WomanOnWheels.ca

Biofuel goes bankrupt: who knew?

In the news today: ethanol plants in the U.S. are going bankrupt.

According to a news report on Reuters, soaring feedstock prices, rising construction costs, tight credit markets, and ethanol prices that haven't kept up with the soaring cost of gasoline are to blame for about a dozen U.S. ethanol plants filing for bankruptcy protection.

It also seems that, while gasoline companies are required by law to mix renewable fuels into the fossil stuff, they don't want to pay very much for it, and so the ethanol producers aren't getting enough to cover their costs.

This would all be deliciously ironic if it weren't for the fact that corn is in just about every product we eat or even touch these days. I've read about downward spirals from the times before my time -- the Depression, the Dust Bowl. It sure feels weird to look around and realize I'm in the middle of one.

Hot rods: just too much damn fun

Last night being one of the first in recent memory without a torrential downpour, I fired up the Studebaker and headed out to the local cruise night. I'd forgotten just how much fun I can have with this truck.

The Stude used to be my daily driver from April through November; it was how I got to work, bought my groceries home, and how we hauled everything from a queen-sized mattress to our kitchen cupboards back from the store. It saw less use when I started reviewing cars, because you can't judge a vehicle when it's sitting in the driveway. That's a shame, because this little truck's a blast.

I went out to a local cruise night, one of the real ones that are still the way it "used to be". No offense to the guys who work so hard to present regular cruise nights each week, but I'm not a fan of being told what year vehicles can come into the roped-off area of the mall parking lot, and here's your ticket, and park where the attendants tell you, and when the last prize of the night is drawn, everyone fires up their cars and drives straight home via the shortest route possible.

No, this one out here (Pete's Big Bite in Whitby, Ontario, if you're ever out on a Friday night after about 9 pm) is as it was in the beginning: you come in, wait until one of the families getting a meal gets back in the minivan and vacates a spot, you double-park if necessary, and you hang around and talk cars until you've had enough, and then you slowly cruise on home because the night's so nice, and the car's running just right, and you're in the coolest thing on the road, and it's just good to be alive. Gas is how much a litre? At times like this, I really don't care.

Volvo: 2,000 jobs out the door

Well, it's not just GM's Oshawa truck plant closure and Ford setting back the F-150's introduction anymore. Volvo has announced that it's axing 2,000 jobs, including 1,400 white-collar workers and 600 blue-collar positions.

It seems that the weak U.S. dollar and the price of raw materials is reaching all the way over to Europe. The company will get rid of some 1,300 people at its plants and offices in Sweden, another 500 consultants on contract to the automaker, and then an additional 300 warm bodies worldwide. The Swedish carmaker posted a first-quarter loss this year of the equivalent of US$151 million.

And don't think it's going to stop there; the elephant rolls over, and it isn't just the Great White North that feels its weight anymore. It's a very scary time to be tied to an auto company, and what's even scarier is that those shock waves go many miles beyond the gate at the front of the plant. I wonder just how far the bottom really is, and where this is all going to end.

The European Ford Focus: It's Coming!

Well, after all this time, it looks like it's finally going to happen. For so long, we could only gaze longingly over to Europe, where the Ford Focus zipped about on a chassis shared with Mazda, and handling that was ... well, European. While we got an economy car that did its job, but was simply not as good as it could be.

And now the news: Ford says it is cutting truck production, increasing crossover production, building the Fiesta for worldwide sales, and finally -- finally! -- producing a version of the European Focus for sales in North America. I only hope it's not a case of too little, too late.

Gas taxes: who will pay to repair our roads?

  In a recent issue of AutoWeek magazine, Kevin A. Wilson -- possibly the most observant and common-sense auto writer on the continent -- brought up a point I'd not considered: as gasoline consumption drops, who's going to fund our roads?

Gas taxes don't just sit in the general coffers; they're used to build and maintain roads. If there's no money for maintenance, no one fixes the cracked pavement. Our roadbeds collapse and our bridges fall down, and eventually, the highway system deteriorates to the point that it starts destroying our cars.

