It’s been a while since I posted anything on this site, and for good reason. My time has been taken up by my new site, Family Car Review.
The idea behind Family Car Review is straightforward. Most automotive review websites are designed to appeal to either enthusiasts or a general audience. Both, obviously, have their place. Enthusiast sites are the most fun, because they (we) engage in burnouts, fast driving, tight cornering, and all that other good stuff that stokes automotive passion. General review sites, on the other hand, are long on information but often short on the passion.
A few years ago I became a father, and I was struck by how few sites really address the automotive needs of parents. Sure, there re a few family-oriented review sites out there, but it’s still hard to find one that really condenses the needs of parents into a simple, understandable format.
That’s what I’ve tried to achieve with Family Car Review. I invite you to check it out, tell your friends, and post a link on your own site. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m adding vehicles every day, and ironing out any kinks that I find along the way. If you have any suggestions, email me and I’ll get right on it.
I just learned about Shaun Carlson’s extremely untimely death. Before I say anything, I want to extend my deepest condolences to his friends and family. Shaun was a great guy, talented in everything he did, and although I haven’t seen him in years, I’ll miss him.
If you were even lightly aware of the import aftermarket in the 90s – especially the burgeoning drag racing scene – then Shaun Carlson was likely a familiar name. He cut his teeth at McMullen-Argus (later Primedia, now Source Interlink) in the early days, working on publications like Truckin‘ and Minitruckin‘. He was a good writer, excellent photographer, and had an way of making hard-core tech issues easy for layman enthusiasts to grasp.
He was also a devoted gearhead, and one hell of a fabricator. I remember he had an old early-90’s Mitsubishi Diamante wagon that, Shaun being Shaun, he had modified extensively. He popped the hood one day to show off the turbo system he had installed on the V-6. The work was beautiful: chromed pipes expertly welded with the smooth curves perfect for moving compressed air without restriction. I asked him where he got the work done, and when he told me he did it himself – including the extremely tricky welding on the aluminum intercooler – I knew then that his days in publishing were numbered as he was obviously far too talented to just write about this stuff.
My suspicions were confirmed when he left publishing and founded NuFormz, and the rest is history, as they say. At 35 years old, Shaun had already transformed one racing genre with his tube-frame front-drive Honda Civic dragster, and was busy transforming another with his involvement in drifting. Shaun touched a lot of lives in his all too short life, and he will truly be missed.
Update: In my haste posting this yesterday I neglected to mention the cause of death. Although nothing official has been announced, Shaun suffered from Brugada syndrome, a genetic disease that can cause sudden cardiac arrest.
Word has leaked out the Michael Bay’s terrible Transformers franchise will indeed reach three movies. The third installment will hit theaters on July 1, 2011, plenty of time to schedule something else to do. Allegedly Megan Fox has signed on, and it’s a sure bet that Shia LeBouf will reprise his role as whiny dorkus with a car that’s WAY too cool for him.
However, thanks to some Hollywood contacts who must remain nameless, I already have an exclusive trailer of the upcoming flick. Watch it while you can…no guarantees how long it will stay before I’m forced to pull it.
Yesterday, Roger Penske backed out of the deal he had struck with General Motors to buy the Saturn brand, ultimately signaling the end of GM’s two-decades old import-fighting brand. The deal was clever: Penske would buy all 350 dealerships and the Saturn brand, and GM would continue to build the current Saturn lineup for the next year or so while Penske found another supplier (widely rumored to be Renault). However, the third supplier backed out, giving Penske no reason to go through with it. GM has little choice but to wind Saturn down.
At only 19-years-old, Saturn was one of the shortest-lived brands GM ever had. Yet it was also pivotal to the company’s current fortunes – or lack thereof – in myriad ways, from the promises made during its development to the billions of dollars poured into the brand that could very well have saved other divisions in the process. GM established Saturn to learn a new way of doing business. Instead, the business it already had was almost undone. Continue reading "Goodbye Saturn, and Good Riddance"
In the state of California, the ugly yellow sticker you see here was, for a time, one of the most sought-after automotive accessories around. People would buy a car specifically to get one, or pay a couple thousand more on the used market for a car that already had one.
