Jil McIntosh

Europe: Observations and comments

I've just returned from a "busman's holiday" in Munich, where I was supposed to be on vacation. But that never happens, of course, because there is always a story around the corner.

Unlike many of my journalist colleagues, I don't travel much outside of my own continent, and this was only my second trip to Europe, which is probably why I was so wide-eyed. It'll all make its way into a newspaper story soon enough, but here are some of my observations:

- Unlike here, diesel is still cheaper than gasoline in Europe, but that's all relative. Keep in mind that a Euro was about $1.50 Canadian at the time when you look at the prices in the photo. Even so, I saw more large cars than I expected in Munich, which is probably due to that city's relative wealth. But small vehicles still make up the majority, including delivery vehicles which are far more compact than the big trucks we use in the cities here. The Ford Transit Connect can't get here fast enough.

- Munich drivers drive. They don't talk on cell phones, drink coffee, eat hamburgers, put on makeup, read the newspaper or play with the stereo when they're piloting cars. In nine days, I saw two -- count 'em, two -- drivers talking into phones. Both of them were parking at the time, and both of them did a terrible job of it. I also didn't see any collisions, didn't see any gridlock-blocked intersections, didn't see anyone run a red light, and saw very few cars with any dents in them. Are European drivers perfect? Of course not. But from what I saw, they're sure a hell of a lot better than what we have over here.

- The cops drive BMWs and Mercedes. With stick shifts, if the model comes with one. As do the taxi drivers.

- Bicycles aren't children's toys or exercise machines, they are serious transportation. That picture at the top is of one of the myriad bicycle lanes in the city. Where the streets are large enough, there are three separate areas: cars on the asphalt, bicycles on a paved section of the sidewalk nearest to the road, and pedestrians on the inside of the sidewalk. (If you forget while walking and meander onto the bike lane, be prepared for the ringing bells; they don't stop for you or go around, because it's your responsibility to move.) On the largest streets, there's an electric tram right-of-way in the centre as well. No doubt because they're respected as road users, cyclists obey the rules: they stop for red lights, they stay off the pedestrian area, and they don't drive wherever it suits them -- from sidewalk to curb to turn lane to sidewalk -- as cyclists so often do here. Each bicycle has a light and a bell, and they use them.

- Germans may grumble about their public transit system, but by North American standards, it's incredible, with above-ground and underground city trains, electric trams, buses, and a train system that connects cities across the country. I got off the plane, got onto a train in the airport, and was in the city center thirty minutes later, at a cost of nine Euros. Try doing that from Pearson International to Union Station in Toronto, which is the equivalent; you're looking at two subway trains and a bus.

- Urban density also plays a part; I didn't see any single-family houses anywhere in the city center. Apartment buildings have stores and offices on their lower floors. People walk. Nowhere, even on the smallest side alleys, was I ever the only person on the street.

- And no wonder they walk. I ordered a salad in a restaurant; it turned out to be a dozen slices of sausage, topped with onions, dressing, and half a lettuce leaf, and it came with a giant pretzel. In for a penny, as they say, and of course I ordered a good German beer alongside. Hey, I wasn't driving.

Premium fuel: yes or no?

This was the sight that greeted me at the gas pump today when I filled up a vehicle. Fortunately, my ride called for 87 octane, which was "only" $1.25 per litre. The premium stuff represented a jump of 12 cents a litre. That would have added about eight bucks to my total.

The Internet's awash in articles on whether most cars really need premium. Few will come out and actually say you can run the lower-grade stuff, liability being what it is, but the general consensus seems to be that if it isn't turbo- or supercharged, the lower grade should see you through.

Things were different way back when, before cars had computerized fuel management systems and knock sensors, and using a lower grade could damage a higher-performance engine. Today's cars can make up the difference by dialing back a little, which shouldn't be too much of an issue to the average driver. I don't know about you, but I doubt I'd be able to tell if my car was producing 300 horsepower instead of 302.

I have another unproven pet theory, and it has to do with prestige and image. Many of the premium-brand manufacturers call for high-test across their entire product lines, regardless of engine size or horsepower. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but I wonder if the thinking is that premium fuel = premium car ... and a car that takes "regular" fuel is, well, just a regular vehicle. In other words, it ain't the car that needs the expensive fuel, but the owner's ego.

