Why I occasionally buy a lottery ticket

2009 Maserati GranTurismo S $135,000

Click image for larger version of car porn.

You people are so boring

… that after two-and-a-half years without cable TV I’ve ordered DirecTV (and Qwest Fiber-optic internet). You’ll miss me when I’m a couch potato instead of a blogger.

I had to renew my vehicle registration this month. Every year I just renew for one year instead of two because I figure I’m due — now after seven years — for a new car. (I had the last one seven years before I got this one.) Anyway I went over to the air inspection place, got the necessary inspection, came home and registered the car online. Altogether, 30 minutes — it was 3:14 when I left and 3:44 when I started updating this post.

Registration in New Mexico is $51 a year (unless you have a special license plate). There are no other taxes or fees for cars that I know of. How much do you pay?

This plate is $37 extra. I think about it — and then figure, who cares.

Did he think I don’t own a computer?

So NewMexiKen and Donna are driving down the street the other day and we see an ‘03 Honda S2000 roadster in the front of a dealer lot. I continue on down the street, think what the heck, make a U-turn and we go back to check it out. I’ve had my eye on this particular model since 2001 — considered one then but took a pass because dealers were getting several thousand more than the MSRP.

The sales consultant wanders out and tells me $18,995 for this particular vehicle, which appears very clean. One owner he tells me.  Traded it in because his wife was pregnant and the car would be too small with a child.

I’m interested but it’s hot, and besides I know better than to act too interested. I’ll come by next week, I say.

Guess what? The car is listed online by the dealer for $1,000 LESS THAN THAT and has had three owners in its five years (in three states) according to CarFax. Not good.

(Even before she knew the car’s biography and actual price, Donna told me she’d offer just $15,995 for the vehicle. I am hiring Donna to negotiate all my major purchases. And “major purchase” for NewMexiKen is anything over ten bucks.)

Update: Donna called the sales manager late this afternoon. He acknowledged two prices and two (but not three) owners. She said he didn’t seem to care all that much that we had been interested in the car, but now wouldn’t trust them enough to buy Cinderella’s used pumpkin.

Supply vs. Demand

NewMexiKen read somewhere this week that there were less than 10,000 privately-owned cars in Beijing when I was there 16 years ago.

Today there are more than 3 million privately-owned cars in Beijing.

The 9 best-selling cars for women

Yes, it’s true. Men still dominate the car-buying statistics, although women have been steadily growing as prime car buyers (not simply “influencers”) since the 1980s. Because it’s been the No. 1 woman-dominated vehicle for years, the automotive press has long maligned the VW Beetle for being the quintessential “chick car.” To be fair, the flower vase on the dash does give this impression. But since its arrival in May, the VW Tiguan has taken over the No. 1 position, making it the ultimate in estrogen-based car buying.

Los Angeles Times

Cellphone law may be more costly than the $20 fine

The Los Angeles Times reports that California’s statewide ban on hand-held cell phone use (it goes into effect July 1) may mean more than a fine. If you’re in an accident while using a phone, the fact that you were breaking the law greatly increases the chances you will be held responsible. It might even be enough to bring a felony charge if the accident has a fatality.

“Violations of a safety law would be powerful evidence of liability.”

Looking to Avoid Aggressive Drivers? Check Those Bumpers.

Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual choruses of “are-we-there-yet?” — and the road rage of fellow drivers.

Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but science has discovered a solution for the third.

Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
. . .

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love — “Visualize World Peace,” “My Kid Is an Honor Student” — or angry and in your face — “Don’t Mess With Texas,” “My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.”
. . .

“The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked,” Szlemko said. “Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver.”

Washington Post

It seems bumper stickers are pretty much the equivalent of dogs urinating on trees and fire hydrants. It’s a way people stake out their territory. The more stickers, the more the person needs to claim the space. It’s actually quite interesting.

Thanks to Jill for the link — the article confirms her take on an incident reported here last year.

Want a collector’s item?

“Decent Model T’s and Model A’s have sold on eBay recently for as little as $6,000.”

From an article in at NYTimes.com on affordable collector cars.

