HOME |
RSS | 
The LA Times has a three-part series on used car dealers who make a great profit on old cars sold at high interest rates to people who can’t afford them, but have little choice.
In this little-known but fast-growing corner of the auto market, dealers command premium prices for road-worn vehicles and finance the sales at interest rates that can top 30%.
In a kind of financial alchemy, they have found a way to turn clunkers into cash cows and make money off the least creditworthy customers: the millions of Americans who are stuck in low-paying jobs, saddled with debt and unable to qualify for conventional auto loans.
For most of those people, having a car is the only way to stay employed, and they’ll accept almost any terms to get one.
Buy Here Pay Here lots sold nearly 2.4 million cars nationwide last year, up from 1.3 million a decade ago, according to CNW Marketing Research.
The mechanics of the business are laid out in the first part, and there is a link to today’s followup, with the conclusion to be posted on Thursday. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Lorena Iñiguez Elebee)
Charlotte Baker had a flat tire and pulled off to the side of the road between Byfield and Boddington in England. While the 28-year-old Baker, who is nine months pregnant, called her boyfriend for help, two men stopped and began to change the tire on her Porsche 911
But to Miss Baker’s disbelief, once he had finished he pushed past her, jumped into the front seat and drove off behind his friend in the white van.
She was left alone and distressed at the side of the road until an elderly man stopped and offered her a lift.
Miss Baker said: “The shock is starting to fade but now I am just reeling. It’s absolutely disgusting, these men have no morals.
It fuels your party, your buzz and your hangover the next day, but believe it or not tequila may soon be fueling your car. That’s because the agave plant extract used to make liquor can also be used to make an ethanol like alcohol which can serve as vehicle fuel, won’t interfere with food crops, and can even be grown in the desert. Someday, our cars may hit the bottle more often than we do, but at least it won’t be hitting our wallets very hard.
Link Image via Wikimedia Commons
General Motors built two or possibly three transparent automobiles to display at the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940. The Pontiac Deluxe seven-window touring sedan (B-body) from that project is going up for sale. In between, it’s been on tour all over the country, displayed at the Smithsonian, and owned by a private citizen. Get more details on this car at Hemmings Blog. Link -via Evil Mad Linkblog
Comments Off
When gasoline was rationed or nonexistent during World War II, many cars were converted to run on firewood. The trend is making a comeback of sorts as gas prices rise higher and higher. See some of these cars and find out how it’s done at Low-Tech Magazine. Link -via the Presurfer
When Ralph Nader wrote the book Unsafe at Any Speed, the US Government sat up and took notice. Highway deaths were unacceptably high, and someone had to do something about it. In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, a government program actually developed the RSV, a car that had many new safety features. The government tinkered with the design, the features, and tried to sell the idea of a safer car to the automobile industry and the public. What happened to this program? It’s a long story, but in the end, the RSVs were destroyed.
Then-NHTSA chief Jerry Curry contended the vehicles were obsolete, and that anyone who could have learned something from them had done so by then. Claybrook, the NHTSA chief who’d overseen the RSV cars through 1980, told Congress the destruction compared to the Nazis burning books.
“Junking those cars was a terrible idea,” said Kelley, who now teaches at Tufts medical school. “What is the benefit of keeping anything that’s historically important? The future wants to know more about the past, and when you destroy the past, you destroy the future’s access to knowing about it.”
“I thought they were intentionally destroying the evidence that you could do much better,” said Friedman.
Read the complete story at Jalopnik. Link -via Metafilter
The images in the video are “safe for work,” but the audio is of a 911 call with a lethal outcome, so those sensitive to such tragedies might consider leaving the video “under the fold.”
Toyota has released some advice re what to do in their vehicles if the accelerator pedal becomes stuck:
• If you need to stop immediately, the vehicle can be controlled by stepping on the brake pedal with both feet using firm and steady pressure. Do not pump the brake pedal as it will deplete the vacuum utilized for the power brake assist.
• Shift the transmission gear selector to the Neutral (N) position and use the brakes to make a controlled stop at the side of the road and turn off the engine.
• If unable to put the vehicle in Neutral, turn the engine OFF. This will not cause loss of steering or braking control, but the power assist to these systems will be lost.
• If the vehicle is equipped with an Engine Start/Stop button, firmly and steadily push the button for at least three seconds to turn off the engine. Do NOT tap the Engine Start/Stop button.
• If the vehicle is equipped with a conventional key-ignition, turn the ignition key to the ACC position to turn off the engine. Do NOT remove the key from the ignition as this will lock the steering wheel.
Another excellent source of advice is an article at Car and Driver about coping with unintended acceleration.
Via Reddit, where there is an informed discussion thread.
This is a great little video, an excerpt from Disney’s "Magic Highway USA", showing what people from the late ’50s thought would be the future of transportation.
It’s really neat to see how far we have come, and how far we haven’t. Some of the predictions have come to some manner of fruition, such as real-time traffic stats, navigation, and autodriving vehicles. While some are still pretty far out and "Far Out!" like atomic-powered and solar-powered cars.
– via techeblog
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by mjgolli.
It has been argued that dirty cars are more fuel efficient than clean ones for the same reason that dimples on a golf ball improve its aerodynamics during flight. The team at Mythbusters tested these hypotheses and found that a dirty car did NOT achieve improved gas mileage, BUT…
For a full-scale test, Adam and Jamie put a layer of clay on a car and did two more sets of runs on their track – one with a smooth clay surface, the other with dimples pressed into it. The respective fuel efficiencies were calculated as 26 and 29 miles per gallon. Although the original myth was invalid, the theory behind it was sound, leading to a final judgment of “Busted, Concept Plausible”.
Discussion threads on several auto forums discussing the Mythbusters episode note that “shark skin” textures on military fighter aircraft (and on America’s Cup yachts) serve the same purpose, that dimpling on the undercarriage of some Lexus cars reduces noise (by reducing friction), and that textured paint is banned on professional race cars.
Mythbusters achieved the dimpled effect using modeling clay applied to the surface of a Ford Taurus. It’s not clear whether the same effect could be achieved with a ball-peen hammer.
Screencap credit. A brief YouTube video of the car (not the full episode) is here.
What is it about Alameda, California, that attracts vintage (read: sometimes just old) cars? Is it the mild weather … or something else entirely?
Jalopnik has a neat feature called Down on the Street, which features snapshots of cars parked on the street. The Alameda series has more than 400 vintage cars and trucks:
Why does such a small city have so many old cars parked on the street?
Good question, and one to which I have no authoritative answer. I have some theories, which are:
[...]
* The Island That Time Forgot: Alameda is a weird place, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s essentially a David Lynch movie set in a sunny California climate, among Victorian and Craftsman architecture and a small-town mentality that belies its urban grid street pattern and very high population density. The island is full of old people who never cross a bridge, whose original-owner classics never drive faster than 25 and are used only for short trips to Ole’s Waffles or Lee Auto Supply. It’s also full of young people who start to feel that an old car just, you know, make the most sense. You never know what this town will do to you; Jim Morrison arrived on the island as a wholesome Navy kid, and by the time he departed for LA he’d become a dopefiend weirdo poet.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Buhandi.
