This past August I went to the AAA Auto show in Toledo, OH with my Dad, Uncle and two nephews. It was a beautiful day, even though rain was coming, and a good variety of cars. For some reason this show I took more detail shots than normal. Lots of neat details on old cars, like that Barracuda emblem above.
Check ’em out in my gallery.
Category: Cars and Driving
New Wheels
Wow, has it really been three weeks since my last post? Yikes. Well, life around here has been a little hairy. I’ll spare you the litany of stuff that’s happened (Hey, stuff happens to everyone, right?), but the biggie was the transmission slipping on our van as we came home from our memorial day camping trip. Turned out to be mostly due to a leak that was easily repaired, but our friend who’s the service manager at the local Acura dealer, said it didn’t it didn’t look healthy. Even though it ran fine after getting fluid in it, he recommended not towing with it again.
It was about 6-7 months early, but with a big trip planned for the end of June, the hunt was on for a replacement vehicle. On Tuesday, we traded out faithful Honda Odyssey for this:
It’s a 2010 Saturn Outlook XR. I had pretty much settled on one of the GM ‘Lambda’ crossovers (Chevy Traverse, GMC Acadia, Buick Enclave and Saturn Outlook) due to their combination of roominess, economy and towing capacity. The seating is nearly as roomy as our minivan and the cargo space behind the third row is double that of most 3 row SUVs (although half what the Odyssey had). At 17/24 MPG, it gives up only 1 MPG highway to the new Odyssey EX-L and actually beats the LX. It’s the towing that convinced me, though. The factory tow package comes with a larger cooling system, a larger alternator that will charge the trailer battery while driving, a dedicated ‘tow mode’ on the transmission that reduces shifts and provides more engine braking on hills and a 5,200 lb rating (1,700 lbs more than our Odyssey). The Odyssey always felt like it was near its limit, and I guess it was.
I really like the look of the Chevy best, but the Saturns were significantly cheaper. This Outlook was several thousand dollars cheaper than the comparable Traverses we looked at. I guess that folks must be wary of buying a Saturn since GM shut down the brand. I didn’t care, since under the skin it’s just like the others. The Outlook would have frankly been my last choice based on styling, but I’ll take the bargain.
As a result, this top trim XR was within our price range and it’s the best equipped vehicle we’ve ever owned. Leather seats, heated seats, remote start, power tailgate, 3 zone auto climate control, bluetooth and the tow package among other features. The Outlook was the only 2010 Saturn made and they were all sold to rental outlets. Ours has 12,000 miles on it and was built in September of 2009 and sold to the rental company in December. It’s certified, so we have a total of 42 months or 36,000 miles of factory warranty left.
I’m sad to see the van go, but I’m very happy with this new Saturn, Interesting that we would get the last model year Saturn made, we also owned the first year sold to the public, a 1992 Saturn SL2 (there were a few 1991s sold to, ironically, rental companies).
Oh, and I didn’t waste any time putting it to work. This is from today:
Van Fun
The Hemmings blog, in two posts, pointed me to some nifty van stuff this week. I generally like vans, the minivan in particular because it does so much well, but I also grew up during the custom van craze of the 70’s. I remember going to van shows in Southwyck Mall in Toledo (now gone) with my Dad. Check these out:
The first post led to this:
They found it at Big Blue’s Online Carburetor. Can you guess what it does? Here’s a video of one just like it in action:
I really want one, but the You Tube link says it’ll destroy your records. Still, how cool is that?
The second post pointed me to Vans and the places where they were, a photo collection of old custom vans. Check this one out:
Yeah, that’s a complete greenhouse from an 80’s Ford Escort grafted on top, complete with opening hatchback. Here’s another:
This van, unlike most of those at the site, is close to what folks were doing in the 70’s. Wild paint and custom windows. The later conversion vans were the the mass production outcome, but at first every one of them was a one off like this one.
Wear your Seat Belt
This video does a better job in about a minute and a half of explaining what seat belts do and why you should wear them than all the well thought out arguments of the last several decades combined. Powerful stuff, please watch.
HT: Autoblog
To the Woman on the Turntable
I just got back from the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit this past Saturday. It was a pretty slow show this year, a lot like last year. No Nissan. No Infiniti. No Porsche.