“Want a convertible instead? A Mazda Miata is a great pick, and there are plenty of choices for around $5,000. A recently reported sale on eBay of a 1990 red air-conditioned convertible with less than 100,000 miles for $4,575 is indicative of the market.”

Cody Unser drives fast

Not even paralysis can black-flag those racing Unsers.

Cody Unser, 21, a paraplegic since contracting a rare degenerative spinal-cord disease nine years ago, gets around in a car equipped with special hand controls in much the same fashion her father Al Jr., grandfather Al and great-uncle Bobby did in winning the Indianapolis 500 nine times. As in: fast.

“I always tell the officer when he pulls me over that it’s in my blood,” she told the Indianapolis Star. “The only difference is, I don’t have a lead foot. I have a lead hand.”

Sideline Chatter

The Unsers are royalty in Albuquerque.

“New Mexico is proud to honor a family which has served as such great ambassadors. In racing the name Unser is synonymous with Albuquerque and New Mexico.” — Governor Bill Richardson

Is it more efficient to leave your car idling?

Simple answer. No.

Today’s cars use electronic fuel injectors, which rigorously control the amount of gas delivered to the engine when you hit the ignition. As a result, virtually no fuel is wasted during startup, and only a thimbleful is burned as the car roars to life. So forget about the 30-minute axiom you were raised on—the threshold at which it makes more sense to shut off rather than to idle should be expressed in seconds, not minutes.

How many seconds, exactly? A lot of environmental organizations advocate the 10-second rule: If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds, it’s best to shut off your engine. The one exception is when you’re stopped in street traffic—it’s illegal to kill the engine in many states, due to concerns that switched-off cars are more easily rear-ended (especially if an absent-minded driver forgets to restart once the gridlock abates).

. . . The researchers concluded that restarting a six-cylinder engine—with the air conditioner switched on—uses as much gas as idling the same car for just six seconds.

Idling is similarly wasteful in frigid temperatures. Contrary to popular belief, cold-weather drivers needn’t warm up their cars for longer than 30 seconds. The best way to raise an engine’s temperature to optimal levels is to drive it almost immediately after startup . . .

Slate Magazine

10 best road-trip cars

Just in time, Kelley Blue Book has provided a list of the top 10 new vehicles best suited for road trips. Based on factors such as driving enjoyment, passenger comfort, cargo space, and — perhaps most important — fuel economy, the experts suggest travelers consider the following options. To sweeten the deal, we’ve offered some fun destinations to consider.

The Top 10
Audi S5
Bugatti Veyron
Chevrolet Malibu
Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid
Dodge Grand Caravan
Ford Flex
Infiniti EX35
Mini Cooper Clubman
Toyota Prius
Volkswagen Eos

The 10 best road-trip cars and where to take them from the Los Angeles Times.

Red means stop, green means go, and yellow means say ‘cheese’

Investigative reporting forced Denver, Colorado to lengthen the yellow at four city intersections where red light cameras are to be installed. In late March, the Rocky Mountain News uncovered how these intersections had quick, three-second yellow times that fell short of recognized engineering standards. Drivers will now enjoy up to two additional seconds of warning at some intersections by the time automated tickets start landing in the mail on June 10.

TheNewspaper

Follow the link for details on the four intersections. Lengthening the yellow at one Fort Collins intersection by one-second reportedly reduced the accident rate 30 percent.

One of my favorite lines ever — “Madrid [New Mexico] doesn’t have any traffic lights yet; there is one in the works, they just haven’t decided what colors they’re gonna use.”

Running on Empty: Cars That Never Need Gas

The Sierra Club reports on an electric car “charged by solar panels on the roof of one’s house. They never need gas, and the power is free after the set-up cost.”

Dickey says the Rav4EV is the best car he’s ever owned. “My wife commutes in it 40 miles a day, five days a week. We drive it for our weekend outings and it does errands that are too far or too bulky for the bicycle. It has never been tuned up, and I’ve spent about $50 total on it for maintenance. My wife has not been to a gasoline station in seven years and 70,000 commute miles—not once!”

