Surely you remember all those hot sport-compact cars of ten years ago? Well, we can barely remember them ourselves, but it turns out that tire manufacturers do, because they built ultra high-performance tires for them. Fortunately all that tire technology has not gone to waste.
As we learned at the introduction of the BFGoodrich g-Force Sport Comp-2 the other week, the tire companies initially thought ultra high-performance (UHP) tires would never be more than a marginal market segment, just like hot sport-compact cars. Instead the market for Z-rated tires since 2006 has grown 10 times faster than the overall U.S. tire market. It’s expected to double in size by 2016 when it will become 8 percent of the overall tire market.
We’d guess that this means a Z-rated tire is probably coming to your car sometime soon, and we’ll bet that it will be a lot like BFG’s Comp-2.
Note to Android users: Ha. Note to iOS users: As you can see here, we have seriously upgraded the Edmunds.com app for iPad. Actually, maybe you don't see, because maybe you don't yet have the Edmunds.com app. Well, now's the time to get it, because the navigation is incredibly slick and the content is extraordinarily rich -- so much so that you may never need to turn on your laptop again.
Basically, what our mobile team has done is revamp the Edmunds app to take full advantage of the iPad's lovely display... looking at photos and reading our reviews has never been so, so, awesome. Moreover, slider bars make it easy to move between model years and types of content (options, specs, colors, safety, dealer inventory, etc.). Optioning out a car is easy and fun (just tap the check boxes), and we've improved the logic, too, so that you don't inadvertently select conflicting options.
In short, Version 3.0 of the Edmunds iPad app is pretty great. It's also free. And if you already have the app, just run the latest update from the App Store, and presto, you'll have the nice new version.
Back in November, the California High Speed Rail Authority released a revised, inflation-adjusted estimate for the project that would provide bullet train service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The figure was $98.5 billion, and of course, it fanned the fire of opposition to high-speed rail.
Governor Jerry Brown was in L.A. late last week, and in an ABC 7 News interview (video after the jump), he told reporter Adrienne Alpert, "it's not going to be $100 billion. That's way off."
If you listen to what he's saying, though, it would seem the governor is not thinking of high-speed rail as an L.A.-to-San-Francisco proposition, at least not in any kind of near term. Instead, he says, "We'll bring Metrorail (L.A.'s light-rail commuter train) up to Palmdale and bring high-speed rail down from Bakersfield.
"This will create tens of thousands of jobs. We can help build up the Central Valley where housing prices are lower and where millions of people of going to move to."
That's right. He's likely talking about the L.A. to Bakersfield to Chowchilla part of the line only. And he's also looking at the Central Valley as a viable and necessary place for future housing development and urbanization rather than a remote part of California where the cattle are fattened and veggies are grown.
Bullet trains. They're cool in Japan, China and Europe, but are they practical and affordable enough for California? This is a matter of intense debate right now.
On January 3, the independent California High Speed Rail Peer Review Group (a body of 6 individuals from the public and private sector) recommended that the state legislature should not appropriate funds to support Proposition 1A, the $9.95 billion high-speed rail bond act passed by CA voters in 2008.
The peer group's reasoning? That the state has only secured enough federal (about $3.5 billion) and state funding to build 130 miles of track from Chowchilla, CA (a Central Valley town north of Fresno) to Bakersfield. As you might infer from the map after the jump, this is not a densely populated area, and in order to ensure brisk ridership, the state will need to extend the line to the major cities to the north and south. Building track all the way to Los Angeles will cost an estimated $18 billion -- $18 billion that the state not yet nailed down for this project.
Eight days later, Roelof van Ark, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (the state agency in charge of the project) resigned, and the chairman of the authority's board, Thomas Umberg, stepped down from his chair position but said he'd remain on the board.
Then, just when it looked like the high-speed rail project was falling apart, Governor Jerry Brown gave it a boost in his State of the State address this week....
Never heard of Lixil? There's a reason for that. It's doesn't make cars, or anything even remotely related to cars. Lixil makes home building products like shutters, doors and wooden louver window shades.
So why a booth at the Tokyo auto show? The company wanted to introduce the idea of "midteriors", or areas that combine the comfort of a home's interior with the openness of its exterior. Yeah, it's a stretch but go with it.
The result was this electric vehicle made mostly of wood. It was joined by a bicycle made of wood and this lovely garden. And of course live miniature horses. Can't have a worthwhile auto show stand without miniature horses.
This week, an article on Consumer Reports draws your attention to an old but persistent issue -- that the vehicles in automakers' press fleets do not necessarily reflect the vehicles available to the general public at dealerships.
In this story, CR points out the plastic covers over the metal trunk hinges on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat. (Gas struts? Not in America, buddy.) The pre-production Passats that most publications have tested to-date (including the Eeyore gray sedan that won our recent comparison test against an Accord) have covers on both hinges. A full-production car CR subsequently examined apparently had a cover only on the driver-side hinge where there's a wire for the electric trunk release that might otherwise get mangled.
