WomanOnWheels.ca

Regrets, I've had a few ...

There are moments of regret in every writer's career: the line we should have used, the word we should have changed. And sometimes it's just a case where time marches on and ruins everything, and that's what happened with Saturn.

My husband came up with the perfect line, and I very much wanted to use it, and then what did GM do? It made Saturns good-looking before I got close enough to a story where I could use it. And so, to my great regret, I never got the chance to use it: Why do they call it a Saturn, when it looks like Uranus?

Texting while driving: You need to watch this ...

... and then you need to share it with anyone who thinks that it's possible to drive a car and text (or operate a cell phone) at the same time. I've always said that it's no good showing people pictures of crashed cars; we need to show them pictures of crashed people. It isn't the way it looks in the movies. This is what happens in a serious auto crash.

I couldn't make this up if I tried ...

Press release from today's news wire:

Lynch Hummer (Chesterfield, Missouri), seven times the world's number-one Hummer dealer, has announced the opening of the world's first combined Hummer and firearms dealership. Jim Lynch has turned his $5.7 million Hummer facility in this upscale St. Louis suburb into every shooting enthusiast's must-visit attraction.

"It is a natural fit," says Jim. "Our customers enjoy outdoor sports and the firearms have been a big hit with our Hummer owners."

Why, yes, I knew that ...

I make a habit out of reading the owner's manual of every car I test-drive. It's mostly to learn about the car, and partly to assemble my annual "Auto Funnies" column -- 2007 is here, and 2008 is over here.

These manuals are intended to inform people who don't know anything about their cars. So I could only shake my head when I read this in the Toyota Prius' manual:

Your vehicle must use only unleaded gasoline.Select octane rating 88 (Research Octane Number 92). Use of unleaded gasoline with an octane rating lower than 88 may result in engine knocking. At minimum, the gasoline you use should meet the specifications of ASTM D4814 in the U.S.A. and CGSB3.5-M93 in Canada.

Why, yes, thank you, that's much clearer!

I couldn't make this up if I tried ...

I just came back from an event in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, where I was driving the new Ford Raptor pickup truck.

The park is hugely popular with off-road fans, and there are trails cut all through it specifically for that purpose. To test the new trucks, we raced across a course -- as high as 75 mph in my case, and some went faster. We plowed through sand dunes and climbed hills. We watched other park users on ATVs and dirt bikes racing across the desert floor. You must stay on the trails, but beyond that, you can do pretty much whatever you like.

But one problem I had was that the course was oddly marked. The signs that would normally indicate a left or right turn well in advance were tied to the small bushes that we were driving around. The reason? The Ford team couldn't pound stakes into the ground to hold the signs.

Yes, even though we could do whatever speed we wanted, run our trucks across the dunes, or climb the same hill however many times we wanted, putting up a stake on that very same trail (and then, of course, taking it home afterwards) would have required applying for an environmental assessment, waiting two weeks for the assessment to be done, and then getting all the proper paperwork in order. For a two-inch-wide, six-inch-deep hole in the middle of nowhere.

Today's not-so-bright idea: starter buttons on hybrids

I have a Toyota Prius today, one of two hybrids I've driven in the last little while. It works well and it's nicely-equipped, but like several hybrid models out there, it has a major flaw: who on earth thought it was a good idea to put a starter button on a hybrid?

As happens with this particular option -- which is a plague across the auto industry, and not just limited to gasoline-electrics -- you don't put the key into the ignition. The car senses the key in your pocket, and when you press a button on the dash, it starts.

(I have to press a button to start my 1947 car. You'd think we would have made a bit more progress in the last 62 years.)

What's wrong with a starter button on any vehicle is that you don't necessarily know where the key is. Did you run back for a forgotten item, drop your keys on the counter, and get back in the car without them? Did the valet hand it over? Did it drop out of your pocket when you momentarily stepped out of the car? At least with a key -- which really isn't that difficult to insert and twist -- you are sure.

But what makes it even worse on a hybrid is that you must also push the button to shut the car off. And it simply isn't intuitive to turn off an engine that isn't running. As I seem to do with every hybrid, I put the Prius in Park and then got out of it -- and realized that the chime meant that I hadn't turned off the power. Sure, you probably get into the habit if you own the car. But why should we need training for something so basic?

A couple of years ago, I drove a Nissan Altima Hybrid. Brought it home, put it in Park, got out. Just as I was getting ready for bed several hours later, I looked out the window and saw headlights. When I went outside, I found the car sitting there, gasoline engine idling. I'd once again forgotten to turn off an engine that wasn't running. The result was that the automatic headlights had come on, they'd run down the battery, and the system had turned on the engine to charge it back up. Now imagine if the car hadn't been under my carport, but in an attached garage.