Ford and the CAW: the start of something new?

In the news today: Ford and the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) have come to an agreement on a new three-year contract. It's still subject to ratification by the members, of course, but the big news is that this all happened more than four months before the contract is set to expire.

I don't pretend to know the full story on either side, but I hope that's a sign that perhaps everyone might start to work together for a common goal that will benefit every community that depends on the auto industry to make its living.

I've never worked for a union, but I certainly know people who do, and I know enough to have some opinions. I think unions have lost the primary importance they held in their earliest days, back when companies (and not just automakers) treated workers as something to be chewed up and spat out. I also think unions can get too greedy for their own good, and that some people can take advantage of that. So a little toning down on both sides, a little standing firm here and there -- it's a good thing.

I think the public, by and large, paints a picture of autoworkers that isn't entirely fair, and I think that further, it's a kneejerk reaction that needs to be examined. Yes, autoworkers make good money, for jobs that generally don't require a great deal of education or skill. Having done just a little bit of repetitive labour, I can say that you're not paying them for the skill, but for the fact that they stand there day after day, putting the same bolts into the same holes. There's a very high rate of repetitive injury on the job, and beyond that, it's just an unpleasant way to make a living. Yes, there are much worse jobs out there. That doesn't make these jobs any better, any more than my broken leg stops hurting just because I meet someone who broke both legs and one arm.

But to go beyond that, we're a society, and society needs to remember the greater good. If you think autoworkers are overpaid, consider how much someone making $30 an hour pays in taxes. Those taxes go into infrastructure, police, schools, fire protection, parks, social programs, health care, and all the other local and national benefits that we take for granted. Now -- do you want your neighborhood financed by people making $30 an hour, or by someone whose job consists of "would you like fries with that"?

As for the autoworkers -- backing off a little in some areas might help keep these golden geese laying their eggs a bit longer. At $30 an hour, you can afford to pay more than 35 cents co-pay for each drug prescription, for example.

I don't know the specifics of the Ford agreement, which will be kept confidential until it's ratified. It should be interesting, though, to see what was hammered out four months in advance, as opposed to four hours before the strike deadline. Times are tough, and it's going to be a long time before things get better in the domestic auto industry. Maybe, though, this is the beginning.

Our gasoline situation: who's to blame?

I paid $1.226 for a litre of 87-octane gasoline yesterday. And I know it's only going to get worse. If we don't see $1.40 by the height of the summer, I'll be very surprised.

And yet, in response to the headline in my newspaper today -- GM will eliminate another shift at its truck plant, here in the town where I live -- there is shock and anger. That's understandable, because this will have an effect from the assembly line right down to the checkout clerk at the grocery store. But really, didn't anyone see this coming?

I wasn't old enough at the time to understand all of the complicated politics behind it, but I do remember the OPEC crisis of 1973. I recall seeing the news reports of the lineups, the alternate days, the stations out of gas. Back then, the Big Three were almost exclusively making large cars, and people laughed at those who bought the weird little Japanese cars. Once the crisis hit, they weren't laughing anymore, and that was the beginning of Japan's surge into the North American market. By the time the Big Three got into smaller cars, it was too late to push them back (and the fact that the cars Detroit built were crap didn't help, either).

But as we all know, history is in the past, and slowly, the cars got bigger again. This time around, though, both domestics and imports played the game. Each next-generation model was bigger, heavier and more powerful than the one it replaced, until the model got so bloated that it didn't fit into the segment anymore and the company had to introduce an all-new one to slot under it.

All of the automakers are hooked on the huge profits SUVs provide for them, and they've done a good job of convincing people they need them to be safe, be stylish, and be able to carry seven people (even though they probably never will). The buyer has lapped it up, and only now is realizing that not enough other people are buying small cars/taking transit/conserving energy so there will be enough left over to fuel the barges. And the automakers then justify it by saying that they're only giving the buyers what they want. Well, I want a panda-bear rug for my living room, too, but there's something about the "greater good" that prevents it.

Still, after having pointed fingers (and, in true North American style, not at myself), the question remains: can Detroit, and now Japan and Korea, react swiftly enough to this fuel crisis to bring appropriate cars to market in time? And when they do, and it all dies down, and everyone's in a smaller vehicle, will the next generations of those models stray from their diet, and start the cycle all over again?

