Trendsetting: China Rising

I've used a lot of blog space to cover trends concerning China as an emerging powerhouse of both vehicle consumption as well as production. I think it's well deserved. This NYT article helps detail why.

Much like the financial, management, and labor troubles of the 1970s led to the consolidation and eventual failure of the British auto industry, the U.S.'s manufacturing base is in upheaval and seems likely to lose its predominance in the auto manufacturing sector, at a minimum. While I doubt the U.S. will lose it's world influence and might as a result (as the U.K. did), it's clear that we leaving a void and that China will be filling it. And I agree with the NYT article that it seems unlikely we'll regain the "lead."

What does that mean for us as consumers, or simply as citizens of the U.S.? In the long run, I think we'll continue to lose auto manufacturing jobs, although we might pick up foreign factories. (I assume you know that many Toyotas and Hondas are built in U.S. factories with U.S. workers, although most parts are still foreign sourced.) Look at BMW: they own Mini and engineer the Mini cars, which are mostly assembled in the U.K. rather than being sent to Poland or something. It is beneficial to the company to keep a British marque in the U.K.

There will also be less American cars on the road - that is, cars made by American companies in the U.S. This was happening long before the financial crisis hit - GM uses it's Korean subsidiary Daewoo to build small cars in Korea.

It'll take a while for the Chinese to want to build their factories here. Our labor costs are MUCH higher than native Chinese labor. But auto trends and preferences will change - no longer will American ammenities dictate global design requirements, as the article points out by noting the American trend for cupholders and the Chinese preference for chauffeur-driven cars.

Things are changing. Get used to China being a carmaker and a precedent-setter. Don't run for the hills, it'll be fine. But be on the lookout for protectionist and sensationalist nonsense, just to give yourself a laugh now and then.

Small cars are UNSAFE!!!! Run, panic, stockpile guns! Resurrect Charleton Heston!

This might expose a lot of my biases and personally philosophies when it comes to car buying, but the new IIHS study that claims that mini- or subcompact cars are less safe than mid-size ones really drives me crazy.

Not because it’s wrong. It isn’t. Not because I dislike midsize cars or think they aren’t as safe as the study claims. They are. And they’re “safer” than mini-cars.

What pushes my buttons is that the byline, “mini- or subcompact cars are less safe than mid-size ones” is so easily misunderstood or misinterpreted. I fear that folks considering outstanding cars like the Honda Fit or Scion xD will now look at them as “unsafe,” rather than understanding that no car is 100% safe in every circumstance. (By the way, if you want a small car like these, get the side airbags! That’s just some advice. They really work. Back to your regularly scheduled rant …)

For example, let’s design a test to prove that the same mid-size sedans vindicated in this IIHS test are “unsafe” by crashing them at 50mph into a large “light” truck, like a Chevy Silverado 2500. I can’t actually run this test, but I think you can assume that hypothetically the byline could be “Mid-Size Sedans Unsafe in New IIHS Study.” It’s just misleading. It’s designing a study to produce an easily misunderstood result. It makes “safety” seem like a binary situation – safe, or unsafe – rather than a continuum where safety increases almost every model year.

I think most folks, if you explained to them that you were designing an offset 40 mph (80mph closing speed) test between a Hyundai Sonata and a Toyota Yaris, that one would fare more poorly than the other. But it’s not like the “exploding Pinto” situation that scared generations of people away from smaller cars into large metal safety cages. Your Yaris won’t instantly entomb you by disintegrating instantly. The IIHS test represents an artificial, laboratory test that is not reflective of real-life accident scenarios. In fact, that hitting anything at an 80mph speed could even possibly be survivable represents the vast leaps we’ve made in midsize car safety even in the last 10 years.

What the test DOES demonstrate is that weight differential is always an issue. Smaller vehicles usually fare worse in an accident when they hit something larger. That is reality. New technology increases the survivability or likelihood of injury dramatically. (You should use your best judgment when determining what size of vehicle to buy, of course.)

On the other hand, if you take that philosophy and decide “I want to put every member of my family into a giant SUV like a Nissan Armada,” then we’re locking ourselves into this cycle of up-sizing and putting others at risk. Ideally, all cars would be lighter (and thus more fuel efficient), reducing our environmental impact while working on getting the size differential issue under control. I’m not saying I want you to get rid of your big truck that you need for work, I’m saying I’d like it to be as strong or stronger, but lighter and safer and also more fuel efficient (for example, through the use of lightweight composites or light metals like aluminum).

I just hope that folks will be able to read the results of the IIHS result and understand what the limitations of it are. And I’d encourage you to think about safety, but not to fall into the “bigger is ALWAYS better” trap. Better is relative. Be an educated consumer and weight the considerations. I trust you’ll make a good decision, especially if you’re concerned enough to read this whole rant.

New sh** has come to light!

[from Jalopnik.com, commenting on Rick Wagoner's demise]:

JackMaz got wagon fever
7:37 PM on Sun Mar 29 2009

@nhubbell84, morphing to ThreeLitre: I've got information man! New s&it has come to light! And s&it... man, he arranged it himself. Well sure, man. Look at it... a failed exec, in the parlance of our times, you know, and GM, uh, uh, owes money all over town, including to the Treasury and taxpayers, and that's cool... that's, that's cool, I'm, I'm saying, he needs money, man. And of course they're going to say he didn't get it, because... he wants more, man! He's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you, man?

Mr. Wagoner has left the (shabby) builidng

Lots of news today. Check back for more.

First of all, godspeed, Rick Wagoner! In case you haven’t heard, Rick was shown the door by one of President Obama’s auto industry group folks, and will resign, as evidenced by this quixotic email:

“GM Message from Rick Wagoner
On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials. In the course of that meeting, they requested that I “step aside” as CEO of GM, and so I have.

Fritz Henderson is an excellent choice to be the next CEO of GM. Having worked closely with Fritz for many years, I know that he is the ideal person to lead the company through the completion of our restructuring efforts. His knowledge of the global industry and the company are exceptional, and he has the intellect, energy, and support among GM’ers worldwide to succeed. I wish him well, and I stand ready to support him, and interim Non-Executive Chairman Kent Kresa, in every way possible.

I also want to extend my sincerest thanks to everyone who supported GM and me during my time as CEO. I deeply appreciate the excellent counsel and commitment of the GM Board and the strong support of our many partners including our terrific dealers, suppliers, and community leaders. I am grateful as well to the union leaders with whom I have had the chance to work closely to implement numerous tough but necessary restructuring agreements.

Most important of all I want to express my deepest appreciation to the extraordinary team of GM employees around the world. You have been a tremendous source of inspiration and pride to me, and I will be forever grateful for the courage and commitment you have shown as we have confronted the unprecedented challenges of the past few years. GM is a great company with a storied history. Ignore the doubters because I know it is also a company with a great future.
Rick Wagoner “

Ignore the doubters? Um, dude, one of the doubters just fired you. It’s sort of like you’re saying “ignore those guys over there who are accurately and truthfully assessing our company’s ill health.”

Anyhow, the buzz around the industry has mostly centered around how Mr. Wagoner is viewed as some sort of sacrificial lamb on the alter of accountability, but as the NYT points out, Wagoner has presided (their word) over probably the worst period in GM’s history ever. I applaud the decision to oust him, and I’m hoping that new blood will ease the transition to a smaller, leaner, and more competitive GM.

Free cars and free gas for employees! YAY!!!

Boy, that sounds great. Too bad those lucky employees are the white collar workers at that shining star of American corporate culture, General Motors. Need I remind you that this is the same GM who is rapidly burning through $13 billion of your tax dollars?

Whoa, hey now. Put that pitchfork of populist anger away! You see, it only cost $12 million to run the program last year. That's chump change! I think the CEO blew that much to rent a private jet to Washington to get harrangued at that Congressional hearing.

