Tag Archives: car
Sign of the times
An email from a car dealership: SATURDAY, [MONTH] [DAY], 9:00am–3:00pm Use our lot to Spring Clean your Attic, Garage, Barn or House! SELLERS Spaces & Tables available for $10/unit fee with all fees donated to [CAUSE] PRE-REGISTER FOR YOUR SPACE & TABLE Call [DEALERSHIP] at ###-###-#### and ask for [NAME], [NAME] or [NAME]. Setup Starts [...]
Finance allegory #1
Shades of Lehman, toxic assets, and stress tests: And, of course, Detroit.
Worse living through lack of chemistry
FT: The crisis in the car industry has led to a global shortage of a chemical solvent used for everything from checking the mould level in a chocolate bar to ensuring a tablet of aspirin is safe. Acetonitrile (a/k/a cyanomethane, methyl cyanide, ethanenitrile, ethyl nitrile, methane, cyanomethanecarbonitrile, ethanonitrile, acetonitril, ethane nitrile): Prices have spiralled. Few [...]
All-American hobby
“Phourlorn Motor Speedway is a custom, professionally built 4-lane routed track. Can be changed from an Indy-style oval to a road course in about 15 minutes due to a lift-out straight away section. Completely detailed and sceniced to resemble a real race track”—including what seems to be a beer-soaked racing fan rudely interrupted in a [...]
Motown’s greatest hits
GM CEO Rick Wagoner “referring to GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler,” in the FT (Simon+Guerrera, “GM Chief Defends Reliance on SUVs,” 6 June ’08; liberated version here). Is it the US manufacturers who are stupid? I don’t think so. You have to recognise that the consumer makes the call here … and we are reacting. [...]
Roger that
Kaplan, “Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas,” theatlantic.com (Sep ’06): But the Predator, especially as it is improved, may also interfere with decision making. As one pilot told me: “No general will want to attack something without visual confirmation from a Predator. It’s the old story—by the time you have all the evidence, it’s too [...]
National energy stragety
Wald, “Drop in Miles Driven Is Depleting Highway Fund,” NYT (29 July ’08): Gasoline tax revenue is falling so fast that the federal government may not be able to meet its commitments to states for road projects already under way, the secretary of transportation said Monday. The secretary, Mary E. Peters, said the short-term solution [...]
A day late and a dollar short
The NYT: To put this in perspective, the difference between a [Ford] Focus and an F-250 over five years is $60,000. The annual pretax income of a typical family in this country is also about $60,000. So choosing a F-250 over a Focus is like volunteering for a 20 percent pay cut. Of course, the [...]
Refractory turn on red: RTOR, CAFE, SUVs, UPS
Right-turn-on-red (“RTOR,” in some circles) was introduced nationwide in the mid-1970s as part of a broad, national fuel-saving strategy in response to the “Arab fuel embargo” of 1973–74 (context here). The goal was to save gas by minimizing idling. In a tribute to former Senator Dale Bumpers, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia said: The [...]
FIRE, Detroit, GOP, Microsoft