My biggest disappointment wasn’t the caliber of the show over all, it was the turntable personnel or “Booth Professionals”. There have always been attractive folks standing on the turntable with the show cars or new production cars. In the past, however, they were all dressed professionally and had something intelligent to say about the car next to them. This year, in the Chinese electric micro car maker CT&C’s booth and in the Chrysler area, the booth professionals were ultra skinny women wearing not nearly enough fabric and said absolutely nothing. Worse, they were relentless about staying with the cars and posing, making getting a shot of the actual vehicle with out them nearly impossible. Now, I like the female form as much as the next guy, but I take seriously what Jesus said about lust and adultery. Besides, I’m there to see the cars, not them.
Jalopnik today has a post from one of these ladies, well, at least someone who works in that capacity. She’s, for obvious reasons, not letting us know who she is or even if she’s actually working NAIAS this year, only that she’s a ‘Booth Professional’.
In her post, she takes guys to task, rightfully so, for treating her like another object to be added to the options list. She says:
The comments on this and other websites that publish ‘Girls of the Auto Show’ posts can be downright disgusting. Do you have a daughter? A sister? Wife? Mother? What would you do if a total stranger walked up to her and asked how much she charges for the evening?
… I don’t object to being a sex symbol. I object to objectification. When you ask me, even in jest, “Do you come with the car?”, do you know what you are implying? Let me fill you in: that I am nothing more than an accessory to be bought, like 20-inch rims or a stereo upgrade. It’s not cute, it’s degrading.
She’s absolutely right, too many guys go there, and for every one who says it out loud, I bet there are at least 10 that are thinking something like it in their mind. It’s disgusting, plain and simple and keeping it to yourself doesn’t make it a whole lot better. Guys, man up and treat her with respect. She is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, maybe even someone’s wife. If you can’t muster the cojones to do so, move on and go look at another booth.
She goes on to say that the way she dresses isn’t her idea, the marketing department dictates every last stitch. Now here’s where I’ve gotta challenge her. Look, no one put a gun to your head and made you take the job. They may have chosen the dress (and frankly, shame on them for that), you put it on. To think that all the guys will look at you in skin tight spandex and think happy thoughts about flowers and bunnies shows you to be very naive about the male psyche. Not to absolve them of the responsibility of treating you right, but to dress like that in a male dominated venue is a bit like opening a fifth of Jack Daniels at dinner with a recovering alcoholic and expecting him to stay sober. Sure, it’s his responsibility to stay clean, but you ain’t helping.
In case my comments above aren’t clear enough, nothing I’ve said here should be construed as meaning that guys have an excuse to lust. To be clear, I don’t care what she’s wearing (or not wearing), guys, you are responsible for keeping your thoughts pure. She’s still a child of God and as such should command your utmost respect. But, ladies, to paint on a dress and then complain when a man says or thinks something inappropriate, well, what did you expect? When you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.
Smashing Pumpkins
Yeah, there’s a band (or was) with that name, but I’m talking about the real thing.
Friday morning after trick or treating in our neighborhood Thursday night I awoke to find pumpkin shrapnel in my driveway. Seems some teenager had used out concrete as the weapon of choice against someone’s jack-o-lantern.
The mess I cleaned up was nothing compared to what the staff at Universal Studios had to clean up after Friday’s Conan O’Brian show.
Conan had the worlds biggest pumpkin guy on the show and they topped it off by bringing in the monster truck Grave Digger, ostensibly to crush it to get the seeds out. (Evidently, world record pumpkin seeds can bring $500 a piece. Who knew?)
The jump was perfect and the driver and Grave Digger creator, Dennis Anderson, was clearly having a lot of fun as he tramples the remains two more times.
An interesting side note is one of my High School classmates, Charlie Paukin, is also a driver for the Grave Digger team. I remember the modified high roller bike they talk about in his bio. He’s been driving monter trucks for a long time, I can remember the Excalibur truck that he started on being parked behind a house on Harrison Street in my home town back in the mid 80’s. Excalibur, I believe, was the first truck to beat the Ford Big Foot trucks back when they were the biggest name in the business.
HT to Autoblog for the YouTube link
A Lap of The Ring
Even tough I’m a car nut, I’m not usually keen on racing videos like this. Usually the thrill isn’t captured on video. This one, however, is awesome. It’s Michael Vergers’ stunning 6min 48sec lap of the famous Nurburgring, or simply ‘The Ring’, race track in Germany. A lap of The Ring has become the standard for measuring a performance car.
In this video, Michael Vergers completes one of only two sub 7 minute laps of the 12.9 mile track (he did the other one too) in a ‘production vehicle’. In fact, according to Wikipedia, only a handful of race cars have accomplished a sub 7 minute time either.
