Archive for the 'Car News' Category
It’s that time of year again, when temperatures drop and ice and snow become the norm. Here are some of the most common winter driving hazards and cautions with tips on how to avoid or prepare for them.
Be Prepared
Before winter is in full swing, it’s important to take steps to insure that your vehicle is properly prepared. This includes checking your battery, windshield wipers, tires, coolant, windshield wiper fluid, spare tire, heater, defroster, any element that you were experiencing problems with and checking for any leaks. If your vehicle is in need of a tuneup or oil change, get these things done before winter hits. If you live in a region that gets alot of rain or snow, then consider getting special tires for these conditions. Also keep a set of tire chains with you at all times.
Getting Stuck
Should you get stuck somewhere due to being stuck in snow or some roads that you need to travel on are closed, you should have some essential emergency supplies with you. These include blankets, several day supply of food, several gallons of water, rope, flashlight, first aid kit, extra clothing, shovel, cat litter for traction if tires are stuck, scraper, jumper cables and a wheel wrench and wheel jack. » Read more after the jump →
Watch out, diesel. Mazda says it’s developed a Miller-cycle engine for the new Demio (Mazda2) in Japan that gets around 54 miles per gallon. The new JDM gas sipper goes on sale in July, sporting a 20 percent improvement in mileage over the current model, in combination with a continuously variable transmission. So what’s this Miller cycle we speak of? Let’s ask Wikipedia:
“In the Miller cycle, the intake valve is left open longer than it would be in an Otto cycle engine. In effect, the compression stroke is two discrete cycles: the initial portion when the intake valve is open and final portion when the intake valve is closed. This two-stage intake stroke creates the so called “fifth” cycle that the Miller cycle introduces. As the piston initially moves upwards in what is traditionally the compression stroke, the charge is partially expelled back out the still-open intake valve.”
That’s lovely. Problem is, the engines trade power for efficiency, which is usually compensated with a supercharger or electric motor (in the case of hybrids). Mazda’s new Miller is naturally aspirated. Maybe the whole Zoom-Zoom thing accounts not stopping for gas. It’s more of a net benefit thing. – Mike Spinelli
Press Release:
Mazda Develops New Naturally-Aspirated MZR 1.3L Miller-cycle Engine
- The new MZR 1.3L engine powers the all-new Mazda Demio to achieve a fuel economy of 23.0 km/L and qualify for Japan’s Green Tax exemptions -
HIROSHIMA, Japan–Mazda Motor Corporation has developed a new, naturally aspirated MZR 1.3L Miller-cycle engine, which will power the all-new Demio (known as the all-new Mazda2 in overseas markets) when it goes on sale in Japan in July 2007. In combination with Mazda’s first continuously variable transmission (CVT), the engine will assist the new Demio to achieve a 10-15 mode fuel economy of 23.0 km/L, an improvement of approximately 20 percent over the 19.2 km/L rating of the current model.
Newly developed from the current MZR 1.3L DOHC aluminum engine, the naturally-aspirated MZR 1.3L Miller-cycle engine employs delayed closing of the intake valves in order to reduce pumping losses and improve thermal efficiency through a higher expansion ratio. Intake valve timing is optimized by the Sequential Valve Timing System to provide improved fuel efficiency over the current MZR 1.3L engine when cruising and accelerating. In conjunction with the CVT, which transfers torque at low speeds without power loss and eliminates gear-shift shock, the setup achieves excellent fuel efficiency as well as a smooth and exhilarating ride.
In addition to this new, highly efficient powertrain, the all-new Demio has been made approximately 100 kg lighter than its predecessor through weight reduction techniques, which have resulted in nimble handling and significantly improved fuel economy.
The Demio model with the naturally aspirated MZR 1.3L Miller-cycle engine combined with the CVT transmission achieves a fuel economy that is rated as 20 percent or better than the level specified by Japan’s 2010 fuel economy standards. Exhaust emissions are also at least 75 percent lower than 2005 standards, which conforms to Japan’s Super Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (SU-LEV) standard and qualifies the Demio for Green Tax exemptions.
Through its Sustainable Zoom-Zoom plan that was announced in March 2007, Mazda declared its intention to pursue the harmony felt between driving pleasure and environmental and safety features, and its quest for an advanced Zoom-Zoom world. This includes the ongoing desire to create captivating design, to provide our customers with continual driving pleasure and to develop improved safety and environmental technologies.
