Free Republic

Among major automakers, Ford Motor Company (+9.33 percent) and General Motors (+7.17 percent) were the leaders, while Toyota Motor Company (+4.34) and Chrysler Group (+4.11 thanks to a +30.33-percent performance by Dodge) managed to stay positive. Nissan North America, however, fared less well, reporting a drop in year-over-year sales of -6.65 percent. Among brands, we see many luxury marques near the top, including Bentley (+42.86 percent), Porsche (+30.53 percent), Audi (+27.77 percent), Mercedes-Benz (+23.05 percent), Cadillac (+20.34 percent) and Land Rover (+19.97 percent). If taken as a sign of a recovering economy, then the wealthier among us appear to be...

In its simplest form, an exotic car with a Montana plates is an immense tax dodge. Being the Wild West, you see, Montana levies no sales tax. Instead, its government chooses to operate under the unique “we don’t need no stinkin’ money” principle, which possibly explains why they went without speed limits for several years: they couldn’t afford the signs. In my home state of Georgia, the Veyron’s $1.7 million MSRP would be taxed at seven percent, which comes out to $119,000. For a license plate. Anyway, if you lived in Montana, the same Veyron would cost virtually nothing to...

The U.S. new car market was up strongly in January. GM and Ford surprised analysts with double digit sales rates. Toyota, up 26.6 percent also surprised. GM is up 16 percent on very strong sales of the Equinox and its Silverado and Sierra pickups. Ford prints a 22 percent increase, powered by the Fusion. Lincoln sales are down 18 percent while customers wait for the MKZ to arrive in quantity at their dealers. Chrysler was up 16 percent, but jaded analysts expected more. Detroit OEMs and analysts expect the SAAR to be in the mid 15 million range

[Video] A foreign diplomat in Rabat, Morocco cruises around in a custom vehicle made up of two Jeep Wranglers!

It's looking very likely that a bill in Congress that will make mandatory the use of "black boxes"— more formally, Event Data Recorders (EDR) — will become law soon. These are little computers clad in rugged casings that record data from your car's various sensors and computers to use for accident investigation and, very likely, other uses. There's lots of privacy concerns around this new bill, and lots of questions as to exactly what that little boxy black snitch is snooping on. Plus, what about the voluntary black boxes some insurance carriers are offering? Let's see what we can clear...

Superstorm Sandy left about a quarter million dead cars in its path, Reuters figures. It mioght even drive up cars sales. There is no official number yet on how many cars have been destroyed in the storm. “We believe that between 100,000 and 250,000 vehicles currently in operation could be removed from used vehicle supply once all is said and done,” said Laurence E. Dixon III, senior analyst with the National Automobile Dealers Association. Reuters think it is at least 266,000 vehicles. Some consumers with damaged vehicles may need to replace them with a new car, said Mark Schienberg, president...

American Suzuki Motor Corp, the sole distributor of Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T) vehicles in the continental United States, will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with $346 million in debt, of which $173 million is owed to Suzuki group companies, it said. Japan's No. 4 automaker said in a statement that it would be unable to maintain profitability in its automobile business in the United States, given the currency rate and its automobile lineup, made up primarily of small cars. American Suzuki, which sold 2,023 vehicles in the United States last month, plans to compensate car dealers as it phases...

Tata CEO Ratan Tata has apparently decided to sell the Tata Nano minicar in the United States, even as Tata lacks though proper sales channel. In an interview with Automotive News, the company namesake said that a redesigned Nano, with features like traction control, a more powerful engine and power steering, could go on sale at a price below $10,000 in three years time. But a distribution channel is still a giant question mark, with Tata saying ”We have to give a lot of thought to how we would distribute the car,” and little else. Tata’s remarks came at the...

A new study by R.L. Polk & Co. shows that the overall percentage of hybrids sold into the new vehicle market has fallen from 2.9 percent to 2.4 percent over the past three years. Moreover, approximately two-thirds of hybrid owners who returned to the market in 2011 did not buy another hybrid. "Intuitively, you would expect the numbers to be higher, given how many hybrid vehicles are available in the market place today," Brad Smith, director of Polk's loyalty management practice, told us. Polk's study revealed that only 35 percent of hybrid owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when...

Margaret Dunning, 102 years old, has been behind the wheel for 94 years, starting on her father’s farm in Michigan. But her even prouder accomplishment is keeping her 1930 Packard roadster in car-show condition, making it an auto-exhibit hit. Margaret Dunning started driving when she was 8 years old. Ninety-four years later, she’s still behind the wheel. The 102-year-old, who has continued exhibiting her Packard 740 Roadster well into her second century, drove fans wild this week at Ohio’s Glenmoor Gathering of Significant Automobiles in Canton. “People were blown away to find a lady who's 102-years-old who is as active...

