Today’s Question of the Day is remarkably simple, but it took a reader suggestion to make it appear.
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After climbing above $3.50/gallon for much of the spring, the average U.S. retail price for regular gasoline began to decline in mid-July before rapidly plunging throughout the fall of 2014, sliding to around $2.70/gallon by the beginning of December.
Have consumer tendencies been altered as a result?
We’re not on a mission to suggest they have, nor is our aim to support the belief that they haven’t. Any change would be both slight and gradual, and not without other possible causes. (Indeed, if it is slight, it means the vast majority of buyers aren’t changing their ways at all.) But if there is a band of consumers which makes new vehicle purchase decisions based on a brief period of less costly fuel, how many consumers are in such a band, and how different is the new track they follow? Read More >
On the news of OPEC’s decision to keep oil production at current levels, there is almost certainly going to be a rout in the price of oil.
Last weekend, while I was helping to run the seventh annual 24 Hours of LeMons Fall South race, I got into a debate with LeMons Chief Perp Jay Lamm over which team should get the accomplished-the-most-with-the-worst-car trophy, the Index of Effluency. The 1982 Renault Fuego Turbo of Interceptor Motorsports, which made its debut at that race, managed to turn 19 laps during two days of racing (the winner did 377 laps) and finished 105th out of 110 entries. My opinion was that the Fuego Turbo was the worst car sold in the United States in 1982 and thus Interceptor Motorsports deserved Index of Effluency recognition for their achievement, but the Chief Perp felt that plenty of Detroit-built cars from the Malaise Era were even worse. In the end, we gave the prize to a 1979 Wagon Queen Family Truckster (which finished in P73), but I still think that you’d be hard-pressed to find any 1982 model-year car that approaches the Renault Fuego Turbo for across-the-board terribleness. Read More >
A few days ago, Jalopnik posted a link to a classified site in Colombia that listed a bunch of armored cars for sale. These aren’t the MRAPs patroling the streets of Ferguson either. Hell, they’re even more discreet than the typical black Suburbans you see roaming around D.C.
When we published the 2015 Ford F-150 order guide, we focused on the trim level changes (the FX4 and STX trims are gone, while the police-oriented SSV package is back) while forgetting three very important letters. SFE.
With pricing for the Audi Q3 and Mercedes-Benz GLA announced, the fight for the luxury compact crossover sales crown is officially on. It’s going to be the most important battle of the year for the luxury car market.
In honor of Independence Day, I’d like to pose a simple question to you all. What is America’s Finest Automotive Hour?
Well, I nearly died today.
I was driving on a winding one lane road, when a silver mid-2000’s Dodge Ram Club Cab broke through the double yellow, and swerved halfway into my lane.
My car was a 7 year old Toyota Corolla, and if it weren’t for a last split-second swerve, I would have been dead. No question about it.
No nav.
No leather.
No premium or power nuttin’.
All yours for $12,800 before fees, tax, tag, title.
I always tell folks that they should try to hit em’ where they ain’t.
Want a Camry? Look at a Mazda 6 first.
A Prius C? One of my personal favorites. But I still have a soft spot for far cheaper closeout models like the Mazda 2 and Ford Fiesta. You may also wind up enjoying them a lot more in the long run.
That final year of a model’s run can sometimes provide that unique, one-time steal of a deal that would put today’s popular car to shame. There is a unique value quotient that frequently can’t be replicated with the brand new stuff, once rebates and slacking consumer demand start chipping away at the true cost of purchase.
So speaking of new cars…
…on the side of the road?
Way back in the day, I used to work as an auctioneer at Logandale Auto Auction. I used to call it, “the red light district” because every vehicle there sold under the red light, which meant AS/IS.
For decades, the formula for a successful pickup design in America has been pretty much the same. Design a simple ladder-frame chassis, drop in the biggest engine you can find, give it a front-engine rear-drive layout with an optional transfer case, and start raking in the money. From time to time, however, manufacturers have tried to swim against the current.
To Dodge, aye, to RAM: there’s the rub.
Read More >
Writing in the National Post, Matt Gurney discusses a darker side of autonomous cars, one that many people (especially this writer, who is not exactly familiar with the rational, linear type of operation that is involved with coding)
In a recent interview with PopSci, Patrick Lin, an associate philosophy professor and director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, proposed a hypothetical scenario that sums up the problem. You’re driving along in your robo-car, and your tire blows out. The computer in control rapidly concludes that your car is moving too quickly and has too much momentum to come to a safe stop, and there is traffic ahead. Since an accident is inevitable, the computer shifts from collision avoidance to collision mitigation, and concludes that the least destructive outcome is to steer your car to a catastrophic outcome — over a cliff, into a tree — and thus avoid a collision with another vehicle.
The raw numbers favour such an outcome. Loss of life and property is minimized — an objectively desirable outcome. But the downside is this: Your car just wrote you off and killed you to save someone else.
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