2007 Escalade Spotted

I saw a 2007 Cadillac Escalade driving northbound on Woodward today. It looked good, overall; it was nicely understated, and was free of t...

Caliber CVT Stupidity, Diesel Tease

I was reading over the Dodge Caliber press release , and playing with Chrysler's vehicle configurator, when I saw this, and had to stop ...

Rethinking "Buy American"

I have always been a "buy American" advocate. But I am seriously beginning to rethink this position. It is becoming hard to defend...

Kucinich: Non Union = Not American

Dennis Kucinich, Ohio's resident vegan leftie nut-job, who once drove Cleveland into bankruptcy when he refused to privatize the city ow...

Cheesy Thug Wanna-Be [Culture]

In Memphis Tennessee, an 18 year old wanna-be gangsta girl tried to arrange a hit on a house because she thought she saw a huge pile of coca...

Tookie Today, Mumia Tomorrow [Politics]

(Via Michelle Malkin) The California supreme court has refused to block the execution of Crips founder Tookie Williams. Nice. Now can we ...

Who Would You Join?

Suppose you were an automotive engineer, in Detroit, with a set of skills that was moderately in demand. Suppose that you were not sure if y...

Progressive TripSense: Hackable?

A few bloggers have commented on Progressive Insurance' TripSense program, which pays you a bribe in return for driving your car with a...

GM: More Salaried Job Cuts

The focus of today's GM announcement was the plant closings and approximately 30,000 hourly job cuts. However, during the Q&A sessio...

Pirelli's Calendar

Bella! Pirelli has a web site which has photos from its calendar going back to the 1960's. Some of these are artistic, and some are ju...

Just Google It [Politics]

Here's a fun game you can play, especially if you believe the Democrat braying about "Bushes lies": Just Google It (or, if you...

The Electric Shock Game

This is the perfect game to play with your out-of-town relatives on Thanksgiving! (Actually I find it kind of disturbing...)

TurboTap: High Flow Beer Dispenser

It is amazing what a bunch of fluid mechanics engineers can come up with when offered beer. The engineers at Laminar Technologies studied t...

Make Your Caravan A Viper!

The Vroombox is a digital audio player which is designed to make exciting car noises, like an engine revving or tires screeching. Says the...

Forbes' Turkey List

In time for Thanksgiving, Forbes has published its list of automotive turkeys: cars that are selling very poorly. These vehicles all have h...

Phaeton Finale

VW is going to stop importation into the U.S. of the Phaeton luxury sedan, according to Bloomberg News: Volkswagen will pull the Phaeton out...

Heh. [Politics]

Heh. From Dry Bones , a very good political cartoon from Israel.

Rep. Joe Schwarz, Selling Michigan Out

A Michigan Republican Congressman, Joe Schwarz, was a member of a group of "moderate" Republicans which managed to get the ANWR o...

PermaCap Revisited

I previously posted about my mishap with the Kleen Wheels PermaCap , a neat gadget (when it works) that replaces the fuel cap on some cars,...

The B Word

The Detroit Free Press, the liberal leaning sister paper of the Detroit News, published a page 1 story about GM today with the word "b...

Know Thy Enemy

Thanks to Jalopnik , we have in Blogger-ville an excellent example of a car hating greenie with socialist tendencies and a fetish for bicyc...

France on Fire [Politics]

The French have finally been forced to confront their non-assimilating Muslim immigrant underclass. Unfortunately, the forum is the streets ...

419 Scam Fun

You know those annoying scam emails you get from places like Nigeria or Ivory Coast, promising you millions of dollars if you can just help ...

Dell Refurbished: Highly Recommended

As mentioned in my previous post, I just bought a Dell laptop. I bought a refurbished machine from Dell's Outlet , and so far, I am thri...

WinXP + SBC DSL BSOD Bug Fix [Computers]

I am posting this so that other people can find it easily. I just bought a Dell laptop, running Windows XP SP2. After installing the SBC Ya...

Jalopnik on Csere

Unexpectedly, Jalopnik posts a piece of literary criticism, on Csaba Csere's review of the Veyron.

Delphi's Steve Miller: "What Went Wrong"

A quote from Miller's speech, published in the Detroit News . ... Steel, airlines, and autos. Different industries. Similar painful tran...

The "Enclave"?

Suppose you are in the marketing department of a gigantic manufacturing company that is floundering under the weight of old products and sin...

What War Really Looks Like [Politics]

This photo shows what Dresden looked like after the U.S. and Great Britain bombed it in February of 1945. It is shocking to look at. But ...

The Burka Project [Culture]

I saw a link to this somewhere and had to look. The " Burka Project " is a series of photographs taken in Paris, and other locale...

Truck Nuts

Apparently, driving a pickup truck is not manly enough for some guys; they need to advertise exactly how manly they are. Today I saw a silve...

Toyota May Overtake GM in 2006

News from Japan : A Japanese business paper estimates Toyota production in 2006 at 9,200,000 vehicles, when including Daihatsu and Hino; GM ...

The Turning Point

GM's recent deal with the UAW, and Delphi's looming battle may mark the turning point for unionized industrial labor in the U.S. Thi...

Crown Vic Killer?

Chrysler is going after the police interceptor market with police versions of the Dodge Charger and Magnum. Image courtesy of InsideDCX.com...

