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 [...]

Image via Wikipedia

Let me put all my cards on the table.  Like my friend Shawn, I want GM and, in fact, all three American car manufacturers to make it through this current mess and to be hugely successful.  I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want this.  Aren’t more [...]

2008 Acura MDX     Predator

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This past weekend, my buddy Shawn and I attended an intro for the new Cadillac CTS-V, Caddy’s high-performance, mid-size sedan.  The event took place at the incredible Monticello Motor Club in New York, a members-only race track – sorta like a golf club for people with high octane fuel in their veins.

The [...]

Picture from New York Times

General Motors can’t seem to catch a break.  Today, the company unveiled the production version of its Volt electric car (officially a Chevrolet).  The Volt is different from current hybrids in that it is entirely driven by it’s electric motors, not by a combination of electric [...]

I have previously talked about the potential advantages of combining powerful (torquey) diesel engines with electric motors into diesel-electric hybrid powerplants.  Like their gasoline-electric brethren that have become the poster child of all things green, an electric motor can be used to augment the fossil fuel powered engine where it needs it most [...]

Many people, including me, have espoused the idea that wider use of diesel-fueled vehicles could put a major dent in fuel consumption in the US.  One can look at virtually all other countries in the world and recognize that this is patently obvious.  It’s easy to find diesel vehicles in the EU, for [...]

CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy), is the set of standards established by Congress in 1975 and subsequently managed by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to limit the number and types of vehicles that Americans can buy – really.  Of course, the Congressional regulations weren’t sold to the public that way.  Officially, [...]

This is clearly going to date me, but as I was getting my driver’s license, gas prices were jumping from about $0.40/gallon (that’s right – only a zero before the decimal point) to an astronomical $0.75.  At the time, many thought that the high prices would destroy America’s open road driving experience, ripping [...]