The ruler prevails!!!

Yes, GM is continuing it's quest to make the Cadillac brand worth buying again. You have to  be pretty old or some sort of Soprano style gangster to relate the brand as top tier luxury but aiming to change this GM has unveiled this week at the North American Int. Auto Show a "racing car".  I admire the attempt but like the rest of GM's products to the american public, it lacks soul. Why do they insist on pushing this weird ruler only design style for so long, it's time to let it go, it's not as cool as they think. The car is sort of lame when you compare it to something like a A4 or C Class DTM, at first you look at it and go wow, then hmmm, and finally you just want to stop looking at it. It kind of looks like a funny car from the front, a case of bad car pimping all together.
But i'm all for a manufacture making a serious commitment to racing, even if their car seems like something  Lockheed Martin made on their spare time, so for that thumbs up for GM.


The production model on the other hand is something I still haven't made my mind yet, like most of GM's claims the "New standard of the world" is nonsense, adding Brembo brakes a Vette engine and tuning your car at the Nurburgring does not make your car the new standard of anything. They claim the car is so fast they had to add a spoiler, but in order not to damage the design, cough cough it's already ugly, they had the clever idea of making the center taillight a "spoiler", which honestly just sounds like the excuse the ruler happy designer told them in order to add a few more straight lines. But I have to admit, the Cadillac's are getting nicer and nicer, on the outside I would even consider one against a Mercedes or BMW if I was really feeling patriotic but GM still has a long way in restructuring their company before they change the core of their flagship brand to what it once was.

Nissan finds UFO and calls it NV,

Today I was reading some random useless Yahoo! News story, and as i'm skimming through the article sitting there on my upper right hand corner was this image. At first sight I figured it was a truck advert but upon closer examination I realized it was a rare species, it was a strange case of  Japtrucktus Uglyvanucus. 
 It looks as though Ford came out with it's cute eco-friendly Transit and Nissan decided to make a new choice for you Transit would be buyers. Problem is, it looks like shit. Feels like Nissan was too busy with it's ultra queer Leaf to bother actually making a new vehicle from scratch, so they just got one of their trucks and made it into an ugly van. I don't think they're going to get much out of this thing, I would buy a used Sprinter for the same price even if it had 100k miles or even a CNG Ford Econoline would make more sense.
I was trying to see what it reminded me of and the post from Jalopnik made it clear. It's the perfect taco truck.

Dear Nissan, please try again.

Bullitt

This week I was going through Netflix and found a few movies from a list of " Awesome car chase movies". The grand daddy of all car chases to date remains the classic "Bullitt" with no one else but Steve McQueen. The movie itself is boring, no really it kind of drags, the plot has that 60's era we're-so-cool your going to be interested in our long monologues thing going on. But you can sense the movie has some connection to cars, even before the great chase, every street shot of San Francisco has some nice cars parked along the road, Mustangs, Vette's, Austin Healey, AM DBS, SS Chevelle, Bentley, McQueen's girl has a sweet ass Porsche 356 cabriolet and even the ambulance is a Cadillac Superior. I'm not sure if LeMans is imprinted on my brain but to me McQueen seems much more like a racing driver than a Cop, the entire time i'm thinking he's gonna put on a jumpsuit, strap on a fiberglass helmet and drive the Mustang to the track. (Go see Clint Eastwood for good Cop movies). By the time the chase starts I was already snoozing as far as the plot goes but in a nice 60's car nostalgia state ready for the action, the scene is awesome, some say overrated but there is just this realistic touch that you don't see in Fast and Futile type movies today. Sure they show the shot of the two cars going by the green FuscaBug about 20 times from a billion angles, and as another commentator said, McQueen upshifts the car so much he could be in 16th gear, but that seems standard in Hollywood, somehow cars can always find an extra gear. So my recommendation is see it, pay attention to the cars and enjoy the sound of pure american muscle cars getting some air on the hills of San Francisco.

Merry xmas!

Das Neue Jetta

For the past few weeks i've been hearing more and more about the new Jetta. I keep seeing adverts saying "great for the price of good" and I was really curious as to how in the world the Germans managed to make such a great car for such a low price. Today I read an article and got the full scoop on whats going on with our beloved Jetta.

Usually a car manufacture improves it's models year after year and the cars get more and more refined, just look at a Nissan Altima from the 90's and one today, but apparently the creative Germans are on a quest to beat the  plain ol reliable Corolla even if that means going against the natural laws of "Carwinism" and making the "new" less capable than the old. In one way i'm disgusted, and I feel people are going to be pissed off after they realize  their friend with the old basic model has 55 extra horsepower than they will have with a brand new one.

But on the other hand i'm proud to see Volkswagen tone things down back to the beetle years in which you got a great piece of german engineering for a great price. No one complained about a bug not having ac, or power steering but people around the world loved the reliability, rear wheel drive and mechanical simplicity that came with the bug. That's what made VW be the brand it is, not Phaetons and V10 Touaregs. And lets face it, who would chose a Corolla when you can get a VW? 

The Chevy Cruze might be a threat to Volkwagen's ambitious plans but I personally believe that as with the Camaro and the Volt Chevy is once again late with their product.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

I've been hearing people saying America is collapsing and that it's the end of the dollar, and that the empire is coming to an end. I never really believed anyone, always thought the "american spirit" would always bounce us right back up and the Dow would rally once more and we could look down on the Euro again. But
after reading an article about "The 16 cars that saved Detroit" I found out that the Fiat 500 will be making it's ways to the good o'l US of A early next year. First it was the Japanese introducing small cars to our streets and highways, then came the Koreans, then oil went to $ 140.00 a barrel and everyone got rid of their SUV'S, then Chrysler and Wall Street went kaput. I could have seen all that and still said it's just a downturn.
But there is just something spooky about a 500 making it's way to America. While Ford is introducing the new Fusion to Brazil, the Chinese are trading their bicycles for Buick's we're getting the 500 from Europe? There are other signs too, the Explorer is no longer a truck but a wannabe SUV sharing a chassis with the minivan mutant Flex, GM will have to have it's shares rise to over $100 before it's no longer owned by uncle sam, and it's easiser to spot a Mini cooper than the Schwarzenegger endorsed Hummer in your neighborhood.

Let's face it, we are turning in to Europe and the emerging countries are turning into us, at least in car terms that's the feeling. But there is hope, with cars becoming smaller there is money left over to actually make them nicely equipped and more refined. Sure we might not be as comfortable, and might not pull off from a red light so quickly but we can all lose a little weight and it sure beats trying to "hypermile" our gas guzzlers by drafting behind semi's. Think of it, you don't have a V6 or V8 but now you don't have to buy an expensive import to have turbo with the same power.
 If  as a country we end up making our way back up to numero uno and don't throw away our good judgement by favoring size over quality  we could end up with quite a nice automotive menu and unlike Europe, actually have money leftover to fuel them.

Hello everyone,

I'm completely new to blogging and finally decided to give it a shot. I have no idea what I want this to be about. Maybe some rambling, maybe I'll go on about what's right for the country or perhaps the world, maybe I'll find the fountain of youth and post the map free of charge. Maybe it will be something for you to read when you should be working, studying, or calling your mother. Maybe it will improve my grammar, or just a past time for insomnia perhaps even teach you about your car.
But that's enough for the first post, you get the idea that I obviously don't have any idea about what I want to do with this.

Goodbye