Oh, wait a sec ... didn't that draw enough negative press to force GM to sell it's corporate planes? So, clearly, the PR people have NOT learned their lesson.

[Hahaha, I just read the article further, and the NPR reporter also compared it to the corporate-plane fiasco. Except not dripping with sarcasm. Great minds think alike!]

Anyhow, if you can contain your rage, read more here.

[Source: NPR via, of all things, FARK]

Basics: My brake pedal is vibrating/pulsing. What's up?

So you're driving down the freeway and hit the brakes to slow for an exit, and the brake pedal and/or steering wheel vibrates. What's going on? This is a pretty common problem on cars, and it's usually referred to as a "warped rotor." That's kind of a misnomer, so let me explain a bit. If you already know how disc brakes work, skip the next paragraph and I'll discuss the issue at hand.

The image to the left represents a typical disc brake setup. The pads are held by the "caliper," which is grey and on the left part of the disc. To the right, you can see a picture of the pads. Most modern cars have these disc brakes. Basically, a metal disc (called a rotor) rotates with the wheel when the car is moving. When you step on the brakes, hydraulic pressure forces two pads against the metal discs, creating friction, heat, and stopping power. The pad material wears down over time, causing brake dust and eventually requiring replacement. The rotor also wears down over time but more slowly than pads.

So, what's a "warped rotor?" From the name, you'd assume the rotor became warped and caused the pulsing. In my experience, usually this is NOT the case. It's usually caused by an uneven depositing of the brake material onto the rotor as you wear it down. That is, as you use the brakes, hot spots form for one reason or another on the brakes and cause extra pad material to fuse onto it. When it cools, it gets really hard, and causes unevenness on the rotors that leads to vibration.

What can you do about it? Probably the best thing to do would be to take your car into your trusted mechanic and have him or her check the brakes out. The usual course of action is to "turn" the rotors - that is, to take them off the car and sand them down so you have a clean new surface. Then the mechanic will clean the brake pads and inspect them, and either reinstall or replace them.

The most important thing is what happens next. Some pads need to be "bedded in," which means that you'd go through a short series of prescribed stopping maneuvers to wear off any hot-spot areas. This will prevent the brakes from having depositing issues in the future. I would ask your mechanic if this needs to be done, and have the mechanic do this. It's easy to do it wrong, and requires some hard, fast braking, so it's best to leave it to a professional.

If you want to know more about brake pads or how to bed them in, feel free to email me. My email is in my Blogger profile.

So now they tell me ...

After years of forking out extra bucks to get fancy removable faceplates for car stereos, NPR is reporting that an FBI compilation of crime data shows that car audio theft is falling of dramatically (down by half in the past 15 years).

Check out the full story here.

A really interesting statistic would be how many folks actually took the faceplates off their stereos regularly. I was certainly pretty lazy about it.

[Source: NPR]

I want a 4GB version: the Tata NANO

If you follow such things, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Nano, as it’s gotten a lot of press. And thankfully, much of it has actually been devoted to some deep thinking about what a $2,000 car will mean for the super-dense Indian subcontinent. If not, it’s easy to get you to speed: Indian mega-firm Tata’s Nano is a tiny gas-powered car meant to replace the “school of two-wheeled anchovies” thing that India has going on (ie, tons of scooters and small motorcycles). The goal was a cheap enough “real car” so that more Indians would be able to avoid the heavily-polluting, unsafe scooters or over-packed busses. And they delivered: the Nano is going to be around $2500, and it gets a decent 47 MPG and has OK emissions equipment. It’s not really meant to be a green car, and at that price point it might be impossible to make it blow nothing but flowers and happy thoughts out the tailpipe. However, it’s undeniably cheap, and they will sell a ton of them, which has lead to nearly endless jokes about it (like the one in the headline! Aren’t I clever?).

So what will it mean for India? Opinions are really mixed. Some say it will lead to crushing traffic congestion on an already stretched-to-the-limit road system. Predictably, boosters say that it will improve the quality of life for many Indians who can’t afford a larger car, as India’s upwardly mobile classes begin to increase their buying power.

Whatever ends up happening (likely, both extremes will be equally true), I think it’s a good idea that folks are thinking critically about what this could mean for India. The public dialogue here needs to happen, and policy makers need to pay attention.

And to put it in perspective, if a Model T cost $290 in 1925, even by the most conservative conversion measures it would still be approximately $3000 (in 2006 dollars). The least expensive car in the United States is the Kia Rio at $10,800 (as of July 2008). No matter what you think of the Nano in any other sense, that is a startling figure.

[Source: NYT]

Don’t be a sucker. Just say no to ZAP.

One of the funny things about a fuel crisis is that it leads to a lot of snake-oil sales (“better MPG through Snake Oil brand additive!”). And the funny thing is that even though living in a capitalist society requires some small modicum of common sense when it comes to purchasing goods, there are always some stunningly idiotic propositions that simply won’t die. Thus, the motto “if it’s too good to be true, it surely isn’t” goes unheeded as folks fork over cash without thinking. (Insert parallels to housing crisis here.) But I’m not here to lecture about the economy – do I look like Keynes? What does this have to do with cars?

I’m so glad you asked. But first, let me ask YOU a question: how would you like a car that got the equivalent of 200MPG, didn’t require fossil fuels, protected baby seals from typhus, and has a range of 16,000 nautical miles? If you said “yes!” then have I got a proposition for you! Test drive a ZAP today!

(Quiz: did you actually get excited about a ZAP car? If so, please continue reading the rest of this article and remember that I’m not judging you.)

ZAP is one of the more recent and media-savvy snake-oil purveyors of late. They essentially sell several versions of their Xebra electric vehicle, which comes in a sedan and a truck and (if you like) with a zebra-themed paint job. They pitch this as some sort of messiah of urban transportation, much as the Segway. Much like the Segway’s most iconic image, President George W. Bush falling flat on his face when the batteries died, the Xebra fails to match the hype. Essentially a dangerous, Chinese-built golf cart with 3 wheels, dangerously slow acceleration, a miserable range of 25 miles in optimal conditions, and poor reliability, the Xebra is really a $12,000 Power Wheels car.

In fact, I think ZAP sells more hype than cars. A celebrated expose that Wired did in 2008 exposed ZAP as essentially being an undercapitalized franchise wholesaler. They sell you on vaporware, you plunk down thousands to purchase a dealer franchise! Isn’t that a Ponzi scheme? Well, technically maybe not, but Bernie Madoff would approve. In any event, it’s SHADY with a capital “T” and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of criminal investigation commencing soon on a variety of fraud charges.

Of course, ZAP is innocent until proven guilty, but look, no one is forcing you to buy their crappy cars. Take that $12,000 and go purchase a lightly used Honda Civic GX, which runs on clean-burning natural gas with almost no emissions whatsoever (it was actually certified as the cleanest burning internal combustion engine in the world for a production car), a range that is approximately 10 times the range of a Xebra, and the reliability of a Honda. And you can send me a thank-you note too.

One Problem With Writing Your Own Epitaph …

(BTW, I’m going to try to get back to discussing car news, trends, and interesting tidbits on a more regular basis. Bear with me!)

The New York Times has an interesting article up right now about Saturn’s new ad campaign. Here’s the two line summary:

1. The ads’ main message is that Saturn is still around and not dead yet.
2. The other message is that Saturn is about to die.

When the reporter notes that the campaign is “risky,” I personally think that’s the understatement of the century. Let me get this straight – the company is doing so badly that they specifically need to risk alerting potential customers that they will DIE in 2012, just to let them know that they STILL EXIST?