His home electricity is free, too. (Well, free after the cost of the solar installation, which is almost paid for.)

Birthday present

As noted earlier, Ken, official oldest child of NewMexiKen, is celebrating his birthday today. Yesterday he celebrated one of his birthday gifts:

The Audi Sportscar Experience has been created to allow you to enjoy the highest performance vehicles that Audi produces while increasing your skills so you can extract the most performance from your car. The Audi Sportscar Experience is for the enthusiast, the person who loves to drive and has an appreciation for the fine art of constantly improving his or her driving skills. Using a variety of vehicles from Audi’s R, RS and S categories, this program was developed to be the ultimate experience in an automobile.

His spouse reports: “Apparently, Ken had accidentally called me on his mobile. It was in his pocket while he was driving. So, I get this voice mail that is basically static and silence and then: ‘zooooooooooooom….zoooooooooooooooom.’ It went on and on and on.”

He was driving an Audi R8 at Sonoma’s Infineon Raceway.

Update: Here are photos of Audi R8s on the track taken by Ken’s passenger. Click images for larger versions.

My question to Ken: Why are these cars in front of you?

‘We never exceeded 175 mph’

Last week Sports Illustrated opened its 53 years of archives (or “Vault” as they call it) with free access. A particular favorite article of mine was Brock Yates’s 1972 “From Sea to Speeding Sea,” — “The Cannonball was an out law auto race—unsanctioned and definitely unwise—but off they went, roaring their way toward L.A.” Yates drove the winning Ferrari with racer Dan Gurney from NYC to LA in 35 hours and 54 minutes.

A couple of excerpts:

Determined to find a car to race in the Cannonball, the three men had looked in the Times classifieds in search of a “driveaway” deal—an arrangement where one drives another’s car to a destination for nominal expenses. This is a common tactic used to transport personal cars by people who don’t like to drive long distances. The Long Island gentleman wanted his new Cadillac Coupe deVille driven to California. Opert & Co. obliged, nodding hazily at his firm orders that his prized machine not be driven after nine o’clock at night, not before eight o’clock in the morning and not run faster than 75 miles an hour. Naturally, all the regulations would be violated before the car left Manhattan.

A yellow 4-4-2 Oldsmobile Cutlass appeared in the rearview mirror. It was running fast, coming up on me at an impressive rate. Two guys were on board and I sensed that they were looking for a race. They drew even and we ran along for a way nose to nose. I looked over to catch eager grins on their faces. I smiled back and slipped the Ferrari from fifth to fourth gear. We were running a steady 100 mph when the Olds leaped ahead. I let him have a car-length lead before opening the Ferrari’s tap. The big car burst forward, its pipes whooping that lovely siren song, and rocketed past the startled pair in the Oldsmobile. I glanced over at them to see their faces covered with amazement. Like most of the populace, they had no comprehension of an automobile that would accelerate from 100 mph that quickly. The Ferrari yowled up to 150 mph without effort, leaving the Olds as a minuscule speck of yellow in the mirror.

I slowed again and turned up the volume on the stereo. Buck Owens and his Buckaroos were sonorously singing I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail. I laughed all the way to Las Cruces.

Go read it all.

He’s been drinking since he was 16 — it’s like water to us

“A 12-year-old girl on horseback hit by a drunken driver south of Santa Fe in 2006 ended up in the bed of the man’s pickup and had to throw beer cans at his back window in an effort to get him to stop, a prosecutor said Monday.”

Santa Fe New Mexican

The driver’s attorney “blamed the setting sun and a dirty windshield” even though his 41-year-old client tested at .15 breath-alcohol content.

Two horses died as a result of the accident.

A way with words

Dan Neil’s review of the Mini includes this:

“The Mini is diamond-laced Champagne, a piano-playing Shetland pony, sex on the wing of an airplane. Simply put, if the Mini Cooper doesn’t put a smile on your face, you’re dead.”

