Jil McIntosh

Would you let this woman fix your car?

I was going through some old photos and found this one. I'd all but forgotten this!

I think this photo was taken some 27 years ago. I went to visit my aunt in Michigan and found her somewhat upset because her trusty Studebaker had developed a nasty exhaust leak. She didn't like spending money and didn't want to take it to the shop, so I offered to fix it for her. Of course she couldn't bear the thought of me getting dirty, so she found a pair of my late uncle's overalls, along with one of his work shirts and a bandana to wrap around my head. I think it took me longer to get all dressed than it did to fix the car!

In "loo" of anything else to say ...

You have to admit, it isn't every day someone shows you pictures of her bathroom ... 

... but I will. I thought I'd have some fun showing off what originally started as a single taxi-themed coffee mug. This is my taxi memorabilia collection. (Most of it, anyway. There's a bit more on the walls, and a rooflight on top of the toilet.)

Back in 1977, I got my taxi license, and became the youngest driver in Toronto; I drove for six years for East End Taxi. I originally wanted to be a driving instructor, but you had to be 21 years old. The city fathers figured I wasn't old enough to sit in the passenger seat, but was mature enough for other people to put their lives in my hands as I sat behind the wheel. I never hurt anybody, although a few passengers did threaten to hurt me.

Much of my collection consists of run-of-the-mill toys, but I've got a few gems in there. Among them are a cardboard checker game, sent by Checker to its clients, still with checker discs untouched (I don't dare pull the sheet out) and matching Christmas envelope; a "Safe Driver" cap badge from Yellow Cab; the fare sheet from my own taxi; a sill plate that went on taxi-specific Dodge models, with "Dodge Taxi" embossed in it; and a porcelain Checker made by Limoges, a generous gift from my best friend (who drove alongside me back then, and we've been best buds ever since).

I've also got taxi pencils, taxi rulers, taxi ashtrays, taxi lighters, taxi licenses, taxi magnets, taxi Christmas ornaments and taxi tin toys. I buy many of my items from the big automotive flea market in Hershey, Pennsylvania each year (I don't do eBay) and taxi memorabilia is surprisingly rare, but I always manage to find something.

Why the bathroom, you ask? Well, our house is very small, we don't have a recreation room, and my office -- the only spare room in the house -- is crammed with books. So we figured, if you're sitting there anyway, you might as well have something to keep you occupied.

Besides, the garage already contains 3,000 Hot Wheels and 200 die-cast cars. Did I mention I married a collector, too?

In print today ...

I took a rant on hybrid vehicles and sustainable transportation that I originally wrote on these pages, and turned it into a piece for The Toronto Star. You can read it here.

I also have a review of the 2008 Ford Taurus in The Star, and you can find it by clicking here.

So you want to be an auto writer ...

There are three things in the world everybody wants to be: a movie star, a famous musician, or an automotive journalist. And while everyone realizes there's a tremendous amount of work and a fair bit of luck involved in making a go of the first two, many people think the third one is a piece of cake.

Here's the reality: yes, of course it can be done, but it's not as easy as it looks. And I'm not telling you that because I'm afraid you'll turn into my competition, but because that's the way it really is.

First and foremost, an automotive journalist is a writer. And I'm going to be brutally honest and say that just because you can write a letter, it does not make you a writer. Writing is like music: it involves some natural talent, which then needs to be honed through a great deal of practice. I don't think there's a writer on the planet who doesn't look at his or her earlier work without cringing. If you think you'll one day get to the point where you can't get any better, then you've got a lot to learn.

Okay, so you can write, and you know something about cars -- where do you begin? Usually it's at the bottom. I started some 30 years ago by writing pieces for a local car club's newsletter for free. And I also started my rejection letter collection. Every writer gets them, no matter what the subject or how good the writer -- sorry, we feel your work is not appropriate for our publication. So you spend a few seconds wallowing in self-pity, and then you try to make your piece better, and then you send it off again. (Under my Magazine Features link to the right, you'll find one for an article called Rejection or Refusal, which you might find helpful.)