Two other notable factoids from the article. First of all, less than 50% of surveyed potential customers even realize that Saturn is a GM brand. (Psst … hey Saturn, you should keep it that way!!!) Secondly, the spokespersons in the ad are … wait for it … auto dealers!!! The most trusted folks on the face of the earth, right after those Nigerian princes who seem to have a lot of trouble transferring their enormous treasure out of the country without your help, are going to explain why you should remember that they are still around.

You know what, GM? You should just offload all of the tooling for Saturn cars to some Chinese company and recoup your costs …wait, what? There is no tooling, because all of Saturn’s cars are simply rebadged vehicles from other GM brands? So you’re saying that Saturn is just a nameplate, with no tangible assets other than a bunch of angry dealer franchises and a severely eroded customer base?

Sheesh. I’m going to cut off the bitterness tap before I make someone cry.

Pedallin' my Pontiac ...

One of the (many) reasons I haven’t been blogging as much lately is that I’m trying to develop a new feature that will change some of the character of the blog: people telling stories about important or memorable family cars from their youth.

I don’t have a name yet (any suggestions?) for the feature, but I’m going to get things rolling with a story that’s not about a car at all.

It’s about a pedal car.

A while back I found a photo of me in my old pedal car, a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 4.9L Turbo, in black with a big red “screaming chicken” decal on the hood. (See this link to Jalopnik.comfor a photo and a brief description.) First of all, how awesome was it that my first pedal-car was a miniature of one of the strangest, most kitchy-awesome 70s cars ever?

Secondly, I loved it. I’d get in it all the time, and I’d refuse to get out. Then I got a little bigger and I would get stuck in it. Which was a pain in the ass for my parents, who would pull me, crying, out of this too-small toy only to have me get back in. Who could resist the pull of the Trans Am? Not me.

One day, on the way up to our lake cabin in my dad’s loaded-to-the-gills pickup, the Trans Am was hit by a gust of wind, and since it wasn’t that well secured, fell off and disintegrated on the highway. I was devastated.

Nonetheless, that car sparked an interest in weird, obscure (and by any objective standard, crappy) cars. And that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

It's not easy being gree ... uh, blogging.

Ok, I've been a bad, bad blogger. But I'm back on it and I'm working on some new features and content ideas.

Visit again soon and be amazed.

There’s only a limited amount of puns possible: a SAAB story

SAAB, or Svenska Aeroplan AktieBolaget, is currently just another GM nameplate to shill their other cars through (mostly Opels and Chevys, at the moment). When formed in the late 1940s, however, SAAB was one of the most unique and innovative automakers in the world. Having been primarily an airplane manufacturer, they brought an outsider perspective to a landscape of conservative auto manufacturing with such wild features as front-wheel-drive, a two-stroke engine (which is small and makes a lot of power at the expense of emissions and noise), and a car that was smaller than the aircraft carriers that most Americans were used to driving.

Needless to say, as a small, bizarre foreign car, most folks in this country just ignored the little SAABs. That’s a shame. The original SAAB, the 92, was an amazing little car. It was so aerodynamic that it matches one of the fastest cars in the world today, the Koenigsegg CCX, at 0.30 CD. (That’s also kind of a biased comparison, because with computers, even a modern Honda Accord can get a 0.30 CD. But for 1949, that was at least twice as good as most cars on the market.) It was designed by a bunch of aeronautical engineers who’d never made a car before, and as I mentioned before was a virtual testbed of new ideas. The front-mounted, transverse (across the car, rather than placed on the centerline) engine powering the front wheels allowed for amazing traction, allowing the little and underpowered car to win rally races on snow and dirt despite being up against bigger, faster opponents. This started a performance and rally-winning heritage that lasted for quite a while.

The car was gradually upgraded, with the 93 and later cars getting different engines and slightly different engineering. Eventually, the cars went to a longitudinally-mounted (along the centerline) setup but with front wheel drive, which was a layout that only one other automaker, Audi, adopted. With the 99 and the definitive 900 coming later, SAAB became one of the only enthusiast-oriented front wheel drive cars on the planet.

So what happened? SAAB began its long, slow tailspin with the arrival of the 9000, which was co-engineered with Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and Lancia. It was entirely different than the 900, not just an evolution of its design, and it lost a lot of the character that the 900 had. SAAB was purchased by GM shortly after this in 1990, and the 9000 was replaced by the 9-5, which was built on a GM chassis that was designed for the SAAB and its soon-to-be brother, the Opel Vectra. This lead the 900 to be replaced by the 9-3, which was also built on the Vectra platform.

I really hope you’ve followed the story so far, because if you did, you’d realize that at this point, GM had both of the SAABs they were selling on non-SAAB, GM platforms. And they were the same platform! Basically, you could get small GM or larger GM. That is what SAABs were by this point. And then they proceeded to sell the exact same cars until pretty much now. The 9-5 has been on sale, virtually unchanged, since 1997.

That’s clearly not how you market an automaker who is supposed to be fundamentally different as its primary selling point. In my opinion SAAB stopped living up to its own modus operandi when the 900 died. Without unique cars to sell, it’s just another GM brand, and that’s why it’s upcoming demise is not terribly troubling to me. It’s just sad.

[Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, NYT]

I’ll say it again: the upshot to the “in the toilet” economy is …

Cheap, cheap cars. Really cheap. If you want to buy a Saab 9-7X, you can get $8500 cash back. But let’s be honest, the majority of these incentives are found on American vehicles, specifically larger cars and SUVs. The Saab I mentioned is a barely-disguised Chevy Trailblazer, so that (along with the fact that Saab is owned by GM and barely sells any cars at all) might explain the discount.

However, some small, fuel-efficient cars that are in high demand are even getting discounts. The Toyota Yaris and the Honda Civic are both having incentive programs in some areas. That just goes to show just how much the sales turndown is affecting even large, healthy companies like Honda and Toyota.

Places like Edmunds.com or manufacturer websites are good places to explore the discounts, but use common sense. Even though $8500 cash back makes a 9-7X a good buy, the insane depreciation and very small number of people interested in a Saab SUV might mean that you’ll end up with less equity in the car than you thought.

Of course, navigating these intricacies are what I do for a living, so you can click through to Spark Auto Consulting if you want more info about tapping into incentives.

[source: Edmunds.com]

UPDATE: GM asks for an additional $12B

No, you’re not missing a period in-between the 1 and the 2. That’s t-w-e-l-v-e billion dollars on top of the $18B they already wanted. If they don’t get it, they’ll run out of cash by March, and might have to consider bankruptcy.

Look, I’m not happy about this at all. GM employs lots of folks who happened to live in this country (and Mexico, Canada, and South Korea). And a bunch will get laid off, and almost all with see a reduction in the health benefits and other perks they were promised. Which totally sucks. You shouldn’t have to shaft the little guy, especially considering the state of healthcare in this country.

I totally blame the UAW. I am usually a pro-labor person, but in my mind the UAW represents everything that is wrong with unionization. Why is that relevant to GM’s woes? I mean, certainly GM has done a lot to dig it’s own grave, with enough brands/models competing with each other, and enough management to make the combined bureaucracy of Europe look streamlined. But the UAW has apparently bludgeoned the industry into accepting insane “legacy costs.” Which is a fancy way of saying, we’ll promise all sorts of benefits, to be paid off in the future, betting on great sales and market dominance. And it’s falling apart like Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme (which is exactly how I view the situation).

The taxpayer ends up with a lot of the burden for the mistakes of private enterprise. That makes me really angry. If GM achieved “parity” with the cost and benefits of other sectors in the US (including the domestic workers for foreign automakers), and stood up to the UAW, they’d be in an arguably better position, and you, Joe or Jane America, wouldn’t be worrying how much of your tax dollars are cleaning up the mess.