A Lexus with cojones

Dan Neil takes the new Lexus IS-F for a spin. His review includes this:

The car also sings. The IS-F is equipped with an eight-speed automatic transmission, in which the gear ratio intervals are very evenly spaced. Eight speeds happen to correlate to eight notes of the diatonic scale — do, re, mi, etc. If you hold the throttle and speed steady, and you shift up and down with the shifter paddles, you can actually coax simple melodies out of the stacked-pipe quad exhaust, for instance, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” And, yes, I get paid for this.

An 8-speed transmission!

Hate to be a nanny, but they’re right — buckle up Hannah and Hannah wannabes

Many parents would agree that 15-year-old superstar Hannah Montana, a.k.a. Miley Cyrus, is a good role model for kids.  But a gaffe in her Disney blockbuster 3-D movie, “Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour” might challenge that opinion. 

Why?  One scene in the movie shows Miley and her dad, country music star Billy Ray Cyrus, riding in the back seat of a Range Rover on the way to rehearsal for the concert tour.  Neither was wearing a seat belt.

Why should we care?  Because, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in about 55 percent of passenger vehicle fatalities in 2006 (the latest data available), the occupants were not wearing seat belts.  Even worse, in the 13- to 15-year-old age group, that percentage climbs to 65 percent.  Unfortunately, we’re not surprised by these grim statistics because a 2002 survey by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that when parents were dropping teens off at school in the morning, nearly half the teens weren’t using seat belts.

Consumer Reports

These numbers actually mean a lot more than they say because approximately 80% do wear belts — in other words, more than half of all vehicle deaths come from the imbecilic 20% not wearing seatbelts.

Of course, if one looks at it from a Darwinian perspective . . .

Some days are better than others

Jeanne, official friend of NewMexiKen, sent this along.

Look at the photo above. Click the image for a larger version.

You can see where the truck broke through the guardrail, to the right where the people are standing on the road pointing. The pick-up was traveling from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, across the culvert outlet, and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which it was traveling.

Now click here for a little better perspective.

He’s not my mayor

“After discussing the issue and at the request of several legislators, Governor Richardson has agreed to put the red-light camera issue on the agenda for the ongoing session,” the New Mexico governor’s blog stated. “The governor believes it is reasonable for the legislature to revisit the issue.”

Richardson, who recently dropped out of the presidential race, is taking aim at Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez (D) who recently quit his run for the US Senate. Chavez had promised Richardson that he would drop the cost of fines in return for the veto, but Chavez has failed to hold up his end of the bargain. By doing so, Chavez has enjoyed $11.7 million in revenue since 2005 with more than $5.1 million in net profit to spend on new government programs.

Chavez briefly toyed with the idea of killing his automated ticketing program after it proved unpopular and became a drag on his aspirations to higher office. The city council, however, recently discovered that it has no ability to cancel the contract because of backroom agreements Chavez made with Australian vendor Redflex in 2005. The changes erased a cancellation clause that had been part of a draft contact approved by the city council. Some council members expressed concern that after more than two years of ticketing, even the city’s “blue ribbon panel” comprised of government officials and the insurance industry failed to generate evidence that the program has provided a public safety benefit.

The Newspaper

Additional key quote: “The council is also powerless to change the per-ticket method of compensation that gives Redflex up to $45 for each ticket it is able to issue.”

Mayor Marty is looking to the courts to overturn the limit that prevents him from seeking a third term. It seems to this observer (who doesn’t live in the city) that it’s the people of Albuquerque that should be looking to the courts — to remove the mayor from office.

Best line of the day, so far

“Arizona uses freeway speed cameras to cut budget deficit by $120 million. But it’s not about the revenue”

FARK.com

Here’s the background.

Prius Whoops Some Ass

[T]he Prius was one of America’s best-selling vehicles in 2007. That’s vehicles, not just hybrids. Toyota sold 181,221 of the gas-electric hatchbacks. That’s more than the entire Acura or Mercury lineups, and the model was nipping on all of Buick’s heels. The Prius also outsold the Chevrolet Tahoe, the Toyota Tacoma, the Honda Odyssey, every Jeep, every Chrysler, every Dodge (except Ram) and every Ford but the F-series.