A busy day in the paper today ...

I have three stories in today's Toronto Star newspaper.

The cover story, on upcoming old-car shows, can be found here. My thanks to photographer Richard Spiegelman who had a 1957 Chevrolet picture -- I couldn't find one anywhere in my files.

Earlier, I'd written a rant here on airbag safety, which I massaged and turned into an opinion piece. It's in the paper here.

And finally, I have a review of the Mitsubishi Lancer, which you can access by clicking here.

It's Earth Day, here's the Prius!

It's Earth Day, and today I have a review of the Toyota Prius on Canadian Driver. You can find it by clicking here.

Infiniti G37

On today's Luxury Car Canada I have a review of the Infiniti G37. You can find it here.

Today's hybrid review ...

In today's Toronto Star I have a review of the Ford Escape Hybrid (and my tester was even green). You can find it here.

Dodge Sprinter Review

I have a review of the Dodge Sprinter on Canadian Driver today. You can find it here.

Today's Review

On today's Luxury Car Canada I have a review of the 2008 Volvo C30. You can find it here.

Never underestimate a cowboy ...

I was going through some pictures and came across this, and thought, hey, there's a story within a story. This was during the launch of the updated 2008 BMW 5 Series. The company put a group of journalists into the cars in Las Vegas, and we drove them to Monterey, California.

That's a lot longer than the average press trip, and my deadline fell smack in the middle of it. The problem is that I write in linear fashion: if I don't have the first line, I can't write the story. And try as I might, I didn't have a first line. The clock was ticking, and I was desperately trying to come up with something. Nothing sounded right; nothing worked. It was getting on for three o'clock, and I had to have the story done that night.

Well, every now and again, the world just turns in the right direction for you. BMW had turned the trip into a bit of a scavenger hunt, and we had to stop at a general store in the middle of nowhere. Other than the general heading of "California", I had no idea where we were. We hadn't seen any living thing other than cattle for two hours. Why this store even existed was beyond us, but we pulled in, and that's when I noticed the beat-up old Ford pickup across the road. A cowboy got out, as lean and dry and weathered as a Joshua tree, and he came over and looked at my German-made machine. I fully expected him to ask what type of car it was.

"Nice car," he said.

"Thanks," I said.

He looked at it, and then drawled through a walrus moustache, "That must be a brand-new one. The ones last year didn't have them headlights."

(You can read the whole thing here.)

BMW X3 review

On Canadian Driver today I have a review of the 2008 BMW X3. You can find it here.

How about giving us what we really want?

I noticed a press release from Chrysler yesterday. In the US, the company is launching a campaign with the tag line of If you can dream it, we can build it.

Let's see what the release says people are dreaming about:

As a chassis rolls out of the plant and down the road, all kinds of people in all kinds of places start adding what they want on a vehicle including MyGig™ with navigation, dual DVD system and Swivel ‘n Go™ seating system.

Now, maybe there are a few people who are dreaming about twin movie screens and minivan seats that face backwards. But I suspect that even more people want things that are even simpler. Things like better interiors, with more care spent on fit-and-finish, and less cheap-looking plastic. Better fuel economy, especially in excessively thirsty vehicles like the Dakota and Durango. Less-expensive versions of utility machines, such as pickup trucks. And possibly most important of all, a good-quality, inexpensive subcompact that can compete with vehicles like the Toyota Yaris and Chevrolet Aveo -- a segment Chrysler has promised us (with a Chinese-built car) but has yet to enter.

I want to see Chrysler do well, because a strong, mostly-domestic automaker is good for our economy. But strong companies start with strong foundations. It's fine to have the odd gimmick, but only when it's added on to a well-built, good-looking, fuel-efficient, realistically-priced vehicle with a reputation for bulletproof quality and reliability. That's my dream, Chrysler. Now build it.

News from Nissan ...

That's a Nissan, and it's coming soon to an intersection near you.

Well, maybe not that exact one, but the news is out: Nissan is entering the light commercial vehicle market in North America. It's planning on building three new vehicles that will enter the market in the first half of 2010, and while there's not been anything concrete yet, the company has confirmed that they'll be under the eight-ton GVW range. It's also forming a partnership with Cummins to supply the engines.