Whether it gets recognition, whether you get paid well for it, the goal is to have published stories that you can put together for your portfolio, which is what you show to editors to prove to them that you can do the job. Writing is a funny profession in that it can help to have a specialized education, but whether you do or you don't, your work will do the talking for you. The editor doesn't care if you've got a diploma in journalism if your work isn't right for the publication. (For the record, I don't have one; I never went to university.)

There's no magic formula for getting your stories in print, aside from hard work and perseverance, although I can tell you what won't work. You won't get very far if you bully editors, call auto companies demanding to be given test cars, if you turn in sloppy work, or if you try to present credentials you haven't earned. And with so many people out there running after a limited number of writing positions, you've got to stand out. I will admit that the novelty of being female in a male-dominated industry has sometimes helped me (although a few times it hindered me in the early days of my career). But I also carved out a niche for myself by reviewing the economy cars that some of my colleagues wouldn't be caught dead driving, and by writing for people who bought cars they didn't understand -- which is the majority of consumers -- by never using a term without explaining it.

And while it is possible to make a good living at writing, it takes time to get to that point. It was only in the last few years that I was able to quit my secondary jobs and devote myself full-time to writing. I also supplement my income by writing a lot of articles that are not related to automobiles. But the big thing is that you have to consider this as a job, and it's one that doesn't necessarily come with regular hours. On the Saturday nights when you're out with your friends, I'm often here at the keyboard because a story is due. If you don't respect deadlines, the editor won't respect you.

If any of this turns you off the idea, then by all means write because it pleases you, but don't expect to become a professional writer. On the other hand, if you can look all of this in the eye, take a deep breath and say okay, I'm ready, let's get this show on the road -- then here's hoping that combination of talent, skill, hard work and a bit of luck all comes together for you. See you in the papers.

Simple is good

This is the dash of the Mercedes-Benz GL-Class, which begins my rant for the day: why does expensive need to mean complicated?

I'm not singling Mercedes out here, not by any means -- it was just the picture that was handy. I could have selected a vehicle by almost every automaker out there, because almost all of them are guilty.

I remember the days when an expensive car had pretty much the same controls as a cheaper car; they were just better quality. Now, an expensive car practically guarantees that you've got to memorize a manual the size of an encyclopedia, and chances are good that there will be a few controls you'll eventually forget how to use.

In many cars, if you want to change the heater vent mode, or switch your stereo, you've got to page through a series of computer screens to get to the one you want. On many cars, there are rows upon rows of identical buttons. On one truck I drove, I counted all the buttons, starting at the driver's armrest and going over to the passenger's door. There were 83 of them. That's not a misprint: eighty-three buttons. On a vehicle that many people drive at 120 km/h.

And on top of that, so many of these systems are absolutely non-intuitive. Why is it that one manufacturer's navigation system is simple enough that I can use it without a manual, and others require me to all but take a course in how to work it? Why can't the engineers grab someone from the front office, sit them down cold in front of it, and then, if they can't work it right off the bat, make it easy?

The funny thing is that I've driven a few high-end sports cars, the type that'll do 300 km/h without breaking a sweat. And it seems that the faster they can go, the simpler their controls. So why is it that a car that's meant to be driven on a racetrack, alongside other trained drivers who are concentrating equally on the task, is simple to use, and one that's meant to be driven in rush-hour traffic looks like an airplane cockpit?

Here's the deal: if it's something I do infrequently, such as setting the rolling locks, then hide it away in a vehicle information centre (that is, in turn, easy to figure out). If it's something I'm going to be changing regularly while I'm driving, like the heater mode or the stereo volume, make it a honkin' big dial in the middle of the dash. A safe car isn't just the one with sixteen airbags. It's the one that lets me work the controls while keeping my eyes on the road.

A topsy-turvy world ...

Twenty years ago, if you'd told me this was going to happen, I would have laughed out loud. This is a ribbon-cutting ceremony that took place in Georgia yesterday. It's the beginning of a Kia assembly plant.

It's an upside-down auto world in which we're living these days. Ford, GM and Chrysler are cutting back shifts and closing plants in North America, and at the same time, they're opening facilities in China, in Thailand, in India, in Korea, in Romania, and in yesterday's news, in Uzbekistan (I'll admit, I had to look that one up on a map).

