My good friend Dave just sent me an article from Wired magazine, “MIT Hopes to Exorcise ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams,” about research going on at MIT in mathematically modeling randomly occurring traffic jams to discover their source as well as potential remedies.  Since I’m not a mathematician, I developed a somewhat less scientific theory as to [...]

Mercedes has always been a leading innovator of safety gizmos that help pull your vehicular ass out of the frying pan when things go terribly, terribly wrong.  Every once in a while, they show off what’s next in preventing your insides from becoming your outsides in an auto accident with a marketing-oriented test vehicle.  They [...]

So, I was in Cambridge, MA last week and parked in a public lot while attending the TechStars Boston Mentor Dinner (really great group, BTW).  I searched the 10,000 little signs around the lot to find out if I needed to fill a meter somewhere and felt fairly secure that I didn’t when I [...]

I’m a car guy.  I’ve owned many cars and have driven dozens that I haven’t had the opportunity to own (yet).  Hands down, my all time favorite car was my new, at the time, 1984 Camaro Z28 HO (High Output).  An 80s example of the classic American muscle car.  It had a clutch pedal that [...]

My son and I once again visited the Big Apple to see what the remaining industrial might of the automotive world has to offer.  Since between the two of us, we read almost every English language car magazine published and cruise virtually all the automotive blogs that Google can dig up, there are hardly any [...]

The back pages of auto magazines are famous for being loaded with advertisements for somewhat . . . let’s say, questionable, goods and services.  Pheromone supplements for your aftershave, slinky outfits for your [in]significant other, a variety of tools and chemicals to increase the length of certain body parts or the amount of time you [...]

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A “deadfoot” driver is one who keeps the accelerator pedal at the same position regardless of the slope or condition of the road they are on.  As such, they often climb hills at 40mph and descend them at 80mph.  They also tend to be the people lying with the shiny side of the [...]

You know how it works.  You’re driving along in the left lane at some reasonable speed – OK, it’s usually above the posted limit – and you get stuck behind someone driving more slowly than you are (usually in a Subaru, but frequently in a Volvo).  You pray they realize that you’re about to scrape [...]

President Obama has a brand new car.  Sadly, this kinda thing is necessary when you’re the most powerful man in the world.  The car, nicknamed “The Beast,” but known as “Cadillac One” by many is not the standard limo ride available to ordinary citizens.  The features are in the graphic (courtesy of Jalopnik), below.

I [...]

I’m certainly not here to defend the big three US auto makers or to say that the huge hole they’ve dug for themselves isn’t completely justified, but I find it interesting that so many people are criticizing the companies for not listening to car buyers.  “If they listened to the consumer,” so many say, “they’d [...]