Not sure if this would be appropriate “piston slap” fodder or not, but here goes:
Our blossoming family recently expanded to five. My wife and I, and a three year old, a 20 month old and now a 2 month old fill up the house. We occasionally travel with our 75 lb dog. Knowing the Volvo Turbobrick would not handle the cargo/dog/people, and the PT Cruiser remains the most reliable vehicle ever built (even if the timing belt changes are a big pain) we decided to sell the Volvo for something more appropriate, if a lot slower and FWD.
Enter the Freestyle. We routinely get 28 mpg on trips, parts are cheap, we have lots of cubbies for kid’s junk and the car seats fit easily. I purchased a high mileage (150k) example that was a one owner (ish) with all receipts. It was a fleet car for some guy who then bought it when his company was done with it. It had the CVT replaced at 118k miles with a remanufactured transmission from Ford, installed at a dealer.
Electric sports carmaker Tesla Motors has lost a major part of its high court libel claim against the BBC’s Top Gear programme, but is still suing the corporation for malicious falsehood over an episode that showed the company’s Roadster model running out of battery in a race.
Ruling at the high court in London on Wednesday, Mr Justice Tugendhat said that no Top Gear viewer would have reasonably compared the car’s performance on the show’s airfield track to its likely performance on a public road.
It’s one thing to see a forthcoming performance-model prototype, say an Audi RS4 Avant or a Porsche 991 Turbo, tearing through the “Green Hell.” But it’s quite another to watch one unreleased prototype pass another camo-clad warrior, previewing autobahn battles that are still a good year away. It should come as little surprise that the new Porsche Turbo was able to get around Audi’s speedwagon by diving inside, but given the Audi’s slower line, the cornering-speed battle is closer than you might think. Besides, try taking the kids to hockey practice in an ‘elfer Turbo…
Chinese automakers are delaying exports to Europe and the US until after 2015, largely because they admit their products aren’t “ready for primetime.” And few issues demonstrate that fact as well as the scandalous crash test videos that have defined internet perceptions of Chinese cars for years now. But with even more recent Chinese export-intenders continuing to put up lousy safety results, Autobild reports that, starting in 2012, China will improve its crash test standards to near-European levels. Read More >
Chrysler-Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne is joining the chorus of doomsday CEOs. “2012 will not be a great year for the European market,” Marchionne told Reuters. He is looking to the U.S. and to Brazil for salvation – despite GM’s Akerson having made equally dire forecasts for America.
Fiat is doing so badly at home in Europe that the U.S. and Brazilian markets are now the biggest contributors to the combined group’s profit. Read More >
The German business paper Handelsblatt reports that Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Ernst Lieb, a 36-year Daimler veteran, has been fired for “serious and repeated” violations of the company’s internal finance compliance rules. Per the Dow Jones [via FoxBusiness] translation,
Lieb is said to have remodeled his house in New York at the expense of Daimler and settled personal golf club contributions through the company, the executive is reported as saying.
Lieb has also been accused of providing favors at the company’s expense, such as renting cars in exchange for flight upgrades
Six months after having been devastated at home by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, “Japan has experienced its largest overseas investment loss ever as a result of the flood disaster in Thailand,” Japans’s ambassador to Thailand Seiji Kojima told the Bangkok Post.Read More >
Insurance? For moi? What do you think I am! A jackass?
What’s the most dangerous thing on the road today?
A drunk driver? Some moron who is self-absorbed in his own little texting universe? Maybe an older person who simply doesn’t have what it takes to drive a car anymore?
Not quite.
The most dangerous thing on today’s roads are those folks who fall into these categories and dozens of other high risk behaviors… and don’t carry auto insurance.
When you’re fighting a lost cause, no news can be good news. Which is why a media-distracting scandal involving Swedish Social Democrat Party leader Hakan Juholt has been one of the best things to happen to Saab since… the late 1980s or so. But here at TTAC, we’re always ready to remind our Swedish friends of the futility of human endeavor… a trait they apparently appreciate (see above). And what little news there is coming out of Sweden is bad. Read More >
Georgia’s introduction of high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on Interstate 85 at the beginning of the month has already turned into a public relations disaster. During rush hour, motorists found themselves stranded in the general purpose lanes as the adjacent HOT lane — constructed and maintained with their tax dollars — were essentially unused. Drivers balked at paying the stiff $5.40 entrance tax for permission to enter, leaving the existing lane space to go to waste. Governor Nathan Deal (R) intervened swiftly on October 6 to order the State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) to lower the cost of using the toll lane. Read More >
According to many news sources, the historic Twin Cities Assembly Plant in St. Paul, Minnesota is headed for a not-so-grand finale. Come December 19th, the 86-year-old facility that originally built Model Ts will be history. Ironically, Twin Cities is currently making the T’s spiritual successor: the (somewhat iconic) Ford Ranger compact truck. So shall we, the collective group of automotive journalists, lament the loss of this famous nameplate from Ford’s storied past? Read More >
So there’s this gaijin with one-piece injection-molded plastic hair, like Ken, and he’s firing up the Tredia in some Delysidic maze. Then he sees these, uh, geese… Read More >
Industry leaders, usually known for their unfatiguing optimism, are more and more taking a cautious stance. GM’s CEO Dan Akerson predicts flat industrywide U.S. auto sales in 2012, while his colleague Carlos Ghosn, chief of Renault and Nissan, has feelings of “very great uncertainty” when he looks toward 2012. Read More >
Sales of new passenger edged up only slightly in the EU, rising 0.6 percent to 1,231,147 units sold in September. Nine months into the year, 10,121,423 new cars found a buyer, 1.1 percent less than in the same period a year ago. For all intents and purposes, Europe is flat. Read More >
The “War On Distracted Driving”, like most of the other wars in which the United States has participated in the past forty years, appears to be a rather muddled way of addressing an improperly defined problem. For the Ray LaHoods of the world, it has to be absolutely maddening that the “epidemic” of distracted driving has yet to lead to any sort of measurable decrease in road safety.
For them, I have some good news. While the plural of “anecdote” is never “data”, it would appear that a BlackBerry outage may have gained a crucial hill in the “War On Distracted Driving”. The problem: as usual, the hill is overseas somewhere.
So there’s this gaijin with one-piece injection-molded plastic hair, like 
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