And while the domestics are moving overseas, here at home we've got Toyota and Honda expanding in Ontario, Hyundai in Alabama, BMW in North Carolina, Nissan in Tennessee, and Mitsubishi in the improbably-named town of Normal, Illinois.

You really have to sit back and wonder where everything's going, and where it's going to end. It's obvious that labor costs are playing a part in this, although I'd imagine even the poorer workers in the South (because no one's building these plants in rich cities) are making more than workers at plants in Thailand and India, which tells me tariffs are part of this too. And I would expect that eventually these plants will start to outsource some of their production materials, just as the Big Three have done. The domestic auto plant in the city where I live used to build its cars almost from scratch. Now many components are coming in already built up, from independent companies that make the parts for the price the automaker's willing to pay.

And while we all want a car that doesn't cost much, there's a flip side to all of this. Maybe unionized auto workers do make too much. But at the same time, many of them pay as much in taxes as someone greeting customers at the local big-box store takes home in a year. When it comes to the quality of municipal services, I'd rather have a tax base of overpaid auto workers than a tax base made up solely of "would you like fries with that?". Think about who pays for your police, fire, schools, health care and social programs next time you complain about wages.

These days, I don't know what to think. Every new ground-breaking ceremony gives me hope, and every idled plant and reduced shift makes me worry. I'm guessing that a few decades ago, the people who made television sets in Canada and the U.S. wondered what was going to happen to their industry. I don't think I have to tell you how that went.

Give me Liberty, or ...

I have a review of the 2008 Jeep Liberty on Canadian Driver today. You can find it here.

A most generous donation ...

This is my good friend James C. Mays, noted automotive historian, author of eight books on the Canadian auto industry, and now, a most generous donor of his extensive collection.

Starting with a Rambler brochure when he was twelve (he's a Rambler nut, but I love him nevertheless), James acquired a collection of sales brochures, factory photos, taped interviews, production figures, books and other goodies that's conservatively estimated to be worth $85,000. And he just gave them all to the University of Windsor, where they'll be catalogued, kept for posterity, and ultimately available to the public for research and viewing.

This is all the sort of stuff that no one ever thought to keep way back when, which is what makes it all the more important now. Most people aren't aware of it, but Canada has played a huge role in the automotive industry, and has a substantial history, both of indigenous auto companies and those tied in to foreign interests. To corporations, it's all just paperwork that costs them money when they need to empty the back rooms. Part of James' collection is material that Renault was ready to throw in the trash when it acquired AMC in 1979. Employees took it home, and when James interviewed them for his book, he received a fair bit of it. That's all now part of the collection, and it's now around for good.

The collection is now with the University of Windsor's Leddy Library, and you can visit their Web site here.

James, I'm going to speak for everyone in the world of cars when I say ... thanks.

More sharing the road with trucks ...

A little while ago I mused here on what it's like to drive a cargo van on the highway surrounded by clueless car drivers. I finally took my rant and turned it into a story for The Toronto Star. You can find it here.

Why can't tire companies sell safety?

You've got to wonder what the engineers were smoking when they came up with the formula for measuring tire size. They stuck not one but three systems in there. Decipher a P205/55R16 tire and you've got metric (it's 205 millimetres wide), a fraction (the sidewall is 55% of the tread) and Imperial (its diameter is 16 inches). Now there's genius at work. But I digress ...

I took this picture in Colorado last year, where I participated in a driving course to prove the superiority of winter tires in these conditions. (Note: they're winter tires, not snow tires, and they're vastly better than all-seasons even on dry pavement in winter temperatures. But that's a rant for another day.)

One thing I've never been able to figure out is why tire manufacturers have never been able to sell safety the way car manufacturers have done. The automakers have done an incredible job. They've got consumers demanding safety systems when they haven't a clue how they work. Years ago I taught a series of "how your car works" clinics, and without fail, whenever I got to ABS and ESC and airbags, I'd get blank stares from people who'd willingly paid extra (they were all options back then) to get them on their vehicles. That goes to show you the power of that marketing.

But tires? Show me an average car owner who doesn't buy tires primarily on price, and when he does, it's a grudge purchase because his old ones are worn out.

Here's a fact: the only things keeping your vehicle on the road are four rubber contact patches that add up to an area roughly the size of a sheet of typing paper. There isn't a safety feature on your car, from anti-lock brakes to airbags, that isn't there for the purpose of trying to get your butt out of the fire after your tires have lost their grip on the asphalt.