Here's viral advertising, social media and a public mural all rolled into one on behalf of the Toyota FT-86 (and Scion FR-S). The production FT-86 will finally debut November 30 at the 2011 Tokyo Auto Show. To build hype for that momentous occasion, Toyota dispatched dozens of painters to the city's busiest train station, Shinjuku, over the weekend where they created the art for a new FT-86 website -- http://fpw.toyota-digital.com/.
The fpw in the URL stands for Fastest Painted Website. It took the painters 8 hours and 6 minutes (get it, 8 and 6, like eighty-six, like FT-86? Clever..) to complete the job and if you were up and online at weird hours over the weekend, liking or tweeting the under-construction website would result in your screen name being briefly displayed on a digital ticker above the mural.
Actually, you can still have your second of fame, as the URL will be live through November 26. It's kind of neat because the website is basically a webcam of the mural and you can hear all the street sounds outside bustling Shinjuku.
Making-of video after the jump. Is this an example of clever, off-beat advertising, in your distinguished/humble opinion, or is Toyota's confused ad team just throwing fragments of youth culture at the wall to see if they stick?
Yesterday, while we were paying attention to SEMA, the California High-Speed Rail Authority released a revised business plan for the high-speed rail network it plans to build between L.A. and San Francisco. It's a 230-page report, but page 21 is the one that has everyone up in arms. It pegs the total cost of the project at $98.5 billion.
Subaru is a regional sponsor of a new race series (as in foot racing, not auto) called Run for Your Lives. At first glance, it looks to be just another 5K fun run, albeit with a cutesy theme, but actually, a 5K run on an obstacle course seems like a form of exercise we could get behind... instead of running just for running's sake, you're trying to guard your precious "health flags" from undead assailants.
As this is actual exercise, you can't hop in an Impreza WRX to mow down the zombies, but we're betting you can buy plenty of licensed Subaru gear at the first race in Baltimore, Maryland, this October. Other race locations are still to be announced.
To get you in the mood to tear it up with the zombies, Subaru commissioned the commercial after the jump. Unfortunate periwinkle blue paint choice notwithstanding, does this make you want to drive a WRX any more/less?
You may have heard or read that kids just don't like cars anymore. They're too busy playing video games and texting each other to bother with them. I think it's BS.
Sure, there may be some shifts in the way younger generations interact with their cars, but to say that they're completely uninterested in them is nonsense.
Consider this scene I observed in a local park yesterday. It was a kids birthday party and the parents hired some guys to bring out these kiddie karts for fun (it was in the Palisades, go figure).
It was clear that the kids were loving it. Girls and boys alike were driving and they were all concentrating like it was the last lap of the Indy 500. When the parents said to wrap it up, they all cried for "just one more lap!"
Granted, these kids were too young to be distracted by cell phones or iPads, but it doesn't change the fact they they were sucked in by the thrill of driving. The tiny electric karts were hardly fast, but it didn't matter. They were still steering, pressing the gas and hitting the brakes to get them around the track. It's an experience they probably won't soon forget, and one they'll never get from a video game or Facebook.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't talk to friends and family about cars and try to steer their purchases in a direction of my liking. No doubt many of you do the same. And no matter how many different ways the Web gives us interact with content, nothing ever replaces frank conversation with a real human being.
So Edmunds.com, parent company of Inside Line and great uncle of Straightline, is now giving you (or your hapless/helpless friends) a chance to do just that. We've set up a new Twitter account @EdmundsLive, and you can Tweet questions (yep, 140 characters or less) to three of our car-buying experts and they'll give you answers.
Or, just send them a twitpic of the monroney on the car you're looking at, plus your zip code, and they tell you what the True Market Value (TMV) price (i.e., a fair price to pay) of that car should be for your area.
There's no charge to talk to an Edmunds guy, so other than a fear of Twitter, there's no reason not to take advantage of our new EdmundsLive service. Moderators are on-call 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET Saturday.
Automakers have all sorts of ideas, but what kind of technology does Average Joe really want in his car? Well, premium audio came in second and wireless connectivity finished third to the frontrunner -- remote vehicle diagnostics -- in J.D. Power and Associates' 2011 U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies Study. Based on responses from nearly 18,000 car owners, the study measures interest and purchase intent of 21 automotive technologies before and after the price is revealed.
After knowing what it would cost, 55% of those surveyed were interested in remote vehicle diagnostics. This compares to 52% that were interested in "non-branded premium sound systems" and 50% for "wireless connectivity systems."
While Ford Sync's Vehicle Health Report provides a combination of the first- and third-ranked technologies and automakers such as GM via OnStar provide remote diagnostics using a smartphone app, a Scottish design grad has devised a way to deliver engine-diagnostics in real time using an iPhone. It takes the idea of the idiot light and moves it to a smartphone in an effort to make it idiot-proof.