OK, in case you can’t tell, this turned into a full-blown rant as I actually thought this whole thing through. I actually hope it riles you up too, because it should.

[Source: NYT, pure unadulterated anger]

Under Pressure: Ford’s Ecoboost, and it’s future

Ford has been talking up their Ecoboost system (really just their name for the new generation of turbocharged engines), which are intended to give the power of a larger engine (like a V8) at the fuel economy of a smaller one (like a V6). For example, Ford already offers a V8 and a V6 version of the Mustang, but with an Ecoboost V6 you could get similar power to a V8 (which would remain the halo motor) and economy closer to the V6, if not better.

What’s the trade-off? As Autofiends.com points out, torque could be the issue. Torque is the twisting, stump-pulling power of a motor. A tractor doesn’t go very fast, but it has a lot of pulling power. Likewise, a Honda S2000 is pretty fast, but it couldn’t pull out a stump. That’s the difference between torque (tractor) and horsepower (S2000). Torque pushes you into your seat when you hit the gas, and lots of Americans like that kind of power delivery. That’s why you can get a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, which is basically a 6.1L V8 engine that flings the shoebox it’s stuffed in to 60 MPH in 4.6 seconds, aerodynamics and basic notions of time and space be damned. Who cares if the SRT8 doesn’t actually make any sense when driving it is like being on a rollercoaster wherever you go?

But hey, the advantage is fuel economy, and weight savings. Especially with the addition of a turbo 4-cylinder engine to the Ecoboost line, it could provide for a lot of interesting applications. For example, a 4-cylinder Ecoboost in an SUV like the Explorer (yes, they still make them) could net fuel economy numbers substantially greater than a V8 version, with a tradeoff in towing capacity mostly.

The bottom line is it’s a good idea. There are drawbacks, and turbocharged cars are not for every application. If you tow a boat, get the larger engine. If you simply need to cruise down to the Denny’s while flooring the gas the whole time in order to stimulate your appetite, then an Ecoboost might be in your future.

[Source: autofiends.com]

Slimmin’ Down: Automakers to submit plans to Treasury

In many ways as unsurprising as it is incredible, the details of GM and Chrysler’s plans to redo their business models is going to be submitted to the Treasury Department today (Ford did not take money from the Feds, so they don’t have to submit a restructuring plan). Apparently, GM is going to slim down to just 4 brands, from the 8 they currently sell in the US. The list is:

1. Chevrolet
2. Buick
3. GMC
4. Cadillac

What’s missing from the list? Some of the brands were expected to be cut, notably Saab, Hummer, and Saturn. But Pontiac!!!

Pontiac has been the sporting face of GM for a long time, despite mostly not living up to the image. Other GM brands, with their own management and agendas, produced their own sportscars, reducing Pontiac to sort of a façade. Take the Chevy Corvette and Camaro. Pontiac got a version of the Camaro, the Firebird, for pretty much the entire life of the car. But the Corvette was the halo car for GM, and it was a Chevy, so Pontiac could never meet or exceed the performance of that car.

This is despite the fact that lately, there was some thinking that Pontiac would become a specialty, sportscar-only brand, making cars along the lines of the Solstice, G8, and the GTO exclusively. However, that’s also a little hard to believe when you consider the introduction of this monstrosity, the Pontiac G3, which is a rebadged version of that old GM favorite, the Daewoo Kalos/Chevy Aveo. Talk about mixed messages! What about the Kalos/Aveo is sporty?

So after my initial shock (“no, don’t kill the General’s sportscars!”), I’ve realized that Pontiac is just as warped and off-message as any brand at GM. Like Saturn, the brand-image has been tainted, and maybe it deserves to die to allow GM to start focusing on not competing with itself.

[Source: NYT]

New layout!

I'm testing out this new layout - I was getting a little sick of the generic blue one. A little too Blue Man Group for me. Anyways, let me know what you think of the new design.

PS - I think the text is a bit too small so I'll work on correcting that.

Multitude of Pun Options: the SHO is back

Trust me, no matter how clever you think the phrase “Fo’ SHO” would be in the byline, it’s not worth my integrity to do it. So there, it’s just in the body, and you can send any hate mail to me through my secretary, Alan Mulally.

So you might know about the Ford Taurus on sale right now, but probably not. Frankly, I’ve only noticed one on the road, and that might be because of it’s DARPA-developed stealth capabilities: complete and utter blandness. Originally the Taurus was the bread-and-butter Ford sedan, outselling all others for a number of years in the 90s, until falling off because of underdevelopment. Instead of injecting some much-needed dollars into the nameplate, they killed it and introduced the Ford Five Hundred, which was a huge underpowered boat that nobody bought. After that proved to be a mistake, they had a brilliant idea: rename it the Ford Taurus again! I forgive you if you don’t remember that earth-shattering day.

The coolest aspect of the original Taurus was the SHO (Super High Output) variant of the original car. A manual transmission and a screaming beast of a V6 (which was designed by Yamaha, which has a history of making really good motors for cars, and helped develop the high-output engine in the Toyota Celica) made it a surprisingly fun, cheap ride. The car would invariably fall apart around the motor, but the motor was a real jewel. It was one of the best V6 motors ever made.

Ford is bringing the SHO back, and it’s a similar formula – big motor in a sedan. This time, it’s a twin-turbocharged Ecoboost V6 making a whopping 355 hp. It will also apparently get 25MPG and is all-wheel drive. The Taurus is now a much bigger car that it was originally, so this is going to be a little bit of a different proposition (more big Mercedes sedan than hot-rod Accord in functionality), but Ford is claiming it will outperform a BMW 550i and be considerably cheaper at about $37,000 MSRP.

My take? It’s still a big bland car, and for $37,000 I would much rather get a Hyundai Genesis or (if I needed AWD) a turbocharged Subaru Legacy. However, the original SHO had a whole heap of die-hard fans, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to forgive it any defects and hoon the living daylights out of it. Plus it’s a cool idea, and using turbocharged V6s instead of big, thirsty V8s is responsible of Ford.

[Source: Jalopnik, Freep.com]

Right next to the giant jar of mayonnaise: a Chinese car?

There was an episode of the Simpsons a while back that involved a giant food big-lots store called CostMo, where Marge buys a 12-pound container of nutmeg. The motto was “Where Shopping Is A Baffling Ordeal.” Our reality has possibly moved closer to merging with the Simpsons universe.

Several blogs are reporting that Chinese automakers, particularly FAW, are looking at how to establish networks to sell their vehicles in North America. The companies interested in importing the cars have hit upon an idea to sell them at big-box stores like Costco and Wal-Mart. One importer, GS Cars, is already doing that in Mexico and apparently moved 4,000 units last year.

My take? Not as crazy as it sounds, but I don’t think the venture has a ton of hope. Brand-quality associations are pretty strong, and selling a car at Wal-Mart might taint the company.

Finally, consider the historical perspective. In the ‘50s Sears-Roebuck sold all sorts of motor vehicles, mostly Vespa and Cushman scooters, under the Allstate brand. They also sold a car in 1951, simply called the “Allstate.” It was in reality a small and cheap economy car made by the Kaiser-Frazier Corporation called the “Henry J” after the chairman of the company. It was cheap, poorly built, and didn’t appeal at all to American sensibilities of the 1950s. Basically, it had a weak marketing message and they didn’t sell, whether badged as Kaisers or as Allstates.

Will the Chinese cars suffer the same fate? I think if the economy recovers, everyone will spend a few dollars more and get a Chevy Aveo or something. I predict that until the Chinese can solidly establish a traditional dealer network, crazy stunts like this won’t move enough cars to make a real difference.