And yet the essential importance of having good-quality, season-specific, well-maintained tires as the very cornerstone of vehicle safety has bypassed almost every motorist on the road.

I just don't get it. Maybe it's the advertising -- save for a couple of ultimately ineffective ads, like the baby riding in a tire, the whole this is where safety starts message doesn't seem to be there. Maybe tires have been around so long that there's no way you can make them new and exciting, the way the fancy auto technology can be. All I know is that when I see a newer Volvo wearing bald tires in the winter, as I did a couple of days ago, the message just isn't getting across. And as long as it doesn't, we're going to be left with cars that have to try to do what their tires simply couldn't.

Small is beautiful!

No, it's not a Smart. This is a Mitsubishi i Car, and -- keep your fingers crossed -- it just might be coming to North America.

It's been on sale in Japan since 2006, and last summer, Mitsubishi brought one over to Canada and let me drive it for a few days. I took it to a cruise night where, as you can see, it proved immensely popular with the spectators. (I also had great fun with its right-hand-drive configuration in a left-hand-drive world.)

The company has announced that it will bring three i Cars to the New York International Auto Show, which starts up in a few days, including this gasoline-powered version, and an electric one that can recharge overnight on a regular household outlet or power up with a quick-charge when necessary.

Either way, it'll be great if we can get more mini-cars into the transportation mix, especially in urban environments. Unlike the Smart, the i Car holds four people (surprisingly well, given its tiny footprint), which will make it accessible to those who need more than a two-seater. This is how sustainable transportation works: not just with giant leaps, but with little steps that bring us closer to fitting each driver with the car to suit his or her needs.

Test-Drive: Audi RS4

I have a review of the Audi RS4 up on Luxury Car Canada today. You can find it here.

Something new: glossaries

I'm slowly compiling glossaries that will help explain some of the terms related to new and old cars. Bear with me, as it's an ongoing process, but you can find them through the new links to the right. I've tried to keep the definitions as simple as possible -- cars are complex and the last thing you need is an equally confusing description!

Nissan and Jeep Reviews

I have two reviews in The Toronto Star today -- the 2008 Nissan Titan, available here, and the 2008 Jeep Liberty, which you can see here.

Sharing the road with trucks

This Dodge Sprinter is my ride this week. Too bad there aren't any mountain roads where I could take it out and carve some corners.

What I do have around me are a couple of highways, and that's how I got this tiny creature home yesterday. If you ever had faith in most of your fellow drivers, pilot something like this for a while and then get back to me.

You'll notice that there are no side windows. That didn't stop a dozen drivers from sticking beside me with their front wheels pretty much even with my rear ones, for several kilometres at a stretch.

The brakes are good, but this is still a lot of truck to stop. I stayed in the right-hand lane (which is generally the empty one, since few people have any clue where they're supposed to drive), but even that wasn't enough for a couple of people who had to cut me off, pulling in front of me with a car length to spare, because they'd been over in the left lane and now had to get over to their exit ramps.

And you'd think something this big would be easy to spot, but no, I had to try out the horn on one cell-phone gabber who started to drift into my lane. Honey, if I can keep this thing steady between the white lines on a very windy day, surely to heaven you can do the same in a Cavalier.

I know not every tractor-trailer driver is a saint, but whenever I hear about a collision involving a big rig, my first thought is always: what stunt did the driver in the car pull?

I'd love to see all passenger-car drivers required to take a big, windowless van like this out on the highway for a couple of hours and see exactly what it's like, and then maybe they'd learn. Too many people are absolutely clueless when it comes to sharing the road with tractor-trailers. If you're not willing or able to drive properly around the trucks, stay the hell off the highway. Period.

Dodge Magnum

I have a new review of the 2008 Dodge Magnum. It's been discontinued by Chrysler, but there are still enough of them available on dealer lots that it was worth taking one out for a last hurrah. You can read it here.

Where's Elmer when you need him?

That's Elmer the Safety Elephant. He's still around and today he wears a ball cap and sneakers, but that's how I remember him from the days that he was a major presence in my school. The police would regularly visit schools and teach road safety -- look both ways before you cross the street, obey traffic signals when you're riding your bike, don't play around parked cars.

