Monday February 8, 2010

Throttlegate: While I was on vacation, the whole Toyota Unintended Acceleration Thing exploded in the media. There is apparently a mechanical fault with binding accelerator pedals on some cars, depending on the model and the component supplier (Denso good, CTS perhaps not good).

Every time I turned on an LA television station, there was some coiffed airhead holding a microphone standing in front of a Toyota dealership saying how awful, dangerous and/or inconvienent it all is. Except when there had been a big accident on a Freeway. Or a murder, which usually involved a knife and a perp with a name ending in 'z' - Hernandez, Menendez, Lopez, Ramirez, etc. And a lot of yellow police tape.

Toyota's January sales tanked as a result of bad publicity and the company's decision to stop selling affected models until the problem is resolved. Toyota's sales dropped 16% during a month which saw gains of 24% for Ford and 22% for Hyundai. Toyota estimates recall costs to be $2 billion or so.

The problem has been exacerbated by U.S. Transportation Secretary - and idiot - Ray LaHood, who said that owners of Toyota vehicles recalled for accelerator-pedal defects should "stop driving" them and bring them to a Toyota dealer for repair. "We need to fix the problem so people don't have to worry about disengaging the engine or slamming the brakes on or put it in neutral." LaHood later retracted the remarks but the damage was done.

LaHood is already on record wanting to force everyone to use bicycles or light rail - 'Transformational Behavior' he calls it - and, as a gummint employee, he represents the interests of Government Motors (Chrysler and GM doncha know) which happen to be Toyota competitors. Plus our president is beholden to the UAW thugs who helped get him in the White House in the first place. Naturally, the UAW hates non-union Toyota and would love to see it sink below the waves.

Conspiracy anyone?

Writing in Forbes, veteran auto scribe Jerry Flint opined, "The company is under unprecedented attack by the U.S. government - never has a Secretary of Transportation told Americans not to drive anyone's cars or demanded a factory shutdown. It's taking on the appearance of a vendetta - after all, the government hasn't told General Motors to shut its Chevrolet Cobalt car factory in Ohio although there certainly seems to be a problem with power steering."

With tongue firmly in cheek, Justin Berkowitz reported that "Ford is advising Toyota on how to blame Firestore for gas pedal recall." Toyota is apparently looking at a number of stories, including "the gas pedals are made from Firestone's rubber" to "the tires forced the gas pedals to the floor."

I don't have a dog in this fight. Our 2005 Avalon (which appears to have a CTS-made pedal) is on the recall list but we haven't gotten any official notification from Toyota yet. We've experienced no problems with throttle response and our factory floor mats are straight, flat and true.

Nevertheless, I am in favor of firing LaHood, eliminating all federal light-rail funding and reducing the DOT budget by 90%. I would point out that - in the past year - far more people have been killed or maimed by mass transit than by sticky gas pedals.

"Lucy, You Got Some 'Splainin' To Do." Dan Neil has described the sound the sound of the 2010 Suzuki SX4 SportBack at high revs: "Imagine Lucy Ricardo stomping grapes in the vineyard, only the barrel is full of cats." On the other hand, "At any point under 4,000 rpm this engine is bereft of twist. If you attempt to take off from a stop in second gear, the car has the acceleration of a Russian novel."

In related news, Pulitzer-winning auto writer Neil is leaving the bankrupt LA Times and will be joining the Wall Street Journal as its automotive columnist, starting in spring.

I Am The Walrus; They Are The Corpsemen: Last week, President Barack H. Obama, in remarks about Haiti read from his ever-present TelePrompTer, made three references to a Navy corpsman, pronouncing it "corpse-man." Remember that this man is the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces.

Had this been a George W. Bush (or Sarah Palin ... or Dan Quale) mispronunciation, the mainstream media would have made it a front page story. But not in the Alternate Universe of Obama: "I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob." (permalink)

It's Over: The much-publicized Obama Store in Washington's Union Station has closed. "This Valentine's Day, visitors to Union Station who had hoped to express their love for a significant other with a $20 pink T-shirt of Barack and Michelle Obama in a heart-shaped picture commemorating the 'Presidential Romance' ... may now be unable to do so."