While we're busy worrying about the possibility of having to fuel up with 15-percent ethanol-blend gasoline (E15) at some point in the future, many Germans have already put their collective foot down: They won't even put 95-octane E10-blend gasoline in their cars. Ah, well, it's not really the owners of mint-condition Viper Green '78 Sciroccos who are the roadblock, rather the masses who drive modern-day VW Polos and BMW 1 Series hatches.
The 10-percent ethanol blend was phased in around Germany this year as part of a government initiative to help reduce carbon emissions, but local refineries have cut production because German consumers aren't buying it. And whenever motorists are surveyed, the number one reason for not using E10 95 octane is apparently that they love their cars (as shown in above photo... you can tell by his shoes that this happy man is German) and fear that the ethanol content will the harm the engine.
E10 gas, of course, is commonplace in the Midwest and, depending on the season, California. It's an oxygenate -- and a more appealing one than MTBE, which has been linked to cancer -- but we've yet to see any research that shows it actually reduces emissions. And no one's arguing that these blends are better for your car's engine, much less better for performance.
It's a little late for us to join the Germans in protesting E10. But assuming E15 eventually arrives at U.S. gas stations, do you think American will boycott it? Or do we not love our cars enough to notice or care?
Have you not yet downloaded the sweet new Inside Line iPhone app? Or do you have an Android phone and want some salt rubbed in the wound?
Well, then, please enjoy the next 63 seconds of slickly edited video, as our developers and IL Editor Ed Hellwig walk you through our iPhone app. It works on any iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch running iOS 4.2 or better. The iPad version is coming in May. The Android version is coming later this decade.
Chrysler is now seeking a court injunction against the Moda Group LLC, which owns and operates the Pure Detroit stores. Said injunction would immediately bar Moda from manufacturing and selling any apparel bearing the "Imported from Detroit" tagline. You'll remember that Chrysler filed suit against the company two weeks ago, claiming that it has sole rights to these quotably pithy words.
In related news, says Automotive News, Chrysler also asked Jeep dealers in Toledo, Ohio, to cease using the phrase "Imported from Toledo." Yes, really.
One of the Jeep dealers evidently had 600 t-shirts made featuring the logo and attempted to sell them. Chrysler's Toledo North assembly plant builds the Jeep Liberty.
If you've driven in Germany, you already know the autobahn isn't some unrestricted free-for-all for car guys, as there are plenty of speed-limited zones around the major cities. Well, now there might be a few more of those on the way.
The Green Party won a regional election yesterday in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg (defeating the incumbent coalition aligned around center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel), and one item in the party platform was a plan to set a 120-km/h (74.5-mph) speed limit on the autobahn in Baden-Wuerttemberg.
This initiative comes in the interest of the environment, not road safety, as Bloomberg's news item quotes party leader Winfried Kretschmann (who will become premier of the state), as saying that vehicle traffic contributes to 30 percent of Baden-Wuettemberg's CO2 emissions. And, yes, he sees that as a bad thing.
Bloomberg helpfully points out that Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are both headquartered in this state, and that both build cars with top speeds more than twice that proposed limit.
Fewer unrestricted zones on the German autobahn... should we be worried all the way back here in the USA?
We're all well aware that gas prices in the U.S. don't yet reflect the recent spike in crude oil prices, and today the Department of Energy issued its prediction: We'll pay another dime a gallon to cover the $100+/barrel crude.
For reference, the current national average price of 87 octane is $3.52/gallon. The DOE is predicting the summer months will push the national average up to $3.71/gallon, and reports Reuters, the agency believes there's a 25 percent chance the national average will exceed $4/gallon.
Of course, if you use 91 octane or higher and/or insist on living in California ($3.87/gallon), $4+/gallon gas is (already) an inevitability. And if you fuel up in remote Needles, CA, on a midsummer day, $5 seems quite plausible. How high is your pain threshold on this issue... tolerable as long as the Europeans still pay more?
Yep, according to The New York Times, there are no 2011 model year vehicles on the market that offer a cassette deck, event as an option. Our long-term Prius has one and it was used occasionally, mostly to provide access to new, more capable means of music storage.
Obviously, the CD player is next on the chopping block. Any guesses how long it will be before those space-hogging slots get put to pasture?
Answer: Because it's a stupid idea. Exhibit A: The Pinto with wings featured in this video.
For the uninitiated, this is the second installment in BMW's series on the future of mobility, one of those catch phrases we hear at every auto show that's inevitably connected with some futuristic concept pod of some kind. There's some interesting points made here, but once again, most of it is just the usual "things sure will be different soon" fluff.
Anyone have any better, slightly more plausible ideas of what we'll be driving in 20 years?
