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While Hyundai offers a front wheel drive minivan in the U.S. market called the Entourage, it's only available with the Korean manufacturer's 3.8L gas V-6. It gets an EPA overall rating of 18mpg, which is competitive in its segment here in North America but no great shakes overall. Overseas, Hyundai has just released a new eight-seat rear wheel drive full-sized van called the i800. The i800 gets motivation from a 2.5L four cylinder diesel engine with common rail injection. The diesel generates 170hp and 289lb-ft of torque which won't get any enthusiasts excited in this application (what enthusiast would...

Like a lot of people, you may be watching the price at the pump soar and wondering whether it's time to dump your current, less-than-efficient SUV, truck or car. It's tempting to simply haul your 15 miles-per-gallon vehicle down to the dealership and drive out in something that gets 30 mpg or more. But that may not be smart, at least from a financial point of view. ADVERTISEMENT People thinking of going this route need to take several factors into account. For starters, your gas guzzler is worth considerably less as a trade-in than it was even six months ago....

PHILADEPHIA: As gasoline prices hit records on almost a daily basis, an increasing number of motorists in US are following a radical driving technique designed to eke out every last mile from a tank of fuel. Known as 'hypermiling,' the methods can double gas mileage, even in gas-guzzling vehicles. Promoted on a growing number of websites, hypermiling includes pumping up tires to the maximum rating on their sidewalls, which may be higher than levels recommended in car manuals; using engine oil of a low viscosity, and the controversial practice of drafting behind other vehicles on the highway to reduce aerodynamic...

...Latarian Milton is not your typical 7-year-old. Few his age have ever driven an SUV up and down several busy streets. It all started at his mother's townhouse. Latarian said he took the car keys and hopped into his grandmother's Dodge Durango.... "I took my grandmother's car because I got mad at my mom. And I saw my friend come in and he smoke cigarettes. He started the vehicle and put it into gear. I yanked. I yanked it. I yanked the thing and off they went," Latarian said. Latarian drove several miles through Lake Park and Palm Beach Gardens....

Sagging pickup truck and sport utility vehicle sales have forced General Motors Corp. to shut down one shift each at four North American factories and lay off about 3,500 workers. The world's largest automaker by sales said Monday that the cuts, to take effect starting this summer, were brought on by weak demand due to high gasoline prices and an economic downturn. The cuts will affect pickup factories in Pontiac and Flint, Mich., and Oshawa, Ontario, as well as the full-size SUV plant in Janesville, Wis. The layoffs represent just over 4 percent of GM's hourly manufacturing work force of...

MIAMI - For used car dealer Ivan Hoyos, accepting a sport utility vehicle as a trade-in is no longer good business. The only SUV he's offering at his Florida Auto Sales and Finance is his mother's red 2004 Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Americans like the freedom to travel. That trait makes sense. This continent was settled by people who were willing to travel in order to make a better life. One could say that the association between freedom to travel and prosperity is in our genes. The old GM commercial said, "It's not just your car. It's your freedom." Movement has always been a defining part of our culture. Today, we have cars. In the past, we had horses. In either case, the means of travel was personal and represented a private possession. Our heritage and history are not oriented towards mass...

FAW's premium HonQi (Red Flag) division has unveiled its V12 luxury SUV concept in Beijing. While photoshopped images based on the Lincoln MKT concept surfaced on a Chinese website ahead of the show, the actual vehicle on display looks nothing like those. It is, in fact, a unique design. HonQi, you might recall, will put the 6.0L V12 engine into production next year and have it power the production HQE limousine, a Rolls-Royce Phantom doppelganger that all the party big shots are sure to be seen in. In the SUV, the engine is said to produce 402 horsepower and 405...

While most automakers are jumping on the trend of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Alton Manufacturing has taken the opposite route. They've created a whole new vehicle category with their extreme-SUV variant, the "XUV"

A New Zealand man got the fright of his life when a runaway SUV crashed into his house and knocked him off the toilet, a newspaper reported Friday. The vehicle had been parked with its emergency brake only half on, and rolled backward down a 32 foot bank into the house Thursday in the southern city of Christchurch, "The Press" newspaper reported. Police said a building contractor working next door had parked the vehicle at the top of the bank minutes earlier. "He came back to his vehicle and found it next door, basically," Christchurch police Sgt. Kim Reid was...