[source: hybridcars.com, wikipedia]

Put your hotness to work: thermoelectric generators

VW claims to have developed a thermoelectric generator that will convert wasted heat from a vehicle’s exhaust into a useable amount of electricity (about 30% of the Golf test car’s needs). They also claim a 5% reduction in fuel consumption because of the reduced load on the engine.

Reality check: is this a crazy idea? Not really, the process actually works. It’s just very, very inefficient. They’ve tried this before, and it’s pretty much not worth it to hook up an expensive thermoelectric device for a few watts of power. Apparently the VW engineers have improved the efficiency, but what’s the tradeoff? I am guessing that the device would be prohibitively expensive.

Good idea for more research and study, though. If you get this device cheap enough, and combine it will other efficiency technologies (example: a plug-in hybrid with regenerative braking, direct-fuel-injection, etc.) you might make a pretty big impact in fuel consumption. Let’s hope the net gains of a device like this outweigh, for example, the energy or harmful substances used to produce it. And these technologies would let us use internal combustion engines for a bit longer. The reality is, gasoline and diesel are pretty useful sources of fuel, from a chemical standpoint – lots of energy per unit, relatively easy to store, and still somewhat plentiful. I’m 100% in favor of getting as much bang for our gallon as possible until the party’s over – and that means wringing out as much efficiency as we can to make the dino fuel last as long as possible.

[Source: gizmag]

I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted: the Chevy Spark

OK, it’s no Maserati. In fact, it’s a Daewoo. GM owns Daewoo as a company that is called, unimaginiatively, GM Daewoo. It’s best known product in the US is the Chevy Aveo, which is sold as the Daewoo Kalos overseas.

The Spark is a badge-engineered version of the Daewoo Matiz, and is styled after the Chevy Beat concept. It’s been expected for a couple of years now, but it will only be sold in the US starting in 2011. Of course, GM could really sell models like this in the current economic Chernobyl, so I’m not really clear why they haven’t rushed this thing into high gear to push them onto US saleslots ASAP. I guess GM knows better.

Yeah right.

But anyhow, even though the Aveo is possibly the most awful car ever conceived outside of the Soviet sphere of influence, they sell a lot of them. So the even smaller and more efficient (theoretically) Spark should appeal to a lot of folks. If you have a genetic condition that prevents you from discerning between pleasing and unpleasing design elements, and you are in the market for a cheap car, this might be the one …

[Source: Autoblog]

Are you a plumber AND a Europhile? Have I got a car for you …

You might have seen Dodge Sprinters running around, especially if you’re a tradesperson making deliveries. The tall, narrow design has a ton of room and relatively economical features (read: diesel engine) and is great for tight urban areas. It is actually a Mercedes truck design, intended to fulfill the same niche in Euroland as panel vans (like those big Chevy and Dodge truck-based vans used by cable companies to park in the middle of your street and eat donuts) do in this country. I live near San Francisco and these things make a lot of sense in even big American cities.


Well, a smaller version of the same idea is being introduced by Ford. Called the Transit Connect (a name that makes NO sense to Americans, more on that in a second), it’s a small car-based vehicle, essentially a tiny minivan with a really high ceiling. It’s going to get a 2.0L Duratec motor and get fuel economy in the mid-20s. No diesel option is mentioned yet, but there’s an electric version coming out later this year with a 60-100 mile range, depending on options. OK, so that name. Ford Transit Connect. It sounds like a service where Ford picks you up at the airport and drops you off at your car or something. It’s really a cute way of referring to the Ford Transit, a larger van a lot like the Sprinter. But seriously, dudes, change the name. It’s stupid because we don’t get the big Transit.

This should be a pretty cool little vehicle. I was across the pond for a bit back in my wild college days, and I drove a very similar Renault vanlet around for a while. It was a VERY useful little car. And Ford is going to offer a passenger version, which should (as in Europe) attract a pretty significant number of folks looking for an inexpensive but very functional vehicle. Probably the most similar car in the US to the Transit Connect will be the Honda Element, which doesn’t offer as much interior space or a commercial version.

[Source: Jalopnik, Freep.com]

Would you buy a Geely Urban Nanny?

I was joking a bit in the last post about the Geely Beauty Leopard. Well, the name of Geely's pickup is the PU (funny in and of itself), and the delivery-truck version of it is called either the Urban Nanny or the Rural Nanny, depending on how it's configured.

It's based on the old (ancient) platform of the Daihatsu Charade, another really unfortunately named car, that was actually sold in the US for a couple of years.

I know it's problematic to make fun of the names of cars in other languages, but I seriously hope before Geely ever sells a car in the US they learn how to do focus groups with Americans.

Volvo Potentially to Be Purchased By Chinese Company

Several sources are reporting that the Chinese manufacturer Geely is interested in purchasing Volvo from Ford. Geely is known in the US mostly for making cars with funny names, like the BL (which stands for “Beauty Leopard.” Pictured above, lifted from the dictionary next to the word “ironic.”). Ford has spun off much of its former Premiere Automotive Group (PAG) to other companies. Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Jaguar are now owned by Tata of India, and Volvo is really the last PAG marque left.

Volvo hasn’t been good to Ford. Low sales volumes and losses have made Volvo sort of a liability, and the PAG (in my opinion) hasn’t really had much of a halo effect on Ford. I mean, do most people even know that Ford owns Volvo? The connection really isn’t there.

What would a Geely acquisition mean for you as a consumer? Probably not too much – I doubt that Geely would tinker too much with the cars or their direction. Volvo still has a lot of structure in Sweden, including designers and engineers, so my guess is that the Swedes would keep developing the cars for Volvo, and work double duty making the Geely cars themselves better. The real question is whether or not this is a cost-effective way for Geely to get some Western design and engineering experience. I’ll leave that to the beancounters.

[Sources: NYT, Edmunds, Autoblog]

Sick again ... more sporatic posting and lame excuses.

It seems that I'm about as healthy as the Detroit 3. But hey, that means lazy blogger is ok! So here are some old Toyota ads.

Let's start with this gem: in Japan, there's a whole genre of ads where a western movie star says a token word or two, and drives a car around in a usually nonsensical situation. I can't embed these videos (sorry), so make the jump over to Jalopnik and enjoy watching Roger Moore drive the crap out of a Toyota Corona. Trust me, it's worth watching the whole thing.

And in this amazing, absurd song-and-dance commercial, you'll notice even the strange looking team of muscle-men like front wheel drive. "Oh what a feeling!" indeed.

Uh, this one? I like old Celicas probably more than anyone, but this ad does not want to make me buy one. I agree with Jalopnik that the swinging mailbox that makes it nighttime is a little absurd.

Basically, after seeing this ad about a Corolla FX from outer space, I can't believe anyone bought Toyotas at all!

Jing Qi! China passes US in total auto sales

Despite a worldwide recession that is affecting even China (after significantly growing it’s economy for most of 2008), the Chinese bought about 795,000 new vehicles in January of ’09. That compares to approximately 657,000 vehicles sold in the US.

For whatever it’s worth, this is the first time in history that China has surpassed the US in vehicle sales. But don’t expect me to scream “oh no, we’re going to be overrun by crappy Chinese cars!” I feel like the learning curve isn’t going to be too much steeper for China than it was for Korea. It took the Koreans, particularly Kia and Hyundai, only a decade or two from making bad copies of other cars to being serious rivals to Japanese automakers in terms of quality and design. Want proof? Look at the new Hyundai Genesis. Compare that to a Hyundai Excel from 1990 and you’ll understand that motivated companies with advantages in labor costs, and some help from foreign expertise, will catch up really quick. Realistically, I give the Chinese another 10 years, and possibly less, to make very competitive cars. And I don’t expect the Koreans to give their market position up easily, so expect a price, feature, and quality war in the near future. Chinese automakers like BYD (“Build Your Dreams,” actually one of the better manufacturer names) are already very serious about hybrid technology, too.