The track is relatively narrow and quite twisty. Several times at 100+ MPH he jumps the curbing or runs wide nearly into the grass. He hits speeds of 165 MPH and his time is an average of almost 114 MPH.. The position of the camera and the sound of the engine make this one incredible video.
Click full screen, turn up the volume and try not to smile.
HT – Michael Banovsky on Twitter.
Where Old Diesels Soldier On
One of the places we visited on vacation was The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, home of The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope as well as several others. The GBT is a 100 meter dish that’s able to be positioned to point at any place in the sky above 5 degrees. It’s huge and it’s awesome.
Because the telescopes on the property are radio telescopes and the GBT in particular is so sensitive, special restrictions are in place for the surrounding area. First, there’s a huge ‘National Radio Quiet Zone‘ covering a large part of south eastern WV and north western VA. Second, all electronic devices give off some kind of radio waves, so all cell phones and digital cameras had to be turned off once we left the main parking area of the Observatory. The picture above was taken at the max. zoom on my camera from the observation point.
One of the other restrictions that interested me was that only diesel vehicles are used on the property as the spark plugs in gasoline engines create interference. As a result, there were a fleet of neat old diesel vehicles around the property. I assume that they use these old cars and trucks because of the lack of computers that could cause interference, although the tour guide did say that they had a newer fleet as well.
This was our tour bus, an old 1984 MCI tour bus. It was a little worse for wear on the inside, and they made no attempt to identify it as a vehicle of the Observatory. Still wore the yellow stripes and orange seats of its former life. Simple and did it’s job.
Our friends who were with us had been here 11 years ago. They didn’t have a bus then (and the GBT was under construction), so the tour was conducted in these late 60’s diesel Chevy Suburbans and here are these nearly 40 year old trucks still in service. If you look to the left, half out of the frame, you’ll see a mid 80’s diesel VW pickup. I saw two diesel Rabbits there of the same vintage too.
At first I thought these were more Suburbans, just darker blue this time. But look closely, they are International Travelalls. The Suburbans were three doors (no rear door on the driver’s side), these have four. And that’s an International Scout pickup hiding behind those two.
The piece de resistance – a diesel Checker Marathon wagon. I gotta believe that not too many Checker wagons have survived, I wonder how many have diesels? If you can look past my grainy picture taken from a moving bus, it looks pretty darn solid, too.
There may have been other diesels, but I didn’t catch them.
Four Wheel Drive Corvette
I need to reclaim my blog’s manliness after over two weeks of purses (cool, automotive purses, but still – purses) at the top of the page. This ridiculous four wheel drive Corvette ought to do it.
Nothin’ brings a Tim Allen ‘Argh, argh, argh’ like a couple acres of polished diamond plate and monster mud tires on a Corvette.
I saw this thing pulling out of a neighborhood near my house and I immediately turned around and gave chase to capture a picture.
So what we have here is a late70s / early 80s Corvette mated to what, a Peterbuilt? Likely a GM truck chassis, actually. The 4WD Corvette of this era has been done before, but not to this level of, ahem, polish. I mean, wow, look at all that polished diamond plate!
Judging by the finished undercarriage and the massive cow catcher inspired front air dam (more polished diamond plate, naturally), this was not made to go mudding. I’m not sure why it was made, but I find it both ridiculously absurd and fully awesome.
I wish I had gotten a picture of that nose, it was a sight to behold. I tried, but the camera phone malfunctioned.
I’m hoping this guy lives in that neighborhood and isn’t just in town for the annual Good Guys hot rod show and was just turning around. If it’s local and lives nearby, I’ll likely see it again adn might get some better shots.
This is Either Cool or Tragic
Yes, it’s a purse. On my blog. Bear with me here for a minute.
Kim White was lucky to find an entire warehouse full of old unused auto seat fabric and bought the whole lot. Now, she uses it to make cool purses and handbags. Hey, I’m not a girl but what’s not to like about a back made from 1983 Camaro seats (in three color combos)?
The tragedy is that this fabric could have been used to fix up actual Camaro seats. Still, ain’t it cool?
If the Camaro is a bit much, maybe the one below is better. It was scheduled to cushion your fanny while driving your 1974 Plymouth Fury. Then there’s the 1975 Gremlin bag, the 1975 Pacer bag and more.
HT: Michael Banovsky at vLane
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