drivers, look back once the merge is complete, wave the phone apologetically, and continue on.

Sometimes we’re in a situation where traffic simply isn’t moving and a U-turn is required. But there isn’t enough room or time to do one due to a tight road or approaching traffic. What to do? The answer is the “Jarno Donut.” It works with most RWD cars. Crank the wheel all the way to the left, rev to five grand, drop the clutch. The first time you try it you may wind up doing a 270 instead of a 180, so practice at home. Of course, it’s called a “Jarno Donut” in tribute to that outstanding qualifier and vintner, Jarno Trulli, who frequently finds himself backwards in his Toyota.

To open up room for aggressive maneuvers, we can take advantage of a certain panic response in most drivers. When they hear squealing tires in the immediate vicinity, curiosity and concern will make them slow down and scan the immediate area. If we need a car to move out of a lane and the adjoining one is open, we can drive up at a higher speed and engage the ABS next to them as we sail by. This almost always produces a sympathetic brake slam and opens the spot.

Final tip: every Prius ever made will always yield its road position to an aggressive driver, as will every car on the road with more than one “Obama ’08” sticker. Good night, and good luck.

[Click here to read Part I . . . or Part II . . . or Part III . . . of this series. Note: as these editorials have triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples in an entirely first amendment friendly sort of way.]

The grand poobahs at the PTFOA are Wall Street bankers and political insiders. None of them have built or run real businesses designing, marketing, selling and supporting high priced consumer products. Everything they think they know they learned from books and lectures, not from actually doing stuff. The old story goes: “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” To the Wall Street types, slash and burn is the hammer they know. Even President Hope has taken to using their favorite motto “Lean and Mean.” Surely we need lean, productive companies, but who needs mean?

GM and Chrysler, under orders from the PTFOA, are decimating their dealer network in the perverse expectation that doing so will lead to higher sales and/or profits. The word decimate comes from the Romans’ practice of showing displeasure with the soldiers by randomly killing one-in-ten of them. While the famously brutal Romans capped their ritual slaughters at 10%, GM and Chrysler are killing off more like 30% of these formerly loyal partners.

Many have made the argument that the bloodletting is necessary to improve GMAC’s cash flow, reduce GM and Chrysler’s inventory costs and give the remaining dealerships the chance to make better profits with which to support future sales efforts.

All of those arguments point to second order effects, not primary effects. GMAC’s floorplanning business, for example, has historically been wildly profitable. Credit worthy dealers paying their floorplan loans on a timely basis are a benefit to GMAC, not a liability. What bank hates having good paying revolving loan customers?

Those dealers which do not demonstrate ongoing creditworthiness should have their credit lines pulled, which in many cases will force them to close down. The floorplan and other second order arguments duck the main reason why financially viable dealerships should not be wantonly shut down by decree from Detroit or Washington.

More sales outlets means more places for customers to buy cars, more places selling the highly profitable OEM parts and more places paying the various fees which go along with being a franchised dealer. Franchise discipline practices which enforce quality standards are long overdue, but swinging the hatchet pell mell is no solution to that problem.

The dealerships are in fact the customers of the factory. No manufacturer of any product in history has successfully maintained or increased its sales volume or profitability by decimating its customer base and sales channel. Surely it makes sense to get rid of crooked and/or financial weak dealerships. The speed with which the recent slaughter has been carried out demonstrates simple minded meanness and not smart management.

The dealer slaughter frenzy all started with Wall Street analysts pointing out the numeric sales per dealership advantage which Toyota, Honda and other enjoy over the Detroit-Washington 2.8. Financial analysts are often much better at describing the disease than they are at prescribing the best medicine.

In 1998 when Daimler merged with Chrysler, not a word was said about the excess dealership millstone around Chrysler’s neck. In the eleven years since then the problems with Chrysler have boiled down to a series of botched new products. Dealers didn’t create that problem and nuking dealers will do nothing to solve it.

