Spotted: Mud Truck (For Sale)

I spotted this truck recently while tooling around rural Michigan. $1,000 actually doesn't seem like a terrible deal, except for the blown engine part...

Not much of a bed... then again, that isn't the point of this truck!

Spotted: Amphicar

I took a road trip recently, and spotted this Amphicar on one of our fine Michigan beaches. Shortly after I snapped the first two photos, the owner hopped in with some guests, fired it up, and drove it down the boat ramp.

Equinox Quality Field Sample

I spotted this blue Chevy Equinox on the road recently, and I happened to have a camera with me.


GM can not afford to let these out of the plant, assuming it wasn't damaged later. Even a slight mis-alignment of door trim really ruins the perceived quality of a vehicle.

And how could she even stand to drive the car like that? I would feel nauseous.

Oops... Chrysler Techs Break Edison2 X-Prize Cars

In a blog post about the Progressive Automotive X-Prize, here, the sad tale of the coast-down testing at Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds is told.  The Chrysler test drivers who were to run the coast-down tests accidentally over-revved both of the Edison2 cars, which use sequential manual transmissions, and blew up the engines.

Also on the morning of Day 3, Edison2, TW4XP, and X-Tracer hit the proving grounds for their turn through Coast Down. On the straight-away of the test track, Edison2's Mainstream Class entries, vehicle numbers 97 and 98, were fielded. In both cases, as third party test drivers accelerated the vehicles to speed, a mechanical over-rev condition resulted in engine failures and the tests had to be aborted.

The fact that the Edison2 vehicles employ sequential transmissions may have contributed to the unintended downshift and subsequent mechanical over-rev condition that damaged the engines. In a typical racing configuration, the driver pulls rearword on the shift lever to shift up through the gears. This is opposite the convention used by many US automakers in their semi-automatic transmissions (like Chrysler's AutoStick), where manual upshifting is executed by pushing forward, away from the driver. Further, given that this is a competition vehicle, the automated software that would normally override an unintended downshift at speed or at high RPM is not yet perfected.

All was not lost however.  Since the point of coast-down testing is to coast the vehicle to measure its decelerating forces, an engine isn't needed except to get up to speed.  Chrysler was able to save the day for Edison2 by pushing their cars up to speed with another vehicle.

Video: Moscow Carnage

A distrubing compilation of wrecks from Russian traffic camera footage. Many of these look like they are serious injury or fatal accidents.

GM's European "Lifetime" Warranty

In Europe, GM is going to offer a "lifetime" warranty on its Opel and Vauxhall brands.  Except that lifetime is limited to 100,000 miles (160,000km).

Which begs the question, are EU GM cars only designed for a 100,000mi service life?

If I was GM, I'd stay away from marketing hyperbole.  Either make it unlimited miles, or don't call it lifetime  

Volt Architecture 201, Voltec Fiero Anyone?

Over at AutoBlog Green, Sam Abuelsamid* delves into the Volt's powertrain architecture, and why GM may have chosen not to have a mechanical path from the gasoline engine to the drive wheels.  It's worth a read.

Another reason that a gasoline-electric-battery-motor-road path makes sense is that it is easy in the future to replace the gasoline engine with some other sort of power source, without having to do as much re-engineering of the electric powertrain side of things.  For example, if GM wanted to package a diesel range extender for Europe, or drop the range extender completely, it would not be a radical re-engineering job.  Perhaps in the future, the gasoline I4 will be replaced with a hydrogen fuel cell stack, or a flux capacitor.  

Having no mechanical connection also allows for some packaging flexibility.  Though GM decided to package the 1.4L I4 in the traditional underhood location, in another application it might make sense to package the motor in the rear of the vehicle--Voltec Fiero, anyone?

*Props to Sam, who is an actual engineer, not just a news writer, he tends to understand his topics.