TTAC commenter esager writes in:

I have a dilemma that may interest our readership (yes, I feel a sense of ownership after being a daily reader for 3-4 years now).

A few years back, my wife and I bought a nice 2007 CPO 328i that was formerly used as a customer service loaner car for the one of our Seattle area BMW dealerships. We really enjoy its performance and sophistication and are happy with the car for the most part, save for the various and sundry trips to the dealership to fix a few warranty items – more trips than I think should be necessary, though not truly excessive. She drove it to work every day and was glad to have it. It’s under CPO warranty coverage for 2 more years.

Earlier this year, a note I left on the windshield of a 1991 318is (the one year E30 model with the M42 engine) allowed me to purchase said car from a co-worker as a daily driver and fixer. I got it for very cheap and have been dutifully cleaning, updating (oil pan gaskets, rear shock mounts, hydraulic timing chain tensioner, differential output shaft seal replacement, etc, etc), and generally enjoying the heck out of it. Lower control arms, ball joints etc. are in the future for this car.

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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?

The truth tends to be a more subtle animal than many imagine, and nowhere is this more true than with the Chevy Volt. Although today’s review was long by any standard, a number of key issues were under-addressed, and on the whole it seems to raise more questions than answers. Accordingly, I will take to Coveritlive tomorrow at 4pm Eastern (1pm Pacific) to answer as many questions about driving the Volt and touring its production facilities as I can manage. No need to create a new account, just check in on TTAC tomorrow at 4 pm Eastern and join in the conversation immediately. I won’t be able to explain exactly how the Volt’s drive unit operates at all times, and I can’t tell you exactly how well it will sell, but if you’re looking for closure on a persistent Volt question, stop by and ask it. Every question of relevance that I’m not able to answer will get forwarded on to GM for official reply, so we should all be able to end the week with a much better understanding of this enigmatic automobile.

Tomorrow your humble Editor boards a plane for Michigan, en route to a date with the Chevrolet Volt. TTAC has followed the Volt’s bumpy road to production-readiness since Bob Lutz decided that the Prius had to be “leapfrogged,” and we’ve tracked every change to the Volt’s mission, message and mechanical blueprint along the way. And though cars don’t exist in a vacuum, giving the Volt a fair review will require us to leave a lot of this contextual baggage at the door.

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TTAC’s long been used to playing the “heel” of the auto journalism world, and sure enough, our skeptical approach to the Chevy Volt is already renewing accusations that TTAC “hates GM.” For the record, this accusation doesn’t fly. We have the tendency to obsess on GM because that company’s rise and fall is the most compelling story in the automotive world. To read GM’s history is to watch a person claw their way up a cliff by his bootstraps, and upon reaching the top, spend the next several decades strangling himself with the very same bootstraps. I challenge anyone who is interested in the world of cars to look away from that.

In any case, our Volt coverage has focused thus far on dispelling myths, so in the interest of seeking the truth everywhere, I thought we should take a moment to make a few Volt myths of our own. After all,  despite planning to build only “10-15k” Volts next year and 60k in 2012, Automotive News [sub] says

And even though my personal and professional obligations to the truth make me the worst marketing candidate ever, I may just have an idea of where to start…

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Paul Penaloza writes in with a timely query:

I’ve got a question for the crew. I have a relative who loves the VW Passat wagon and the promise of the better mileage with the TDI. She was crushed when she found out it did not have a third row like a minivan. That got me thinking, are there any car wagons out there that have a third row of seating these days?

Ah, the rear-facing third row… if that doesn’t bring back childhood memories, you’ve missed out. Remember gang, that’s “car wagons.” No Swagger Wagons or Cute Utes for the former Passat owner. If I didn’t have the $56k to stump for a new E Class wagon (and I don’t), I’d be thinking used… or reminiscing about making faces at freeway traffic. Or both.

In its retooling announcement for the Orion assembly plant, GM notes that

Orion will be the home to Chevrolet’s new small car and Buick’s future compact sedan – the all-new Verano.

What’s interesting is that GM doesn’t call the “new small car” the Aveo, even though it’s shown near-production versions of the new model bearing the Aveo name at several auto shows. Sooner or later, GM will have to start sticking with consistent, memorable nameplates in order to build up the kind of loyalty enjoyed by models like Accord, Camry, Civic and Corolla. Which would suggest that an improved Aveo should be called the Aveo, and that the new Opel Astra-based Buick Verano should be called something less instantly forgettable. We’ve speculated about what a three-door Buick Astra hatch might be called, but this Verano plan calls for an intervention. Help GM keep Buick from sliding into 90s-era ambivalence by improving on the narcoplesy-inducing nameplate Verano. It doesn’t have to be a heritage nameplate, but it should be something that makes the brands foray into compact cars seem like less of an afterthought. And that will be just as good four generations from now.

