Are we bailed out yet? Edward Niedermeyer at The Truth About Cars assesses the smoking rubble following the explosion of sanity in the U.S.Senate late Thursday evening. It's all up to W now.And Peter DeLornezo at AUTOEXTREMIST makes the case for throwing a TARP on Detroit.
So let's say just for talking sake that you've gotta be in a crash. Would you rather be in a 66 Caddy or an 09 Civic? The CarGurus offer some thoughts on the latest safety ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Not sure what to give Rover - the dog, not the TC - for Christmas? AskPatty.com has some suggestions.
They're sleeping late over at AutoMoBlog, but that doesn't prevent them from getting all crazy about the GT-R. No, crazy-mad, not crazy-good.
Joe Sherlock took the Avalon in for some routine service and before the service writer even looked at the car managed to say something really stupid. Which of course didn't sit well at all with the guy giving us The View Through the Windshield.
Cookie the Dog's Owner is looking at Naked Daihatsu again. Well, he is writing at the Car Lust blog
People sometimes ask me what is my all-time favorite car and I always say "Corvette Grand Sport, of course." They understand why at the Corvette blog.
Talk about finding a silver lining in a disaster - Eric Peters says now is the best time ever to get your Hummer H3T. I think his tonque is firmly planted in his cheek
Sounds like progress is being made with the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicles. GM's Mary Beth Stanek updates Project Driveway at GMFastlane. Nice to know somebody at GM is worrying about something besides poltiics.
My man Shouting Thomas at Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars makes the case for Ron Santo to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hey, it's not about cars, but then the way things are going for Detroit these days, I'll bet a sad story about a Chicago Cubbie who can't get a decent break sounds familiar.
Uh oh. The Auto Prophet read Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" back in his college days. Events in Washington this week reminded him of a certain passage.
And finally, French authorities are sitting on a report by one of that country's most respected energy experts. They aren't happy with the report's negative assessment of EVs. Read all about it in Financial Times. No, it's not a blog post, but you can be sure it will soon generate lots of posts around the Auto Blog block.
WHAT I'M DRIVING THIS WEEK: Toyota Land Cruiser
Why am I in this thing? Well, it had been several years since a Land Cruiser showed up in my driveway, so not long ago I scheduled it for a "slow part" of the season. Slow is one thing the Land Cruiser is not, at least in a straight line. The 381 horse 5.7 liter V-8 under the hood does a masterful job of moving the Land Cruiser's 5,600+ pound curb weight, especially in two-lane passing situations where there is little room for error.
On the road, the Land Cruiser is a quiet, comfortable conveyance as well it should be for a vehicle with a Monroney on the far side of $70,000. The soft suspension settings and huge donuts, I mean tires, make short work of most road imperfections. I wasn't able to get my tester off road this time around, but if memory serves, this thing is good for most any sort of terrain you might want to throw at it.
Given its old tech trappings and the bigger, newer Sequoia in the Toyota lineup, you might think the Land Cruiser won't be around much longer. And, although gas has dropped below $2 a gallon around the country, that surely is a temporary situation. So the prognosis for the Land Cruiser might not be so bright. But Toyota has been quite happy for many years to sell only a few thousand Land Cruisers a year here in the U.S. and most of those customers tend to be rather loyal. This dinosaur might just be the last survivor of its species.
See ya next week!
stovt001 says:
03:31 PM, 12/13/08
The government's response to Detroit has been nothing but shameful. They subsidize foreign manufacturers, throw big money at the banks that started this whole mess, money that is promptly used to send the executives on luxury retreats and buying rival banks, money that has zero oversight, but the minute American auto manufacturers come asking for a relatively small amount of money, they pull out criticisms on the product based on information no more recent than the 1970s, impose arbitrary and meaningless restrictions, and still don't give them the money. America is in trouble because our government will bend over backwards to help any foreign company, but will do nothing but harmfully meddle in the affairs of domestic companies. Truly shameful.
cwc1 says:
10:24 AM, 12/14/08
You make some good points. While I'm against the bailout in principle, the fact that Congress and the President blindly allocated 700 billion dollars that we don't have, to give away to financial institutions to do pretty much what they want with it, while later giving the automakers hell for asking for a comparatively smaller amount of funds is incongruent. And did you know that they even forced some companies to take that money - these were companies who were solvent and didn't need it. The words stupid and idiotic don't seem strong enough to describe it.
And Congress isn't even willing to acknowledge that they are complicit in dragging down the US automakers, through their policies of CAFE and over regulation. I wish the auto executives had the gumption to point that out to them, even at the risk of not getting the money. It could be better to go bankrupt than to make a deal with the devil.
billt9 says:
11:06 AM, 12/14/08
Toyota sells the Land Cruiser internationally, like Nissan. It's not fully reliant on the American market...
Mmmm... rich people living in the sand dunes...