The times they are a-changin’, and automakers are slashing the excess weight from their fleets to stay afloat, sometimes doing away with entire brand names in the process. Now that the oily dust is beginning to settle it’s time to take a look at some…
Land Rover Encino took the opportunity to milk some serious product placement out of MICHAEL JACKSON's untimely death by providing close to a dozen Range Rovers and Rolls Royce’s to the Jackson family, free of charge, for use in the late entertainer’s ultra-publicized memorial service.…
Billy Mays, the lovable salesman who managed to hawk some of the finest, err, most alluring automotive wares ever to grace the television airwaves in spite of his AMBER Alert beard has died. With his new show “Pitchmen,” Mays’ popularity was reaching an all-time high…
If it’s wrong to strap a panda into a Fiat 500 for a crash test then Fiat is as wrong as wrong can be. In a series of new print advertisements the Italian automaker shows a Fiat 500 being smashed from various angles with wildlife…
GM is using the summer blockbuster Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen to showcase a lineup of the next generation vehicles they hope will TRANSFORM their struggling empire. Whoo! I shelled out $10.50 and sat through 147 minutes of Shia LeBeouf to document this film…
If it weren’t for ridiculous cars there would be far less cars worth wanting. It would be easy to fritter our lives away worrying about what’s going to happen when the oil runs out or the icecaps dissolve or if we should adopt another polar…
Are women really treated equally by car salesman, mechanics and the like? Jody DeVere, Founder and CEO of AskPatty.com believes that the male dominated atmosphere surrounding auto business needs to be more in tune with female clientele. According to the press release announcing Ask Patty’s…
The last time I attempted to test-drive a muscle car for this blog I was stuffed into the passenger seat of a tired 1980 Corvette Sting Ray alongside a rosy-cheeked man who was most likely dying of respiratory failure. At the time, a blogger from…
So General Motors went bankrupt, Chrysler went bankrupt and by default Ford is poised to be our leading domestic carmaker, or the sharpest butter-knife in the drawer. Also, cheeseburgers are now eating people. As for the world heavyweight auto title, the big whoopin’ belt now…
The recent announcement that the Obama administration plans to throw another $30 billion of taxpayer bailout money to GM in addition to the $19.4 billion that’s already been lent to the drowning giant... doesn't seem at all out of the ordinary. Either our government is…
Memorial Day weekend produced enough sunshine to call it summer, the seasonal anti-depressant strong enough to cast even the most horrific auto news in a more flattering light. Throw some cow on the BBQ, crack a beer and get ready for four pieces of pleasantly…
There’s been a lot of talk lately that the V-8 is a dying breed, big cars are going the way of Artie Lange’s liver, that the auto industry is sobering up and apologizing to those it hurt during its decades-spanning blackout. Good for you Artie,…
I’ve never thought of my 1991 Dodge Dynasty as being a “clunker.” She’s been referred to as a “grandpa” car, a “drug dealer” car even, but certainly not a clunker. Then, the muffler and every inch of piping to the rear of the catalytic converter…
The crankshaft is 10 feet long and weighs over a ton, a piston is the size of a pumpkin and just one of the twin turbo chargers is bigger than the engine in a Mazda RX-8. It’s a V20, and oh yeah, it’s built in…
It was a definite sign of the times over the weekend when I accidentally handed my passport to a Ford of Kirkland salesman in place of a valid driver’s license and was still allowed to test drive not four, but five of their vehicles. *…
Big news is tossing the auto world like a dryer set on crazy. There will be no salad references here. Without further ado, here’s a good cross section of the action: -Fiat CEO to take over Chrysler (and the world?) “Fiat Group CEO Sergio Marchionne…
Bah! Chinese automakers are ripping off the world’s cars and there doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it. It’s no secret that China churns out a preponderance of second-rate regurgitated products, everything from clothing lines to cameras. In fact, it’s respectable, because…
They almost had it. Under the wire and working with the Obama administration, Chrysler nearly avoided the recent announcement they will be forced to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. In a bid for further government loans, Chrysler worked a cost-cutting deal with the United Auto…
Today, General Motors announced the death of Pontiac. What was once known as The Excitement Division will soon be no more than a bed time story to tell the grandkids, of a time when the rebel American spirit was embodied by a mustached man in…
The government is dishing out funding for battery-powered vehicles and carmakers are jockeying for a slice of the electric cheese. Way back on the campaign trail, President Obama voiced his desire to convert the White House vehicle fleet to battery power within the year, and…
There is a definite compressed sense of time in the auto industry right now. A year’s worth of activity now needs to be crammed into a matter of months as carmakers scramble to innovate the vehicles of future and survive in the process. But let’s…
Girl cars. Strong enough for a man, but specially designed for a woman, these are the vehicles that inarguably represent a serious gender divide on the roadways. The following is a list of the most predominant girl cars the world has ever known. For any…
You might have heard that West Coast Governors are pushing around plans to checker I-5 rest stops with green refueling stations. The idea is that drivers would be able to use the new businesses to swap out and recharge electric car batteries, fill up with…
With the show underway, it’s time to give a tip of the hat or a wave of the finger to several of the more notable cars already revealed from beneath their silky coverings. The ultimate goal for carmakers is to sell, obviously, but the game…
Unbeknownst to this Jeep lover, Chrysler LLC began producing a military-spec Jeep Wrangler called the J8 for use by the Egyptian military in 2007. Now, American Expedition Vehicles (AEV) will be making a limited number of AEV J8 MILSPEC Jeeps for sale in the United…
The latest news, reviews and commentary about cars, trucks, and more, automotive technology and car culture