Maybe the store should have applied for one of those shovel-ready stimulus grants. (permalink)

I'm Picturing This Floating Over Portland: "Imagine ... a "Peace Blimp"- defiantly displaying a message of peace across the skies of the nation, unable to be dismissed, ignored or brushed aside. Rallies for peace greet the blimp in every city it visits. Politicians, celebrities, movie stars, athletes, war veterans and peace activists make the call to bring our troops home by boarding the blimp for a ride. Crowds flock to the events and are educated about the war. With each stop along the tour the momentum for peace grows from a dull roar into an undeniable fervor until the seemingly endless wars come to an end."

"Please join us March 20, 2010 for the largest online monetary war protest in history. Our goal is to bring together 100,000 people to donate $10 each (minimum), creating a one day total of millions to fly the Peace Blimp until we the people force our government to end this war."

For some reason, this 1936 photo came to mind.

Fish Kill: The Salem, OR-based McGrath's Fish House chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The firm has no plans to close any of its 20 locations in six states. McGrath's management blamed the recession.

Headline Of The Week ... so far: 'Anger management counselor pulls gun on men in parking dispute.' The two guys he believed were blocking his car turned out to be federal marshals. Oops.

Oh Wait, Here's A Better One ... from the Seattle Weekly: 'Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination.' It seems the cheerleading coach "instructed him he couldn't gyrate his hips like the girls do and the athletic director allegedly suggested he be the team mascot."

Look on the bright side - he could have also been a wheelchair-bound midget.

Global Warming Update: A monster, record-breaking snowstorm hammered much of the mid-Atlantic states, "with high winds and double-digit snowfall totals that downed wires, canceled flights and brought ground traffic almost to a halt." Depending on location, 20-36 inches of snow fell on parts of Ohio, Maryland, Deleware, Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC.

Dulles International Airport recorded a record-topping 32.4 inches of white stuff. "Flights from Reagan National and Dulles International airports were canceled "until further notice," the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said on its website. Hundreds of thousands of customers across the region had lost electricity and more outages were possible because of all the downed power lines."

Philadelphia International Airport experienced major delays and cancellations with almost 27 inches of snow reported. The storm/blizzard was the biggest February snowfall on record for Philadelphia. Wind gusts of more than 45 mph created low visibility and near white-out conditions for the area. This marks the first time in the history of recordkeeping, dating to 1884, that Philadelphia has had two snowstorms of this magnitude in the same season.

Paging Al Gore.

Quote Of The Day is from Thomas Sowell: "We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past."

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Friday February 5, 2010

Trip Report: We have completed a two-week vacation in southern California. There were spectacular sights to see and we returned home with lots of great memories - visual, culinary and historic.

When we arrived in Palm Springs, it was colder and wetter than it was at home. There was a lot of flooding - more rain had fallen in the desert in five days than in the last year - but, after a few days, the rain abated and the sun came out. That's when I doffed my legendary miracle hat.

We attended several musical performances, had some great meals and enjoyed visits with friends.

After a week in the desert, we drove to Los Angeles. We visited the famous Santa Monica Pier, the Getty Museum (too much to see in one day but the hillside automated tram from the parking garage to the museum provides spectacular views of LA), the Petersen Automotive Museum (there were a lot of new displays to admire, including a special exhibit on California Car Design and the Gilmore-modified 'Topper car'), the La Brea Tar Pits, the Nethercutt Museum (there are 355 gorgeous cars in the collection now; the Royal Hudson steam locomotive and private railroad car are now open for inspection), the LA Farmers Market and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

On a sunny Friday morning, we drove the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu to Montecito and Santa Barbara. We had a pleasant lunch at the Four Seasons Biltmore with an ocean-view table.

We thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend the three-hour LA Dearly Departed Tour, which showcased famous murders, celebrity scandals, significant movie locations and stars' homes.

The tour made a bathroom stop ... at the public restroom where pop star George Michael was arrested for soliciting other men. We were given a copy of the police report as a 'souvenir'.