We could use him these days. Drivers seem to be getting worse, but then, so are pedestrians.

I live in a rural area, and I think I'm the only one who remembers Elmer's rule for that: when there are no sidewalks, you walk facing traffic.

It seems the police remember that rule, too; in today's news, police have charged a 62-year-old woman in Sarnia, Ontario for walking on the wrong side of the road after she was struck by a pickup truck. I'm sorry she got hit, but pedestrians have to take responsibility for road safety just as drivers do, and I applaud the police for taking a stand here.

How many times have you seen parents run across the road, even though there are traffic lights nearby, with their small children in tow? How many ride their bicycles through red lights, or not bother to use hand signals? If you don't obey the rules of the road yourself, how do you expect your children are going to learn? Elmer's good, but he can't do it all on his own.

Time Marches On

This is my pride and joy, my 1947 Cadillac known affectionately as Lucille. She's one of a few older vehicles I've owned, along with the 1949 Studebaker I still have, and long-departed models including a 1948 Chevrolet and 1962 Pontiac Acadian. I learned to drive on a 1972 Plymouth Scamp, and there was one at the Antique Automobile Club of America's show last year, so I guess that qualifies these days, too.

I love old cars dearly, but I'll say this: I'm realistic, too. Whenever I take Lucille out and park her somewhere, I'm guaranteed that someone will come up and say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore."

And my immediate reply is, "That's not a bad thing."

I don't know what it is about old cars, but they sure bring out the rose-colored glasses in a lot of people. Save for the odd Amish wannabe, I can't think of too many people who would prefer shovelling coal into the furnace over tapping the thermostat, or hauling ice to the icebox instead of opening the refrigerator, or biting on a bullet as opposed to surgery in a modern hospital. But mention automobiles, and as far as these people are concerned, there hasn't been a single improvement in the industry since Henry Ford brought out the Model T.

Too many people in the old-car hobby are blinded by nostalgia. Sure, I make my living with new cars, but that's not the reason why I think they're so much better. It's because they are.

People rap on Lucille's thick fenders and say, "These new cars just crumple up when you hit them." Well, that's because they're supposed to; they absorb the crash energy instead of passing it through to the occupants, unlike the the old cars where you hosed the blood off the dash and sold 'em to the next guy. People say you can't fix a new car in your garage anymore, and that's true, but you're also not doing the numerous repairs that older cars needed, like tune-ups twice a year. And as for their longevity, well, most old cars had a three-month warranty. Some manufacturers now guarantee their vehicles for ten years. 

And as for the hobbyists who say all new cars look the same ... if you've gone to the trouble of learning that a groove in the bumper differentiates a 1946 Olds from a 1947, but you'll proudly proclaim that you can't tell a 2008 Buick from a BMW, that's just wilful ignorance.

Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing fundamentally wrong with nostalgia. When the time machine's invented, you can put a martini in my hand and ship me back to the Las Vegas strip, circa 1960, with a ticket for a Rat Pack show. It'll be great fun, and yes, pick me up at the door in whatever land yacht is available. But when I finally come back home in the middle of winter, you can leave that lovely model's vacuum wipers, manual choke, four-wheel drum brakes, single-chamber master cylinder and bias-ply tires back in the garage where they belong.

So who gave them the keys?

Note to the government, the police, the media, old-car enthusiasts, new-car enthusiasts, and to the general public at large: This is not a tuner car.

Okay, some background. In Ontario, where I live, all of the above regularly get into huge kerfluffles regarding tuner cars and the propensity of their drivers to engage in either planned or impromptu street races. When the heat gets hot enough, the government instructs the cops to go round up as many Hondas and Toyotas with tomato-can exhaust pipes as they can find. At one point, in the most ridiculous media stunt I think I've ever seen, two seized tuner cars were crushed by a bulldozer, with the warning that more would follow. (To the best of my knowledge, they haven't.)

So I opened my newspaper today, and found that three teenagers in my area were charged yesterday with street racing, after three vehicles tore off from a light and one of them hit a tree and landed on a fire hydrant. According to the paper, "Officers found a 1997 Chevrolet Venture minivan on its side ... about 12:10 a.m. yesterday. ... Police seized the van and two other vehicles, a 1996 Pontiac Torrent and 2006 Pontiac Grand Am."

