Nooooooooooooooooo! Volvo to kill V70 wagon.

I can't believe it.One of Volvo's iconic products was the turbo wagon.  It was a way to drive an honest wagon, and look and feel good doing it. Now, according to a leaked document at Jalopnik, Volvo is going to drop the V70 wagon in the U.S., to concentrate on the butched up XC70.  The more sedate midsize wagons will still be produced for other markets, so there is always a chance that if fashion swings back to car-based wagons, Volvo...

The Most Expensive Cars To Insure

I thought this was interesting. This is a list of the most expensive 2010 models to insure. I suppose if you have the riches to own a Porsche 911 GT2, which is a second or third car, you probably can afford almost $3,000 for insurance! Data courtesy of Insure.com. The most expensive 2010 vehicles to insure Rank Make and Model Style & Type Cylinders Avg. national premium...

How Will Chrysler Survive?

According to many measures, Chrysler is building junky cars.  Today's junky cars are still miles ahead of the junky cars of decades ago, but still, Chrysler's products are not competitive.  The latest bad news comes from J.D. Power, which shows that Chrysler and its various brands are much worse than industry average for 3 years in service reliability.   Industry Average: 155 problems (per 100 vehicles)Chrysler: 166Dodge:190Jeep: 222...

A Theory To Explain Sikes

This is purely my speculation.According to Toyota, Mr. Sikes pressed his brake pedal hundreds of times during his "runaway Prius" event, but did not trigger the engine torque over-ride. One possible explanation is that perhaps he had a foreign object, such as a soda bottle, wedged under his brake pedal.  In a panic and unable to slow his car down, he wasn't able to remove it until the end. I once had this actually happen to me, when a water...

Electric Car Consumers Want 90mi for $2,000

According to a survey by Consumer's Union of 1750 car owning adults, the typical (well, median) consumer wants a plug-in car that gets 90 miles of range or more, and wants to pay $2,000 or less over the price of a similar gasoline car for the technology.  More tellingly, consumers earning less than $50,000 (close to the median family income in the U.S. of about $52,000) were much less willing to pay a premium for a BEV.   "Among consumers...

Video: Lincoln LS vs Rock Slide

That's one way to trash a Lincoln LS.http://www.breitbart.tv/caugth-on-video-driver-doesnt-notice-massive-rock-slide-covering-tn-highw...

Huge BMW Poster in WSJ

If you get the Wall Street Journal, you may have gotten an insert in today's paper, which folds out into a huge BMW poster. This is an impressive piece of advertising, about 3' x 4' unfolded.If you are a BMW fan, you should hunt down a copy of the 3/17 WSJ and check it o...

Beware The Craigslist Ebay Motors Escrow Scam

The famous Craigslist (or any other source) Ebay Motors escrow scam is still going strong. I am still getting many search engine hits from it, and even after two years, it remains my single most popular post. In short, it works like this:You answer an ad which has a car for sale that seems "too good of a deal to pass up" or perhaps too good to be true.The seller says the car is in storage, and will be shipped to you. The stories vary, lately the...

Is Sikes Another "Balloon Boy"?

Recenly reborn TTAC and Jalopnik have been digging around to see what they can find out about Mr. Sikes, the "I can't stop my Prius" guy, and what they are finding isn't pretty.  It looks more and more likely that Sikes is a gold-digger. But even if he is... how did he manage to burn his Prius brakes?  Shouldn't that be impossible?TTAC story here, Jalopnik here....

Videos Show Prius Will Stop

Leith Toyota's (Raleigh, NC) service director, Rodney Britt, has posted a home made video starring Shawn Witek, general manager.  Witek shows how you can stop a 2008 Prius which has its throttle pedal mashed to the floor, using the neutral gear selector, or using the brakes, at 80mph.  You can watch it here. In the video, the car has no problem going into neutral at 80mph, even if the pedal is pinned to the floor.  The car also...

Top Gear on Prius

An old Top Gear episode from Top Gear. Clarkson hates the 1st gen Prius so much, he has "Billy Bob" get all WWII on one. See 2:43 for the HK G3, followed by a Browning .50 machine gun. Ni...

Yep, Runaway Prius Guy = Idiot

I wonder, maybe this guy set this up as a stunt?"Neibert told Sikes after the CHP caught up with him to shift to neutral but the driver shook his head no. Sikes told reporters he didn't go into neutral because he worried the car would flip." From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100310/AUTO01/3100387/1148/rss25#ixzz0hmUtw0Hc...