The rational thing to be doing right now would be a selective culling of dealerships based on quality and financial stability criteria. Most of the really bad dealerships will self-destruct without any help from Detroit or mean spirited zone managers. Instead of this, we are seeing summary decimation carried out as a result of the “appear to do something bold” political imperative.

The contrast between Ford and its cross-town rivals on this subject is quite telling. Ford is selectively culling the dealer herd and will likely come out the other side of this period with the strongest vehicle sales and service channel in North America.

Books and articles will be written about how even with greatly reduced dealer numbers, GM and Chrysler will continue to loose sales at an accelerating rate as the remaining dealers do not in fact pick up the slack from their slain comrades. The real reason the dealer slaughter is going on is to offer blood sacrifice to the gods of Washington and Wall Street. God help us.

From 1973 through 2005, my job was to create excitement for Volkswagens in the hope that people would buy them. The job had its ups and downs. We loved facelifts and hated totally new cars. With a facelift, we could travel to attractive and warm places for the photo shoot. “Because of the sun.” Not to mention the beach. And the nice amenities of the Hotel Negresco in Nice. With a facelift, we could tool around in broad daylight, and nobody would bat an eye or even think of snapping a picture. Which magazine would publish the spy shot of a re-designed bumper? Totally new cars were top secret. Not allowed to travel outside the confines of the VW factory. Even there, constantly under tarps. The only places we could photograph them were at the in-house photo studio or at the VW proving grounds in Ehra-Lessien.

Ehra-Lessien (“Ehra” for short) was—still is—in a godforsaken place north of Wolfsburg. Surrounded by woods, barbed wire and an army of guards, Ehra is Europe’s largest test track. According to Wikipedia, “they had originally built it here during the Cold War, because it was a no-fly zone on the East German border, safe from prying eyes seeing secret prototypes.”

We said they built it there because they saved barbed wire on the one side abutting the death strip of the border. It was a lie. Read More >

The Detroit News headline: “Obama Auto Bailout Draws Fire.” Suddenly, without warning, Motown’s hometown newspaper has changed sides. What was “their” bailout has become “Obama’s.” The altered allegiance comes hot on the heels Chrysler and GM’s decision to terminate around a thousand dealers apiece. This is not music to the domestic supporters’ ears; the dealer cull represents the complete, final and unavoidable end of Motor City’s domination of the American car industry. The fact that the domestics’ supporters are suddenly behind the franchisee push back—which could scupper both automakers’ future—shows the depth of Detroit’s denial. While the bailout boosters gave The Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) props for shit-canning GM CEO Rick Wagoner, you can file this one under no good deed goes unpunished.

Like any political battle, the latest front in Motown’s wider war against reality is a race against time. Can the axed dealers’ political allies wrest control of GM’s post C-11 future from president Obama’s “smartest guys in the room” before (as?) the company sinks into complete chaos? We’ll see. The DetN reports that Congress critters are firing multiple salvos against US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Reps Kucinich, LaTourette, Conyers, McCotter and others sent Timbo a missive calling for the Obama administration to hand the whole bailout thing “back” to Congress.

To do what, exactly? Other than saving the dealers cast adrift by Chrysler and GM, they got nothing. Which puts the offended politicians at level pegging with the PTFOA. Remember: the PTFOA decided to arrange a shotgun marriage between Chrysler and Fiat, swap the “old” Chrysler’s liabilities for a worthless promissory note (i.e., shares in “new” Chrysler), give the born-again (and again and again) car maker a multi-billion dollar dowry and . . . call it good.

The plan sounded crazy—and it still does. Strangely, despite the dealers’ howls of protest, no one [who votes] seems to care that the feds sold Chrysler down the river. On Friday, Fiat named the three Board of Directors members who will control the new, taxpayer-supported Chrysler LLC. Ignoring the Wagoner problem (Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne will be both ChryCo’s CEO and a Board member), the announcement was a tacit admission that Chrysler will now be an Italian company. Protectionist outrage? Nowhere to be seen.

