Bashing the buff books is a regular exercise for we bitter car bloggers who are forced to earn a living writing about cars without manufacturer junkets, auto show swag, or a steady stream of the latest, hottest vehicles to test. And one has only to look at their circulation numbers to see that they probably deserve much of what they get. But in the midst of a media frenzy about sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota’s, would you believe that Car & Driver has actually made a contribution to the national discourse that’s worth more than a week’s supply of frenzied-yet-ultimately-inaccurate headlines? Believe it. Not only do the paper-and-ink guys prove that a V6 Camry can be braked from 100-0 at full throttle in under a hundred feet more than it can at no throttle, but they even explain how to control a car that experiences unintended acceleration. You know, besides suing the manufacturer or giving self-righteous testimony under oath, before congress. Now that is auto journalism.
QOTD is a fairly irregular exercise for us, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t dust it off for today’s marathon hearings before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Needless to say, the ten-ish hour affair offered too rich a bounty of choice quotes to properly choose just one. And so we have two: the first and one of the last quotes of the day’s proceedings. The day opened with the following words from Chairman Edolphus Towns:
Good morning. I thank you all for being here. It is hard to imagine the horror of the event that took the lives of an entire family near San Diego, California on August the 28th, 2009. California highway patrolman, Mark Saylor, his wife, their 13 yr old daughter, and Mrs Saylor’s brother, Chris, were driving in a Toyota Lexus, a loaner car that the Toyota dealer provided while their car was being repaired. As they drove along the highway, suddenly the car… accelerating [sic] rapidly, he stood on the brakes, but nothing happened. No matter what he did, he could not stop the car from flying down the road, faster and faster. As this car reached top speed in just seconds, it was all he could do just to kep it under control. In a frantic call to 911, his brother-in-law, Chris, reported the gas pedal was stuck, the brakes did not work, and they were barreling down on an intersection. He yelled over the phone “hold one, hold on, hold on and pray. And those were his last words.”
This CC Outtake is not about the Valiant per se; I’ve got the ultimate A-Body in the works for that (and we did a Duster 340 already), and it’s coming soon too. This is about what cars are worthy to be considered a Valiant successor. From the looks of this photo, this household thinks highly of the Mazda 626 to supplant the now rarely-used Plymouth. Well, they’re in good company; the 626 cultivated a rep for reliability, right from the beginning. In the eighties and nineties it was held in particularly high regard in Germany, and was the best selling Japanese car for a few years there, in part to its excellent showing in the ADAC Pannenstatistik. It was at the top of that list in 1994 and 1995. Read More >
After a lot of to and fro, GM today officially gave up on the Hummer deal. Reuters reports that “General Motors Co will wind down its Hummer SUV line after failing to complete a deal to sell the brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co.”
“We are disappointed that the deal with Tengzhong could not be completed,” John Smith, GM’s outgoing vice president of corporate planning and alliances, said in a statement. This is the last in a row of failed deals Smith misengineered. Read More >
I will be Skyping into the BBC World News for a discussion of the Toyota hearings sometime shortly after 5pm Eastern Time (just over an hour from now). Do tune in, if you are able.
The biggest (only?) fringe benefit of my job is what I learn. Decades of perusing old books and magazines don’t begin to add up to the collective knowledge and perspective that TTAC’s commentators provide. Case in point: I wrote the Illustrated History of Automotive Aerodynamics because I’ve always been smitten by streamlined cars ever since I saw a Tatra as a young child. And I thought I had all the slippery bases pretty well covered. But thanks to a late comment by NeilBlanchard, I’ve been introduced to what is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable aerodynamic cars ever, the 1938 Schlörwagen. It was originally tested at Cd 0.186, but a later test by VW in the seventies of a model resulted in a Cd of 0.15. Either of these values put the “pillbug” at or near the top of the list of the most aerodynamic concept cars ever built, like the Ford Probe V of 1985, with a Cd of .137. Read More >
Before Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood even took the stand before the House Energy Committee, the Washington Post [via TheCarConnection] reported that:
NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn’t employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.
Down on the Potomac, zingers like that go over like an ounce of catnip in a phone booth full of rowdy toms. And sure enough, the question came up at LaHood’s testimony. In fact, it came up twice. And it was the closest thing to a real “gotcha” moment in a long day of testimony.
Reuters reports that the Detroit offices of Denso, a major Japanese automotive supplier, has been raided by the FBI as part of an on-going investigation into alleged anti-trust violations. Denso spokeswoman Bridgette Gollinger said the investigation was “absolutely not” related to ongoing recalls by Toyota. Denso supplies accelerator pedals (see above) and other components to the automaker. “We are cooperating with the investigation,” Gollinger said. The FBI raid was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which said that federal investigators had also searched the Detroit area offices of two other Toyota suppliers, Yazaki and Tokai Rika. Curious coincidence of timing as this happens while Akio Toyoda testifies on Capitol Hill.
