By Chris Haak

12.31.2008

As a difficult and tumultuous 2008 comes to a close tonight, I thought it might be fun to list the top ten most popular articles on Autosavant during the past 12 months.  This top ten list is not necessarily a list of my favorite articles – though I’m fond of many of them – but rather just a ranking of the most popular in terms of the number of people who have viewed them.  Also, while most of these articles were written during 2008, a couple were written in late 2007 and just had incredible staying power.

10. Ford Will Retool US Factories for Switch to European Models. Autosavant was literally the first media outlet to report this news, something like six weeks before Ford made the formal retooling announcement.  Others laughed at us at the time, but our sources are solid and we’re proud to have broken this story.

9.  Suddenly Cobalt Beats its Competition. Again, Autosavant was on the forefront of the news of the Cobalt XFE’s debut - this time not because of any special sources, but because our astute writer noticed some quietly-released news that no other media outlets had been picking up on at the time. Continue Reading

By Chris Haak

12.31.2008

The Honda Accord is a perennial award winner, in comparison tests done by magazines, the Car and Driver Ten Best list, and on the sales charts.  Though the Accord hasn’t held the annual “best selling car” title in the US for several years, it’s always near the top of the charts, just a step behind the Toyota Camry and a step ahead of the Nissan Altima.  I’m also a big fan of the Honda Accord, as it has continued the Honda tradition of engineering excellence, intelligent packaging, high quality, and above average reliability for decades.  In fact, until this past summer, I owned a 2004 Accord EX-L V6 and the car gave me zero problems over five years and 80,000 miles.  Since the Accord was all-new for the 2008 model year, I was eager to see if any progress had been made on some of the areas for improvement that I had noticed over time in my 2004 model, and conversely, if any of that car’s goodness had been removed in the name of cost cutting.

My test vehicle was a completely loaded black sedan, including sunroof, heated leather seats, satellite radio, and a navigation system.  The only thing that it didn’t have was the new 3.5 liter V6, but since I had just driven a similar 3.7 liter version of the Honda V6, not to mention a few trips around the globe in the 3.0 liter predecessor of the 3.5 liter engine, I was happy to receive the 2.4 liter four cylinder to test.  Around the time that I bought my old Accord, I borrowed a 2.4 liter version of the old car for a day or two, so I had a basis for comparison; also, Autosavant has already reviewed a direct competitor to this loaded four cylinder Accord in the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ four cylinder six speed.  And finally, I had family staying at our house for Christmas, and they arrived in a 2007 Nissan Altima 2.5SL, which was coincidentally the same color, with the same equipment levels, as the Accord test vehicle that I was evaluating. Continue Reading

By Chris Haak

12.30.2008

The US Treasury announced yesterday that it had approved a $6 billion financial assistance package for GMAC, the heretofore 49% GM-owned/51% Cerberus-owned finance company.  The assistance is coming in the form of a $5 billion purchase of preferred GMAC shares and a $1 billion loan to GM so that it can buy additional shares in GMAC.  The preferred shares pay an 8% annual dividend.

Under the terms of the capital infusion, which is occurring under the TARP program originally intended to provide assistance to financial institutions (actually, it was originally intended to purchase troubled assets from banks, to get them off of the banks’ balance sheets, but TARP has evolved over the past few months), a new sub-program under TARP has been set up to aid auto finance companies.  Treasury also said that this just the first in a series of deals expected in the coming days and weeks to aid other auto-finance firms, hopefully making consumer lending and dealership inventory financing less expensive and more accessible.

Toward that end, today GMAC announced that it had immediately lowered its unfortunately-high bar of requiring a FICO score of 700 and above (in place for the past two months) for approval of any loans to a more reasonable 621 and above.  As our own Brendan Moore noted during a brief interview with NPR’s Marketplace radio show today, GMAC had just been out of the game as far as its ability to offer financing to a large swath of the buying public.  And, by the way, all of GMAC’s competitors – and therefore GM’s competitors who still have possession of their captive finance arms, like Toyota Financial Services, Ford Motor Credit, and others – were still able to make loans to individuals with FICO scores below 700.  According to GM, about 40% of buyers have a FICO score of 700 or greater, so they were shut out of a major slice of the market. Continue Reading

By Andy Bannister

12.30.2008

As Volkswagen rolls out its sixth generation Golf (Rabbit) in Europe, the startling longevity of the new car’s predecessors is once again thrown into focus. Quite remarkably, the first and second generations are still in production in various parts of the world.

