Car News Articles

If you’re an Helio Castroneves fan, you know what kind season he’s having — good, but often times not quite good enough. He’s finished second seven times and still hasn’t earned a win. Yeah, seven times. And in three of those races, points leader Scott Dixon has won. That doesn’t help Castroneves’ title chances, as he sits 78 points behind Dixon with three races remaining. Read more about Helio here and view a fun Helio video at www.indycar.com.

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The 2008 Toyota RAV4 bugged me. It bugged me in the same way that the perfect-looking mom from my kids’ school bothers me. You might know her — she never leaves the house without her makeup on and her hair dried and styled.

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GM dealers are catching it from all directions. The General cutting back on leasing (with a very sharp knife) even as the troops wait for central command to fix the mix, And now the corporate mothership’s gutting the dealers’ GM Mark of Excellence 2008 Recognition Programs. A message to dealers outlined the “difficult” changes that resulted in canceling “select rewards” but added new cheaper incentives. Travel rewards are toast. In their stead: prepaid $1k debit cards and “exclusively yours®” reward points. “GM PerQs” are also gone, whatever the Hell they are. On the positive side, GM’s cut the dealers’ monthly enrollment fee by 50 percent. However, any refunds for prepaid feeds will “be applied to the Dealer’s Open Account.” Click here for a PDF of the complete communique. If a GM dealer or an industry-savvy member of our Best and Brightest can parse this for us, we’d be much obliged.

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Autoblog: “You’re going to be reading in the mainstream press about how horrible sales were in the U.S. during June, 2008. Yes, they were bad for many automakers, but consider that there were only 24 selling days last month versus 27 days in June, 2008. This makes comparing raw sales numbers misleading, since there were three fewer days to sell. Thus, as always, all the percentages below represent the change in Daily Sales Rate, i.e. the average number of vehicles sold per day, not the change in raw number of vehicles sold.” TTAC joins Automotive News in rejecting this metric. We go by cars sold per month. Period. That said, TTAC got caught-out when Automotive News started with adjusted numbers, then revised to non-adjusted numbers. But no matter how you crunch these stats, they ARE horrible. “Not That Bad Edition”? The idea that any credible news organization would say otherwise is almost as astounding as the chaos afflicting the U.S. new vehicle market. How about this: there are industry players in Detroit who ascribe to Autoblog’s Pollyanna philosophy. And while you’re thinking about that (or something), Justin and I perform our usual reality check. 

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I live just off Blackstone Boulevard (GPS coordinates available for GM Black Ops rotary winged aircraft). It’s RI’s urban highway: two-lanes in each direction with a large, leafy central island (once a streecar route, now joggers’ paradise). The Boulevard is also the Mother of All Speed Traps; I’ll pay anyone who can drive down that piece of tarmac at 25mph to wear one of those Mission Impossible masks and sit through my kids’ school plays. Well, that’s the way it used to be. Suddenly, Renaissance City Planners have added a bike lane to Blackstone Boulevard, restricting traffic in each direction to a single lane. As a two-wheeled boulevardier, I can only say WTF? The new lane places two-wheelers closer to the traffic (there’s a lane for parking next to the curb). Why didn’t my unelected representatives ban parking and put the bike lane next to the curb? And now I hear these self-same traffic planners [sic] are going to install speed bumps. All I’ve got to say about that is this article about a Canadian traffic calming strategy gone serious awry. “[Local resident Brenda] White says cars and a motorcycle have spun out of control after hitting or dodging [constricted] curbs. Some cars spin onto lawns, she said. Some shear off trees or dent traffic signs and cable boxes. Curbs are chipped and blackened by the many tires that have struck them. A recent survey found residents are almost as concerned about the curbs as they are about speeding. Their concerns are justified. Between 2004 and 2006, five drivers lost control on Heritage Drive and crashed. Five more vehicles crashed for other reasons. One of these 10 collisions claimed a life.”

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On April 1st, 2008 significant modifications to road safety regulations in the Canadian provinces of Québec and Nova Scotia went into effect. CTV.ca reports that handheld cellular phones are now verboten while at the wheel, though hands free devices are still tolerated. Nova Scotia will begin ticketing the offense immediately, while Québec has allowed for a three-month grace periods in which offenders will only receive stern warnings and moralizing sermons. The first offense in Nova Scotia will cost $165, while costing $80-$110 and three demerit points in Québec. Still not satisfied, road safety advocate Jean-Marie de Koeninck argues that “[h]ands-free is just as dangerous. (But) by forbidding the hand-held it does send a signal that there is a problem with the cellphone, there’s a problem with concentration”. Meanwhile, the same traffic safety bill in Québec also doubled all speeding fines , with new suspension of license provisions for those caught traveling at 40 km/h over the limit in under-60 zones, 50 km/h in 60-90 over zones, and 60 km/h over in 100+ zones. All in the name of safety, presumably.

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Math is not my forte, in the sense that I grew up thinking times tables supported New York newspapers. But there are many of you who know your way around a calculator. For your number crunching pleasure, I submit this article from Seeking Alpha, a stock tip site. The unnamed author crunches the numbers: the total amount of potential ethanol production vs. total U.S. gas consumption. The conclusion: “Corn ethanol will never replace any meaningful quantities of gasoline nor diesel.” More specifically, “ethanol (spark ignition) will not substitute for diesel (compression ignition) anyway without substantial vehicle and fuel changes. Ethanol will not easily substitute for heating oil nor jet fuel neither. And if you add in ALL the energy-related inputs, some have said we may be able to replace, at best, 3-4% of U.S. gasoline using all U.S. corn.” And so ethanol supporters will move on to cellulosic sources or trash or lithium ion crystals, with your tax money. 

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