The Truth About Cars

Car brand perceptions survey

Automakers spend billions of dollars to promote their vehicles and build brand awareness. Yet, marketing alone does not shape consumer perception without a clear connection to the vehicles in the showroom. In the latest Auto Pulse survey conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, Toyota and Honda brands ranked first and second, respectively, by dominant margins over all others. Likewise, the vehicles from those brands have consistently performed well in our testing, often ranking among the best in their classes, and have been mostly at the top of our reliability ratings over the years.

This survey focused on how consumers perceive and rank car brands in seven crucial areas, including safety, quality, value, performance, environmental friendliness, design, and technological innovation. It also looks at which of those factors are most important to consumers when buying a vehicle.

Consumer Reports

Top in brand perception by category:

Safety — Volvo (by a huge margin)
Quality — Toyota
Value — Honda
Performance — BMW
Green — Toyota
Design — Mercedes Benz and Lexus tied, Cadillac close third
Technology/Innovation — Toyota and Lexus

Fascinating car prototype

It runs on compressed air — up to 125 mile range, speeds up to 70 mph, on $3 worth of air. Seems ideal for urban/suburban life.

$100 a barrel

President Nixon signed legislation 33 years ago today mandating a federal speed limit of 55 miles per hour. The Edge of the American West has a discussion, including a couple of comments by yours truly.

Oil is at $100 a barrel today for the first time. That’s 68€. A year ago oil was $58 a barrel, 44€.

In a year oil has gone up 72% in U.S. dollars but only 55% in European currency.

America’s best auto critic begins this week’s review

A couple of weeks ago, when the temperatures dipped into the 40s — or as we call it here in Southern California, the extremes of human endurance — I went shopping in West L.A. It was like base camp at Annapurna. High-heeled hotties had turned in their sex spurs for pairs of Merrell hiking boots. Guys were walking around in zero-degree quilted Marmot jackets. I’m sorry — I just don’t think crampons and bottled oxygen are necessary to make the traverse to the valet stand.

God knows, high-end technical gear is fun. Suunto watches, Adidas glacier glasses. I love it when people use Black Diamond trekking poles and Platypus hydration packs to assault the untamed reaches of Griffith Park. You sure don’t want Jon Krakauer writing a book about you.

Dan Neil

Imagine that

Dan Neil loves a GM car.

So here’s a new thought, worthy of defending: Cadillac makes a better car than BMW or Mercedes or Lexus or Infiniti, and that car is the 2008 CTS. No other car in the mass market, with so much at stake for its makers, dares so much as this expressive and audacious bit of automotive avant-gardism. In a segment that lives and dies by European benchmarks, the CTS sets fire to the bench and throws it through the shopkeepers’ window.

Doing well, not good

Dan Neil objects to incremental improvements in SUV mileage.

Strategic: This is the strongest objection. In a time of surpassing urgency — whether your pet issue is global warming, oil security or economic disruption — we are accepting, even rewarding relatively modest and incremental changes in efficiency that require no sacrifice, no change in consumer behavior at all. This isn’t going to get it done, people. The notion that American drivers can sally on as before, driving the miles and tonnage they do, and only the technology under the hood has to change, is complete bollocks. We will incrementalize ourselves to the crack of doom.

Neil points out that the manufacturers and their accomplices legislators in Washington are working to exempt trucks (and thereby large SUVs) from future fuel economy standards (35 mpg by 2020). I will go on to point out, that for example, as noted here this morning, 57% of GMs sales in North America are trucks.

Car talk

57% of General Motors’ sales units are trucks.

If Toyota stopped making vehicles on June 1st, their dealers would be out of stock by Independence Day. If GM stopped making vehicles on June 1st, their dealers could have kept selling stock until Labor Day. (The point being that GM has a million units in dealer stock on average; Toyota 200,000.)

(NewMexiKen was born in Detroit. I can’t help it, I find the automobile industry strangely fascinating.)

Facts gleaned from The Truth About Cars.

Another Year of Automotive Turkeys

In compiling our fourth annual list of Automotive Turkeys, we looked at four factors, all pertaining to 2007 model-year vehicles: number of recalls to date, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) database; reliability ratings from Consumer Reports; depreciation, in the form of Automotive Leasing Guide’s (ALG) star ratings; and safety, from NHTSA and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) crash-test ratings.