A New Zealand man got the fright of his life when a runaway SUV crashed into his house and knocked him off the toilet, a newspaper reported Friday. The vehicle had been parked with its emergency brake only half on, and rolled backward down a 32 foot bank into the house Thursday in the southern city of Christchurch, "The Press" newspaper reported. Police said a building contractor working next door had parked the vehicle at the top of the bank minutes earlier. "He came back to his vehicle and found it next door, basically," Christchurch police Sgt. Kim Reid was...

Last Edited: Thursday, 27 Mar 2008, 6:06 PM EDT Created: Thursday, 27 Mar 2008, 4:43 PM EDT An armed man continues to keep authorities at bay on the Walt Whitman Bridge. The Walt Whitman Bridge between South Philadelphia and Gloucester City, N.J., has been closed since about 4:30 p.m. New Jersey State Police Capt. Al Della Fave says troopers tried to stop a vehicle for a minor speeding violation, but the driver wouldn't pull over. He says troopers stopped the pursuit after a few minutes because the man was driving erratically and police feared someone would get hurt. After that,...

Foreign companies and governments sometimes spend millions of pounds on research trying to "get inside the British mind", but there is a simpler way to work out what makes the traditional Englishman tick. Just find an old Land Rover, fire up its engine, and take it for a short drive down a country lane. The noise! The discomfort! Most of all the smell! The aroma is an odd mixture of Castrol oil, barn dust and chicken droppings. For some inexplicable reason, this is true of Land Rovers around the world, from Kettering to Kinshasa. They all have that smell, even...

LOS ANGELES, CA - SUV drivers, increasingly falling victim to the bursting market bubble of the popular vehicles, are finding themselves struggling to keep their means of transportation. Faced with rising fuel prices, lengthy loan agreements, and the skyrocketing costs of rim maintenance, many SUV owners are on the brink of downsizing to smaller vehicles...

I am now considering replacing my vehicle and I was doing an ROI/Break even analysis on a conventional power vs a hybrid to see if the additional cost was worth the effort. So I built the table below in Excel and have come to the conclusion that even with today's gas prices ... it simply is not a smart move. My assumptions and math is below. If I'm wrong would someone point out my error?

After more than two decades, the ghost of the El Camino has finally risen from the grave, at least for U.S. drivers. It never actually went away in Australia. Now that the Pontiac G8 has ushered in a new era of affordable rear-wheel-drive performance at General Motors, the car-based pickup truck, or Ute as they are called Down Under, is coming back. Rumors have been flying for months about a G8 Ute and GM even showed the GMC Denali XT concept at the Chicago Auto Show last month – a four-door ute with a two-mode hybrid power-train that may or...

An explosion has been reported in central Stockholm. Police confirmed on Sunday morning that a bomb squad was at the scene and that no casualties had been reported. Neighbours reported to police early on Sunday morning that a large explosion had rocked the area around Surbrunnsgatan 4 in central Stockholm. Twenty windows were blown out as result of the blast. According to Eva Nilsson at Stockholm police something exploded under a parked car. "To the naked eye the car is in principle intact." A large area was cordoned off by police after the explosion, and Surbrunnsgatan was closed off between...

Toyota is introducing the production version of its iQ city car at the Geneva Motor Show. First shown as the Concept Car iQ at last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, the iQ will go into production during late 2008. Toyota is also using the Geneva show to showcase a new small SUV concept—the Urban Cruiser—aimed at “the urban all-roader market”. The new Toyota iQ measures 2,985mm in length and 1,500mm in height, but features a comparatively lengthy wheelbase of 2,000mm. Delivering a relatively spacious interior in such a compact car required six interlinking engineering innovations. Iq3 The six space-saving technologies...