This is no small point. As we count down the final hours until GM’s C11, as Congress bellyaches to no practical effect, we can expect history to repeat itself. Former Chrysler exec Jerry York is active again, desperately seeking a chunk of post-C11 GM to call his own. OK, Renault/Nissan’s AND his own. In other words, GM’s C11 could be Chrysler II.

And why not? In Chrysler’s final analysis, all the xenophobic rhetoric about federal tax dollars “saving America’s industrial base” counted for nothing. Not only have the zombies been “allowed” to shutter plants and jettison American production jobs, they’ve been “encouraged” to terminate tens of thousands of dealership-related jobs.

I’m not saying it was the wrong thing to do. I’m simply pointing out that the original logic underpinning the entire $100 billion (and counting) bailout process has disappeared. Which brings two maxims to mind: nature abhors a vacuum and a week is along time in politics.

Will Renault/Nissan fill the hole where the world’s largest automaker used to be? Given that Uncle Sam didn’t get dime one from Fiat for Chrysler, there’s literally nothing to stop them. And if not them, someone. While the feds’ restructuring plan assumes public ownership of the “new” GM, Obama’s army isn’t stupid enough to cling to the ship as it’s sucked beneath the waves. Congress is—which is a scary thought.

Either way, the clock is ticking, and it’s a time bomb. Voters will not put up with this Motown mishegos forever. And the longer this process continues, the worse GM’s chances of even pretending to be in a position to recover. Immediately after The General files, May’s sales figures will emerge. And after that, June. And so on. Anyone who thinks that the GM sales chart’s arrow won’t point straight to hell is seriously deluded.

Delusion is, of course, GM’s strong suit. It suffuses the company’s management. It blights its unions. It envelops its dealers. It infects its pet media. It even afflicts its customers. That’s how General Motors got into this pickle. And that’s how they’re not going to get out.

Unless, that is, Renault/Nissan or some other outside “investor” repeats Fiat’s “pay no attention to this faux Chapter 7” strategy, scarfs up GM’s good bits for bupkis and cleans house. In that case, General Motors might survive. If so, it will be a vastly smaller enterprise.

In fact, any GM that emerges from C11 won’t be GM in any recognizable way. That would be a good thing for some of the automaker’s current stakeholders. But by no means all. Whether it’s warfare or bankruptcy, “surgical” doesn’t mean bloodless.

One amazing aspect about the hunt for the distressed assets of Chrysler and GM is the absence of the Chinese. Weren’t they eager to snap up anything they could get their hands on? And who would have thought that Fiat of all auto makers would walk away with Chrysler—and possibly large parts of GM—if their Opel bid gets approved? The absence of the Chinese was duly noted in Ed Niedermeyer’s piece “Where Is China?” It talked about xenophobia, and the discussion soon turned into a xenophobic slugfest and had to be closed.

Guess what: China is still interested. But a more serious cold war adversary is currently in pole position to get their hands on the European part of General Motors: Russia. Some see the Kremlin itself running Opel.

Yesterday, we reported that a Chinese company had voiced their interest in Opel, a day late after the bidding was closed Wednesday.

Financial Times now fingers Beijing Automotive Industry Corp (BAIC) as the Johnny-come-lately which “has expressed an interest in buying a stake in Opel together with the rest of General Motors’ European operations.”

Beijing Auto is no stranger to joint ventures. Their joint venture with AMC actually predated Volkswagen’s China engagement by a hair: Beijing Jeep started cranking out Cherokees in 1983. That led to Chrysler and later to a joint venture with Daimler Benz, which is still on-going. Yes, you can buy a Made-in-China E-Class and C-Class Benz.

Beijing Auto’s offer is a bit mysterious and is generally not taken seriously. Even in China, people have their doubts: “No Chinese car company can afford to pay that much money,” said Li Chunbo of Citic Securities in Beijing. Wrong choice of words or bad translation perhaps. They surely “can” afford the €650 million, which is the current bargain-basement price for a controlling stake in Opel. They may not “want” to, but, as the letter from Beijing shows, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

The hot prospect for control of Opel is . . . no, it’s not Magna. It’s pretty much the Russian government. At a Friday briefing in Berlin, Magna co-Chief Executive Siegfried Wolf “laid out the company’s Opel plan for the first time, confirming it aims to team up with Russian partners,” as Reuters has it. In the briefing, Magna confirmed that together with the Russian bank Sberbank Rossii they made a “non-binding indicative” offer to invest €700 million. A portion of this investment would be guaranteed by the German government, which is also expected to underwrite billions of loan guarantees for Opel.