Early one afternoon, we treated ourselves to lunch at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. We saw rap mogul Russell Simmons twice - once in the bar and again in the lobby of the hotel. (Maybe he was stalking us.) Simmons, the co-founder of the pioneering hip-hop label Def Jam, has created several fashion clothing lines and is reportedly the fourth richest figure in hip-hop.

By the way, the cherries in the Polo Lounge's Manhattans are the best I've ever tasted. And I've been drinking Manhattans for over 50 years.

The Reagan Library was memorable; it has been substantially expanded since my last visit eight years ago. Ronald Reagan, a man I greatly admired, was alive back then. This time, we paid our respects at his tomb.

Overall, we had a very enjoyable trip but I don't know if we'll ever return to LA - too much traffic and stress. We're used to a slower pace. And the place was full of rude, pushy, non-English-speaking Asians who arrived at attractions by the busload. The Freeway traffic was awful - at least three times worse than my last visit in 2002.

Car Sightings: In the desert, the most popular luxury brand was Lexus by a large margin, followed by Mercedes and BMW. Cadillac was a distant fourth, followed by Jaguar (mostly old ones, although LA was full of recent XFs), Infiniti and finally - and waaaay down - Lincoln. We didn't see many exotic cars in the Palm Desert area this year. I'm not sure if it was the less-than-perfect weather or the far-from-perfect economy.

The Beverly Hills Hotel valet lot was packed with Lexi, Benzes and Bentleys along with a Rolls Royce or two ... and a late-1960s Series II silver Jaguar 2+2 E-Type. Saw a lot of awesome cars driving along the streets during our LA visit, including several Lamborghinis, a few $420,000 McLaren Mercedes coupes, numerous Ferarris, a flame-painted '32 Ford roadster with a huge GMC blower perched atop ta big V8 engine, numerous Audi R8s and new and surprisingly ugly Porsche Panamera sedans and a rare BMW Z8 roadster.

I visited some dealerships in Palm Desert and got to sit in an Audi R8 mid-engine sports car. There was plenty of room for me once I got in but the door was cut so damn low that I'd surely need a neck brace after a week of getting in and out. The interior was black, silver and carbon fiber - very trendy and Teutonic.

The new Porsche sedan actually looks worse in person than in photos. The style lines clash and the back end can only be described as "unfortunate."

Speaking of hideous cars, I got a good look at the new Cadillac CTS-4 Sport Wagon. What a design mess. The vehicle is very angular but its angles are all wrong. It seems like the car was drawn by a hyperactive, myopic six year-old using nothing but a ruler and flat-edged mechanical pencil. The front license plate mount is too tall for the blank nose bar and overlaps awkwardly. The nosepiece was apparently designed for European plates, not American ones. This is epically stupid; Cadillac sells - what? - 32 cars per year in Europe. As I walked around a parked example, I kept asking myself, "What the hell were they thinking?"

On the other hand, I saw several new Buick LaCrosse sedans. The design is attractive and compelling. If the car had a Lexus badge, it would probably sell like hotcakes.

Car Rental: Our big silver Chrysler 300 sedan was very comfortable, peppy and handled quite well (those Mercedes underpinnings really make a difference). The interior wasn't particularly luxurious but the car was rattle-free and seemed to be well assembled - a pleasant surprise considering all the bad things I've read about Chrysler's quality. At 16,000 miles, the dashboard had developed a small blister ... otherwise the car was fine.

It was a good freeway cruiser and got an uninspiring 20 mpg on regular gas. I didn't care for the chopped-top effect. The small windows made it tough to see stoplight changes when first in line at a traffic light. Combined with the dark interior, near-claustrophobic conditions were created on overcast days.

Trip Photos: I have posted photos, grouping them into five different categories:

1. Southern California scenery

2. Getty Center Museum

3. Reagan Presidential Library

4. Petersen Automotive Museum

5. The Nethercutt Collection & Museum - five pages of cars (and a locomotive) starting here

Enjoy!

Quote Of The Day is from Larry the Cable Guy: "Change is inevitable, except from vending machines."