Runaway Prius = Driver FAIL

The runaway Prius story is just full of FAIL.The driver didn't know he could put the car in neutral with a flick of his wrist, or push and hold the starter button to kill the engine. The police officer which talked to him over the loudspeaker told him to use the emergency brakes--did the police officer know to suggest neutral or killing the engine?There is no excuse for a sticky throttle pedal.  But there is also no excuse for not knowing how...

U.S. Census Money Waste

Today I got a letter in the mail with official markings on it, U.S. Census. But it seemed awful skinny to be a census form. Sure enough, it was a letter informing me that in a week, I will get a census form, and that it is very important that I fill it out.What a stupid waste of money and tre...

Toyota Vs. ABC: The Empire Strikes Back

It took The Galactic Empire^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Toyota a couple of weeks, but they finally have issued a formal rebuttal to the hack job that ABC and Professor Gilbert did to them on TV.   You can read the details here, but basically, it is the same conclusion that I came to (and posted about here). Gilbert spliced into several wires on the throttle pedal harness, shorted two of them together through a resistance, and then shorted them to sensor...

Troy Chrysler Dealership Tricks

At the Troy motor mall, there used to be a Chrysler dealership, Birmingham Chrysler Jeep ("Birmingham's In Troy!"). They lost their franchise during the Chrysler quick-rinse bankruptcy. Now, something strange has happened. The former Saturn store in the same area has apparently picked up a Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge franchise.This was formerly Suburban SaturnI don't get it. Chrysler had an established...

Volt Sighting: Detroit Zoo

I took the family to the Detroit Zoo today, to take advantage of the warm sunny weather, and here is what I spotted in the parking deck: a Volt powertrain calibration vehicle.What surprised me the most about seeing the Volt up close was its size. This is a compact car, not much (if any) larger than a Prius. It was parked next to a current model Malibu, on one side, and a large crossover utility...

In Defense Of ETC, Part 3

A comment on my previous post, by user "Ming", pointed out the trend of the total number of unintended acceleration complaints to NHTSA over the years.2000: 14152001: 13452002: 14602003: 14462004: 14262005: 11122006: 8782007: 8762008: 4562009: 251Now, what is interesting in this is that over this period, the number of complaints were cut dramatically, even though the number of new cars on the road...

Unintended Acceleration Round 3: NPR Does The Math

NPR posted a nice widget on their web site, here, where you can check the statistics on unintended acceleration complaints.  Most importantly, the data is normalized, so you can see which carmakers are having more complaints than their market share and which are getting less.    Here is a snapshot for 2009. Notice that the worst three carmakers, in terms of complaints per 100,000 vehicles, are Toytoa, VW, and BMW.  Also notice...

2011 Mustang Fuel Economy

Ford just announced that the 2011 Mustang with 3.7L V5 will get 19mpg city and 29mpg highway, with the manual transmission. This is due in part to the use of newer engine technologies such as variable cam timing, and they haven't resorted to direct injection or turbocharging (yet).I went on Edmunds and did some digging, to make a chart of how the base Mustang engines have evolved over the years. It...

Read At Joe's

One of my favorite autobloggers is Joe Sherlock. He writes well, usually has interesting things to say, and has been doing it for a long time. Go check him out, he...

Chrysler Naming Fun

Rumour has it that the Chrysler Sebring midsized mediocrity will be renamed the 200C when relaunched under Fiat rule.  This is funny because the 300 is a large car, and the upcoming 500 will be a very small car.   Chrysler clearly needs a consistent naming convention, and as an engineer I am ready to help.Chrysler cars should be named in terms of 1/(size).  Therefore, since the 300C is a large car, and the 500 will be a very small...

Unintended Acceleration Round 2

News reports are out that that NHTSA is still getting Unintended Acceleration complaints from Toyotas which have apparently been repaired with the various recall fixes. What is going on?I think that what we are seeing is normal cases of UI, which happen to all brands of vehicles, amplified through the media and the Toyota recall frenzy.  In other words, people hitting the wrong pedal, or both pedals. It is unreasonable to expect that Toyota's...

Spyker Interview

This morning Paul W. Smith (WJR 760AM) interviewed Spyker CEO Victor Muller about the acquisition of Saab, and the plans going forward.A few interesting bits, from memory: "We are going to return Saabishness to Saab" ... "We are going to restore the Saab DNA.""Saab buyers are the most educated in the market, with 67% of them having a college degree or better" "Saab buyers are very loyal.  We don't need new customers.  We just need...

Wow! AdBlock on Chrome!

Wow.  I was sure that Google would not allow adblocking extensions to run on Chrome, but amazingly, they do.  Chrome + AdBlock is now my favorite browser, because it is fast....