Under the offer, GM would keep a 35 percent equity stake in Opel, while Sberbank would take 35 percent, Magna would get 20 percent and Opel’s employees would get 10 percent. The German magazine Der Spiegel analyzed the deal. Their conclusion: “The one who profits most: the Kremlin.” According to the magazine, Sberbank is a “quasi governmental organization” (60 percent of its stock is owned by Russia’s central bank).

Sberbank is run by German Gref, Russia’s former Minister of Economics and Trade, and part of Putin’s inner circle. GAZ, also part of the Magna bid, is also close to the Kremlin. GAZ’s owner, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, also a Putin faithful, had stock in Magna until last year. The linkup between Magna/Sberbank/GAZ and Opel was an early favorite of the Social Democrats and the German metalworker union.

“A Russian-social democrat-union old boys network for Opel?” asks Der Spiegel. Opel has a cool image in Russia, GAZ can use Opel’s know-how. And Sberbank would finally pull of the Western takeover they had wanted so much and could never complete.

Now what about Magna? With its 20 percent, it would play third fiddle. Says Der Spiegel: “Investment bankers have a suspicion: The Russians knew that they would have met with political opposition if they would have bid directly for a Western company. They simply sent Magna ahead. The partnership with the Austro-Canadian parts maker is only a tactical maneuver. The Russians are in the driver’s seat.”

Funny coincidence: Before striking a deal with AMC, Beijing Auto made Russian Jeeps. Production continued well into the new millennium. Conspiracy theorists to the front, please.

Mark from Klamath Falls, writes:

My friend from Europe is visiting the USA next summer. We’re planning a three week road trip around the American Southwest. He’s a car fan (Alfa Romeo variety), and wants to tour around in something typically American with a V-8 and a drop top. I normally drive a Miata, but that’s too small for all our stuff, plus no V-8 (at least not yet).

I figure I can buy a previous generation (2004 and older) Mustang GT convertible, drive it for the summer, and then sell it for about the cost of a rental.  My question: what suspension modifications do I need to make beyond new tires and shocks to make the Mustang handle reasonably well (not Miata-like but close) without resulting in a ride that beats us up on long trips? I’m thinking Panhard Rod, but am open to any ideas that cost less than around $1,000 in parts (I can do the install myself for anything short of major surgery).

Please note: this has to be an American V-8 convertible – don’t bother suggesting alternative cars that don’t fit that criteria.

Read More >

It was just another day at the “Tail Of The Dragon” for the group of experienced sportbikers clustering around the Robbinsville, NC, gas station. Fresh from multiple high-speed runs down the famed road, they were reliving their victories when a long-haired old man in some girly convertible asked them to “show him the fast way through.”

“Fuck off. We don’t wait for old cagers,” was the reply. As fate would have it, they didn’t have to. Five of the six knee-draggers had to yield to that old man in his Porsche-with-panties before the halfway point. The sixth and fastest made a mistake, went off, and snapped his fairing into three pieces. The nice old man stopped and helped him carry his bodywork to the “Tree of Shame” at the Dragon’s end.

Contrary to what you read in Car and Driver, we can’t drive “10/10ths” on back roads. In Speed Secrets, Ross Bentley talks about the bell curve of tire traction. The more we ask from the tires, the more we get . . . but as we reach the limit of traction, the rate of slip increases. As we pass the “peak” of traction, the tires “fall off” at the same rate . . . but now we have no safety margin for gravel, road waves, animals, and whatnot.