Two of the drivers were 17, the other 18. Now, unless things have changed drastically in the many years since I was a teenager, a full-size minivan generally tends to belong not to the teenager, but to the teenager's parents. That was also the case in 2006, when a Toronto taxi driver was killed by two young men driving Mercedes-Benz cars owned by their parents. In fact, when I read about crashes caused by street racing, full-blown tuner cars don't really seem to make the list all that often. Here's a thought -- maybe it ain't the car.

Maybe parents should be asking where Junior needs to go with two tons of steel and very limited driving experience late on a Friday night. And if he doesn't have an ironclad reason, maybe he shouldn't be getting the keys.

Here's the harsh reality. Street racing is like drunk driving: we can reduce it, but we're never going to eliminate it entirely. We can crush cars, we can ban nitrous, we can tell the cops to pull over cars with little blue lights on their windshield washers, and we'll still get testosterone flowing when the light turns green and it looks like your minivan can take his minivan. We need to stop with the kneejerk reactions and work on realistic solutions that don't involve herding up the Hondas whenever a BMW hits a tree.

If you're of a certain age and grew up in southern Ontario, you probably remember the reminder on Buffalo's Channel 7 every night: It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your children are?

Do you?

Chrysler's leaving California

Chrysler has announced that it's closing its Pacifica Advance Product Design Center in Carlsbad, California and will consolidate the Advance Design function at its headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Now, news from the automakers is usually made available to journalists on media-specific Web sites during business hours, with lots of quotes that we can use to beef up the story, and photos if they're available. This little tidbit came as a very low-key email, and with the same terse message posted not on Chrysler's media Web site, but on a blog that it reserves as a chattier version for the press. No quotes, no photos, not even an attribution -- just "by Editor". And it arrived late on a Friday night.

Methinks they don't want us to say too much about it.

The email said that the function will be consolidated with Michigan, but the last paragraph reads, These changes set the stage for Chrysler's future global growth efforts, which also include our intent to establish global expertise in design, engineering and sourcing through centers of excellence. These actions will help the Company meet its long-term globlization goals.

Translation: we're going to find a place that'll make the cars for cheap.

It's not new, of course. GM's been doing it for a long time -- you want to get a deer in the headlights look, go up to half the people driving Chevrolet Aveos (bonus points if they've got a "Buy Domestic" license plate frame) and ask them if they know their cars are built in Korea. Rather tellingly, GM built three new subcompact concepts and had the public vote on which one it should build. One was designed in the U.S. The winner, announced at last year's Los Angeles Auto Show, was designed in India. Hmmm. I wonder where the actual car will be built, and if that has any bearing on how that particular design was chosen.

Y'know, in the grand scheme of things, I do have a bit of a handle on how corporations work. Even if I don't like it, I understand why companies move production offshore, whether it's cars or clothes or call centres.

I just wish everyone would be honest, instead of coating it all in bafflegab. Come clean with us: it costs too much money to design a car in California, so we're closing that office and we'll be contracting the work overseas. Will the public like it? Of course not. But I think John Q. Public would have more respect for a company that tells him up front what it's doing, instead of sneaking out the back door in the middle of the night.

Just for fun ...

No reason for this, just that it's great fun. This is Corb Lund, a singer from Edmonton, Alberta, with a cool song about trucks.

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And happy birthday, Ford

It's a big year for a little car, as the Ford Model T turns 100 years old in 2008. The first production model built for sale was turned out on October 1, 1908. (Some people cite September, but that's the date Ford gives, and I guess they should know.)

It's hard to believe today just what effect this car had on North America. Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line, as some believe, but he did revolutionize the process when he made it move seamlessly between the workers. That moving line meant a lot of cars could go out the door very quickly -- more than 15 million, in fact, before production ended on May 26, 1927.

It's doubtful Henry ever said "any color the customer wants, as long as it's black", especially since the early ones came in several colors; the story goes that they finally went to black because that color dried the fastest and so the line could keep moving. They were spindly and flexible and so worked very well on the very poor roads of the day, and they were relatively inexpensive. And if you've ever had the chance to ride in one, as I have and can attest, the Tin Lizzy's bare-bones performance is all part of the charm.