As Wilson points out, cars that get better fuel economy use less gasoline, and electric cars don't use any liquid fuel at all. Less gas = less tax money = who's going to foot the bill for our roads? It's not justification for buying a gas guzzler by any means, but right now, while we're on the cusp of dramatically reducing our fuel consumption, we'd better spend just as much time figuring out how the infrastructure is going to be financed. A car that gets 60 mpg isn't much good if there's no place to drive it.

Everything is relative ...

Some rambling thoughts on cars and driving for a Tuesday morning. Not necessarily right, not necessarily wrong, just ... observations.

Everything is relative: My everyday driver is a V8-powered, full-size pickup truck. That's bad these days. A family up in town owns a Prius and a Yaris. That's good these days. They have three children (one still in disposable diapers), a house that's approximately 2,800 square feet, central air conditioning, and up until the pesticide ban took effect out here, a Weed-Man sign on the lawn warning that it had been sprayed with poison. I have no children, my house is 900 square feet, I don't have air conditioning, and my gardens have been completely organic for the last 15 years. Hmmm.

What you can and can't do for fun: Going out for a couple of hours "just for a drive" is now frowned upon, because it wastes fuel and contributes to global warming. The RV and boating associations run regular ads on television urging people to take up these activities because they're fun. Hmmm.

That was how much?: There was a letter in today's paper regarding the blockade the CAW set up at General Motors here in Oshawa over the truck plant closing; the writer said that the autoworkers must obviously be paid too much money if they could afford the gas to drive slowly up and down the street for a couple of hours. Perhaps. But I can drive some 50 km on what I'd pay for a burger, fries and soda at the local fast-food joint. You seldom hear anyone complain that an autoworker's making too much money because he can afford to buy lunch at McDonald's. Hmmm.

Remember, Evian is "naive" spelled backwards: The gas station up the road is currently charging $1.34 per litre for regular gasoline. Go into the store attached to it, and the cheapest bottle of water is $1.00 for half a litre. I remember when there used to be conspiracy theories about backyard mechanics who'd invented special carburetors that would allow cars to run on H2O, but the auto and oil companies got wind of it and had them destroyed and the inventors hushed up. We never realized at the time just how lucky we were that they did.

What's that again?

Every now and again, Transport Canada will send me a list of the latest recalls; apparently, the agency gets the notice from the auto manufacturer and just runs it verbatim. So I'm not sure if it was someone at the government or someone at Cadillac, but taking a few bucks out of the kitty to purchase a dictionary might not be a bad idea:

No remedial action is required due to the unlikely-ness of such an occurrence.

Look, Ma, no hands!

I was on the highway today, driving at approximately 110 km/h. I was passed by a young woman in a Cadillac Escalade. I'd say she was about 25 and trying very hard to be Paris Hilton.

She had her cell phone jammed up against her left ear. In her right hand she held an open bottle of water, and the only contact she had with a vehicle doing a minimum of 115 km/h was the side of her hand resting against the bottom of the steering wheel.

Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino says speed kills. I dunno. I'm not afraid of someone doing 140 km/h in a capable car when they're paying attention. But I'm bloody scared to death of supermodels who seem to think that driving is fourth or fifth on the list of important things to remember when you're piloting two tons of steel at 32 meters per second. And what terrifies me even more is that Ms. Hilton Wannabe probably doesn't even comprehend that she's doing anything wrong. I wish you could fix dumb, but it doesn't look like it's possible anymore.

Note to the cops: It ain't the speed, it's the stupidity

 In the news today: Ontario Provincial Police chief Julian Fantino ain't happy. It seems that the media -- more specifically, my colleague at the Toronto Star, Jim Kenzie -- has been on his case about Section 172 of the Highway Traffic Act, better known as the "street racing legislation".

In short, if you're caught doing 50 km/h (31 mph) over the posted speed limit, the cop takes your license and your vehicle away on the spot. For seven days, sans judge and jury. It's just him, you and the towtruck.

