Tag Archive for 'smart'

21st Century Cow Tipping

Published on July 26, 2009 in Baby Boomer and Cars. 6 Comments Tags: , , .


I sure hope they keep this little prank in Amsterdam and it doesn’t invade the U.S.

Seems “Smart tossing” is the hot new activity for buzzed out Amsterdam youth. They toss Smart cars into the nearest canal.

A similar conversation took place at Varley and Chickie’s home last evening. Bob and Felicia had taken a ride through the Kentucky version of the hood, which is a very diverse neighborhood of Mexicans, African Americans, Bosnians, Vietnamese, etc. etc.

Nancy said she would take Chickie there someday since she had never been. Bob suggested that she shouldn’t drive her Smart. “They would pick you up and carry you off.”

Laffs all around.

Smart car at Amsterdam canal

Smart car parked alongside Amsterdam canal.
Photo by Tinou Bao

According to locally-published newspaper De Telegraaf police has not wanted to publicize this form of vandalism for fear of copy-cat incidents. However, police officers are paying extra attention to Amsterdam’s canals, especially during the weekends.

The Smart cars are small enough to be parked with head or tail pointing to the water.

One man who parked his Smart car that way said police woken him with the message that his car had been pushed into the canal.

“Several weeks ago the same thing happened to my companion’s Smart,” Casper de Jong said. “In both cases the Smart was declared a total-loss.”

Alongside most canals a low guard rail helps prevent cars from taking a dip, but the Smart car is small enough to be lifted and tossed.

It is not clear how many Smart cars have been vandalized this way, but an employee of Smart Center Amsterdam confirmed the company has recently been confronted with it ‘a number of times.’

Shouldn’t be a problem here in Podunkyville:

  • no canals
  • car is tucked away in garage by 9 p.m.

Can Penske Make The Saturn Profitable?

Published on June 8, 2009 in Cars, Money, Politics and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Penske Automotive owns a whole crap load of car dealerships. 310 in the U.S. and around the world. Penske Automotive sells over 40 different car brands -  including the Smart car in the U.S.

Roger Penske is successful renting trucks and running racing teams. Can Penske Automotive sell Saturns? Yes.

Can he make a profit? Probably.

Will he still build Saturns in the U.S.? Doubtful.

He could form a venture with Nissan Motor Co., the Japanese affiliate of Renault SA, according to a source familiar with the talks. Automotive News, an industry trade publication, has reported that Penske plans to import vehicles made in South Korea by Renault Samsung Motors and sell them through the Saturn dealership network.

I wouldn’t bet on Penske Automotive in this deal.

Why?

  • Because the $2,500 Tata Nano is coming to the U.S. in two years.
  • Because he sells Smart.
  • Because he sells 39 other car brands.
  • Because Saturn never turned a profit in it’s whole existence under GM’s wing.

So GM invested billions to give Saturn independence. Saturn ran its own factory, employed its own engineers and made its own engines and transmissions. But the economies of scale never materialized. GM needed to sell half a million or more Saturns a year for this to all pencil out. In 1994, sales peaked at 286,000 cars.

Penske Automotive will have a two year deal with G.M. to buy Saturns. But then Roger can shop his car-building business around.

tata$2,500 Tata Nano
smart60 $20,000 Smart

2009saturnvue20239218-396x249 $25,000 Saturn Vue

Tata doesn’t have a dealer network currently. But that probably won’t stop them. There is already a demand for the car in the U.S. (IF it passes gummit standards – and I’m betting the standards will be relaxed to make it so.)

We have had people ask us if the Smart was a Tata. We have had people tell us they can’t wait until the Tata comes to the U.S. These same people don’t have a clue that the Tata

  • is put together with glue,
  • has opening in the back (a “trunk),
  • no air conditioning
  • only three lug nuts per wheel (gummit standards dictate four)
  • top speed of 43 mph

Many of these same people are concern that the Smart isn’t safe enough for them!

But that $2,500 price tag makes it very appealing to wedge in four teenagers and turn them loose or send Mama to church meetin’s.

Where will  Roger Penske and Penske Automotive wedge the Saturns in the marketplace? If G.M. still designs and builds the cars, they won’t change much. If Penske Automotive takes the design/build to another factory he doesn’t own, does this mean Penske Automotive takes on a whole new level of overhead?

Am I willing to bail out Penske Automotive eventually?

I might if he let’s me drive one of his racers.

Want to Buy a Collectible Car? Think Plain, Simple, Ugly and Odd

Published on April 13, 2009 in Baby Boomer and Cars. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .


Jay Leno owns dozens and dozens and dozens of highly desirable vehicles: * Muscle Cars * Supercars * Sports Cars * Classics * Antiques * Vintage * Custom Built * Motorcycles * Hot Rods * Duesenberg * Bugatti * Bentley * Fixed Engines * Trucks * Hybrids * Electric * Steam Cars * Aircraft * Corvettes * Ten years ago, Leno’s Garage first showed up in Popular Mechanics, so they asked him what cars today would interest him as collectible in 20-30 years.