Surprisingly Strong SUV Sales Despite high gas prices and calls for greater energy efficiency, many Americans are still buying large, luxury SUVs and pickups by Jim Henry Thought sales of big, expensive SUVs and pickups were on life support? It would seem that reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated as sales for some of the largest, thirstiest luxury models, including the Cadillac Escalade ESV, Mercedes-Benz GL, and Toyota Tundra have shown a surprising resurgence. "There are buyers for whom, that's the vehicle they still want, for what their needs are, and gas prices won't deter everyone," says Stephanie...

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Laredo North station, working with officers from the Laredo Police Department, apprehended six illegal immigrants on Friday afternoon. Agents patrolling near Father McNaboe Park, located off of Mines Road, observed several suspicious people come out from a landing area on the river, get into a black Lincoln SUV and speed off along Rancho Viejo Drive. Border Patrol agents in another vehicle saw the SUV pull into a driveway. They pulled in behind the SUV to conduct an immigration inspection. Upon seeing the Border Patrol vehicle, the driver of the SUV sped away, striking another...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

Courts: The often-loopy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now giving orders to the White House. A three-judge panel ruled Thursday that federal fuel-economy standards for light trucks and SUVs must be tougher.The unanimous decision was made in favor of the 11 states, the cities of New York and Washington, and various environmental groups that sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over fuel-mileage standards issued last year. Using the save-the-planet argument, the plaintiffs claimed corporate average fuel economy requirements should be higher. They dislike the federally mandated 1.5-miles-per-gallon increase to 24 miles per gallon for 2008 through 2011...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out planned federal fuel economy standards for many sport-utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks, ruling that the Bush administration failed to address why those so-called "light trucks" are allowed to pollute more than cars. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals also ruled that the standards, which were to go into effect next year, didn't properly assess the risk to the environment and failed to include heavier trucks. "The ruling does two potentially very big things," said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity, which led the assault...

A sport utility vehicle ran off a Central California road and landed upside down in a canal...The SUV was going more than 55 mph Saturday night near Kettleman City, about 50 miles south of Fresno... The vehicle ran up a dirt embankment, rolled and landed upside down in the canal with 5 feet of water, Miller said.

Cadillac announced the world premiere of the Escalade Hybrid, the world’s first hybrid applied to a large luxury SUV. Powered by the GM 2-Mode Hybrid system (earlier post), Escalade Hybrid will deliver more than a 50% improvement in fuel economy in city driving. GM’s patented 2-Mode Hybrid system consists of an advanced electrically variable transmission (EVT) and 300-volt nickel-metal hydride Energy Storage System (ESS). These systems work in concert with the standard 6.0L V-8 Gen IV gasoline engine with Active Fuel Management (AFM) and late-intake valve closing (LIVC) technology. AFM enables the V-8 engine to seamlessly shut off half of...

The officer, whose name was not released, was on his way to assist another officer with a disturbance about 5:30 p.m. when his bike was clipped by a sport utility vehicle. ............... It was unclear whether the driver of the SUV would be cited.

CBS) SKY VALLEY, Calif. An SUV crashed and overturned when it collided with a sedan in Sky Valley Sunday, trapping and injuring people inside the larger vehicle, a California Highway Patrol dispatcher said. The crash was reported at 5:42 p.m. near Dillon Road and Prospect Street in Sky Valley, the dispatcher said. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured, the dispatcher said.

General Motors Corp. is struggling to halt declining U.S. sales, but it has a bright spot in the three large crossover vehicles it launched in the past year. The Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook each have three rows of seats and look like big sport-utility vehicles, but they are lighter, have a smoother ride and get better gas mileage than SUVs. Made from many of the same parts, all three are selling briskly and have a GM plant in Lansing, Mich., running at full capacity, a key to profitable auto production. More importantly, the trio is doing something...

TIPTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. "It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK." He noted, for example, that women would be...

