And Now for Something Completely Different . . .

1953 Studebaker Ute

It's pretty bad when you're old enough to know people who actually had Studebakers, it's even worse to have known them well enough to know they were called 'Steady Breakers'.

But here's the story of a fifty year old customized Studebaker Utility Vehicle (geez that means it really is an SUV. ; -)

It is for sale on eBay. Here's the link.

Cash for Clunkers

The Cash for Clunkers bill, formally titled, "Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act", is now law. So what does it do for anybody? Well, the congress has dipped into our pockets (sometime in the future no doubt) and allocated a wad of our cash to rid our streets of bad old polluting cars.

How old? Not that old (at least not from my perspective ; -); 1984 or newer are the model years covered. So the notion that a Chevy Nomad from the golden age of American hot rods would end up being scrapped is off the table.

Further the car to be scrapped (and it is scrapped - the drivetrain must be intact and the entire vehicle must be crushed or shredded once it is in 'government' ownership) has to meet a max fuel economy target. A 2001 Honda Insight wouldn't be eligible. The dollar amount of the voucher are based on the previous and new fuel economy.

Additional restrictions are in place to prevent people from going to Joe's Salvage Yard and plucking a POS from the bowels of the yard and plopping it at the dealership as a 'down payment' on a new car. Those restrictions ensure that the car has been continuously licensed and insured for at least a year prior to being turned in.

So who is going to take advantage of this? If the clunker is worth more as a trade in than the voucher, the clunker will hit the used car market. It's then off the table - the cycle of insurance and registration starts over. The folks driving really nasty clunkers tend to miss renewing their licenses and forget about insurance, so those won't come off the street either.

The only case of a car worth using this program for that I can imagine is my mom's 1987 Plymouth Caravelle (the dreaded Pink Panther ; -) which is on its last legs and is worth absolutely zero as a trade in. At least some of my tax dollars will stay in the family. ; -)

Tort Reform We Can Beleive In

Seems the Chrysler that emerges from bankruptcy does so with a bit of a CYA shield. They are immune from suits filed against cars sold prior to June 10 this year.

Of course there is pending litigation against Chrysler but Chrysler is no longer liable. The plaintiffs may win a suit - but win nothing in the process.

It's as if they aren't really Chrysler anymore, isn't it? ; -)

Go Like Hell

"Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans", by A.J. Baime is worth a read.

A.J. Baime deals with the epic battle between Ford and Ferrari with a sensitivity to context and a sympathy for the characters involved that elevate what some might consider just another car book to literature.

Several characters get star billing; Carrol Shelby, John Surtees, Ken Miles, and Enzo Ferrari. Sketches of Henry Ford II and several Ford managers are fairly well fleshed out. And there's a wonderful cameo appearance of our native son, the Kansas City Flash, Masten Gregory.

But the beauty of the book is A. J. Baime's capturing the zeitgeist of racing in that era (and it touches on almost all aspects of big league racing in the day).

Deep technical specs are avoided - but where technology provided an edge it's explained. (In particular Ford's use of data logging, one of the first cases of it's use in motorsports.) But the characters come to life and jump off the page.

One reviewer mentioned that there would be great heros and villians in the book. I didn't find any villians though. Rather, I saw fear, lives, huge egos, and money ground into dust in the high speed crucible of international motorsports.

The Second Waltz

This collection of commercial footage has a surreal aspect that marries perfectly with the Shostakovich waltz.

Another British LSR

In this case a wind powered vehicle - at an astounding 126 MPH.



It is the Ecotricity Greenbird. Here's the link to their website. But the amazing thing is that they can travel at three to five times the speed of the wind. Truly special engineering, and I'm sure, given Great Britain's history of sailing, another source of national pride. Good on them!

Update to British LSR Steam Car

From Reuters, a nice overview of the UK steam car land speed record team. It's always nice to see the UK and USA flags together on a nice British Racing Green car.

F1 Follies: Part Deux

Eight F1 teams have broken ranks with the organizing body (the FIA) and have announced that they will run a competing series next year.

At which tracks? ; -)

That was the problem CART had when the IRL split from it. The IRL was more than a mere breakaway - it also took with it THE race, the Indy 500.