We need to stay on the safer side of the tire-traction curve. That means we drive up to the audible squeal but not past it. To make this happen, we drive what I call the “Safe Line.” This is what I teach to novice racing students, and it’s the only “racing line” we can use on back roads.

Approach each turn at the very outside edge of the pavement. For right-handers, this means either the edge of the double-yellow or the far edge of the road, depending on your vision and personal risk tolerance. Brake in a solid, single swift motion, “squeezing on” and “easing off.” If you over-slow the car, that’s fine. Wait longer next time. But don’t re-accelerate this time. When you have completed braking, turn your head past the “clipping point” of the turn, which is either the inside curb or the double-yellow, focus on the exit, and make a single turn-in motion. Keep constant throttle until you reach the clipping point, then unwind the steering wheel before applying throttle for the exit.

Since we are not on a racetrack, we don’t trail-brake, we don’t “adjust” the car in mid-corner with left-foot braking or throttle inputs, and we don’t even think about applying power until the car is pointed properly to the exit. Most importantly, we take the absolute latest apex, which is to say that we wait as long as possible to turn the car into the corner before turning sharply. This reduces mid-corner speed, but it also reduces inadvertent corner exits.

To do this quickly, you need “traction sensing”: the ability to guesstimate potential corner speed the first time you see a turn. I can’t give that to you. You’ll have to earn it over time by steadily increasing the speed at which you approach known corners until something goes wrong.

Racetrack time doesn’t help much here. Racetracks don’t have pavement waves, big bumps, salt, gravel, dead animals, or Amish people in horse-drawn carriages. If you see any of those, you’re either on the road, or you’re at Nelson Ledges Road Course for a “Friday Funday.” Forget what you know about on-track traction sensing. You can be an SCCA champion and still finish your first Ohio backroads drive in close proximity to a guardrail or tree. Ask me how I know.

Between corners, we accelerate at full speed until it’s time to brake for the next. The exception to this is when we run “The Pace.” The concept of “The Pace” is an old sportbike maxim: set a maximum speed between corners and treat it as a hard ceiling. On the backroads group drives in which I occasionally run, that ceiling is 110mph. Go faster than that, even for a moment, and you can go home alone. No exceptions.

If you enter a corner too hot, straighten the wheel and apply full ABS. Chances are you will go off, but you will go off slow. If you find yourself “saving” a turn by braking in the middle, guess what? You had enough traction to make it through on the throttle.

When you are in mid-air from a “whoop,” do not hit the brakes. Relax your hands and make sure your thumbs are clear of the steering, and keep the throttle at the same place you had when you left the ground. Oh, yeah: keep your eyes up for other road users and treat ’em with courtesy, of course. Pass with care.

Part IV is the finale, in which we discuss suburban and urban techniques.

[Click here to read Part I or Part II of this series. Note: as these editorials have triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples, in an entirely first amendment friendly sort of way.]

As it struggles to find its way through bankruptcy, Chrysler Corp. has announced its most recent cut back. The automaker is eliminating turn signals from its vehicles. In a written statement, a Chrysler spokesperson said that with turn signal usage falling below 10 percent, slicing the cost from each car (estimated at $22) would save the Fiat division over $44 million a production year (based on sales of over two million cars in 2007). “Our studies of vehicle equipment usage found that sixty-five percent of drivers were unaware that their cars actually had a turn signal device,” the press release revealed. “Of the thirty-five percent that were aware of the devices, only half even knew how to use them.” To counter safety advocates’ criticism of the equipment deletion, and bolster its case for a NHTSA waiver, Chrysler released the results of a driver survey.

Read More >

Now that Jack Baruth’s editorial series “Maximum Street Speed Explained” has hit the servers, more than a few of TTAC’s Best and Brightest have hit the roof. A few of them felt so strongly about the inadvisability of the rants’ publication that they’ve followed Elvis’ example and left the building. I can understand that. Road safety is an emotional issue. As Lord Humongous said, “We’ve all lost someone we love.” Or worry about same. But, in this case, my empathy does not extend to self-censorship. In other words, I stand by my decision to publish Jack’s editorials. Before I present my case, I want to get a few things out of the way . . .