McClarens? Mustangs? Corvettes? Sure!

About 10 years ago, I had the chance to buy a McLaren F1. A new one was almost a million dollars. This was a secondhand car with less than 2500 miles, and it was $800,000. I thought, it’s crazy to spend that much money on a car. So I talked it over with my wife. And she said, “You’ve worked hard. If you want to get it, get it.” And I thought, ohhh … kaaay! So I bought it. Last year, a McLaren F1 sold at auction for $4.1 million! I now realize this is the greatest investment I’ve ever made. In less than 10 years, I more than quintupled my money.

But Leno’s advice is to buy a car because you love it, not because you think you can make 5 times the investment in a few years. I still love to ride the back roads and rubberneck looking for “barn finds.” I’ve inquired about a few, but the owners always have the image of their beat up 1987 Corvette selling for enough money to pay off the mortgage on the double wide. Or the 1952 Dodge coupe that has no interior and no glass paying for their next set of dentures. It’s discouraging because I know those cars will 1. continue to rot away, or 2. eventually be hauled to the scrap yard.

What are Leno’s picks from the current crop of cars to be collectible? Think ordinary, plain, average, simple, even ugly!

That’s why I think the Mazda Miata will be the ultimate affordable collectible by, say, 2025. The first-generation Miata was extremely simple, and that’s part of its charm.

Miata made a cute car! But how about the Ford Taurus? Cute? Not really, but collectible because of it’s roundness which was unusual for the time and lots of people owned them. Would you buy a Pontiac Aztek?

Not many people did.

Nancy thinks they resemble a tennis shoe on wheels.2001 Aztek GT Leno likes it because it is “odd and weird” like the old Pacers and Gremlins.

How about a Chrysler LeBaron K-Car with the fake wood? (we had one which was broadsided with oldest daughter driving.) Collectible according to Leno.

Here’s a car I didn’t even know existed: Cadillac CTS-V with a six-speed standard transmission. Easy to know why that will be collectible. Hardly anybody drives a standard transmission now, in 20 years, nobody will be driving sticks.

Leno even likes Hummers and blinged out Escalades for future collectibles!

One last collectible? It’s any car your girlfriend thinks is cute. A ’79 Ford Fiesta? “Oooh, look at that little thing!” It’s seen as a cute, desirable city car. The new Smart cars will always be collectible. Minis too. Things don’t change. If a woman was cute 20 years ago, she’s cute today. The same is true for cars.

smart60


My cute girl in her cute car! Both highly collectible. One will be collecting Social Security in July.

Boomer Standard is Sixty: 45 rpm Records Are THAT Old!

Published on April 2, 2009 in Baby Boomer, Entertainment and Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

On March 31, 1949, the first 45 rpm record was released.

RCA Victor released “Texarkana Baby” b/w “Bouquet of Roses” by Eddy Arnold. The first 45rpm record to hit the Billboard charts was “A — You’re Adorable” by Perry Como, listed on the charts on May 7, 1949. The next week, the year’s biggest hit appeared on the Billboard charts — “Riders In The Sky (A Cowboy Legend)” by Vaughn Monroe. The first 45 rpm records were monaural and as stereo sound became more prevalent and popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were manufactured in stereo.

admiral
This isn’t my record player. It belonged to my aunt. It’s an Admiral radio/record player and would probably work if it had a plug on the end of the cord. The finish is Bakelite which attracted me to it.

As with most record players it handled three different formats. LP or 33 1/3 rpm, 45 rpm (the seven inch record), and 78 rpm. I didn’t have a “portable” player like the Admiral High Fidelity. I played records on a monster console radio/record player.

I didn’t own records, I played what my parents had until I got to college and then I listened to my roommate’s collection of LP’s. But I had one of the early transistor radios, so I had a tiny cool factor.
It puzzles me why people buy music.
Nancy’s Smart has a plug for an iPod, so we checked it them out at Target. For fifty bucks, I can buy an iPod the size of a book of matches and it will hold 250 songs. Two hundred fifty. I don’t know 250 songs. Don’t songs cost 99 cents from iTunes? So she’s going to spend $250 on music to play in the car while she putts to the golf course?
I get not listening to earthbound radio with all the commercials and station breaks. I think I would like satellite radio if it didn’t cost so darn much.
See where I’m going here?
Pandora.com – music deserves to be free! Pandora has added lyrics! I may be able to figure out what Lady GaGa was singing on American Idol.

Nah.

Seems like the smarter play would be to get an iPhone, stream Pandora.com, and plug that into the car speakers. Wait, did I just replace a $50 iPod with a $400 iPhone? Somebody figure the cost/benefit/ROI/payback on this idea quick.