The new F1 (it will have to be called something else) will have an assortment of tracks (heck, maybe even one or two races in the US) and name drivers at their disposal. They won't have one key race probably - the Grand Prix of Monaco, and they won't have the legitimacy of a recognized sanctioning body.

Regardless, they will have the manufacturers support, the key technical people, and the 'name' drivers. The 'legitimate' F1 will have to make do with scratch entries and pick-up teams (those who currently have little or no chance of fielding a competitive entry).

So let's welcome the 'World of Outlaws' version of F1. (The cars probably won't look like this though. ; -)

Formula 1 at the Brink

The FIA's Formula 1 (F1) is supposed to the premier motorsport series in the world. However the recent controversy over spending caps (of which the better teams are adamantly against) may unravel the bonds between the constructors and the organizers. The back and forth at the moment is in regards to 'conditional' entries for the 2010 season. It's a dance that mere mortals may find difficult to follow (substitute 'boring' for 'difficult'. ; -)

It's happened before, both in F1 in the 1980s and in American open wheel racing in the 1990s. The prior split in F1 didn't result in as damaging a fracture as the CART/IRL split in the US. But the issues at hand could very well be as bad for F1 as the previous US split.

Personally, I'd like to see F1 lose its 'parade-like' aspects. There is little racing/passing in F1 at the top of the field. The aerodynamics preclude that. From a fan's perspective, I'd like to see them lose more aero grip (restrict the chassis configurations) and place a weight penalty on engine displacement/cylinder-count. Hopefully you'll end up with some screaming 4 cylinder turbocharged cars dicing for the lead on a week-in, week-out basis.

The Peugeot 908

Peugeot Prevails

That was the preview from EuroSport for this year's race, but the results are in:

Audi is eclipsed at the 77th running of the Le Mans 24 hours. Peugeot's push to the first podium step took three years this go around, Peugeot's last overall win coming in 1993.

There's an old salt about racing that says while the American's enjoy the spectacular the Europeans revel in the epic. There is nothing else that compares with the French road race at Le Mans as an epic battle of man & machine against time and each other. But in the end at Le Mans you have to defeat time and entropy before you can beat your human opponents.

Nowhere else is the saying, "to finish first, you first have to finish", as apropos. Le Mans is grueling, unforgiving of the unprepared, and can test the will of the strongest. It is, quite possibly, the premier race in motorsports.

Run by the Automobile Club of the West (ACO), the race features four classifications of cars (two prototype and two sports car classes). It has been won overall by diesel prototypes for four years running.

Rules for next years race will open the door for hybrid systems, keeping the ACO in the forefront of technical innovation. Le Mans will continue to be important and relevant.

Penske Purchases Saturn

Saturn's future is secure. Roger Penske has purchased the brand.

In statements made to the press, Mr. Penske has outlined the product plan for Saturn. In the interim they will continue to utilize products manufactured by GM. Down the road they are open to branding and supporting products from other sources.

Penske has associations with Renault Samsung Motors, which makes a couple of cars that are inherently prior generation Nissan vehicles. That is one possibility. But I don't think that likely personally.

There's the possibility that the products will be sourced from Opel (if they get the sale of that group to Magna sorted out). Opel builds decent product and it would help them to have a market in the US. (Ask Fiat if it's good to be in the US market. ; -)

However, I'll go out on a limb and say that Saturn may go after a Chinese manufacturer (and there's still a lot of work to be done to make that a viable proposition).

The one thing for sure that will happen with Penske ownership of Saturn is that Saturn will be a good company offering good product and service. Nothing is done shabbily, it's the Penske way.

The Supreme's Fold!

Chrysler and Fiat - a marriage made in the biggest sausage factory in the world, Washington, DC. ; -)

I Don't Want To Know ; -)

Posted without comment from a tweet . . .

What's Next?

The decision by Justice Ginsburg to delay the sale of Chrysler to Fiat until further notice may mean a lot or may mean very little. The action taken today is merely a delay - possibly only for a day or so, in order to review the documentation, before deciding to hear or dismiss the appeal.