There are a number of events planned for the car's centenary, and the big one right now seems to be the T Party 2008, put on by the Model T Ford Club of America this coming July in Indiana. You can find out all about it here.

Happy Birthday, GM

On September 16, 1908, William Crapo Durant filed incorporation papers that formed a new company he called General Motors.

He was already involved with Buick, and he'd agreed to license their production to the McLaughlin Motor Car Company in Oshawa, Ontario. Its founder, Sam McLaughlin, sold his company completely to GM in 1918 (it became GM of Canada) but stayed on as president and as a board member of the U.S. company. He also built a little place in Oshawa that he called Parkwood.

The 55-room mansion is now a public museum and national historical site, and if you spend any time watching movies, you've probably seen it; it's been the backdrop for such films as X-Men, Hollywoodland, Chicago and Billy Madison.

In honor of GM's 100th anniversary, it'll be holding a number of events throughout the year. The one I'm most looking forward to is the McLaughlin Buick Club's Homecoming on August 4, when it's expected that 200 vintage vehicles will drive up Oshawa's main street and into the grounds.

All the info on Parkwood can be found here.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Today, in Geneva, Infiniti has unveiled its latest FX model, which should arrive in North America this June. It has technology. Oh, man, does it have technology.

It watches the road ahead and hits the brakes in case you're too busy sipping your coffee to notice that the car ahead of you has stopped. It warns if you're drifting out of your lane -- a common enough occurrence with people on cell phones -- and if you don't listen to it, it'll get its point across by jerking the wheel. And it'll keep its distance from other vehicles when the cruise control is on, so you don't have to go to the trouble.

But this is the one that really gets me: it features the "industry's first appliance of Distance Control Assist." According to Infiniti, it helps reduce the stress of driving in heavy traffic by intuitively helping to release the throttle and apply the brakes to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle ahead.

Here's my advice: if you're that stressed that you can't drive your own car in traffic, do the rest of us on the road a favor and take the friggin' bus.

Sustainable transportation: Lots of little steps

I picked up a copy of The Oprah Magazine the other day in a waiting room. A number of celebrities had been asked what would make the planet a better place. Along with world peace and happiness, one woman said, "A Prius in every driveway."

I almost threw the magazine across the room.

Few things anger me more than the simplistic answer, endlessly parroted. It's not just hybrids, although they have a cheering section all their own. Depending on who you ask, the solution to our transportation woes is ethanol, or hydrogen, or plug-in electrics, or bicycles, or the bus.

I used to believe that, one day, there would be a single perfect solution that would replace petroleum overnight. Now I realize it's going to be a combination of solutions, each with pros and cons carefully weighed -- and not all of them are necessarily going to have four wheels.

We need to look at plug-in hybrids for those who commute shorter distances, and flexible gasoline-electric architecture (such as that used in the Chevrolet Volt) for those who can't easily get to an electrical outlet. We need to realize that some people can fit their family into a Smart, and some need a minivan.

We also need everyone to get on board. A politician can talk sustainable transportation all he likes, but as long as he allows developers to build houses on cul-de-sac mazes and put big-box stores in the middle of parking lots, he's an ass. City planners need to add bicycle lanes and give public transit a higher profile. And parents need to stop bemoaning the quality of the air while they're queuing up to drive Junior five blocks from school to home.

The solution isn't going to be a Prius in every driveway. It's going to be a Prius in this driveway, a diesel-powered sedan in that one, a bicycle in that one, and the last house on the block won't even have a driveway because the homeowner can walk to work. As long as we think there's only one piece to the puzzle, we haven't a hope in hell of solving it.

Boyd Coddington dead at 63

Hot rod builder Boyd Coddington passed away earlier this week; my story on him for the Toronto Star is here.

Coddington was always difficult for me. He wasn't my favorite artist-in-metal; he did a lot more cars that didn't turn my crank than those that did. But when he caught my attention, he did it full throttle. Chezoom and CadZZilla will rank at the top of the list for as long as people care about cars. And because of his television exposure, a lot more people care about cars. There's a legacy right there.