Recent Comments:
Japanese firms working to make carbon fiber mainstream {Autoblog}
May 12th 2008 8:40PM The body panels aren't load bearing structures (beyond air drag and incidental contact) so strength largely doesn't matter.
They will eventually be replaced with cheap plastic, not carbon fiber.
In the mean time, they've been thinned down to almost nothing. Been a long time since a car had 500 pounds of body panels.
Enter the Rumormill: Ford considering F-100 small pickup {Autoblog}
May 12th 2008 3:00PM Nissan did this with the Frontier - built it off their fullsize truck platform.
And ended up with an overbuilt, hell for stout, neither nor with very nearly the weight, turning radius, and fuel costs of a fullsize - and the children only backseat and narrow bed of a Colorado
Ford can read $4 gas prices as well as any of us. They know smaller trucks are where the growth is. But they don't have the money or the time to come up with a proper one, so they're going to half ass something based on the fullsize truck they already have.
And while the Frontier started from the lightest full sized truck in the segment, the F-150 is the heaviest.
Fail.
Subaru Exiga heading to production, teaser leaks out {Autoblog}
May 12th 2008 2:37PM So is the HHR. So is the PT cruiser. A sunroof turns a midsized car into a compact.
Federal bureaucrats do counterproductive things that only make sense if you don't understand the subject, what else is new?
Subaru Exiga heading to production, teaser leaks out {Autoblog}
May 12th 2008 2:31PM Three row minivan type CUV, ricer styled front air dam, humongous front overhang, ricer styled roof spoiler, ricer styled hood scoop, yep it's a Subaru.
I'm actually sort of glad they always get their styling so wrong. Mechanically they're great cars and I'd otherwise be tempted to buy one, and then have trouble reconciling that with their hard left gays and granola bars image.
GM may divorce trucks and full-size SUVs {Autoblog}
May 9th 2008 2:35PM That's an important observation.
In Chicagoland - and NYC and DC and LA and SF and so on - where the journalists and politicians and bloggers live, nobody tows. Traffic is so bad you couldn't if you wanted to. DIY doesn't mean a bed full of framing and sheetrock, it means re-wiring your own switch. Box stores have cheap delivery. The roads are plowed and salted by the time you wake up.
So they look across the street and see a line of Explorers and Suburbans that never saw a day's work in their life, and conclude that that's how it must be everywhere so the government should ban the wasteful things.
America doesn't end at the city limits. If you ask me, it starts there.
GM may divorce trucks and full-size SUVs {Autoblog}
May 9th 2008 11:53AM FWIW, in CR testing which isn't great but being done on a real road it's more realistic than the useless fedgov treadmill test:
The Tahoe and Suburban scored 14 mpg overall.
Large CUVs like the Acadia and CX9 scored 16 mpg.
And most minivans score 17 or 18 mpg.
There's a whole lot of hating over 3 miles a gallon.
Ford begins production of new mid-range six-speed automatic {Autoblog}
May 8th 2008 5:38PM How are overdrives different from distinct gears?
A transmission could have 6 overdrives and no 'regular' gears at all and do just fine, so long as it was matched with a suitable axle.
Obama picks worst car ever to come out of Motown {Autoblog}
May 8th 2008 4:44PM Comparing different cars that are similar only in weight and engine displacement is changing too many variables to meaningfully demonstrate anything.
Until manufacturers start releasing SFC plots of their engines, which will be approximately never, comparing the same car with different engines is the best you can do.
And other than niche applications shoehorning existing engines into applications that don't match their tuning, like the smallblock Impala, or the Camry powered Corolla XRS, the mileage bonus for giving up literally a third of the engine is consistently in the order of 5 to 7%.
Mazda survey reveals pricing and packages for Mazda6 {Autoblog}
May 8th 2008 3:43PM The equivalent top trim of the current model is $28,400 including freight.
Realistically, they'll be selling for 4-5K under sticker just like the current one does.
First Peek: 2009 Dodge Ram R/T {Autoblog}
May 8th 2008 3:25PM With diesel at $4.50 a gallon today, the fuel savings just aren't there at personal vehicle quantities.
If the federal government is going to mandate x miles per gallon without specifying a gallon of what, diesel is the obvious answer. From a paying customer perspective there are a lot of costs for relatively little benefit.
