Michael writes:

Love the website. Here is my conundrum:

My wife and I have two cars. A 2007 CR-V that I use mostly for a 75 mile round trip commute several days a week to San Francisco and a 2004 Infiniti FX35 with 52,000 miles. While the CR-V has a ton of utility, I am tired of driving it. It has quite a bit of road noise, the sound system sucks and frankly it’s kind of a female car. The plan is to keep the CR-V and let my wife drive it, and use it as our family car while we sell the Infiniti and I get something for that daily commute. The Infiniti was purchased from a friend and is in great condition, but I feel like it is a ticking time bomb and want to sell it now to take advantage of high used car prices. Plus the mpg is horrific, it doesn’t have satellite radio and the tires are still original and will need expensive replacing shortly. (Read More…)

Chery has asked the Chinese government for its blessing regarding a joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover worth $1.9 billion.

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Exports have been mentioned before as a way to help improve Opel’s precarious near-term fortunes, and now one of Germany’s state-level Prime Ministers is throwing his support behind the export plan.

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It is this power, combined with amazing precision—its tolerances are measured in thousandths of an inch—that gives the Fifty its far-reaching utility. It has made essential parts for industrial gas turbines, helicopters, and spacecraft. Every manned U.S. military aircraft now flying uses parts forged by the Fifty. So does every commercial aircraft made by Airbus and Boeing.

So says The Atlantic in a fascinating short piece about the rehabilitation of the Alcoa Fifty. In one of those examples of government-industry collaboration that twists the knickers of libertarians and ultra-liberals alike, the United States Government sponsored a “Heavy Press Program” after World War II so American industry could forge massive aircraft parts. The presses were paid for with public money then used by private companies such as Alcoa. Having been brought back to life after a shutdown, the Fifty will now make parts for the Joint Strike Fighter and operate for at least thirty more years.

Russia has a 75,000-ton press, and the Chinese are working on an 80K monster. Without a press of the Fifty’s scale, it is impossible for an individual nation to build large-scale aircraft without outside assistance.

So… if large-scale government intervention and engineering assistance has made the Jet Age possible, why couldn’t something similar be done for American industry?

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You would have to travel far to shoot (bad boy as you are) a Bali tiger. Germany’s Auto, Motor und Sport Magazin did not have to travel further than the Golfanlage Schloss Nippenburg to shoot themselves a Macan. Macan is Indonesian for tiger, better known as the name for Porsche’s upcoming SUVlet. (Read More…)

The fellow had spent nearly three hours on the road. Just to drive a 10 year old Isuzu SUV.

Traffic cones. Construction. Stalls and accidents. By the time he got to my lot he was already emotionally spent, and it was only 10:00 A.M.

Then he saw it.

The front passenger tire was flatter than a Ford Festiva going through the crusher. I was at the bank when he called. Hadn’t even opened the lot yet. Finally when I got there I noticed that an old Lincoln Mark VIII had two tires flat as well.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

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In case you have surplus cash sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, hang on to it until the end of 2013. This is when Porsche finally wants to crank up production of its Über-Porsche, the 918 Spyder. Porsche has finished the initial prototypes, which are cleverly camouflaged: If you see something whizzing by, and you think to yourself: “This looked just like a Porsche 917 race car,” then you actually saw a 918 in drag. (Read More…)

Need an excuse for getting fat for lack of exercise?  Buy Honda’s latest invention, and you won’t even have to walk to the bathroom anymore, assuming a barrier-free environment. Honda presents the UNI-CUB, the first vehicle you steer with your ass. (Read More…)

Car sales in China have become headline material the world over. However, numbers are often reported without checking, and even more often reported erroneously. Yesterday, we were tracking two reports  of Chinese car sales, January-April. One set of data was from China’s official manufacturer association CAAM, the other from Reuters.  They did not quite match. A day later, the confusion is even bigger. (Read More…)

Minutes after Ally Financial, the bs-artist formerly known as GMAC, took its Residential Capital bankrupt, David Shepardson tweeted to his followers that all is fine:

“GM owns 9.9% of Ally Financial Inc, while @USTreasuryDept owns 74 percent” (Read More…)