Tailgating: It's all in the preparationSerious fans set up shop early in Athens as season begins By JENNIFER BRETT The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 09/01/07 Athens — Long before game time, the fields were full of action. Grassy quads throughout the University of Georgia campus started filling up Saturday morning as tailgating season, a cherished Bulldog tradition, began. "Most of this group was here this morning at 9," said Kim Folsom of Sugar Hill, breaking bread with a group of about 50 friends, relatives and co-workers. With relatively mild weather following the recent bout of withering heat, fans turned Athens...

SWANTON – A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Swanton Sector fired his weapon at an unknown driver who Thursday morning struck him with his vehicle near Alburgh Springs. Another agent, hurrying to aid his colleague, was involved in an auto accident. The unidentified agent had stopped the vehicle, a gray SUV that had entered the country illegally from Canada, officials from the agency said. As the agent approached the vehicle, the driver put the SUV in gear and hit the agent twice. The agent, who was uninjured, fired one round from his weapon into...

Interesting exchange yesterday between Presidential candidate John Edwards and a group of machinists and aerospace workers. Allow me to paraphrase… John Edwards: I’m telling all Americans to give up their SUVs to help sacrifice and save energy. Union worker: How can you tell us to give up our SUVs when you live in a 28,000-square-foot mansion? John Edwards: I’m a lawyer. Union worker: Oh, ok. *Applause* I couldn’t help but want to shout a few follow ups at the man just reading the news report of his little Q & A. The first would have been, and I quote myself...

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles. The former North Carolina senator told a forum by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, yesterday he thinks Americans are willing to sacrifice. Edwards says Americans should be asked to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. He says he would ask them to give up SUVs. Edwards got a standing ovation when he said weapons and equipment used by America's military needs to be made in the United States. He says tanks...

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group that he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles. "I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice," Edwards said Tuesday during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "One of the things they should be asked to do is drive more fuel efficient vehicles." The former North Carolina senator was asked specifically if he would tell them to give up their SUVs, he said, "Yes."

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer is not happy. In a case which proves that nothing is immune to the sleight of hand of Chinese manufacturers and their ability and willingness to clone any product on earth, BMW has been forced to threaten legal action over a cheap knock-off version of their popular X5 SUV. The Chinese-made SUV which ironically enough is called CEO is almost identical in appearance to BMW’s X5…especially from the rear. “We have already taken steps against the marketing of the CEO (SUV) in Europe. Should this car be presented at the IAA, we will look into taking...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Oscar-nominated director John Singleton was driving a Lexus SUV when it struck and killed a jaywalker who stepped in front of the car, police said Friday. Singleton, 39, immediately stopped his car and waited for police to arrive after the accident Thursday night in the city's Jefferson Park neighborhood, said Officer Jason Lee, a police spokesman. "Mr. Singleton stopped and identified himself as required by law and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol," Lee said. "He was questioned and released." The woman was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead Friday...

In a time when modern science and scholarship have begun to cast doubts on traditional faith, many on the left, right, and center are increasingly abandoning traditional religion. While most such people on the center-right are content simply not to believe, many on the left continue to cling to the salvationist ethos. In the past, that impulse was satiated with communistic reveries. If religion was the opiate of the masses, socialism was the heroin of the secular leftist. That no longer seems, at least outwardly, to be the case. With a worldwide record of abject failure, socialism lost its claim...

GM has cut overtime shifts at six of its North American plants for full-size pickups and SUVs in response to falling demand for the vehicles amid high fuel prices and the slowdown in the housing market. GM spokesman Tom Wickham said the company's overtime cut was implemented Monday and said the production slowdown is in effect for the rest of 2007...

(Beijing) - It was the frugal minicar that lured the Liu family to the showroom, but it was the full-size sedan that hooked them. Like countless other first-time auto buyers in China, the Lius were moving up in the world, and getting four wheels with plenty of steel was a key part of that process. "A car! This means so much to us," said Liu Yang, while her husband, Liu Yue, fiddled with the dashboard of the Chery Eastar sedan that they were about to buy in a showroom in suburban north Beijing. The biggest car-buying boom in world history...