The original 1974 Golf, the car that saved VW in the 1970s, lives on in South Africa, now called Citi Golf and sold as Volkwagen’s price leader. The little vehicle has helped hundreds of thousands of South Africans get motoring, and nowadays is an intrinsic part of that country’s national car culture.

Over in China, meanwhile, a variant of the second generation Jetta (the saloon version of the Golf Mark 2) also remains in production, and is one of China’s motoring staple products, used by thousands of taxi drivers and government agencies.

Through the generations, the essential boxy style of the Golf has remained constant (for my money, leaving aside the classic original, the Mark 4 is the most successful variant to date of what in recent years has never been a particularly good looking car). Gradually, though, it has grown wider and longer, so the original Mark 1 is now smaller than VW’s next model down, the Polo. Continue Reading

By Kevin Miller

12.29.2008

Tire chains are  supplementary traction devices, installed on a vehicle’s drive wheels to give traction on compacted snow or ice.They usually become necessary in the Pacific Northwest about once a year, and then fade out of motorists’ memory until the next snowfall. Readers in other parts of the country may be unfamiliar with tire chains for passenger cars, so I’ve written this handy piece so you can see what you’ve been missing. While tire chains do assist in giving traction, using them is about the least fun you can have in a car in the snow.

Regional and online tire retailers sell varieties of tire chains for vehicles based on tire size and vehicle weight. The past decade has seen widespread introduction of “quick fit” type tire chains, which have replaced cable chains on most passenger vehicles. “Spider Spike” type chains are available for some vehicles which have limited clearance in wheelwells, and these require a carrier to be installed for the season on the vehicle’s wheels; the carrier allows a circular chain assembly to attach on the tire from the outside, without any parts fastening inside of the wheelwell.

The tire chains reviewed here are “Quick Fit Diamond Style” chains, purchased from regional tire retailer Les Schwab and fitted to my 2001 Saab 9-5 sedan. The chains were purchased around the time the car was new, and have ridden around inside of the spare tire under the trunk floor ever since, with the rare exception of the two previous occasions they have actually been used. Such tire chains typically cost between $30 and $60, depending on tire size. Continue Reading

By Chris Haak

12.27.2008

Acura launched the current generation RL flagship sedan for the 2005 model year and had great expectations for the car.  It combined an engine that was then rated at 300 horsepower, all wheel drive, pretty much all of the technology that a luxury car buyer could want, including navigation, DVD audio, satellite radio, Bluetooth, surround sound, adaptive cruise control, and nearly every safety feature out there.  Unfortunately for Acura, the RL was never able to crack onto most premium car buyers’ shopping lists, with its front wheel drive little brother, the 2004-2008 TL, taking up most of the RL’s potential sales in an arguably better-styled package.  Critics also lampooned the RL for offering only a V6 engine while competitors at its price point had optional V8s, for cramped accommodations in its Accord-based cabin, and a relative lack of brand prestige.  I personally wish the RL were still called the Acura Legend.  That was a good name for a car.

Now, Acura – the first luxury division of a Japanese nameplate to be sold in the US, starting way back in 1986 - has committed to boosting its prestige to Tier One luxury status – to the equivalent of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus.  At this point, it’s not at that level, with the work to be done at the top of the house in terms of reaching upward into more expensive segments such as building competitors to the 7-series and S-Class, since Acura’s lower-end offerings and crossovers are generally well-regarded.  The stillborn Acura NSX supercar would have certainly helped Acura in this regard, but the global financial crisis has killed that car.  Honda has also made some noise about including a V8 offering in the next-generation RL; while most 5-series and E-class sedans I see on the road are of the six-cylinder variety, I believe that having the option of a V8 helps the prestige of those brands, as does having more powerful, more expensive models slotted above them in the lineups.  In the meantime, though, Acura has its V6-powered RL, and is sticking with it for a few more years. Continue Reading

Excuse me, I mean a Touring model

By Brendan Moore

12.26.2008

The prevailing wisdom is that station wagons are a terrible market segment in the US market. People want minivans, SUVs and crossovers, not station wagons.

First, the minivan displaced wagons in driveways across America, then, when the minivan became identified as a housewife’s vehicle, it was replaced by the SUV. And now we have the crossover. Each one of those station wagon replacements took away some percentage of the station wagon’s former constituency, and now, there just aren’t a lot of station wagon fans left.