That will be good for consumers, trust me. You’ll benefit in the long run.

[Source: Freep.com. Bnet Autos]

Auf wiedersehen, beschissen Bangle-Arschen!

(Goodbye, crappy Bangle-butts!) For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Bangle or his atrocities, know this: in high school, my car-loving friends and I adopted the word “Bangle” to mean, well, the same thing as a four-letter work starting with an “F” commonly used to describe (with “-ed” on the end) the state of the economy. That same meaning of “completely and totally screwed” applies to what Mr. Bangle did to the styling department of BMW.

According to the ever-accurate wikipedia, Chris Bangle (who is American) went to BMW in 1992, apparently after deciding that becoming a Methodist priest was less exciting that making ugly cars. There, he imposed a strange, twisted design philosophy. Before Bangle reached BMW, they were known for their driving dynamics, not their styling. Case in point: the BMW M5 of the late ‘80s. Ugly as sin, but a great driver. Later M5s, notably the 1998-2003 edition, were handsome in an UNDERSTATED way. They did not need to be flashy to convey the point that they were fast, luxurious, and exclusive. Fast forward to 2002, when the 7-series that was styled by Bangle’s team was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. It had a butt that looked like it had grown an unfortunate tumor, and it was shocking and polarizing. No longer was BMW going to eschew gimmicky tack-on elements, they were going to fully embrace them! Bangle said, “let the world have FLAME SURFACING,” and despite the fact that no one knew what the hell he was talking about, suddenly people noticed that their BMWs looks like they had been poorly folded out of cardboard, with clashing lines and edges. This Z4 is a prime example, with strange shapes scalloped into the sides, awkward meetings of panels, and a frumpy tail. All hallmarks of the Bangle style. But in any event, the point of the matter is that Bangle is gone, and despite all of the harm he’s done to BMW and its competitors (like Infiniti and especially Acura, whose cars have been beaten with the ugly stick of late), hopefully BMW will decide a new styling direction would help them sell more cars.

[source: Jalopnik, Reuters]

Hug your sad Salesperson: Sales off sharply for January

Reuters is reporting some bad news. Auto sales are near a 27-year low for the month of January. The numbers (make sure small children or people sensitive to strong images of corporate failure are not looking):

Ford: 40% drop in January domestic sales, capping 10 months of declines of more than 10%

Toyota: 34% drop for US sales

Nissan: 30% for US sales

Shockingly, on the news that rental car agencies were sharply cutting back on purchases, Chrysler expected sales to be off more than 35%. Why did I say “shockingly” (in a sarcastic manner)? Well, that’s to be expected when the only people who buy your cars are rental agencies. I mentioned a while back that the Dodge Avenger and Chrysler Sebring twins are pretty much the archetype of a car so foul that only rental car agencies will buy them. The economy is so bad the agencies are balking.

If any Chrysler execs are reading this (which, trust me, they aren’t for several reasons, one of which is that they are allergic to good advice), you might want to consider making cars that don’t look like rejected props from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs.

Symphonic Exhaust: Jay Leno's Lotus Elan

If you read my posts about Lotus (see HERE and HERE), then watching this video might help you further understand my appreciation from the quirky little English manufacturer.

If nothing else, the sound the twin-cam in this little Elan makes is simply unearthly.

Enjoy!

Good News!

OK, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two days looking for some morsel from the auto world that is not completely depressing. It hasn’t been easy, but hey, I’m working for you, loyal readers, so I don’t mind the drudgery. So here’s what I came up with:

1. The impending failure of the Big 3 in Detroit means our society, our way of life, and all of our cars will be consigned to oblivion in the near future. Prepare to eat a diet of coarsely ground grain, fend off large mammalian predators, and drag a sledge behind you …

… um, er, haha, little joke. Moving right along …

1. (for real this time) if you live in Europe and have a hankering for really big luxury cars that get good economy (who doesn’t?), then you might like the new BMW 730Ld. Kidding aside, this car really points out why diesel engines, in my mind, play a really important niche. The 730Ld (which is a huge car, by the way, at 205” long and weighs close to 6,000 lbs) will get 32 MPG on the European combined cycle test. I don’t think it will break any speed records, but diesels are getting a lot better. And for folks that want their cake and don’t want to have to fill up the tank while they’re eating it, the idea of a huge luxury sedan that gets Toyota Yaris fuel economy might be just what the doctor ordered. [Source: BMW via Autoblog Green]

2. Plus, if you get a 730Ld, in the near future you might be able to fill it up with fuel derived from algae. Seriously. There are still a ton of economic obstacles to making this a really competitive fuel source, but the advantages are numerous: high productivity, noncompetition with human food sources, ability to grow in ponds on unutilized land, etc. As long as it doesn’t spur the rise of a super-advanced sentient algae species that we will have to fight in order to survive, it should work out well. [Source: Nevada News]

3. Finally, Ford, the healthiest of the Detroit 3 automakers, has announced that if you actually want to buy one of their 2010 Fusion hybrids, you’ll get the full $3,400 tax credit. It does get impressive economy, at 41 MPG in the city. The hitch? In April, the credit gets halved, and in October it gets halved again. Nevertheless, if you absolutely crave a midsize hybrid that gets the best fuel economy, the Fusion is the way to go. It’s significantly more efficient than any other hybrid in its class. [Source: Ford]

Best Car Ad Ever

Dear lord. The scene at the very end. Priceless.

OK, Jalopnik gets a huge shout out here for reminding me of this brilliant ad. Why they didn't rank it number one, I'll never know. Check out their "Top 11 Best Superbowl Car Commercials" post.

RIP: Isuzu departs our shores Jan. 31

I guess it’s a morbid day here around Sparkblog. Earlier I was circling, vulture-style, over the bloated corpse of Saturn. While honestly, there isn’t much levity in chronicling the demise of nameplates, with Isuzu we can at least hold one of those “the survivors should celebrate” type of funerals, looking back at some of the cool stuff Isuzu did before they went to the big junkyard in the sky. First of all, in the interest of telling it how it is, Isuzu hasn’t really been here in a while anyways. They stopped selling cars they designed themselves in 2004, and have been selling rebadged GM trucks ever since. The I-series truck is a Chevy Colorado, and the Ascender is a Trailblazer. And they sell like crap as Isuzus, let me tell you. So the guys from Tokyo are packing up and going home.

Some highlights to throw on the funeral pyre:

The Isuzu 117: OK, so it was never sold in the US, but the 117 was a sporty DOHC coupe styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro. Giugiaro also penned lots of gorgeous cars (like the Delorean DMC-12, which for all its faults was a pretty car), but in my opinion the 117 was one of his best designs.

The Bellet GT-R: also never sold in the US, this was a sporty sedan was designed by Tom Tjaarda, who was another well known designer. It used the engine from the 117 in a smaller package.

The Chevy LUV: god, this is one of the best names ever to grace a car. The LUV was a Isuzu KB-series truck that Chevy imported while they were developing the S-10, to compete with the Ford Courier (which was a Mazda B-series pickup). You could call it the war of the tiny Japanese captive import trucks.

Joe Isuzu: ok, it’s not a car, it’s a marketing phenomenon. Played by David Leisure, Joe Isuzu would make clearly absurd claims about Isuzu cars. The campaign had serious gall, and it worked. They’re hilarious. Check it out.









Pretty much everything after Joe Isuzu, including the cars, really aren’t worth the space to talk about them. Sorry Isuzu, you just weren’t that cool.