Most importantly, they'll be built in Canton, Mississippi for use in North America, thanks to an investment of $118 million, on top of the tooling for the trucks. There's no word yet on where the ousted Quest minivan and QX56 will go once the plant gears up for the trucks, although I'm wondering if the company will abandon them entirely. In any case, kudos to Canton, and here's hoping it makes for a lot more jobs in an area that can probably use them.

A Suzuki review

Today on Canadian Driver I have a review of the Suzuki SX4 sedan. You can access it by clicking here.

Mini mini mini mini ...

Today in Canadian Driver I have a comparison test of the Mini Cooper and Mini Cooper S. You can find it here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, that was quick ...

The federal government has decided to get rid of the ecoAUTO rebate program, only a year after it put the scheme in place. Hang on, let me open my wallet a bit wider. It cost money going in, and it'll undoubtedly cost money going out.

I'd like to say it was a good idea in theory, but it never really was. The plan was that the government kicked back rebates, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000, to people who bought brand-new vehicles that met specific fuel economy standards.

There were the usual problems that spring up when ideas are conceived in haste and implemented at leisure. Apparently, it took more than six months from the time the program got underway until the application forms were ready, and even when buyers could finally apply, there were long waits. According to an article by Carol Goar of the Toronto Star, only 30,000 of the 50,000 people who sent in their applications had received their money as of mid-February.

Much of my objection to the program was in the discrepancies. The Dodge Caliber, for example, doesn't meet the fuel economy requirements for passenger cars, and so there's no refund. But the similarly-sized Jeep Compass, which is mechanically identical and gets the same fuel mileage, is classified as an SUV, and so you get $1,000 back.

And there's a rebate for some flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on E85, a fuel made of 85% grain-based ethanol and 15% petroleum gasoline. Sounds good, except that at last count, two gas stations in Ottawa appear to be the only ones from St. John's to Victoria that sell it. So you get $1,000 back because your vehicle could potentially save the planet, if you could only fill it with the right juice.

In her article, Goar also notes that while the government will no longer be handing you money back for buying a fuel sipper, it will still be collecting the "green levy" on gas guzzlers, which Goar says generates some $110 million per year. Hey, maybe the feds will spend that cash on improved public transit, bicycle lanes, incentives for car companies to build more fuel-efficient vehicles, and better urban planning to eliminate housing developments that make car ownership necessary in the first place. Yes, I think that's exactly what they'll do.

My big brother's watching

This is SmartAlert. It's a new system that Ford and Lincoln dealers in the U.S. will be selling to customers, at a cost of about $1,000 plus a monthly subscription fee. Ford calls it an "onboard, intelligent communication service that connects (customers) with their car or truck." I call it the end of the old-fashioned private eye.

SmartAlert knows where the vehicle is. That's no big deal; systems like GM's OnStar have been around for years. What SmartAlert does is tell you what it knows. It'll send email, phone and text messages to warn you if your car's being moved without authorization (a good thing, granted), if someone's driving it faster than a pre-set speed limit (also a good thing), where a thief has taken it (ditto), and a report of exactly where it was, when it was there, and how long it stayed.

That sound you just heard was Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade crying in their beer. Who needs the guy in the fedora slouched in his car, camera at the ready, to catch one's husband meeting up with his mistress?

Frankly, I sometimes wonder at the things people find intrusive. A police camera on a crime-ridden corner that might film a shooting or a drug deal? We can't have that -- it's an invasion of privacy. A red-light camera at the intersection that could photograph dangerous drivers? We can't have that -- you have no right to send a ticket to the car's owner after the fact. An onboard system that'll track your every movement, send email reports, and file a monthly statement telling you exactly where your car was every minute of the day? Hey, that's technology! Here's my thousand bucks -- sign me up!

Grand Caravan review

I have a review of the 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan with the base Canada Value Package up today. You can see it here.

A grain of salt

One of my all-time favourite movies is The Blues Brothers. I've probably seen it twenty times and could watch it twenty more, and yet, when it came out, most of the critics savaged it. It was the wrong film for them, but it was the right film for me.

The moral of the story? Be critical when you read criticism.

I make most of my living reviewing cars, but I'll be the first to tell you that my reviews, and the reviews of all my colleagues, are only guidelines. A smart buyer uses them to help make a buying decision, but never depends on them.