What’s so special? If you were lucky enough to have one affixed to your car, you could drive solo in the carpool lane. The idea was to kickstart hybrid sales, which at the time were languishing because gas was cheap and, I’ll bet, a bit of technophobia on the part of the general public. In chronically congested California, the idea of zipping along in the carpool lane without Bob from accounting nattering in your ear the whole time was too good to resist, and the 85,000 stickers were snapped up quickly, with the last one issued in February, 2007. The stickers even added between $1,000 and $2,000 to the used car value of your hybrid (most often a Prius or Civic Hybrid) if you were lucky enough to get one.
However, the program’s days were numbered from the start. Initially supposed to expire in 2008, the deadline was moved to 2011. Now that deadline is fast approaching, and the subject of extending it until 2016 is under consideration. Opponents say that the work is done, and they make a great point. The Prius hardly needs help selling these days, and hybrids with similar or better mileage than the original Prius are all over these days. Besides, hybrids are most efficient when they’re stuck in traffic anyhow, using all those great electrons stored in the batteries instead of that nasty gasoline they consume at high speeds. Diesels like the Jetta TDI are generally more efficient at steady-state highway speeds than most hybrids anyhow, so why don’t they get a sticker? In addition, the carpool lanes are so crowded these days that kicking all these hybrid people out makes sense.
The effort to extend the program won’t even cover current hybrid owners. One version under consideration would only offer the stickers to pure electric or alternative fuel vehicles (which currently get a white sticker that does the same thing as the yellow one), and another would give the hybrid sticker to vehicles with a combined city/highway mpg rating of 65 or higher, something no car currently available achieves. Either way, it looks like Prius owners will have to commute with the rest of us schlubs in the regular ol’ lanes starting in 2011.
How many times have we heard an old-timer saying something along the lines of “Back in my day cars were cars made of tough stuff, not these flimsy little tin cans we have today!” As their eyes get misty, they wax on about how solidly built cars of yore were, and how they’d much rather be in a big vintage American boat than anything modern. Those sure were the days.
Yeah, right.
To celebrate 50 years of smashing things, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety put money to mouth, crashing a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air – about as big and heavy as they come, mind you – into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The results speak for themselves.
Wow. I mean…wow. The windshield on the Malibu doesn’t even crack. The Bel Air, however, folds faster than Superman on laundry day. So you can have your nostalgia. I’ll take the one that’ll save my life.
Remnants of the Hidden Springs Cafe in the Angeles National Forest
By now you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Station Fire that is currently burning in the Angeles National Forest in the mountains north of Los Angeles. As of this writing it’s the biggest fire in the modern history of Los Angeles, spanning more than 145,000 acres, or about a quarter of the San Gabriel Mountain range between California Highway 14 and Interstate 15. It has claimed the lives of two firefighters, injured many more, destroyed more than 60 homes, and unfortunately claimed a spot well known to me and, I’m sure, other fans of the multitude of twisty roads in the forest, the Hidden Springs Cafe.
Like many who like to drive, the Angeles National Forest is one of those areas in Southern California that’s held in shrine-like reverence thanks to the multitude of twisty, winding, rarely used roads. I’ve spent many an hour blasting through the canyons along the Angeles Crest Highway and other byways in the mountains. However, to lament that some of my favorite roads will be closed for a while would be beyond crass considering the bigger implications of the fire (which makes Autoblog beyond crass, btw).
The Hidden Springs Cafe deserves mention because of its role as a welcome way-station along the Angeles Forest Highway. Early in my career I found myself driving to Palmdale quite a bit, and it was quicker (and far more entertaining) to cut through the mountains than drone along on the freeways. Built in the 1940s by miners in the local area, the cafe was bought by the Lewis family in 1971, and has remained a family-owned business ever since.
The Cafe was a great spot, offering good burgers, some friendly conversation and, yes, clean bathrooms. The red buildings with their white trim were unexpected along the wilderness route, but it was easy to understand how it stayed in business since lots of people commuted from the Palmdale area to Pasadena or other parts of Los Angeles through the mountains. I will miss the Cafe, and I’m sure I speak for a great many people when I say I hope the Lewis family is safe, wish them all the best of luck, and hope that they are able to rebuild. If, like me, you have fond memories of the Hidden Springs Cafe, post them in the comments.