The flip-flopping over GM’s IPO strategy continues, as The General backs away from its “retail investor” focus and begins courting Sovereign Wealth Funds in earnest. Bloomberg reports that GM’s underwriters have approached

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia- based Kingdom Holding Co., Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development Co., Qatar Holdings LLC and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings Pte.

In hopes that they’ll become “cornerstone investors” in the new GM’s IPO. Who knows what will come of the negotiations, but assuming that one or more of the Arab SWFs end up with a large chunk of GM equity, a number of PR problems present themselves. Though (marginally) less emotionally-charged than a possible ownership stake by a Chinese firm, such an outcome would amount to the US-sponsored foreign takeover of an American firm. Politically, the bailout is much easier to justify if GM ends up in American hands… especially since Fiat is likely to gobble up the Chrysler equity it wasn’t handed on a taxpayer-funded platter. But beyond that, GM will have to work twice as hard to convince the American people that it’s not working to serve the interests of its oil-rich Gulf State owners. Renewed scrutiny over its most profitable business, namely gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, would be a given. Any hesitation (however well-justified) over electrification of the automobile would be interpreted as an oil-cartel plot. And renewed turmoil in the middle east could further inflame anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sympathies, potentially bringing greater pressure on GM. Meanwhile, GM’s energy-independence rhetoric around its E85 ethanol efforts would be extremely awkward.

But will Americans notice or care? At what percentage of ownership would these factors come into play?

Government’s solution to distracted driving: hold summits and tweet at Jersey Shore cast members. The OEM solution: run ads legitimizing unfocused driving and then sell an electronic solution (in the example above, a $2,950 “Driver Assistance Package” for the $49,400 Mercedes E350). Or argue that voice-controlled in-car Facebook updates pose no more of a distraction than, say, radios. Or roll out a “feature-disabling feature.” What Ray LaHood calls an “epidemic,” and “menace to society,” the automakers call big business. If LaHood is as serious about distraction as he says, should he not be calling out the trend towards increased in-car communication? And if he is exaggerating the problem, shouldn’t the automakers be more actively defending their decision to market distracting in-car technology?

If LaHood keeps his rhetorical War On Distraction alive long enough, the current OEM approach will inevitably come under the microscope. Given that private concerns generally prefer self-regulation to government regulation, what should the automakers do to keep the government off its back? Ignore LaHood and hope his crusade blows over? Fight him, commission studies, and definitively prove the safety of in-car communication? Or change course, risking a huge disadvantage but possibly carving out a new branding opportunity? Now that the least safe part of the modern car is the human doing the driving, everything has become a lot more complicated…

With 15 “new or refreshed” Chrysler Group products launching over the next 4 months [complete product plan in PDF format here], we’re about to find out definitively if a company’s product can be turned around in a little over a year. Given how complex automobiles are, and how deeply uncompetitive many of Chrysler’s products have been, the odds are obviously stacked against Auburn Hills… and Chrysler’s $50m loss on the Grand Cherokee launch is a sign of how scary things can get in a product blitz. But the real question here isn’t how many recalls Chrysler is risking, or how much money it could lose on launch costs and “associated industrial inefficiencies” but whether consumers will actually notice a difference.

The “mid-cycle refresh” is a familiar phenomenon for the American consumer, and few of them fundamentally change the character of a car. Though Chrysler is doing “deep refreshes” on cars like the 200 (neé Sebring), reworking the body, drivetrains, suspension and interior (also, the Durango, 300 and Charger will be “all new”), a number of the new launches will be of plain-old refreshes… like the 2011 Town & Country pictured here. Will the deep changes to some vehicles be lost in the flood of refreshed Chrysler Jeep and Dodge vehicles? More importantly, will refreshes like this one convince consumers that Chrysler has really changed?

Your faithful editor just dodged a bullet. And no, not from our owners, who might have wondered why I just took off for the better part of a weekday. Truth is, for the past several hours I’ve been trying to buy a car I don’t particularly need… but now it seems that circumstances have forced me to postpone my rash decision. At least until Saturday. And though it’s always best to consider big purchases thoroughly before pulling the trigger, this car has simply been lodged itself in my brain, screaming at me to buy it for the last several days. I like to think of myself as a fairly reasonable person, but I find myself stripped of objectivity, common sense and practicality, all of which have been replaced by slobbering, single-minded lust. In fact, I’m so unreasonably set on this acquisition that I’m not going to even say what kind of car it is, for fear of jinxing the deal (feel free to guess though… unless you’re one of the two people who actually know).