Don't Believe It

According to the Detroit News, GM 's leaders are not considering bankruptcy. Wagoner said unlike the airline industry, where some bankru...

How Not To Buy A New Car*

Everyone once in a while, when I am driving my car, I have a moment of infidelity. My eye wanders to the shiny new luxury/sports sedan passi...

Jail Bait

Ed Alterman of MPH writes about drag racing all comers on Woodward Ave in his loaner Corvette Z06. He feels high and might "like Zeus...

F on Yahoo Finance

I was looking at some automotive stocks on Yahoo Finance, and I noticed that Ford's stock (F) is labelled "Ford Motor Credit",...

Unicef: Smurf Killers [Politics]

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, has produced a cartoon ad in Belgium dipicting Smurfs being blown to bits by a bombing raid...

Delphi: Out of S&P 500

As a reward for declaring bankrupcy, Delphi is being removed from the S&P 500 stock index, and replaced: Delphi shares are scheduled to ...

Delphi--Bad Omens

As you probably have heard already, Delphi, the largest American automotive parts supplier, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. ...

More Eye Pollution: Honda Element "Woody"

Remember the Silly Car Contest ? I saw a strong contender the other day: a Honda Element with an aftermarket "Woody" kit. It looke...

Enough Cup Holders

I've had enough of cup holders. More precisely, I am sick of hearing about them in car reviews. Every review published by one of the L...

Racedriven

Welcome to a new (new to me, anyway) automotive blog, Racedriven . Written by one Brian Vermette, Racedriven is mostly focused on motorsport...

Comment Spam

I have been bombarded by spam in the comments areas lately. To try to stop the flood, I have turned on the word verification feature. I ap...

CAFE Is A Farce

The CAFE rules (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) are a farce. I like to post on this subject, so this isn't the first and won't be th...

Ford Charity Auction on EBay

The Big 3 have had a close relationship with the United Way charity organization for some time, so close that they have used high-pressure t...

Jeremy Clarkson (Heh!)

I realize that I am late to the game, but thanks to MyFordDreams , I have discovered that Jeremy Clarkson (of the BBC's Top Gear auto sh...

Eye Pollution

A quick message to the guy who was driving in front of me on the way to work, the one in the black Ford 500 with huge chrome wheels, chrome ...

Send Robots, Save Money, Save Lives

Not entirely an automotive post, but sort of an engineering post. I recently read about NASA's plans to send astronauts back to the moo...

Wanted: In-Car Bluetooth MP3 Interfaces

I would like to see automakers and their electronics suppliers join with the MP3 makers and the Bluetooth consortium to develop a standardiz...

VW Irrelevant?

Pete DeLorenzo at Auto Extremist says that VW has become irrelevant in the U.S. market. I agree with him. VW has poor quality, high prices,...

2.70 And Falling

Regular gasoline prices in the Metro Detroit area have drifted down over the last week, from about $3.00/gal to pre-Katrina prices in the ne...

Details About Volvo ETM Failures

Don Wilson, a retired metallurgical engineer, has posted a detailed analysis of the failures of 1999-2001 Volvo ETMs (Electronic Throttle M...

Zeta Confusion

Some time ago, GM announced it was stopping work on the Zeta mid-size-to-fullsize RWD platform, to focus resources on releasing upcoming tru...

New Jeeps in Frankfurt

Two of the guys behind Autoblog are in Frankfurt, Germany, snapping pictures of the auto show. One of the more interesting photos they grab...

Diesel Cars in the US

I regularly hear and read claims that there is some industry conspiracy against bringing diesel cars to the US, or that Americans won't ...

Buyers Be Wary

AutoMuse predicts a flood of flood damaged used cars on the used car market, due to Katrina. She goes on to analyze the legal background of...

Massive Ford Recall (Ouch)

The Reuters news service reports that Ford is recalling 4,000,000 trucks, built between 1994 and 2002 to repair the cruise control deactiv...

New NRA President [Politics]

The new president of the NRA (my favorite political organization), Sandra Froman, is a woman. A Jewish woman. Sweet.

Gas Tax Economics 201

If any of my (few) readers are knowledgeable about economics, and the economics of gas prices in particular, please chime in. In support of ...

Wasted Buses [Politics]

This photo shows a yard full of school buses in New Orleans, neatly parked in rows, partly submerged. Courtesy of Yahoo! This text is from t...

Suspend Gas Taxes

One solution to the (temporarily) out of control gasoline prices: Congress and the state legislatures should immediately pass bills suspendi...

NKOTB

There's a new automotive blog online, eMercedesbenz. Carpundit is suspicious that they may be a plant from DaimlerChrysler, on account ...

Dumbest Mod Ever

I usually save my bile for the huge wings that some TuNeRz put on the back of cars like the Kia Rio. As if the glued on contraption is going...

My PermaCap Failure

I bought this gadget for my car some time ago, the PermaCap , which is a replacement for your gas gap. The selling point of the PermaCap is ...

New CAFE Rules

I haven't had a chance to write a detailed post on the new CAFE rules, but DublinSaab has gone and done a nice job, so I heartily recom...

My Chariot

What do I drive? Nothing impressive. I drive a Volvo 850 with a 2.4L I-5 engine and a 5 speed manual. ~160HP, 0-60 takes about 9s. I have 10...

I Get A Noble Ride

"For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge At the Woodward Dream Cruise, 1G Racing ...