12th
March
2008
I guess Rick Wagoner has had plenty of time to compose his answer for when the inevitable question came up about Bob Lutz’s recent outspoken remarks on global warming. And it was a very good answer, actually.
As for Mr Lutz, the rough with the smooth and the straight talking is maybe a part of the charm, though he could perhaps be advised to try and not put his foot in it when talking to the media, if at all possible, or at least avoid saying things that potentially undermine company objectives.
There again, I don’t suppose he’d take much notice. The guy had his 76th birthday last month. Got to admire the fact that he is still at the sharp end of the business.
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12th
March
2008
Via
Technology Evangelist
What Businesses Can Learn from Scrabulous
Scrabulous, as the New York Times reported this weekend, is spreading like wildfire within Facebook. People who were logging into their Facebook accounts once a week are suddenly keeping a tab open all day so they can check to see if their opponents have played their turn.
While this could be a productivity sucker for employees who become addicted to the game, I think there are some productivity lessons that can be learned from this as well.
The Power of Asynchronous Work
Improved speed. Imagine sitting in a large room with 12 of your friends who are each playing 12 games of Scrabble one on one with each other. If my calculations are correct, you’d need 66 Scrabble boards and spend half your time running around looking for tables where you could play your next move. It would end up taking a long long time for all 12 people to complete games against their 11 competitors. However, if each person can play their turns at a time that’s convenient for them, the total time committed to each game goes down significantly.
Complete Article
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12th
March
2008
In Mochi Mochi’s comment on the AMC Eagle Car Lust post, he* told a pretty entertaining story about his home-built attempts to heat his VW Squareback that I thought deserved its own post.
“The thing I love most about this article is the reference to duct tape and vacuum cleaner hoses to augment the “climate control” of cars. Drivers of air cooled german cars are well aware of the challenges of staying warm - kind of the polar opposite of the situation here. In my years of driving through Boston winters in my 72 VW Type III Squareback I invested a lot of time trying to engineer new and augment the existing heating system. For a while I had a series of what looked like little battery operated hair driers stationed around the interior of the car. They drew power from the cigarette lighter socket. These were incredibly noisy and did almost nothing. Eventually they all either caught fire or arced out and exploded. I carried an ice scraper to scrape the inside of the windows as my breath would condense and freeze on the windscreen. I tried using a mask to warm my face. The mask had a hose built into it to funnel my breath directly to the outside of the car - again to avoid having the windows completely fog and freeze. I looked a little like a cosmonaut from the late 1960’s.
“I looked into clear plastic films with heater wires embedded in them that could be stuck to the windows. At one point I considered installing a kerosene heater in the back of the car. But that just seemed a little too dangerous. Now living in the friendly and sunny climes of SoCal the air coolers seem like a happy option. I know that all I have to contend with is cooling during the summer months. And duck tape and vacuum cleaner hoses sound not so bad.”
Wow! I know the heaters in air-cooled VWs were pretty poor, but I had no idea they could inspire this much home-brewed ingenuity. This stuff is fascinating.
Eventually they all either caught fire or arced out and exploded.
Now that sounds like a problem.
I tried using a mask to warm my face. The mask had a hose built into it to funnel my breath directly to the outside of the car - again to avoid having the windows completely fog and freeze. I looked a little like a cosmonaut from the late 1960’s.
This is incredibly funny - mostly because it actually seems like a pretty logical solution. Mochi, did it work?
I’m a fan of Squarebacks and other air-cooled VWs, but this hilarious list of attempted fixes is pretty damning commentary on VW’s engineering at the time. I understand that heating air-cooled cars is tricky, but why do I hear so much about VW’s problems and not about contemporary air-cooled Porsches and Corvairs? How did Porsche and Chevrolet solve the heater problem, or were they as bad as VW am I’m just ignorant about it?
* By the way, Mochi, I had to make a call and went with the male pronoun. Given your background, it seems like a solid bet, since most of the women in my life, at least, have entirely too much common sense to like the cars that we do.
–Chris H.
This is syndicated from
Car Lust, and written by Chris Hafner.
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12th
March
2008
A quick lube center’s staff is usually kids in or just out of high school. While they may go through some sort of training program, this doesn’t really mean that they will be fully prepared to deal with every situation that comes up. It truly takes years of experience to be a pro. The manager of a quick lube center really won’t be much help here either, changing oil for a living is usually not a long term career choice and is instead a stepping stone to something better. Keep in mind, at a quick lube center there is not going to be a Master Technician on staff changing oil or supervising the process. Worse yet is the business model of a quick lube is to achieve add on sales by performing other tasks on your vehicle. That is that sometimes a scary proposition as they are typically not always capable of the service. Don’t you deserve to have a professional Technician working on your Subaru? If you call a plumber to your house and a kid still in high school shows up to fix your leak without his supervisor how confident are you going to be about the service. Through the years we have seen and heard of so many terrible situations involving the service work done at a lube center, that I often am amazed that they can still obtain a liability insurance policy. There are so many instances that I have observed very poor workmanship from a Quick lube center that I could write a novel. From not putting the right fluids back in or worse yet, none at all to “forgetting” to tighten a drain plug or leaving the air box loose causing a check engine light to come on and then telling the customer it will reset it self. I am never surprised when a customer starts a conversation with “I had my car at ______________” and now I have this problem.