First, Jack’s views are not my own. Many of our enervated readers concluded—wrongly—that giving the “oxygen of publicity” to Jack’s how-to guide means that I condone speeding on public roads. As someone who’s lost both his license (twice) and close friends to illegal driving of one sort or another, I believe that motorists should all follow the law. Scrupulously. Fastidiously. That is my official stance. Period. 

[In case you were wondering, I am not hypocritical in this regard. OK, most of the time I’m driving a minivan. And I will admit to giving the Boxster S its head on the odd off-ramp. But generally speaking, I would never do ANY of the things that Jack describes, even if I have done some of them in the past.]

Second, I didn’t publish Jack’s work as a form of “trolling.” Those of you familiar with this site will know that our goal is, believe it or not, to tell the truth about cars. When I called for GM to ditch the Corvette, I wasn’t kidding, trolling or pimping for readers. While TTAC will never run from a fight, nor will we hesitate to start one, we never head fake. We never “pretend” to believe something to stimulate debate or increase viewership. That’s just not how we roll. 

Third, “we.” Ever since this site began, I have actively sought contrary opinions. And published them. I have never believed that I—or anyone else—has a “lock” on the truth. In fact, it is my firm conviction that the truth emerges from vigorous debate. In some cases, it withstands that debate. In other cases, the conflict reveals the original assertion as incomplete, ill-considered, flimsy and/or just plain wrong. So be it. Not to get all hippy-dippy, but as far as I’m concerned, the truth is independent from the person who gives it voice. It is what it is.

And so we turn to this particular case . . .

In this series, Jack is providing information based on his experience as a law-breaker. He is also advising others how they might break the law and get away with it. The danger is clear: someone might read his words, attempt to follow his “guidelines” and injure or kill themselves and/or others. I get it. 

But this is not likely, nor is it his intent. To me, Jack’s message—if not the underlying morality—is clear. IF you are going to engage in this activity known as speeding, THIS is how you should do it.

Which brings us to an uncomfortable, statistically verifiable truth: speeding is like masturbation. Few of us admit it, but we all do it. Yes, there’s a vast gap between what the law allows and what Jack’s describing. But pretending that his actions are not ours writ large is disingenuous at best.  

Anyway, doing it is one thing. Reading about it on TTAC is another.

I decided to publish Jack’s editorials because I think they raise important questions worthy of closer examination and spirited debate. However inadvertently. And so they have. To my mind, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Commentators who believe that I should have excluded Jack’s opinions undervalue their own contribution.  

The biggest problem here may not be the substance of Jack’s views, but the way he presents them. For some of you, Jack’s rant is like a sex tourist bragging about having intercourse with an underage prostitute. Fair enough. But it is my experience that the majority of writers worth reading are born braggadocios. There is only one effective weapon against the terror of the blank page: ego. Jeremy Clarkson excepted, do not mistake mission critical rhetorical flamboyance for arrogance.

My final argument is this: TTAC started as vanity publishing. It has become something much more sophisticated, and worthwhile. It has become the conscience—the proverbial canary in the coal mine—for the carmaking industry. It’s also become a safe place for pistonheads to share their unvarnished, often prickly love of all things automotive.

We did not get where we are today by excluding thinkers with controversial, often polarizing opinions. The brand demands that we encourage strong voices, and err on the side of outrage. And so we shall.

[Note: as this series has triggered some strong emotions, I’ve turned off our no-flaming the website/author policy. Ish. I reserve the right to douse particularly egregious examples, in a first amendment-friendly sort of way.]

How many Mercedes owners change their own oil to save a few bucks? The latest “Meet the Volkswagens” TV ad doesn’t just insult Benz owners’— and everyone else’s—intelligence. It’s also racially insensitive. By depicting a white guy with his face blackened with oil, it raises the specter of 19th century minstrel shows. OK, that’s a stretch. But so is VW’s supposition that reminding customers of their over-familiarity with their local dealer’s service department is a good thing. And what does a Microbus sliding out of a nearby garage have to do with anything, Amigo? Wait . . . cue-up the Routan commercial . . .