For the most part, here's how car reviewing works. Each manufacturer puts specific vehicles into its "press fleet". They're usually introductory models, which is why you don't see up-to-date reviews of cars that have been around and unchanged for several years. The option packages vary with each company, but I'm more likely to get a moderate- to fully-loaded vehicle than I am a base model, especially with trucks and SUVs. These come to me from the automaker -- I don't go to a dealer and get a car out of their stock -- and I drive them for a week. They're not specially-prepped for the journalists, as some people suspect; it's not unheard-of for me to pick up a car that's dirty or out of gas, or with obvious problems.

I like to look for things that most people don't find on a test-drive and might later become an issue. When you see these things mentioned in a review, you need to decide if you can live with them. If you never drink coffee in your car, for example, a poorly-placed cupholder isn't an issue. I also like to look at how a car will be used. It's my pet theory that a lot of inexpensive cars get a bad rap from journalists who just got out of sportscars, and who forget that there's a huge market for people who don't need road feel and brilliant acceleration -- or a big price tag -- to get to the office and the grocery store.

Keep in mind, too, that most of us get low-mileage cars and drive them for seven days. We seldom know what a new model's long-term reliability will be.

All of those are reasons why reviews can be an important buying tool, but they shouldn't be your only one. Use them to make a list of the cars you want to try -- and then put your butt in the seat and drive them all for yourself.

A new Toyota review

I was along for the market launch of the all-new 2008 Toyota Sequoia; you can read my impressions by clicking here.

It's easy looking green

The writer's strike is over, the Oscars will go on, and of course the celebrities need wheels to get them to the red carpet. General Motors is obliging with a fleet of "fuel-friendly" vehicles, including gasoline-electric hybrids, fuel cell vehicles and those that can run on ethanol, when it can be found.

Celebrities love hybrids as much as they love winning Oscars. They arrive at events in Priuses, they pay cubic dollars for electric sportscars, and a few of them are even driving BMW Hydrogen 7 cars around California. They're greener than Kermit, and admittedly, a celebrity in a Prius is probably chewing up fewer resources overall than a celebrity in a Hummer H2.

But have you seen their houses?

Have a look sometime, when Vanity Fair or Entertainment Tonight gets a camera inside the gates. The average big-name movie star drives that Prius home to a 10,000-square-foot climate-controlled house, with a pool, and with acres of irrigated grass and gardens, many of them in the desert.

I drive a full-size, eight-cylinder truck. But my house is about 900 square feet. I have no air conditioning, I don't water my lawn, I don't use pesticides, I compost every scrap of even faintly organic material right in my back yard, I get my water out of a well and I don't have a pool.

No, I don't own a hybrid.

But I think that in the grand scheme of things, we're just about even.

Sometimes it's the little things

When you walk around a new-car show, it's the big stuff that draws your attention: flashy paint, big wheels, all-new models.

But sometimes, the tiniest thing there could be the next wave of the future.

Case in point: this is the Hummer HX concept, which I saw at the Detroit Auto Show in January. It's a throwback to the Volkswagen Thing, with removable doors, roof and fender flares, and it's the work of three designers young enough to get carded when they go for a beer.

It might be the basis of an open-air, entry-level model to compete with the Jeep Wrangler, but that won't be its legacy. Instead, these designers might have changed the whole way we look at car stereos. In short, the HX doesn't have one.

It's got a full speaker system, though, and a jack to accept your iPod or other music player, and it's absolutely bloody brilliant. The CD player is going the way of the eight-track; who wants to carry a stack of slippery jewel cases when you can tote thousands of songs on something the size of a pack of gum? A great many people, me included, use the stereo as little more than a means to connect a digital player to the speakers.

Looking into my crystal ball, I see a world where this configuration will be the default, and a stereo -- with AM, FM, satellite, CD or whatever -- is an add-on option. Out of everything unveiled at Detroit in 2008, I'm betting that this is the one that counts.

Car of the Year: Does it matter?

The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), of which I am a member, is in a bit of an uproar over the story behind this photo. That's the Audi R8, a car that costs $139,000 and will sell about 100 copies in Canada. The award that Audi president Diego Ramos is holding is AJAC's 2008 Canadian Car of the Year.