Besides a standout number of recalls, we looked specifically for below-average reliability, high depreciation, and NHTSA ratings below four stars and/or IIHS results of “Marginal” or “Poor.” Of the vehicles that met at least two of these qualifications, we also looked subjectively at other factors, such as fuel efficiency and cost.

Topping the list are the Chrysler Sebring, Dodge Nitro, Jeep Liberty, Dodge Caliber, and Dodge Magnum.

ForbesAutos.com

Turkeys six through ten: Ford Crown Victoria, Chevrolet Aveo, Nissan Quest, Hyundai Entourage and Pontiac Grand Prix.

Don’t drive and talk

According to a report in the Albuquerque Tribune, 798 drivers have been cited for talking on a hand-held cell phone since the ordinance went into effect. Two have been cited twice since enforcement began in April.

It’s $100 for the first offense; $200 for subsequent offenses. Those would be a pretty expensive calls.

NewMexiKen sees this violated all the time, including one police officer I noticed using a hand-held phone while driving.

Elsewhere The Newspaper.com has a lengthy piece on red-light and speed cameras — The Roads Have Eyes.

DST

God may have given us the 24 hour day, but it took humans to create something even better.

The 25 hour day. Enjoy your Sunday.

[Not valid in Arizona and Hawaii.]

But be careful out there. The weeks after the time change are the most dangerous of the year for pedestrians in early evening traffic.

October Auto Sales Up… Or Down

U.S. auto sales showed their first overall increase since May, with a 1.2 percent gain over last October– if you don’t adjust for selling days. If you do, (as does BusinessWeek) then sales were down about 3 percent.

The Truth About Cars

NewMexiKen passes this along mostly to point out the poor way statistics are reported in the MSM. It seems to me Business Week has it right, but I’d go further. Why can’t the comparison be based against a three-year or five-year October average? Aren’t year-to-year comparisons almost certain to be anomalies (like the number of sales days in one year vs. another)? And were car sales depressed a year ago or good?

Chrysler and Ford were each down around 9% last month from 2006.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse

The Virginia legislature enacted a law five years ago making it a serious crime to drive past a police officer on the side of the road without changing lanes. As a result, unsuspecting motorists, who are not speeding, can nonetheless be caught in a speed trap and face a first degree misdemeanor ticket that carries a fine of up to $2500. According to a Virginia State Police news release issued in July, despite the significant financial penalty involved, nearly three-quarters of all motorists have never heard of “move over” laws.

Forty states have passed these laws which require drivers either to make an immediate lane change when approaching a police officer with his flashing lights activated, or to slow down at least 20 MPH under the posted speed limit.

TheNewspaper.com

Best line of the day, so far

“Ford Runs Out of Duct Tape”

The Truth About Cars reporting on a Ford recall that has been delayed for lack of parts.

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory

New York to Santa Monica in 31 hours and 4 minutes — a new record. Wired Magazine has the story (not without errors). The ultimate, high-tech road trip.

Two of the coolest ad minutes ever

Another reason not to have a SUV

The data, however, continue to show that most people would be safer in a Mini Cooper (or a minivan) than a Chevy Trailblazer. The latest news comes from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose new crash tests show that most SUVs perform poorly when hit from the side, even though they’re much higher off the ground than other cars.

MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog

Photo Enforcement Generating Millions

All together, [Albuquerque] collected $10,611,397 in revenue and handed over $2,844,920 to Redflex. This left the city with between $5.8 and $7.8 million in net profit. The precise figure is not known as officials charged as photo enforcement expenses a number of part and full-time police officer salaries as well as the entire administrative hearing office budget. The audit report sidestepped the question of whether the ticketing program has had any beneficial effect on traffic accidents. It mentioned that police could claim only two of the nineteen intersections with cameras might have seen a decrease in accidents.

TheNewspaper

I like this most about our local system: “The so-called ’speed on green’ feature ensures that motorists will not be able to adjust their speed to make it through a short yellow light without getting a ticket.”