If that's what is intended, an effort to peer under the hood to see if anything is amiss before dismissing, then look for a decision before Saturday. For some reason 15 June 2009 is important (upon which Fiat's obligation to 'purchase' Chrysler expires. ; -)

If, in the next day or so, the Supreme Court declares that they will hear the appeal, the Fiat deal is gone. Arranging a marriage partner at that point will be difficult at best and the most that can be hoped for is the liquidation of Chrysler, the most valuable piece of which is the Jeep brand.

And if the court does decide to hear the appeal, what has to be done to ensure the GM bankruptcy doesn't suffer the same fate?

Put Some Time Back On That Clock (and Kiss Fiat Goodbye ; -)

Wow! After seeing Justice Ginsburg was assigned to hear the Chrysler appeal, I called the bookie and got 1 in 9 odds (how appropriate ; -). But then the longshot came in and Justice Ginsburg decided that the Supreme Court would take the appeal. I had expected the deadline to pass without any action, essentially denying the appeal.

Now what? ; -)

The Clock Is Ticking

There is a 4 pm deadline today for the Supreme Court to accept or decline intervening in a decision to let the Chrysler sale to Fiat go through. If the Supreme Court decides to take the case, look for lots of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth on the part of administration spokespersons and talking heads on the boob tube.

Myself, I give it 1 in 3 odds of the court wanting to stick their noses in this one.

There's also been some discussion about how poorly vetted the deal with Fiat has been. To say the least it was a hastily arranged marriage, kinda like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. ; -)

The Transparent Car Factory

VW has a plant in the heart of Dresden, Germany that is 'open' to the public. An interesting post-industrial-age take on an industrial process.



As for the car, the VW Phaeton, well as my wife said, "If I'm going to pay $80,000 plus for a car it's going to have something other than a VW badge on the grille." ; -)

Could This Be a Reason Chrysler Failed?

The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming!

Word has it that a Chinese company is negotiating to purchase the Hummer brand. Ostensibly to sell the existing inventory and continue building the H3 for a year or so. It would be within reason to expect that at some point the production of Hummers will move to China.

MotorAuthority had a piece regarding a new electric car startup called, Coda Automotive. This is a five passenger sedan that looks vaguely like a Volvo. Hmmm, a little digging shows that a Chinese aircraft manufacturer is involved in this venture, Chengdu Aircraft Company.

A couple of years ago a video of a Chinese car undergoing European crash testing made the rounds on the net. It wasn't pretty and showed that there was a lot of work left to do before folks would trust their families in them. But that will be done.

The Chinese manufacturers have a window of opportunity in the American market if they can get product that will pass US safety standards. There are a ton of dealerships that have had (or will have) their franchises stripped from them. They have the property and personnel to sell and service product. While some of that will disappear before the Chinese cars are approved for sale, there's still time to get in on the next upswing of car sales (which at a rate of 10 million or less a year at the moment has a long way to climb before they're back to normal).

Will the Chinese cars be well received right off the bat. No, not likely, this is a tough market (ask Chrysler ; -). But if they can compete on price initially they'll have the opportunity to compete on features and value later. Think of Kia just a few years ago, or the Japanese in the early '60s.

The Chinese are coming!!

Spin, Spin, Spin

Reinvention? Why didn't they think about this - oh say - ten years ago? I was at a press preview of a redone Cavalier in 1999 when the brand manager said, "I don't have gasoline in my blood . . . " and you knew it was going to go downhill from there.

Well here's the spin from GM:



Go back twenty years and Maryann Keller's, "Rude Awakening" was published. Subtitled, "The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors". Some things don't change evidently.

Taste? Sure, We Got It By the Square Foot!

Jim the Realtor strikes again!! ; -)

A Long Row to Hoe

Chrysler is said to be emerging from bankruptcy today to be swallowed by Fiat. This is a cashless transaction where Fiat converts equity in Fiat for the purchase price of Chrysler. And some folks will say, "swell".

GM enters bankruptcy today, ostensibly to clear the cancerous brands, Saturn, Pontiac, Opel/Vauxhall, Hummer, and Saab, from the books. The Canadian parts firm Magna has entered an agreement with the German government to purchase Opel (which saves Vauxhall). There has been a series of suitors for the Saturn brand (the brand NOT the products ; -) as well as the Hummer brand.

But, the road to recovery for both Chrysler and GM will be long and fraught with additional peril, especially while the economy continues to under perform. In the long run both will be mere shadows of their former selves.