The flap is that a car so exclusive should not be Car of the Year. It should go to something that the average person might have a chance of owning. Ithought it should have come down to a run between the Chevrolet Malibu, Honda Accord and Kia Rondo, but that's not how a democracy works. (And I will also add that, due to a scheduling conflict, I wasn't at the three-day back-to-back testing where the winners are chosen; I guess if you don't vote, you can't really complain.)

But all of that aside, it brings me to another question: are Car of the Year awards now so common that they really don't mean much anyway?

Car of the Year awards effectively began in 1949, when Motor Trend magazine gave its inaugural one to Cadillac in recognition of its new high-compression, overhead-valve V8 engine. During the early years, it went to a manufacturer, not a car, and for three years it wasn't awarded at all.

Now, every publication and every association names its annual winners. Car and Driver, Green Car Journal, Road & Track, Top Gear, What Car, MSN, and even Mother Proof name theirs, and there are many more. There's a North American Car of the Year, a European Car of the Year, a World Car of the Year, an International Car of the Year, Japan Car of the Year, and even a Lithuanian Car of the Year. 

AJAC says that surveys indicate more than half of new-car buyers are influenced by its award. Perhaps in Canada that's very true, since we have fewer "best of the best" handouts across the country, and the AJAC award is the biggest. Even so, when thousands of pieces of hardware get handed out each year, it does tend to water it down.

The smartest buyers will look at awards specific to their needs. You want the best van to haul your children, you go to Mother Proof, because they aren't wowed by 420 horses. Their testers look at stuff that matters to buyers with $25,000 to spend. Or buyers should look past AJAC's single Car of the Year, and look at each of the category winners. Someone with $139,000 and a hankering for an R8 doesn't care if it took Car of the Year or it ended up at the bottom of the pile. It's the folks who work hard for their money and can't afford to spend a lot of it who should be the focus of Car of the Year awards. Look at the cars, but look at the audience, too. Maybe then these awards will be relevant again.

What to see in Toronto ...

The Toronto Auto Show opens today, and runs until February 24. I've got a list of my top-ten "must see" vehicles available here here.

Presenting the ChryWagen

This is a Routan.

Now, you probably haven't heard of it before, although you're thinking it looks familiar. It's from Volkswagen, sort of, and it's pronounced ROO-tan. Yes, the same folks who gave us Tiguan and Touareg, and could use some new staff in the naming department. Routan -- now available without a prescription! But I digress ...

Anyway, I just got back from the Toronto Auto Show press preview, where VW took the wraps off the stunning Passat CC (think Mercedes-Benz CL-Class, but hopefully with a lower price tag) and the Routan. If that one looks familiar, that's because Chrysler builds it alongside the Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country on behalf of VW. (Instead of Routan, maybe they could have called it a Vodge. Or a ChryWagen.)

I wish VW all the luck in the world with it, but really, what were they thinking? The traditional minivan market used to be a license to print money, but that's all changed. You want to do well in this shrinking segment, you make something really inexpensive, like a base Caravan, or a Hyundai Entourage, or a Kia Sedona, because people know it's just going to end up covered in kidspit and dog hair. Sure, the pricier Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna are great pieces of engineering, but those two combined sold just under 22,000 copies last year in Canada, compared to 56,572 Dodge and Chrysler vans.

VW should have learned a lesson with the Phaeton, which they wouldn't have been able to keep in stock if they'd released it as an Audi: it's damn tough to sell a $100,000 car that has the same badge as a $16,000 Golf. While pricing hasn't been released, I'm betting the bank that this minivan is going to have a higher sticker than its Caravan twin. Sure, it'll have a nicer interior and "sport-tuned suspension" (be careful you don't tip the groceries when carving corners), but it's a Dodge with a VW badge. Call me crazy, but I think buyers just might figure that out.

The Toronto Auto Show

I'm off to the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto, which opens to the public on February 15 and runs to the 24th. You can read my list of previews here. You can also check out the site's official site by clicking here.

Two new reviews today ...

Toyota has introduced some new models, and I was along for their launch. The redesigned Toyota Matrix story is here, while you can read about the new Lexus LX 570 over here.

In today's paper ...

My column in the Toronto Star deals with all the stuff carmakers are putting in their vehicles to save us from ourselves. You can find it here. And if you disagree, please promise you won't call me from your car to complain.