I will be appearing on CNN’s Newsroom Saturday at 5:30pm Eastern/2:30pm Pacific to discuss the Toyota recalls, their impact on the market and the politics of automotive safety. Do tune in.

The media and “celebrities” are making hay over the Toyota recall issue, desperate to find evidence of electronic and software gremlins. We’re adamant in stating that Toyota needs to change their software to give braking priority over a stuck pedal, and to replace the pedals, of course. And there may well be genuine software or electronic glitches out there, but we’d like to see solid evidence of them. Instead, we’re stuck listening to Steve Wozniak’s experience with a faulty cruise control on his Prius. It’s being spun as an example of Toyota’s electronics gremlins, creating  confusion and scare-mongering. As if there wasn’t enough of that already. (Read More…)

I don’t watch “24″ but apparently GM’s dead brand Pontiac Pontiac “received $256,200 in exposure by 8 total sequences, including one verbal mention” on the season premiere of the Fox terror drama according to Front Row Marketing and TVbythenumbers.com. Your tax dollars hard at work building equity for dead brand? Out of morbid curiosity, are there any 24 fans out there who can tell us what these references were? [Hat Tip: Graham Smith]

The gist of Sweet Pete DeLorenzo’s argument is that Chrysler has to do something to remind Americans that they still exist. Given the Chrysler’s inability thus far to articulate a vision for the Dodge brand post-Ram, this makes a certain amount of sense. With a new, well-respected ad agency, Dodge could use the Super Bowl’s giant stage to get back on the buying public’s radar. The problem with the plan lies in the one question that DeLorenzo fails to answer: why bring buyers into Dodge showrooms if there’s nothing there?
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Sort of. At least she might have if my esteemed fellow bloggers had let her get a word in edgewise. No wonder GM seems to have such a low opinion of the “well informed.”

Anyway, the clip’s money quote comes at 1:47, when Docherty lets out the classic Freudian slip: “the last competitive product I spent a couple of weeks in was the Acura TSX.” Whoops!

It’s incredibly hard to figure out where MSN Autos came up with the headline  “CT&T Set to Take the EV Mainstream” for its write up on the South Korean firm’s presentation at the NAIAS. Hell, the author even admits:

Unfortunately, none of the vehicles is approved for “normal” use on America’s highways and byways. Instead, they are categorized as low-speed vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the same classification given to golf carts and other similar-sized, 4-wheeled vehicles.

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Having been told by the Secretary of Transportation that the Chrysler Group’s motley assortment of new trim level names, rebadged Lancias, decal-sporting special editions represents “the cutting edge of developing the kind of products that I think people in this country, and also in other countries, are really going to feel very favorable toward,” CEO Sergio Marchionne apparently thought enough had been said about his struggling bailout baby. As CBS reports, Marchionne suddenly canceled a 45-minute scheduled press availability before he had the chance to confirm LaHood’s astonishing opinion.

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Blogging, like most human pursuits, is perennially torn between two competing impulses: getting paid and keeping it real. On the internet, where the basest pandering tends to yield the most bounteous rewards in traffic (if not discourse), the temptation to lose focus in search of new traffic is ever present. In a striking piece entitled “The Awesomeness Manifesto,” Jalopnik Editor-in-Chief Ray Wert admits that over the past year (or so) he and his website have strayed too far from the path of realness. The impetus for the decline in standards: pressure from Gawker bosses, and what he paints as a year of post-carpocalyptic malaise.

A year ago this month, I caved. I did what I was told, dampening our smart and snarky voice. I moved Murilee from daily to weekend duty and let go of many new names. Instead of looking forward while remembering the past, I forced my overworked and undersupported team to stumble blindly across the post-Carpocalypse automotive desert. We chased the same carrot as Autoblog, Motor Trend, and the rest, pursuing what we were told was the “growth segment” of the automotive universe — general consumers and non-enthusiasts…. we were hungry for cheap traffic, and we gorged, competing over meaningless press releases and page-view-whoring galleries because there was nothing else on the table. And dammit, we were good at it.

The good news is that Wert says he’s sorry. Jalopnik, he says, will once again focus on “a new breed of enthusiast… waiting to be freed from the shackles of a crossover culture.” The not-so-good news?

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Getting a car like the Volt on Jay Leno’s Garage seems like a no-brainer. America’s patron celebrity of car obsession has the gearhead credentials to help explain the Volt’s positive attributes, and the enthusiasm to draw a very different crowd than the usual Volt fanboy sites. And yet from the first, the Volt’s visit to automotive Valhalla seems to have chief engineer Andrew Farah in permanent flinch mode. Leno is never overtly hostile (alá Letterman), but from his comparison of the Volt to a 1916 Owens Magnetic, to his assessment that the Volt is “not a tiny car,” you can’t help feeling that he thinks it’s all a bit of a joke. It’s a four-seater. Literally. They’re shooting for a 2,900 lb weight goal. Your mileage may vary. The hood is held up with a stick. What is the deal with that? Like any comedian, Leno’s only as good as his material. Luckily, the yawning chasm between the modest reality of the Volt and its relentless hype is fertile ground indeed.

It’s getting late in the game today and we’re down a couple of points, so its time to go for a double. Thanks to an easy pitch from the UK government and AutoBlogGreen, I’m going to swing. The Nanny State Incarnate is encouraging local UK governments to introduce blanket 20 mph speed limits in all residential area. And ABG picks up the story from Autocar and adds its own little brilliant addition to the story: its going to save fuel. Now how is it that a writer for the biggest little green blog in the land doesn’t know that cars are way less efficient  at 20 mph than at their peak efficient speed of somewhere between 35 and 50? And there’s more; in fact this might well be a triple: (Read More…)