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12th
March
2008
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Nissan’s Qashqai, similar to the Rogue small crossover, has adopted the slogan “urban proof,” and the proof of that is in a spectacular new commercial that sees the SUV avoiding skyscrapers that come to life with smiling faces — and homicidal motives.
In an advertisement directed by Danny Kleinman, who has made videos for Madonna and Prince as well as title sequences for James Bond films — the Qashqai is shown in the empty streets of Buenos Aires. The film, Nissan says, “captures the might of the city and the unique crossover beauty of the car.” It also captures a number of wild near-miss attacks by buildings that drop cars, metal and other hazards in the Qashqai’s path.
Filming took eight days and 170 crew members, following six weeks of preparation by 12 designers and artists, and required the downtown Avenue Corrientes to be closed down for a weekend.
The Qashqai is built in Sunderland in the U.K. The British newspaper Guardian links to the new commercial on its Web site. An older Qashqai ad, in which a giant uses the SUV as a skateboard, is viewable on YouTube.
What this means to you: All the great commercials seem to be on European TV. — Laura Sky Brown, Correspondent
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12th
March
2008
posted in Car News Articles |
12th
March
2008
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02.21.08
All-New 2009 Honda Fit to Make World Debut at New York International Auto Show
Pilot prototype and FCX Clarity also set to make New York debut
American Honda Motor Co., Inc., announced today that its all-new Honda Fit will debut at the 2008 New York International Auto Show (NYIAS).
“The current Fit has been a tremendous success for Honda with its spacious, versatile interior and a wealth of standard features in a compact, fuel-efficient and affordable package,” said Dick Colliver, executive vice president of American Honda. “The all-new Honda Fit will reconfirm that small can in fact be big.”
Additionally, a prototype of the Honda Pilot will make its first appearance in New York at the Jacob Javits Center. The prototype conveys design features of the more boldly-styled 2009 Pilot, set to debut in spring 2008, and emphasizes authentic SUV styling, clever and more accommodating interior packaging and advanced technologies for safety, fuel efficiency and convenience.
Along with the Pilot prototype, the FCX Clarity will make its New York debut. The FCX Clarity is a next-generation, zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle based on the Honda V Flow fuel cell platform. Featuring tremendous improvements to driving range, power, weight and efficiency - and boasting a low-slung, dynamic and sophisticated appearance previously unachievable in a fuel cell vehicle - the FCX Clarity marks the significant progress that Honda continues to make in advancing the real-world performance and appeal of the hydrogen-powered fuel cell car.
Additional media information and high-resolution photography is available at www.hondanews.com. Consumer information is available at fit.honda.com.
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12th
March
2008
Eight people have been killed and 141 injured after a devastating 200-car pile up on the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway today.
Emergency workers said the cars smashed into each other in thick fog at around 6.45 am on the Dubai-bound side of Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Road.
Ninety-two cars caught fire in the smash-ups, Khalifa Al Darrai, chief executive of the Ambulance Service Centre in Dubai, told UAE weekly Xpress.
“Patients were lying on the road. Thankfully, they had abandoned their cars or else the death toll would have risen significantly,” Al Darrai said.
As of 1.00 pm on Tuesday, a total of 141 injuries were reported, of which 39 were major injuries and 102 minor, Xpress reported on its website. Crash victims were taken to Rashid Hospital in Dubai and Al Rahba and Al Mafraq hospitals in Abu Dhabi for treatment.
“There were six buses carrying labourers, three buses had 50 passengers each.
“I have never witnessed an accident of this scale before.”
Eyewitnesses at the scene said it was “mayhem”.
“There is a car which is completely charred, that is all I can tell - I cannot tell the brand, or if it’s one car or two. All I can is that it was once white, ” said Rami Dia, a 31-year-old business development manager, speaking to ArabianBusiness.com from the scene.
Dubai Police said in a traffic update at 12.45 pm that the road from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was partially closed, and where the accident happened the road was completely blocked.
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12th
March
2008
Want to know what’s the quickest cars at the best price? Car and Driver has just released a list of the fastest cars from $20,000 to $25,000 so if you gotta have performance without paying the hefty price tag, maybe you should consider the cars you see on this list next time you go car-shopping.
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12th
March
2008
Colette Fischer has discovered a genius new product that can keep your child’s car seat from becoming a sticky, disgusting mess — at least for a little while. Also, Sara Lacey test drives the 2008 Dodge Durango, and while she admits that someone out there must like it, the Durango leaves her thoroughly uninspired.
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