Fuel economy standards for the year 2025 have now been set, as the government released the finalized CAFE regulations, in a massive tome totaling 1,994 pages in PDF form The full document is available here. I’d be lying if I said I had come anywhere close to completing it…think of the longest novel you’ve ever read and extract all the amazing prose, gripping scenes and moving themes, and that’s basically the CAFE regulation, with another 1,000 pages thrown on top of that. Anyone who has taken a peak is more than welcome to comment. In the mean time, I’ll be...

I've been closely following recent technology advances in automobiles for the last 2-3 years. Some very interesting technologies are beginning to make it into regular production vehicles that ordinary people can buy. The first is direct injection for gasoline engines. The second "big deal" is the dual-clutch transmission. These are cutting edge technologies for cars right now. Guess what? There is no Japanese brand car available with both of these technologies. In fact, both Honda and Toyota seem to be ignoring dual clutch transmission entirely. It appears to me Toyota is coasting on its reputation right now and isn't doing...

State Farm Built The Harvey Dent Of Camaros, Can You Tell Its Good Side From Its Bad? Meet Two Face the Camaro. Can you tell which is the good half and which is the bad on this '68 convertible? State Farm had it built to serve as a gimmicky training tool for classic car insurance appraisers, so that they'd know the difference between a factory spec restoration and a cobbled together resto-mod. The driver's side of the car was refinished exactly as it came from the Chevrolet assembly line, while the passenger side was the recipient of sloppy welds and...

The Minnesota State Patrol says a driver who bounced in and out of a highway ditch unknowingly lost her backseat passenger, who was ejected through a broken window. The patrol says the 72-year-old driver, Louise Ericksen, was driving southbound on Highway 72 in Beltrami County Sunday when her car strayed into the ditch, hit a sign and broke a back window. As the car bounced along the rough terrain, 15-year-old Kendall Ericksen was ejected out the broken window. The driver maneuvered her Impala back on the highway and continued southbound without realizing Kendall was missing. The Duluth News Tribune says...

If you're of a certain age - or just watch a lot of Hulu or Nick at Nite - you probably remember the folding (and flying) car from "The Jetsons." The forthcoming Hiriko Fold doesn't fly, but it does fold. To make this work, regular controls had to be replaced with drive-by-wire, and the accelerator, steering wheel and brake are gone in favor of an aerospace-type yoke that (as in a Segway), is moved forward to move the vehicle forward, and back for reversing. Left and right are for steering. Just like in the Jetsons' car (and the 1950s BMW...

Ask Andrew Bocarsly about the innovation behind Liquid Light, a New Jersey startup company that turns carbon dioxide into fuels and industrial chemicals, and the Princeton University chemistry professor smiles ruefully. "The project goes back to the early '90s," he said. "But nobody cared about carbon dioxide at that time." Today, carbon dioxide (CO2) is a hot topic. Scientists around the globe are searching for ways to store, dispose of, or prevent the formation of the greenhouse gas, which is a major driver of global climate change. Liquid Light hopes to take this concept one step further and harness waste...

A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous "blind spot" for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion. Traditional flat mirrors on the driver's side of a vehicle give drivers an accurate sense of the distance of cars behind them but have a very narrow field of view. As a result, there is a region of space behind the car, known as the blind spot, that drivers can't see via either the side or rear-view mirror. It's not...

Hydrogen gas offers one of the most promising sustainable energy alternatives to limited fossil fuels. But traditional methods of producing pure hydrogen face significant challenges in unlocking its full potential, either by releasing harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or requiring rare and expensive chemical elements such as platinum. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new electrocatalyst that addresses one of these problems by generating hydrogen gas from water cleanly and with much more affordable materials. The novel form of catalytic nickel-molybdenum-nitride – described in a paper published online May 8,...

NASA is clearly looking far into the future for a way to handle both human waste and a need for fuel on either long space flights or when attempting to colonize another planet. To that end, they’ve assigned life support engineer Jonathan Trent the task of coming up with a way to use algae to solve both problems at once. His solution is to use plastic bags floating in seawater as small bioreactors, containing wastewater, sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow algae that can be used as a means to create biofuel. The whole thing is called Offshore Membrane Enclosures...

Drivers hoping to slip the surly -- and traffic congested -- bonds of Earth moved a step closer to realizing their dream, as a US firm said it had successfully tested a street-legal plane. Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype "Transition" car-plane had completed an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year. "With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream," said founder Carl Dietrich. The two-seater craft, which has the rounded features of a Fiat 500 and collapsible wings, is on presale...