Some import manufacturers sell wagons, but in small numbers, to a core “wagon” population, and those are the exception rather than the rule. Station wagon models have gone away completely at Ford, Chrysler, GM, Honda, Toyota, Nissan in the last 15 years.

This, despite the fact that a lot of SUVs and almost all crossovers look like, well, a tall station wagon.

And then, of course, you have vehicles like the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix twins, the Honda Element and the Dodge Caliber that are really big hatchbacks (kinda like wagons).

But the difference, according to a tremendous amount of consumer research done over the years, is that those vehicles do not have the “station wagon” label, which has lately become the kiss of death in the North American market.

Continue Reading

By Roger Boylan

12.25.2008

Frequently, the themes of my Web browsing are automotive and historical, and occasionally both themes converge–with World War II Jeeps, for example, a subject of more than passing interest to WWII buffs and Jeep aficionados. (You can count me as both, although the hearty sobriquet “buff” somewhat diminishes the seriousness: “amateur scholar,” perhaps?) Recently I came across this photo of a small herd of Jeeps waiting to move on deeper into Germany in January, 1945. It’s a reminder how crucial these little vehicles were to the Allied victory; after all, the Germans had only the Kübelwagen, which was great on-road, less so off. It had a tendency to run out of breath in the wildernesses of the Alps and the Ardennes while the homely little Jeeps soldiered on and on–to Berlin.

They’re less homely now (most of them, anyway), but they still soldier on. Modern Jeeps run the gamut from the Wrangler, direct descendant of the WWII icon (and reviewed here recently by yours truly) to the lush, luxurious Commander, an old-style thirsty SUV built for the day before yesterday. Along the way we encounter the oddity of the Compass, a Dodge Caliber that thinks it’s a Jeep; the Grand Cherokee, a venerable family hauler now with a common-rail diesel alternative; the Liberty, would-be claimant to the legendary Cherokee’s mantle; and the practical Patriot, the company’s base-model SUV or crossover or whatever you want to call it. I call it sensible. It should be the mainstay of the Jeep brand. Continue Reading

By Sam Boni

12.25.2008

They called him Mr. Horsepower.

Born in Switzerland, he is the only top executive who worked in that capacity (in alphabetical order) at BMW, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, in Europe and on this continent. At Chrysler he was the driving force behind the V10 Dodge Viper. At the age when most people retire, he was persuaded to become CEO of Exide Technologies, the battery maker. After he “retired” from that position, General Motors coaxed him into revamping its model line-up as vice chairman of global product development.

You will know by now that we are talking about Robert A Lutz, “Maximum Bob” as he is known in Detroit these days. He started to influence the new cars coming from ‘The General’ a few years ago, and that influence has only gotten stronger. The beautiful Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky sports cars were some of the early models designed and produced under his leadership. The amazing 1,000-horsepower V16 Cadillac, which could have topped Rolls Royce, has become a victim of the times. The world now awaits the Volt, the extended-range electric car that everybody knows about before anybody has actually seen the final production model.

“This is now what I’m more excited about than I was about the Dodge Viper,” Mr. Lutz said in early 2008. “I think this can bring about the revolution and really make us independent of foreign oil and solve all the other problems.”

The one problem Bob Lutz did not anticipate is the financial and credit meltdown caused by years of ineptitude by the Bush administration. We hear every hour on the hour how deep we are in trouble, and how much money the auto industry needs to convert for the time “After Oil”. Continue Reading

By Kevin Miller

12.24.2008

Toyota got their start in the US nearly four decades ago, selling efficient, no-frills economy cars. More recently their offerings have grown to match the size and power of domestic offerings while offering appliance-like charm and reliability, but the Yaris harkens back to the simpler vehicles of Toyota’s early days.

The Yaris is in its second generation worldwide, though the current generation is the first Yaris to be sold in the US. It is an economical vehicle, available here as a three- or five-door Liftback, or as a four-door sedan. Having recently helped my sister-in-law shop for a small car, I can report that the Yaris shares its vertically-oriented climate control binnacle and trick rear seats with the Scion xD.

The car I spent a cold, snowy Seattle week with was a 3-door Yaris Liftback (Toyota uses the term “Liftback” as way of not using the taboo “hatchback”), in a retina-searing “Yellow Jolt” hue which was never meant to be driven by a man. It was a really bright color; my three-year-old daughter told me she liked the car because its color matched the sun. Thankfully, the interior is a muted charcoal color with light-gray inserts. Continue Reading