That's even though Fantino, in a press release sent out today, said that "It is our job to lay the charges; once that happens, it's up to the judiciary system beyond the police to deal with each case individually."

Okay, but even letting that go, I can't agree with Fantino when he then says, "OPP officers are doing a great job of apprehending the most dangerous drivers." Because that all depends on your definition of who the most dangerous drivers are.

Fantino says it's someone driving at 150 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. I say it's someone driving at 100 km/h on a highway with a cell phone stuck to her ear. I say it's someone driving 60 km/h with a hamburger in one hand and a coffee in the other. I say it's someone who's been allowed to take the family vehicle out at midnight, even though he's only been driving for six months, and he's taking along all his friends.

Much of Fantino's effort is the result of a deadly crash in June 2007, when a truck driver went for the shoulder and was killed rather than take out vehicles around him. He had to take action when a speeding driver cut him off. No question: that driver should have been nailed to the wall. But one thing that very few people seemed to notice was a comment from a witness, who said that she saw three cars race past her in the right lane, according to a newspaper report, and then cut across to the left lane just moments after she let the tanker merge into the centre lane in front of her.

Read that again slowly. It doesn't exonerate the man who cut in front of the truck and caused the collision. But if our witness -- who apparently thinks she did nothing wrong, and the police seemingly agree -- had been in the right-hand lane where she was supposed to be, my guess is that the three cars would have continued up the highway in the left-hand lane, and that truck driver would have finished his route safely.

Here's my suggestion, Commissioner Fantino: put your men out there looking for the real problem drivers. Look for the ones who aren't paying attention; who don't know which lane to drive in; who don't obey amber or red lights; who don't know what "right of way" means; and in short, who need to go back to driving school.

Speed makes the result of a collision worse, but it doesn't cause the collision. Stupidity causes collisions. Bone-headed moves cause collisions. Hit on those folks, Commissioner, and the 150 km/h guys will still be breaking the law, but chances will be good that nobody will die. One early morning a few years ago, I hit 220 km/h on a deserted stretch of Highway 407. I knew my car, I knew my ability, and save for the illegal speed, I didn't do anything dumb. I'm still here. I wonder how that is.

R.I.P., Oshawa Truck Plant

Well, it's official: GM plans to close its truck plant in Oshawa, Ontario in 2009. Funny that that news apparently wasn't passed along when the company negotiated a new contract with the union a couple of weeks ago.

Even more troubling is a blurb in the Toronto Star newspaper today: 2005: Ontario invests $235 million with GM's Beacon project, $60 million of which goes to universities for R&D and the balance to GM for its Oshawa operation. The agreement includes minimum job levels at the truck plant.

I think it's time that Ontario had a second look at that particular piece of funding, methinks.

GM: Time for "strategic initiatives"

In the news today: GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner used the stockholders' meeting to outline the plans in store for GM. It looks like gas prices have finally gotten through.

There's going to be more emphasis on smaller vehicles, an all-new Aveo, a new global compact Chevrolet, and funding to get the Volt on the road.

There will also be plant closures, including one at the truck plant here in Oshawa, Ontario, where I live, which should go over really well. I've never figured out why the plants that win the most awards for quality always seem to be the first to close.

And there's going to be a "strategic review" of the Hummer brand. Gee, ya think? The only surprise is that it took them this long.

Today's Translation: Ford Corporate-Speak

In the news: Ford is transforming a full-size truck plant near Mexico City to build the new Fiesta, a compact vehicle that will be sold in global markets worldwide under the name. Mexico will produce all Fiesta sedans and hatchbacks for the North American market.

Ford president and CEO Alan Mulally: "Ford is absolutely committed to leveraging our global assets to accelerate the shift to more fuel-efficient small cars and powertrain technologies that people really want and value. Our investments in these facilities in Mexico are part of our plan to further realign our manufacturing capacity in line with the introduction of more small cars and crossovers."

Translation: Nobody's buying our big trucks and SUVs, so we'll build small cars. Naturally, we will find the global plant where it costs us the least amount of money to make them.