Maybe the title should be “What Grates My Ears”, because there is no automotive sound that more predictably induces a spike of cortisol than the clatter of studded tires on pavement. As they steadily chew up the roads in Maritime western Washington and Oregon, where it snows once every couple of years or so, it’s also the sound of idiocy, greed and government’s inability to act on the obvious. That so few are allowed to create so much public damage, is truly mind boggling, especially as it results in little or no actual benefit to them. The conditions under which spikes offer some possible benefit (sheet ice) exist about 1% of the time. Even then, the actual improvement under those conditions is only 10%! And contrary to the popular myth, spikes offer little or no benefit on snow, and are materially worse on wet pavement, which of course is what it is most of the time on the west coast. And it’s not just the millions in dollars ($17 million per year in Washington alone) in damage alone that’s the problem; spikes make the roads much more dangerous for everyone, including the spikers. Read More >
After a big buildup by expert witnesses, and Toyota’s Jim Lentz’s evasion of any evidence that his firm’s cars are afflicted with an untraceable electronic gremlin, the House Energy Committe turned its attention to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Because LaHood’s department falls under the congress’s oversight (and carries the government’s ultimate responsibility for the safety of American motorists), LaHood might well have been the main focus of the committee’s investigation. And indeed his last-in-line billing appears to make him the event’s headliner. Or at least it would have if his testimony didn’t make the previous several hours of Ahab-ing largely unnecessary, and possibly even highly embarrassing. Read More >
The benefits of gasoline engine downsizing has its latest poster child: the new Polo GTI. It’s a graphic example of why diesel market share in Europe is declining, especially in smaller cars: a 25% reduction on the European mileage standards, without any loss of performance. The GTI’s 1.4 liter TSI produces 177 hp (132kW), exactly the same as its 1.8 liter predecessor. But the combined fuel consumption is 5.9 L/100km (40 mpg US)—equivalent to CO2 emissions of 139 g/km, 25% lower than the outgoing model. Knowing that it also squirts to 100km (62 mph) in 6.9 seconds and comes standard with a 7 speed DSG transmission is only rubbing the wound of knowing it’s not coming to the US with salt. But undoubtedly, tightening CAFE standards will eventually send VW’s pioneering 1.4 and 1.6 TSI engines our way; the question is only in what body. Read More >
As China’s new year (that of the tiger) came around, China’s biggest automaker SAIC Motor Corp has won regulatory approval to acquire the crucial 1 percent stake in Shanghai GM, Shanghai Daily reports today via Gasgoo. The matter has been officially filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday. It’s official now. General Motors officially has been relegated to minority shareholder in its key venture in the world’s largest auto market. SAIC is now calling the shots. Read More >
Presidential campaigns always start with books, and Mitt Romney’s ‘No Apology’ is rolling off the presses. For a guy who unapologetically strapped his dog (in a carrier) on the roof of the Family Truckster, that seems a fitting enough title. But the White House is asking for one; well, not exactly an apology, but it is firmly denying that it is “calling the shots” at GM. According to a Detroit News story, “Romney writes that that an unnamed CEO of an automotive industry corporation told him that despite what is said publicly, ‘the government is calling the shots on every major decision at GM, including which plants to expand and which to close.'” Romney also calls on the government to distribute its GM shares directly to the American people. Read More >
Toyota’s Jim Lentz (who, I’m obligated to share, bears a striking resemblance to the dad from “Teen Wolf”) spent nearly two and a half hours before a committee that by then was investigating what expert witnesses described as an unknown, untraceable electronics error of nearly limitless reach. With this white whale taking the foreground of the committee’s imagination, the committee sharpened its harpoons, licked its lips and sailed out upon uncertain seas in search of its elusive quarry. Read More >
It’s been nearly a year since the automotive industry has been treated to a must-watch DC hearing. The last time around, when the executives of America’s automakers went begging to congress for multi-billion dollar bailouts, hearings were heated and combative. Though liberally sprinkled with irony and comedic ignorance, those hearings were, at their heart, a traditional partisan stand-off. But bailouts are also a relatively cut-and-dried topic: you either support them for solid political reasons, or you oppose them for equally solid, equally political reasons. But faced with a national bogeyman of legendary mystery, the lurking terror of unintended acceleration, congress’s task was more complicated than the bailout’s do-we-or-don’t-we dilemma. Tasked with uncovering the truth behind a complex technical problem, is it any wonder that yesterday’s hearings before the House Energy Committee took a turn for the strangely hilarious? [Editor’s note: full prepared statements from all witnesses are available in PDF format here full video of all of yesterday’s testimony is available at CSPAN]
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