Now that you’ve had a taste of the madness that’s afflicted your loyal devotee automotive truth, I invite you to crack open a judgment-impairing beverage and let me know what car you might buy in the throes of automotive insanity. Keep in mind that this is not a lottery fantasy question… you should be able to acquire this car in real life (you just might not want to tell your spouse, children, or financial planner until it’s too late and madness has become reality). Alternatively, tell us about the impulse buy that taught you to overcome the insanity of blind automotive lust.

Gasoline with up to ten percent ethanol have been approved for public sale in the US, and the ethanol industry has been pushing to increase the maximum allowed blend to 15 percent. Or 12 percent until the EPA can figure out if E15 damages engines. But with automakers turning against the e15 push, fears about E10-related engine damage (which primarily began with boat and small engine operators) are being more widely heard. So why is E10 allowed if it damages engines? For one thing, trailerboats.com points out that

Yamaha warns that due to the fungible nature of fuels in transit from refinery to service station, some E10 fuels may actually get an extra dose of ethanol

In other words, E10 may be safe but you may not actually be getting E10. But more importantly, the market is answering the call of consumers. Over at pure-gas.org, a site dedicated to connecting Americans with stations offering ethanol-free gasoline, the number of registered “pure gas” pumps has skyrocketed since June of last year. But, warns the site’s founder (a BMW motorcycle enthusiast),

We buy [ethanol-free gas] because we want to fuel our vehicles with it. If you want to save money on gas, this site is of no use to you – it will NOT have gasoline prices on it. They vary from day to day and this site isn’t about saving money. It’s about finding pure gasoline for your machine.

So we’re wondering: does ethanol-free gas exist near you, and if so, is it more expensive? Finally, is there a price premium you would be willing to pay for ethanol-free gas? Or would you even pick corn-free gas (and its groundwater-accumulating carcinogen MTBE) at price parity with E10?

Nissan was the fifth best-selling brand in the first half of 2010, but with nine new model rollouts planned for the next two years it’s looking for something its marketing team calls “breaking the mold” improvement. To do that, Nissan is leading its product blitz with distinctive products like the Leaf EV and the Juke “sportcross,” but it’s also working to bring more attention to its brand as well as its vehicles. Marketing boss Jon Brancheau explains the problem to AdAge

If you look back over the course of the last 18 months at our creative, a lot of it has been focused on individual models and there hasn’t been an overarching idea that held everything together, laddering to Nissan. That’s what’s different about this work. It’s focused on the vehicle lines supporting the Nissan brand rather than just focusing on individual launch activity. The Leaf is the most recent example to believe that Nissan is an innovative company and that’s how we want to transmit our message to consumers, we want to turn it around a little bit — Nissan is the brand, and here’s the reason you should believe in it.

Unfortunately, the vehicle for Nissan’s latest bid at brand awareness is based on the tagline “Innovation For All,” a bon mot that is unfortunately reminiscent of the ill-fated Chevrolet tagline “Excellence For Everyone.” For a brand that is respected by many but loved by few, that’s a dangerously vague approach to a marketing push, and it hardly seems like the message to propel Nissan out of its perennial also-ran status. On the other hand, it’s tough to put a finger on what exactly Nissan should stand for because it’s brand has almost always been poorly differentiated in this market. So we’re curious: what does the Nissan brand mean to you, and what are the strengths it should build on as it seeks to improve brand awareness? Or are they on the right track already?

Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.

That’s the thesis of UCLA professor of urban planning, Daniel Shoup’s new book The High Cost of Free Parking. Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen explains Shoup’s line of thinking in an NYT Op-Ed.

Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life.

Cowen points to San Francisco’s market-based parking meters as one potential solution for the waste and stealth subsidies of automotive overuse caused by free parking (which Shoup reckons amounts to a staggering $127b annual subsidy). But will market-based parking pricing be any more politically palatable than other green behavior-modification efforts like, say, a gas tax? On the other hand, if municipalities can get rid of speed cameras due to increased parking revenue, perhaps the compromise might be more worth it to motorists. Either way, one gets the feeling that the free parking phenomenon isn’t going to disappear overnight.

I recently attended a fancy-pants dinner held by Chrysler PR for some Houston-area bloggers. We were wined, dined and introduced to the 2011 Grand Cherokee. While free food and journalistic integrity are a tough combo to swallow, I found something entertaining and inherently blog worthy: the castrated 2011 Ford Explorer is in the new Grand Cherokee’s gunsight. Why? One of the SUV’s most famous nameplates is now a crossover, while another is still an SUV. But neither of them like being called names.

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