Autoblog

"Hey, Stompy, you wanna take a test drive?

Nein, I'll just take the one in black, please."

So goes the imagined conversation between Michael Herzog, he of size 12 (UK) feet, and the Volvo dealer from whom he purchased a C70. Herzog says his feet are too large for the pedal box in his Volvo, precluding use of that most essential pedal, the accelerator. The issue went to court in Wiesloch, Germany, where a judge ruled that size 12 is not freakishly large, so Volvo should have designed a car to accommodate that size foot. Size 12 on UK size charts is about the same as a U.S. size 12, so it's not an incomprehensibly large foot. The dealer has been directed to refund five percent of the purchase price, a total of £1,350, to pay for a custom pair of shoes that allow the owner to drive his new car, as well as compensate him for time lost to shoe-changes. And we thought the U.S. was litigious.

[Source: am-online, Photo: BBC]

There's a new blog in cyberspace, and it's hosted by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Mary E. Peters. According to Secretary Peters, she's pushing twenty-first century proposals, so she decided that she'd better communicate in a twenty-first century way. The all-new site is called Fast Lane, and at first glance, it is an interesting approach (for a government job, that is).

As the site is in its infancy, a tour only takes about five minutes. There are a dozen or so links to other DOT agencies, a who's-who list of notable contributors, and an e-mail link directly to the Secretary's inbox (yeah, right). It appears that much of their content will be from "guest" bloggers (aka other politicians). Today's guest was the the Mayor of Chicago announcing a new Bus Rapid Transit system.

While we don't see the new site competing with our own (we looked everywhere, and didn't find any reference to the Nissan GT-R or Dodge Challenger SRT8), the innovation of the site appears to be the speed at which information will make it to the public, and the interaction (via comments) that the public is welcome to partake. Don't expect to use the site to vent your frustrations towards the agency - as a dot.gov site, you can expect that all submitted comments on Fast Lane will be moderator approved.

[Source: Detroit News]

You may recall a Carsumer Advocacy post we published a couple weeks ago about an 8thcivic.com forum member whose new Honda Civic Si suffered $12,199.64 worth of damage after Circuit City employees botched the install of a $3,000+ stereo in his car. At the time, Circuit City had decided to only refund the cost of the stereo. The owner, who goes by the handle VTECnical, took his cause to the internet and once again, the internet came through. VTECnical has posted on 8thcivic.com that Circuit City has stepped up and will take care of the car. He told Autoblog in an email that he wasn't at liberty to discuss the matter further, but we've been in contact with some people repping Circuit City who told us that the consumer electronics store's third-party insurance provider covered $10,158.45 of the repair cost and the store itself paid for the rest out of its own pocket. On top of that, Circuit City gave VTECnical a brand new Pioneer AVIC Z2 valued at over $2,000. Congrats to VTECnical and props to Circuit City for doing the right thing.

[Source: 8thcivic.com]

Click on the image to see VIN tampering evidence

After finding out that the Unique Performance asset auction didn't make nearly enough money to pay the lost wages of the company's former employees, at least those disenfranchised workers held out hope that their ex-bosses would face some major legal ramifications. Or not. Apparently, the the U.S. Attorney in Dallas has informed the Secret Service in writing that it will not pursue the case, despite the fact that company executives had faced 25 felony charges.

Some sort of hope still exists for the ex-employees and customers that justice will be served, as the Dallas County District Attorney's office has investigations underway regarding criminal allegations that Unique Performance had destroyed or removed the vehicle identification numbers of at least 61 vehicles.


[Source: CBS 11 via 67 Mustang Blog]

The saga of Ken Tanisaka and BMW of Lincoln, Nebraska is almost over, as the embattled eBay winner of a nicely-priced BMW M3 sedan has exchanged funds with the dealership and the car is set to be shipped for delivery. It's been a long road for Ken involving lawyers and lots of patience as the dealership, part of the Husker Auto Group, stubbornly fought not to honor its eBay auction that Ken won for $10,000 below MSRP.

Now that it's almost over, BMW of Lincoln should be glad that the firestorm of negative media attention with which it's had to deal is about to end. That's what you would think, but this particular dealership seems to relish in making the wrong choices. Autoblog reader Dale pointed us to this advert that was emailed to him from the Husker Auto Group, which paints the whole ordeal as a case of the dealership bending over backwards to make a customer happy. Read the most choice paragraph below.

Being the honorable dealership that Husker is, [it] agreed to honor the price of $60,000 for the BMW E90 M3. This vehicle typically would have been priced around $70,000. At Husker BMW, we honor all contracts. And in this case we covered the $10,000 for the vehicle to make our customer happy.

True, the Husker Auto Group eventually honored the auction that Ken rightfully won, but we'd hardly describe its behavior as honorable. The decision to let go of the car for $10k below sticker appears motivated less by the desire to make Ken happy than to get out from under the harsh spotlight of attention that was aimed at the dealership by a loosely organized but large group of compassionate internet citizens. The last thing this dealership should be doing is bragging about its customer service.

[Source: imakenews.com]

Following quickly on the heels of our last late-arriving podcast, we're back for episode #91 of the Autoblog Podcast. Alex and John take time to discuss Knight Rider, Top Gear and TV in general, turning this 'cast into the AutoTVblogSquad show. We also cover the uncovering of Max Mosley and his strange predilections, our institution of a CarSumer Advocacy category, and answer the three legitimate emails out of our new podcast at autoblog dot com address. Thanks for your 44 minutes this week.

If you have a question, comment, bit of praise or heap of criticism for us, email us at podcast at autoblog dot com and we may read your email on the show.

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