When GM filed its history-making Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in June, a new plan was immediately announced that would eliminate four of the company’s eight brands, restructure with a ton of government assistance, and so on and so forth. At the time, I wrote that while the new GM was definitely a step in the right direction, the new company didn’t shed enough brands, and should have ditched GMC and Buick as well.
Not everyone agreed, and my friend and colleague Rich Truesdell at Automotive Traveler noted a conversation he had with AutoPacific’s Stephanie Brinley, who thinks the new GM is just the right size, with the right number of brands.
On the other hand, last week Advertising Age threw down on my side of the argument. According to consultant Maryann Keller, Susan Jacobs of Jacobs & Associates and AutoPacific president George Peterson, the article reaches the same basic conclusion that I did, that there are too many brands, even now, and that GM’s limited resources would be better spent on making Cadillac and Chevrolet great, rather than trying to keep GMC and Buick around for dubious reasons.
Peterson in particular points out GM’s marketing foibles, especially with regards to the Chevy Malibu and the Chevy Camaro. The Malibu hasn’t gotten much advertising love since its 2007 debut, and the Camaro has relied mostly on good press in buff books. The basic question is that if the Malibu is an anchor for the Chevy brand, why not advertise it? And with a traffic-driver like the Camaro on the floor, why not lift the whole brand with an aggressive ad campaign?
I guess it’s true: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Well, so much for that. Only days after announcing that the Pontiac G8 would return to the U.S. market as a Chevrolet Caprice, General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz has announced that the rear-drive sport sedan is well and truly dead for the U.S. market after all. Sounds like the right hand gave the left one a smackdown, if you ask me.
Posting on GM’s Fast Lane blog, Lutz said that with his new “marketing hat” on, he couldn’t make the case for a high-level sedan for Chevrolet, considering that the company is in a cost-cutting and fuel-efficiency-enhancing mode.
In the meantime, if you’re a fan of the Pontiac G8 GXP, you’d better get one quickly. According to Jalopnik, Pontiac marketing chief Cheryl Catton has said that only 2000 of the sport sedans will be built, along with 2000 examples of the Pontiac Solstice Coupe GXP. If you like hot Pontiacs (and maybe want to gamble on a future classic), you’d better get one pronto.
Automotive Newsreports that General Motors is strong-arming dealers into signing a statement opposing congressional legislation that would reverse the company’s decision to close more than a thousand of its dealerships. AN quotes a letter Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa sent to GM CEO Fritz Henderson as saying “It’s alarming to have GM corporate leaders force dealers — some who are losing everything they worked hard to build — to take an active stand against it.”
The bills would restore the eliminated dealerships of GM and Chrysler, forcing the companies to work through state courts rather than the U.S. Bankruptcy court to close the dealerships. Complaints have come in all across the country of GM district offices pressuring the surviving dealerships to sign the statement. It’s not really surprising that GM is playing hardball with its remaining dealers, and maybe they should back off a little.
To me, the bigger problem is that such legislation exists in the first place. It’s hard to see this as little more than a purely political move on par with Rush Limbaugh’s ludicrous call to boycott GM altogether. Partisanship in Congress and across the nation has reached such a fever pitch that opponents of the GM bailout would rather see the company fail — and have absolutely no prospect of recovering any of the bailout money, which is supposed to be repaid by 2015 — than have it succeed and have a manufacturing giant restored to at least some of its former glory. A strong manufacturing base is critical to the U.S. economy, and it has been slipping away for decades. Are short-term political goals more important than the long-term health of one of our major industries? At the very least, isn’t it worth it for the company to be successful enough to repay its debt to American taxpayers?
In all honesty, I’ve been on the fence about this whole bailout thing from the beginning, unsure if throwing billions of dollars at a company with such deeply ingrained problems was a good idea. However, what’s done is done, and it seems to me as though voices calling for the failure of the GM bailout are similar in tenor to those on the left who hoped the U.S. effort in Iraq would fail just because it would make Bush look bad. I’ll leave the hard-core political punditry to those on the left and right who have much more practice than I do. Instead, I’ll just see this legislation for what it is: Opposition for the sake of opposition, rather than an attempt to actually do any good.
It’s been a while since I posted anything on this site, and for good reason. My time has been taken up by my new site, Family Car Review.