There’s that Microbus again, with its “Cars” rip-off happy hippy stoner’s voice (as opposed to the Beetle’s Arte Johnson-esque German accent). In this ad, the Routan asks an Odyssey owner if her van has an “autobahn-tuned suspension.” Instead of checking her meds, soccer Mom replies that there’s no autobahn in Japan. True! Nor is there an autobahn in Canada, where Chrysler builds the Routan. Or Lincoln, Alabama, where Honda builds the Odyssey. Or the rest of America, where Odyssey mom lives. To the same point, the day a Routan driver explores the limits of her minivan’s autobahn-tuned suspension is the day I’m parking my Audi.

Needless to say, VW doesn’t have the corner on bad commercials. Suzuki’s “Supercar” ad makes it look like an SX-4—or any other car— can’t traverse a pothole without shifting into 4WD. How about Saturn’s recent campaign, where they attempt to reassure their remaining customers that they’re still the “just plain folks” brand that they were back when they were barbecuing—I mean building cars—in Tennessee? A Saturn salesman warns viewers that there’s a car company out there that’ll take your car away from you if you lose your job. Jeez. How un-American is that?

He’s alluding to the “Hyundai Assurance” program where you can return the car with no impact on your credit rating if you lose your job and can’t make payments. Mr. Saturn makes it sound like Hyundai’ll hunt you down and pry the car from your hands as soon as you’re unemployed. Then Saturn man assures you that his [temporary] employer would never treat you that way. Really? Anyone want to guess what Saturn will do the day after their nine-month grace period on payments expires and you’re still unemployed and not making the payments?

And what happens to Saturn’s “Total Confidence” plan after GM sells the “ReThink” brand to the Chinese or Roger Penske or whomever shows up with cash in hand? Or no one at all? Call me cautious but I wouldn’t feel too confident about Saturn’s ability to back any of their promises at this juncture.

Chrysler’s latest commercials proclaim that the bankrupt company (shhhh!) builds dugouts, lockers, easy chairs, radar systems, TV stations, starting gates, skyscrapers, fish finders, battery chargers, base camps, luxury suites, transporters, mechanical bulls, sanctuaries, viewmasters, security cameras, troop transports, and moving vans. No wonder their sales numbers looks so bad. They’ve been building all these neat things while everyone else is building cars and trucks. But don’t worry, be happy! It’s all backed by the U.S. Government, so buy your whatever-it- is they build with total confidence!

Ford wants you to know they’re still building trucks. BIG trucks. In fact, one commercial highlights their extra-cost tailgate and bedside steps and tells you how much you need them to get in and out of the bed of the F-150.  Well, if they’re that important, why aren’t they standard? Or even better, if it’s such a chore to get stuff out of the back, why doesn’t Ford make the F-150 a more manageable size so you can just reach over the side to get what you want, like you could a few years back?

If you’re Chevy, and you can’t match the competition’s feature, you just make fun of it! In a Silverado commercial, Howie Long ridicules an F-150 driver (the usual stereotypical clumsy, balding, overweight schlub they use when they want you to know someone’s less than a “real” man) for using his “man step.” It’s the same sort of “you’re a faggot” put-down used by brain-dead high school football players (not to stereotype or anything) on classmates who can program a computer.

After questioning their competition’s customers’ sexuality, Chevy brags about Silverado’s “unbeatable” five year/100K mile powertrain warranty. But they won’t compare their warranty to the Dodge Ram’s lifetime powertrain warranty. Instead, they just belittle the Ram’s less-than-real-man owner for having a heated steering wheel and a manicure.

One good thing that’s come from the auto industry meltdown: fewer car commercials. Unfortunately, the remaining ones are getting worse, as the automakers grow increasingly desperate for sales. They’ll try anything to attract attention, whether it’s lying, belittling the competition or insulting viewers’ intelligence. Come to think of it, what’s changed?