Buick was the special child in the GM family: the beautiful and temperamental second-oldest daughter that somehow always got the most attention from Daddy. Sure, oldest daughter Caddy got to wear the family jewels and formal gowns, but Buick was lavished with style. Whether it was Harley Earl or Bill Mitchell, GM’s top stylists always blessed Buick with their best efforts. For decades, Buick was maintained in the style to which she had become accustomed, and remained America’s fashion-conscious upscale buyers’ wheels of choice. And then, not.
Scotsman David Dunbar Buick founded his eponymous automobile company in 1903. The following year, the inventor of the overhead valve engine sold the struggling concern to James Whiting, an ambitious wagon builder. Whiting turned to William Durant to help jump start Buick.
With an excellent product to sell (the Model C), Durant’s energy, affability and marketing genius ensured Buick’s ascension to profit and glory. Durant used Buick’s revenues to acquire dozens of other automakers and form General Motors.
Right from the get-go, Buick was GM’s anchor brand. Durant capitalized on the company’s engineering excellence and reputation to expand sales around the globe. In 1926, Buick sold a then-staggering 260k cars.
The Great Depression hit the brakes but good; annual Buick sales plummeted below 40k. GM President and future CEO Alfred Sloan used the downturn to rationalize GM’s brand portfolio. He slotted the consummate “doctor’s car” between affordable Oldsmobile and unapproachable Cadillac.
Priced at around $40k to $65k in today’s dollars, pre-war Buicks were the Lexi of their time: refined, smooth, powerful, elegant and built to last. They were the consummate “doctor’s car.”
By the late thirties, GM’s inter-brand demarcations had begun their inexorable erosion. Buick’s product line overlapped a significant portion of Olds’ and Pontiac’s price range. As internal competition intensified, Buick cultivated two selling points to stay ahead: performance and style.
Throughout the ‘30’s and into the ‘40’s, Buick espoused its General Manager’s “more speed for less money” maxim. In 1936, Buick had a brand-new 320-cid 120hp straight-eight, designed for the large and heavy Series 80/90. When the company shoehorned the big eight into the smaller and lighter Series 40, it was dubbed Century, for its readily attained top speed. Thus the first factory production “hot-rod” was born.
When Harley Earl joined GM in 1927, he created the Arts and Color Section: the car world’s prototype styling studio. Earl used the Buick brand to showcase his most significant creative output.
Earl’s Buick Y-Job of 1938 was the world’s first dream-car. Unlike the European salon specials sold to exclusive buyers, the Y-Job’s was created to build excitement for future GM products, and showcase their styling direction. The Y-Job succeeded brilliantly; it solidified GM’s global styling leadership. And Buick’s.
The 1951 Buick LeSabre and XP-300 dream cars initiated the GM Motorama era, a grand traveling carnival of GM-think. Until 1961, Motoramas showed Americans a tempting glimpse of the (ever better) good life to come, from cars to kitchen appliances. And GMAC would finance the dream.
The consumer era was now in high gear, and Buick style led the way.
Buick enjoyed its greatest market-share success in the mid-fifties. From 1954 through 1956, Buick was America’s third most popular automotive brand. During those heady days, models like the Century, Super, Roadmaster and Special defined affordable American automotive luxury, class and power.
In ’57, Plymouth’s radical models pushed Buick back to number four. But it was Buick’s horrendously overwrought ’58 models that really hurt. Renaming 1959’s Buick entire line-up (LeSabre, Invicta and Electra) didn’t help. By 1960, Buick’s market position had tumbled to ninth.
Buick desperately needed a new make-up artist, and found it in Bill Mitchell. The 1963 Riviera coupe was Mitchell’s tour-de-force: one of the most beautiful American cars of the post-war era. It had the class, cachet and authenticity of a Mercedes CL or Bentley Continental. The Riviera’s halo effect worked; by 1965, Buick was back to fifth place.
Fast forward a decade, and Buick’s hot new coupe is the execrable Skyhawk, a clone of Chevy’s Vega-based Monza. Alternatively, Buick intenders could contemplate the Skylark, a padded landau-roofed version of Chevy’s Nova.
