Chelli's Bentley

Yesterday, on Southfield Road, I pulled up next to a shiny black Bentley Azure convertible, like this one:


Driving it, slowly, and chatting on a cell phone was (if I recognized him correctly) Chris Chelios, the senior defenseman from the Red Wings, and owner of Chelli's Chilli Bar restaurants.

It doesn't really matter to me what our local celebrities drive, as I don't care much for celebrity one way or another, but it was neat to see a Red Wing and his wheels.

Japanese Precision Auto Stunts

From Break.com.


The Japanese Are Very Talented - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Spotted In Birmingham: Holden Crewman

I stopped by the Border's Books in Birmingham the other day, and found myself parked next to one of these, sporting an M-plate. Sorry for the stolen pics, I dont' have a cell phone camera.















It is a sharp looking car, outside and in. Some lucky engineer from GM probably got to drive it for evaluation purposes.

Sometimes, We Need Big Brother

Today, I had a near miss because an idiot in front me of me had exactly one of three brake lamps working. He also had near-black tint on his front windows (technically illegal in MI) and non-functioning hood pins. On a battered Mercedes 200-series!

I would not advocate emissions testing to qualify for vehicle registration, but I am thinking now that mandatory safety inspections may be a good idea.

Should we let people drive with bald tires? Dead brake lamps? Dead headlights? Undamped, bouncing wheels? Worn out brakes? Ridiculously high lift kits that could result in decapitations in a collision with another vehicle?

I'm all for individual freedom, up to the point when people's poor maintenance or poseur engineering endanger the others on the road.

Slip-sliding away, slip-sliding away...

"Domestic" auto sales (Chrysler + Ford + GM) have fallen below 50% market share, and are not likely to recover any time soon, if ever.

But market share doesn't so much matter; the important thing is for the domestics to be sustainable, profitable businesses at the size they wind up at.

How likely is this? It is hard to say. I personally think that GM and Ford are large enough that they might pull itoff, with concessions from the UAW, product updates, and relocating production of low-margin vehicles to low cost countries.

Chrysler, I think, is a tough problem, because they aren't strong enough to stand on their own. Whoever winds up with Chrysler will have to join into alliances with other automakers to keep Chrysler's product pipeline full. If Chrysler's new owner is only interested in making a quick buck, there is a real chance that most of the company will simply evaporate, as the valuable pieces are sold off.

The "elephant in the room" is the massive legacy cost of the pension and retiree health care obligations. These costs mean that the domestics are significantly underwater--for each vehicle they build, they have less money available to put into content. The problem seems intractable, and at some point it will have to be dealt with. Either retirees will be thrown under the bus, or we will see some of the largest bankruptcies in American business history.

Either way, it will be excruciating.

Where I Buy Volvo Parts

Every now and then, my Volvo breaks in some annoying little way... like the wimpy cupholders that slide out from the console lid, packaged like origami and about as strong.

I have two places that I usually use to buy replacement parts from, and neither one is the local dealer, who has a healthy mark-up on his parts (although they do have nice free breath mints and chocolates at the service counter).

The first is an outfit called FCP Groton, at www.fcpgroton.com. FCP has a good selection of tune-up and wear-out parts for Volvo and a number of other European nameplates. The prices are very good.

The other place I have been dealing with is www.getvolvoparts.com, which is an e-commerce site for an auto dealership in Rhode Island called Tasca Automotive Group. When I needed a secondary air valve recently, Tasca had a great price, and very friendly service. If you need help, you can call or email them and they will support you. Tasca has a very nice online parts catalog, where you can find just about any part on your Volvo.

* I am not being compensated for this plug in any way, I am just a happy customer.

Grindhouse!

I saw Grindhouse. Loved it. This is a typical Tarantino movie--vulgar, sharp dialog, well crafted. I think they just have used the m-----f---er about 1000 times. The fake movie trailers shown before each half are hilarious.

Tarantino's half of the double feature is "Death Proof", a car chase/revenge story about some stunt-girls who duel it out with a stunt man who gets his kicks stalking pretty girls in his big black muscle car. There is a lot of talking, which you don't mind much because there are four pretty girls doing the talking (interesting somewhat right-wing tangent on gun rights in one scene), followed by a pretty spectacular car chase. The car chase, supposedly was done with "real" cars, no CGI.

If you don't mind sitting through a (pretty funny) disgusting zombie movie to get to the car chase, and don't mind the word "m-----f---er", and understand Tarantino's idea of humor, then definitely go see it, you won't be disappointed.