Pull the Plug Already! Saturn wheezes on until at least 2012

It’s going to sound cliché, but bear with me. Imagine a company’s finest hope, a scrappy contender with a unique style and inspiring philosophy, poised to take on the complacent and omnipresent foreign thugs. Launched with great fanfare and a lot of optimism, Saturn moved an impressive amount of cars early on. (Let us ignore the fact that they were kind of tinny and, without some really impressive marketing to gather up a loyal fanbase, probably would have shuffled off to oblivion.) They were scrappy, and managed to convey a lot of messages into a rather pedestrian package. But hey, the attitude was there, the hype was there, lots of fans wanted to buy more Saturns, and they wanted to tell all their friends about it.

And … (insert a foreshadowing, dejected look or sound) … GM completely, totally screwed it up.

Talk about resting on your laurels. GM sat on them so long they were implanted in GM’s butt. GM sat on their product (the SL1 and its derivatives) for ELEVEN years with no real significant changes. Dear lord, how can I convey how long that is in car terms? That’s like, everyone starts out as an amoeba in a primordial mud puddle, and while Saturn was waving their flagella around aimlessly, Honda, Toyota, even Hyundai were striding about on land, inventing advanced rockets and string theory. They also formed a club that Saturn wasn’t invited to, and made fun of it. (No Saturns Allowed!)

When someone at GM (I’m imagining a Rip Van Winkle character popping up from a drafting table suddenly, looking around, and crying “oh no! I’ve slept too long!!!!”) finally woke up and wiped the drool from their design table, Saturn was totally screwed. It was too late to catch up by developing their own products, so they started shopping around the GM portfolio and grabbing vehicle platforms from other companies (mostly Opel, GM’s German brand). In doing so, they lost their character completely despite (finally) having good cars in the lineup. With no unique character or philosophy, it was just another GM brand selling a mismatched hodgepodge of cars.

So there has been a lot of speculation about Saturn going the way of the passenger pigeon. Or the marsupial tiger (which were totally RAD, too bad they’re extinct). But anyways, GM has announced that it will linger on in painful agony until at least 2012. Tellingly, they leave it open-ended whether it will survive past that. They might just be buying time to pull the plug.

[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Cool Idea: Mini-ATV/RVs

Whoa, hold on a sec. Cool ATVs or RVs? No, I haven’t been lapping up antifreeze from beneath my cinder-block-residing Camaro. Jalopnik is reporting that Yamaha is doing some market research about small ATV-like vehicles that have the ability to turn into mini-RVs. I think that’s a neat idea.

Well, neat up to a point. I think ultimately it’s going to be used mainly by hunters, who I am guessing already form the majority of side-by-side-seating ATV buyers. Scratch that, all ATV buyers. But I dunno, this might be a good idea for people who work in extreme areas. I have friends who do geology in remote parts of Alaska, and I bet you could helicopter a few of these in and be a lot more self-sufficient than just an ATV/tent combo.

Anyhow, check out the article at Jalopnik.

In the News: Obama, California, tailpipes, and seals

There are a lot of great news articles about this, including the New York Times one - by the way, I’ll admit my bias here and now and say that I get most of my news from the NYT – but I’ll do my super-quick summary for you here.

Basically, California wants to more strictly regulate tailpipe emissions, which is currently the domain of the federal government for all states, unless they have a waiver. The waiver allows the state regulations to be stronger than the federal regulations. California has had a waiver for a long time, but they want to increase their standards again. Of course, this is bringing up a lot of the same, tired, arguments about how this will kill the industry and cause Detroit to explode and set Canada on fire. Or that there will be some sort of evil mutant hodgepodge of state regulations, and the automakers will be really confused. So confused, in fact, that they claim they will explode and set baby seals on fire. And go out of business. But mostly incinerate seals.

This is a pretty stupid argument, in my opinion. Business, as those type-A personalities who become businesspeople will be happy to tell you, is about natural selection. Adapt or die! Corporate raiders! Hostile takeover!!!! It’s a rough business, business. And it has become abundantly clear that the big three need to get their ducks (not the Catera ducks!) in a row and shape up. All of them make small, efficient cars in Europe, and sell them like crazy. Ford is working on turbocharging smaller engines so that power-hungry Americans can still pass big trucks on the freeway while getting ok fuel economy when off-boost. Great! That’s fantastic. It’s been proven that you can make cars that burn less gas and emit less pollutants. Start building them!

In any event, Obama is ordering his minions to make sure they reconsider granting California’s proposed waiver, which is a shift away from the Bush policy. In case you can’t guess, I’m all in favor of it.

On Top of the Pile: Toyota is now world’s largest automaker.

[insert: "I for one welcome our new ____ overlords" meme here ...]

I can’t believe I didn’t post to mention this. It’s pretty simple. GM, the world’s largest carmaker since the 1930s, was outsold in 2008. GM sold 8.35 million vehicles to Toyota’s 8.97 million.

It’s not surprising in the least. Toyota has been expected to pull ahead of GM for a long time, considering that GM has subsisted for at least 50 years on lazy and regressive business practices, marketing flops, and convincing Americans to buy huge cars and trucks. Toyota, meanwhile, has a business model that is widely emulated in the corporate world. And they sell darn good cars. (OK, they’re a little boring, but the Corolla is the best selling car nameplate in history, and they sell most of their cars like hotcakes. Or at least they did before the economy went in the drink.)

(Source: New York Times)

Engine Basics: that mess o' hoses

Most folks blanch when they peek under the hood. Modern cars have enough wires and hoses to tap into people's instinctual fear of snakes and spiders (that's my pop-psychology theory at least). In any event, it's usually a mess. At some point in the last couple of years, car designers got wise to this crazy situation and decided, "let's just cover the whole shebang up!"

And they did. Most brand new cars have a nice, obfuscating plastic cover that tidies up all that unsightly junk. In case you can't tell, I think this cover-up trend sucks. But if it prevents some of the more sensitive among us from having visceral reactions involving jumping up on a chair and shrieking, then good on 'em.

So what do you need to know about all these hoses and wires? Well, the wires are pretty simple - look for frays. Sometimes mice and other small animals decide your engine looks like a wonderful nesting area. They chew on this, and rip at that, gathering up your underhood insulation and such to make a cozy little nest. It's not very smart, but neither are rodents. So chewed up wiring is definitely something to be watchful for. Also, some underhood liquids are corrosive (like brake fluid, nasty stuff) so a spill on wiring could eat through the insulation. Chafing and heat can play a role, too. But if you notice something suspicious, let your mechanic know.

Hoses are also pretty simple. They usually get checked up on when you bring a car in for scheduled maintenance. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't look at them occasionally. There are two types - hoses that carry your coolant/antifreeze ("water"), and air hoses. Look for cracking, bulges, and anything like that. A gentle squeeze on a cool hose (don't burn yourself!) can also tell you if it's getting brittle and might break. A broken water hose can strand you, and some air hose leaks can keep a car from running. Let your mechanic know ASAP if you think there is a chance a hose might break.

That's about it. Shoot me an email or comment if you have any questions.

Out sick ...

I've been sick the past couple of days, so posting has been on the nonexistent end. I'm currently pouring massive quantities of juice and vitamins into my body so I can get back to posting cool stuff about cars ASAP.

Bear with me.

Alfas in Detroit? Fiat takes 35% stake in Chrysler

Only independent from the DaimlerChrysler partnership for a year and a half, the smallest of the big three has given a 35% stake to the Turin-based conglomerate Fiat. Basically, the deal is that Fiat will pay for retooling Chrysler factories to build Fiat-based small cars and efficient engines. However, Fiat won’t actually put any cash into the automaker. As the New York Times points out, “[t]he speed and terms of the Chrysler-Fiat talks illustrated the emergency facing Chrysler, which was willing to give away more than a third of the company essentially for free.”

Fiat also has an option of increasing their stake to 55%. While that would mean Chrysler would be foreign-owned again, I’m not sure that they had any choice. They were majority-owned by New York-based Cerberus Capital (80% stake), so I assume that their stake was simply reduced and given to Fiat.