Turn and twist: smart on any car, even smarter on a hybrid. Turn it on, turn it off. I can't imagine why anyone would think differently.

Press release I couldn't finish reading ...

Chinese Astronauts Choose Volvo S80L ...

The digital thermostat: What took you so long?

Funny things, cars is. The new car in my driveway probably has more electronics in it than the rocket that went to the moon. Depending on the vehicle, it can shut off half its cylinders when it doesn't need them, switch between gasoline engine or electric motor, monitor its own emissions, keep the driver cool and the passenger warm, pull satellite signals out of the sky, figure out the air pressure in each tire, and even hit its own brakes if the driver isn't paying attention.

And yet, when it comes to the thermostat, an essential little piece of hardware that controls coolant flow, keeping the engine from running too hot or too cold, it depends on a mechanical valve that uses a spring, a rod, and wax that melts or firms up to make it work.

That little Sputnik in the photo is a design by Mileage Matrix that intends to replace the thermostat, keeping the engine temperature right where it belongs at all times for optimum use.

A much better system, and it's surprising that it took so long for someone to come up with it. Still, it just ain't the same as dropping the old-style ones into a pan of boiling water to see if they still work, or remembering to change from the hot-running one to the cold-running one as part of the rites of spring ...

I couldn't make this up if I tried ...

 Today's press release that I couldn't finish reading:

Only the very best bulls for Audi interiors: Making a prestige German car calls for an obsession for attention to detail with Audi now only selecting leather from bulls rather than cows to achieve the required upholstery standards ...

 

GM-town mayor vs. GM-town taxpayer: Camaro 1, Saturn 0

There's a tempest brewing in Oshawa, home of General Motors of Canada -- and me. The mayor, John Gray, can buy a car as one of the perks of the job. He purchased a V8-powered Camaro. Oshawa is the only plant anywhere that builds it.

That isn't sitting well with some people, including Oshawa resident Bill Steele, and the story's here in the Toronto Star. Steele wants Gray to raffle off the Camaro, which cost $38,000, and buy a hybrid or "an economical car for the future," and give the remaining money to a food bank.

(Full disclosure: I know John Gray on a first-name basis, but only through chatting with him at various car shows. His Worship has a fondness for Chevrolet Corvairs and owns a few of them -- presumably not directly funded by taxpayers -- and while I seldom agree with his political policies, he's a really nice guy on a personal level.)

Steele's argument is wrong on a number of levels. First of all, he says that he doesn't want part of his taxes going to buy a sports car that "gets 17 miles to the gallon." Now, Gray may well drive it hard and affect the fuel numbers, but cars are measured by official figures, and on paper, the V8 Camaro gets a combined 26 mpg (Imperial): 21 in the city, 36 on the highway. Steele gets nowhere fast by pulling random numbers out of his butt.

Gray can't buy a hybrid made in Oshawa, unless he picks up one of the last Chevrolet Silverado or GMC Sierra hybrid pickup trucks built in that city before GM shut the truck plant down. Such a truck is rated at 27 mpg in the city, but only 29 on the highway -- nowhere near as good as Gray's 36-mpg Camaro. And GM cancelled its only other hybrid, the Chevrolet Malibu -- built not in Oshawa, but in Kansas -- because no one was buying them.

Steele argues that Gray's vehicle choice is out of sync with Oshawa's bleak unemployment picture. Well, here's a news flash: Oshawa's employment rate improves considerably when people are working, and more people work in Oshawa when General Motors is running at full tilt. The plant there currently produces the Chevrolet Camaro and Chevrolet Impala, and that's it. Gray put another order on the assembly line when he took delivery of his car. Steele's used, nine-year-old Saturn never put a dime into Oshawa's manufacturing economy; it wasn't built in Canada. (And given that he also slams Gray's choice on environmental grounds, I wonder what kind of fuel economy and emissions he gets from a $200 "grey and rust" car.)

The mayor of an auto town needs to drive the car that auto town builds. Gray could have chosen an Impala -- which, in its smaller-engine configuration, gets only 5 mpg better than his Camaro -- which would have blended into the traffic scenery like a white dog in a snowstorm. He could have waited for the hybrid that rumor has it the Oshawa plant will build, but GM hasn't even confirmed it, much less given a date. Instead, the mayor bought a car that turns heads wherever he goes, and has many people saying, Hey, that's way-cool, and it's built right here.

My taxes helped pay for John Gray's Camaro, as well. But unlike Bill Steele, I think it was money well spent.