The preceding and ensuing string of badge-engineered disasters were unleashed at the exact moment when Buick needed to strengthen its roots– style, performance and quality. Up-scale import competition from Mercedes, BMW, Audi and later, Lexus, stole traditional Buick customers by the tens of thousands.
Buick’s subsequent decline is too painful to describe in detail, especially during the mid to late eighties. After that, it was either too little too late, or another kick in the groin, like the Rendezvous.
No wonder Buick packed her bags and slipped away to China, where she’s once again adored and idolized. All she left behind moldering in American showrooms are ghosts, pale shadows of her former stylish self. And plenty of beautiful memories.
The master cladders at Ford Motor Company have left almost everything to the imagination with this spy shot of the next-generation F-Series pickup, which is expected to debut for the 2009 model year.
But as the truck moves into final confirmation prototypes, a number of them were caught road testing—in three cab configurations. Spotted in Detroit have been standard short cab, extended cab (like the one pictured here), and four-door crew cab ’09 versions, suggesting Ford will be ready to rumble with a full lineup when the trucks launch next year.
The few glimpses through the cladding reveal a large three-bar grille, and it appears the headlights of the new F-150 will not share the tall, stacked treatment given the new Super Duties.
We admit, we were surprised last October when Ford, in delivering the grim news of layoffs and plant closures in its updated Way Forward restructuring plan, added fairy dust with the announcement it was redoing the pickup.
The current generation launched for ’04 as what amounted to five different pickups, each with distinct interiors to appeal to diverse buyers—including, for the first time, luxury vehicle buyers. Ford was acting on research that said luxury buyers want maximum luxury, sportier guys want ultra sport, and buyers of a base truck want it really stripped down.
While every variant offered the standard three-across seating in front, the current-generation F-150 was the first to offer a center console in a pickup, a nod to the luxurious side of truck ownership that the Lariat was designed to tap into. The spy shots of the pending trucks show a generous center armrest with plenty of storage.
Ford launched the current F-Series with the lofty goal of selling 1 million annually, with plants in Dearborn, Norfolk, Virginia, and Kansas City tooled up for the challenge. It was a bold goal, given that the pickup had averaged 800,000 per year over the previous five.
And, in the end, it proved mission impossible. The closest Ford came to the million mark was in 2004, when the new truck was fresh and exciting, and the automaker sold 891,000 light duties and 940,000 with heavies added. Sales have tapered off ever since, and through April of this year, light-duty F-Series deliveries are running 10.4 percent behind year-ago’s pace, according to Wards Automotive Reports data.
The F-150 is the automaker’s single-largest profit contributor, at about $5,000 per unit on annual sales in the 800,000 range—which means Ford can’t afford not to redo its bread-and-butter vehicle.
BMW AG has made it official: It will build the next generation of the X3 SUV in-house, at its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, when its current contract runs out in 2010–2011.
While not unexpected, it is a blow for Magna International which currently assembles the X3 for BMW at its Magna Steyr plant in Graz, Austria. In preparation for the addition of the X3, which launched in January 2004, Magna purchased its next-door neighbor, Chrysler’s Eurostar plant that was making minivans and PT Cruisers. Once Magna owned the whole complex, minivan production moved to Magna’s original plant; PT Cruisers were consolidated at the Toluca, Mexico, plant; and the vacated Eurostar space was prepped to set Magna up as the sole source for the new BMW.
In 2006, the X3 represented about 45 percent of Graz’s total vehicle output. But the writing has been on the wall since BMW officials began suggesting the next X3 could share underpinnings with the Z4—and both could end up adopting the new 3-series architecture.
BMW is spending $3 billion to expand capacity at Spartanburg within three years from 140,000 units annually to 200,000. It already revamped operations, replacing two separate assembly lines with a single flexible one that builds the Z4 and the midsize X5 SUV. The new coupe-shaped X6 (based on the X5) also will be sourced out of South Carolina next year. The continued strength of the euro vs. the dollar is one of the reasons for building more of the BMW lineup in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Magna, which specializes in niche-vehicle production, says it is talking to customers to fill the excess capacity that looms in a couple years. That includes discussions with BMW, which is studying whether to source a different vehicle from Graz. The German automaker could be mulling something along the lines of the Concept CS revealed last month at the Shanghai auto show, and based on the 7-series. Or a smaller luxury sports tourer, based on the 5-series, could be under consideration.