LAWRENCE, N.Y. (AP) -- A man was fatally struck by an SUV, with no driver at the wheel, on a sidewalk in Lawrence, Long Island today. Nassau County Police spokesman Officer Thomas Brussel said the accident occurred at 2:46 this afternoon. He said a woman had parked the 2007 SUV and had left the vehicle, when it jumped the curb and struck a man walking on the sidewalk in front of 315 Central Avenue in Lawrence. The man was taken to St. John's Hospital in nearby Far Rockaway, Queens, where he died a short time later.

Barack Obama wants you to drive a car that gets over 40 miles per gallon, but it's a case of "do as I say and not what I do." Obama was one of the 65 senators who voted in late June to raise federally mandated Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for cars, minivans and SUVs to 35 miles per gallon. In a May speech to the Detroit Economic Club, the senator said his goal is "to help bring [the auto industry] into the 21st century." He proposed requiring automakers to increase their fuel economy standards by 4 percent --...

Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon. I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget. On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of Europe." If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes...

A man who set firebombs in seven large SUVs last March pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison Wednesday. Grant Barnes... using the methods of the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front... When Barnes was arrested, police found a box of seven of the devices in the back of his car. Police said they are replicas of bombs shown on ELF's Web site.

Vandals Batter D.C. Man's SUV, Slash Its Tires and Scratch In an Eco Note On a narrow, leafy street in Northwest Washington, where Prius hybrid cars and Volvos are the norm, one man bought a flashy gray Hummer that was too massive to fit in his garage. So he parked the seven-foot-tall behemoth on the street in front of his house and smiled politely when his eco-friendly neighbors looked on in disapproval at his "dream car." It lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and...

Mark your calendars, because we're calling today a watershed moment for the advancement of diesel's acceptance in the U.S. General Motors has just announced a new 4.5L V8 Duramax turbo-diesel powerplant it plans to use in the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra half-ton pickups, as well as the HUMMER H2. The new oil burner is expected to produce at least 310 horsepower and 520 ft-lbs. of torque. It features dual-overhead cams, four valves per cylinder, a variable-vane turbocharger and aluminum cylinder heads with integrated manifolding that helps keep the overall package small enough to fit in the same space...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA - idiot Algore causes global warming with his CADILLAC ESCALADEDFU | 7-3-06 | DFU Posted on 07/03/2006 10:04:20 PM PDT by doug from upland

CBS) LOS ANGELES A 70-year-old Tarzana man riding a bicycle Wednesday was struck and killed by an SUV, authorities said. Joseph Miller was riding in the 3500 block of Reseda Boulevard shortly before 9 a.m. when he was struck by an SUV driven by a woman who was uninjured, according to city fire official Brian Humphrey and Capt. Ed Winter of the county coroner's office. The circumstances of the death were under investigation.

Four teenagers were killed early Thursday morning when the stolen SUV they were in and a train collided. It happened in Baytown at Archer Road and Fleming around 3:30 a.m. According to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, six teenagers were in the stolen Jeep when the driver apparently did not see a Union Pacific train that had apparently been stalled on the tracks for some time. The SUV slammed into the tanker car at a high rate of speed and went under it into a ditch. Four people in the backseat, three girls and one boy ages 12 to 15,...

Vote due on gas-guzzler fees By Chris Bowman - Bee Staff Writer Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, June 7, 2007 Here's one way to combat global warming: Take $2,500 out of the pockets of new Hummer owners and give it to buyers of the Toyota Prius. That's essentially the proposal set for a vote today or Friday on the Assembly floor of the California Legislature. The same body that passed the nation's first law curbing climate-altering or "greenhouse" tailpipe exhausts is debating a system of fees and rebates to coax some of those emission cuts from new car buyers. The...

BOSTON (AP) - A Somerville man who was allegedly fleeing police when he crashed his car into a taxi -- killing a passenger in the cab -- is due in court today on a number of charges. Prosecutors say Javier Morales being chased by state police early Sunday morning when the SUV collided with the taxi. Killed was 23-year-old Paul Farris of Medford. The Tufts University grad was the lead singer in a Boston-based rock band and was planning to attend law school. Farris' girlfriend and the cab driver suffered serious injuries in the crash. The charges against the 29-year-old...