What does this mean for Chrysler? Well, despite Fiat and their related brands leaving US shores in disgrace in the 80s and early 90s, they’ve apparently gotten their act together and are now putting together a decent car. The new (nuova) Fiat 500 is a MINI competitor, and the Alfa Romeo line looks really sharp (especially the Brera and 8C Competizione). Are we going to get Fiat (or Alfa, Lancia, etc) branded cars, or are we simply going to get new Dodge and Chrysler small cars based on Italian platforms? It’s probably too early to tell.

The bottom line? Chrysler needs a partner. Why not Fiat?

Engine Basics: the CEL (Check Engine Light)

Depending on what type of car you drive, the check engine light can either be a continual (comforting?) presence on your gauge cluster, or an ominous herald of doom whose orange light illuminates your deepest car-related fears. It’s not either, and there are a few things that you should know about this often misunderstood warning light. First of all, it comes in a couple of varieties. Some cars have a light that literally spells out “Check Engine,” others have an icon that looks like an engine. Usually they are yellow or orange. If you’re unsure of what to look for, your owner’s manual will have an illustration of the icon.



So what does it mean? The CEL means that some system on the engine is working improperly. The computer on your car monitors the engine through a number of sensors, with the most having to do with the cars exhaust (emissions control) system. There are sensors that measure the composition of the exhaust, for example, to make sure the engine is complying with emissions requirements for state and federal laws. Some of the sensors look at aspects of how the engine is actually running. In any event, when one of these sensors detects a condition that is outside its acceptable range, it will send a coded signal to the computer, which will in turn display a CEL.

In some cars, the CEL will flash on and off if a really serious error is detected. If you see a flashing CEL, I would recommend safely stopping the car and consulting your owner’s manual. When in doubt, or if the car feels unsafe to drive, please use common sense and don’t drive it. Call a tow truck or your mechanic.

Usually, the CEL stays on in a steady glow. It’s really just there to say that “something is wrong! It could be one of many things! Get it looked at!” The CEL tells you almost nothing about what is actually going on, unless you can read the code that the sensor sent to the computer. This is exactly what happens if you have a car built after 1996, and you take it to the mechanic. Starting with the 1996 model year, all cars were required to have an OBD-II (On Board Diagnostic [System] – II) plug, which is a universal code that is standardized among all brands. So whether it’s a Mazda or a Jaguar, an OBD-II reader device will be able to download the error code from the computer. (Older cars may have non-universal readers for them, but in any event, your mechanic should be able to read any CEL code.)

For example, let’s say you have a Mazda Miata from 1996. If you had an OBD-II reader, and you plugged it in, imagine it displayed the code “P0126.” You’d have to refer then to the list of codes, and you’d find out the code meant “thermostat stuck open.” That is not necessarily a serious fault, but it could affect the way your car ran in cold weather, so it would be a really good idea to take it in to a shop and have them look at the car.

Of course, without a code reader, all you see is the light. And the point I want to make is, the light doesn’t tell you very much. With our hypothetical Mazda code above, you could in all likelihood drive your car to a mechanic to have them look at it. But the light isn’t there to tell you whether to drive it or not. I wish I had better advice, but again, I would say to exercise your best judgment, and if you see the light, bring it to a mechanic in a safe and responsible manner. (That might mean towing it!)

The one thing I CAN tell you without a doubt is that the wrong way to respond to a CEL is to tape a piece of paper over it! I know folks who have done that. The CEL means business, so respect it!

Jalopnik: 11 Most Depressing Moments At Detroit Auto Show

Link to the Jalopnik Article

I found this to be pretty hilarious. THIS didn't make it into the list, but it should have. I guess they included it with the "Chrysler" entry in the list.

Forgive me if I've been sucked into the lazy blogger's "blogging about other blogs" disease. I'm just a bit busy. I'll be back on my game soon.

Until then, read this article. And if you don't already, you need to check out Jay Leno's Garage website, that'll kill some time and let me pound out some real blog posts.

Interesting NYT blog: cheap gas, efficient cars?

How to Sell Fuel Sipping Cars Despite Cheap Gas - NYT

This was a pretty interesting piece. It proposes to tax larger and less fuel efficient vehicles and give a proportional tax break to folks buying smaller cars. It would supposedly be tax-neutral in sum.

If you're a libertarian, this is your cue to freak out!

Engine Basics: Turbos and Superchargers

One major component that makes a big difference when considering an engine is whether or not it has some form of forced induction. That's a fancy term for "blowing more air in." I think the best way to think about it is to imagine those old-fashioned bellows that folks used in fireplaces.



When you pushed air into the fire with the bellows, the fire was able to burn more, and it flared up. If you replace the bellows with a fan (technically a turbine, which is really just a fan with a ton of thin blades), then you get the idea. Induction simply refers to how much air gets to the fire. So forced induction can be thought of as "force-fed air into the motor."

There are two types of forced induction: turbochargers and superchargers. Both of these cause an engine to make more power by mechanically (basically, using a fan) to force more air into the engine than it can suck normally. The car also adds more fuel, and the result is more combustion. Combustion, after all, is a controlled explosion of gas mixed with air. Combine more gas with more air and you get more power. By using some of the engine's energy, you can turn the basically make the fire work its own bellows. This creates more power than the engine could make initially. I know that sounds kind of like a perpetual motion machine, but there are some limits on it, and so it's not really "free energy." It's just more energy.

So remember that there are two types. The first is a "turbo," or more properly, a turbosupercharger. Turbo refers to turbine, the fans that power the system. Charge is another name for the air that the system forces into the engine. Hence, turbocharger. This system gets the power it uses to turn the turbine (that forces more air into the motor) from the exhaust system. If you were to ever put your hand near your exhaust pipe while the car was running, you'd feel some pressure against your hand. This is normally "wasted energy" in a regular car. In a turbocharged car, one fan blade in the flow of the exhaust, which spins it like a windmill. The other side of the turbo has another turbine, which uses it's fan to compress ("boost") the fresh air and push it into the engine.


You can see the two halves of the turbo here. One side spins in the exhaust, one side spins to pull in fresh air. They are connected by a shaft.

Turbochargers are in many ways a very efficient way to tap into some extra energy. They tend to be more efficient that simply making a bigger motor to get the same power. But they only work when there is enough exhaust flow, so they don't make much power when at idle ("off-boost" or not working). That increases the fuel economy though. When you don't need the extra power, the turbo isn't working, and that means it's not sucking more gas along with all that air. The disadvantage is that it takes a second for the turbo to catch up with the exhaust flow. So if you floor the throttle, the exhaust starts shooting out immediately, but the turbocharger needs to get it's fan up to speed. That lag, which in modern cars is very small, is called (not very creatively) "turbo lag."

Superchargers are not really that different, but instead of dipping one side of the turbine into the exhaust flow, they simply get that rotational power from the motion of the engine itself. If you look at the front (sometimes, the side) of your car's engine, you'll see some belts that power certain accessories on your car. They spin, and they cause the accessories to function. A supercharger runs off of one of these belts, and uses it to do the same job as a turbocharger. As you can imagine, because the belt is always spinning while the car is on, the supercharger is always adding power, and it adds more proportionately to the speed of the engine. The disadvantage is that the engine is always making that power! So it always needs more gas. But there's no turbo lag, so you get that power whenever you want it.


You can see the supercharger on the front of the engine. On the left side is the pulley the belt attaches to.

I've tried to make it simple, but these are some pretty complicated systems. If you have a turbo or supercharger on your car and you want to learn more about it, or you're hopelessly lost, just write me an email and I'd be happy to answer your questions. Email contact AT sparkautoconsulting DOT com.