It’s not been a good week for Magna. The Canadian parts maker also learned it lost out on its bid to buy Chrysler Group. Cerberus Capital Management is buying an 80.1 percent stake in the automaker in a deal expected to close in the third quarter.
Tom LaSorda, president and CEO of Chrysler present and future, spent his first day back on American soil filling in the blanks and debunking misinformation following the surprise announcement May 14 that the 83-year-old automaker had been sold and will soon be a standalone private company.
LaSorda was still bleary-eyed and jet-lagged from the flight back from Stuttgart, Germany, where the news came out that a deal had been reached to sell Chrysler. New York equity firm Cerberus Capital Management will own 80.1 percent of Chrysler while former parent DaimlerChrysler AG will retain 19.9 percent.
The new Chrysler will consist of the Chrysler Corporation—the name it had prior to its 1998 merger with Daimler-Benz—which will design, engineer, build, and sell Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler brand vehicles. Chrysler Financial Services will be a separate entity. Both will report to Chrysler Holding, which is majority owned by Cerberus.
The 20-member supervisory board of DaimlerChrysler today approved the split. After the divorce is finalized, the German parent will be renamed Daimler AG. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
LaSorda, who retains his job running Chrysler, made it a priority to meet with union officials, media, and executives, including some from Cerberus. The CEO was kept updated in the six months he says the project was in the works, but was not directly involved in the talks and admits to being surprised himself at the speed and quality of the negotiations and final deal. He says Cerberus was chosen for its desire to grow the business and bring cash to the venture, as well as expertise in the financial and operational side of business.
The message in the succession of meetings was overwhelmingly rosy—even critics such as outspoken Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove were on board after spending time with Cerberus CEO Stephen Feinberg and others. The union president was semi-gushing by day’s end, saying workers were better off with Cerberus than Daimler. Much of his enthusiasm was fueled by a signed letter guaranteeing no layoffs as a result of the sale, and the new owner’s pledge to address one of Hargrove’s biggest pet peeves: unfair trade between North America and Asia.
United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger, who is on the DC supervisory board and was privy to internal information before the sale was announced, endorsed the move immediately as being in the best interests of workers.
The Fleetwood product line has tremendous value. Its design and construction are the industry’s best as far as we’re concerned.
When we bought our 27 foot long class C motorhome, we were expecting our first child. A floor plan with twin beds in the back seemed the best choice since we rationalized, “someday perhaps we’ll have another child or maybe our son or daughter will want to bring a friend camping.” Two months later we learned that our child had a sibling already. The twin bed floor plan was a perfect choice!
Sleeping accommodations vary with floor plans but we can put up a total of 7 people with little discomfort. Normally my wife and I sleep in the cabover bed and the children in the back. We debated the merits of the queen bed in the back and decided that if children need to be put down earlier than the adults, a separate room with a door is much more desirable than having to move them from the back to the front when the adults wish to call it a day.
Look carefully at the galley arrangement when shopping. Some are straight along a wall and others have an L shaped layout. The slide-out models give tremendous galley space and allow others to pass by someone preparing food with no interference at all. » Read more after the jump →
While my mini motorhome home is slightly older than this category, there is not a category in which to place this review at the present time, when such category is added I will move this review. This review is on a 1978 Dodge Minnie Winnie, since so many of these are still on the road, I felt it was important to do a review on my home away from home.
I come from a family of campers, my first camping experience when I was just a child was in a rented pop-up tent trailer. Since then my parents have gone onto truck campers, mini motor homes, travel trailers and their latest camper is a 1999 Sunline, 27 1/2 feet in length complete with tiny bathtub and microwave. Okay, so my family was not known to rough it!
We were fortunate enough last year to basically have our 1978 Minnie Winnie given to us, for my father-in-law installing a starter on a customer’s tractor. A Minnie Winnie is made by Winnebago, a motor home company that has been in business since 1958, located in Forest City, Iowa. The definition of a mini motorhome is unit built on an automotive manufactured chassis with an attached van cab section. In our case the attached van cab is a Dodge. Our Minnie Winnie is 24 feet long and is powered by a 360 Dodge engine, with a three speed automatic transmission. Many of these older models are still on the road considering they are only used several months out of the year, in fact ours only has about 70,000 miles on it. Which since it is 22 years old that isn’t very many. » Read more after the jump →