With an eye still firmly on gift giving as we are now a mere 12 days from the Big Holiday (11 if you exchange gifts on Big Holiday Eve) let’s talk Hot Wheels. Yep, every car junkie’s first tiny car turns 40 this year. Was it really 1967 when me and my next door neighbor […]
Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Shorty
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If you have an car-gadget lover on your Christmas list and not a clue what to buy for him or her, look no farther than Amazon’s list of best-selling items in the mega online retailers automotive department. Currently the top ten items on the list (all of which were in stock as of the writing […]
Posted on December 11th, 2007 by Shorty
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As a child I used to watch the man at the local gas station remove the dip stick from my Dad’s Ford pick-up, clean it off with the filthy rag in his hip pocket, then replace and remove it again to check the level of the oil. Sometimes he’d deem it acceptable and sometimes he’d […]
Posted on December 1st, 2007 by Shorty
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Some people may be looking forward to the opening of the Tokyo Auto Show next week for the new models we’ll actually see hit the road. Me? I’m a sucker for the concept cars. The ones I really, really, really want to see hit the road — knowing they probably never will.
Toyota will be showing […]
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Shorty
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I’ve run into a number of articles lately discussing the danger nearly silent hybrid vehicles present to the blind. Last night I had the interesting experience of actually listening to a Prius for the first time. I was walking into the grocery store and heard a buzzing sound I didn’t recognize. Glancing up I realized […]
Posted on October 2nd, 2007 by Shorty
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October 1 marks a pretty significant day in the history of automobiles. On that day in 1908 the first Model T Ford came chugging out of the company’s plant in Detroit. The first of more than 15 million built over the next 20 years. By 1913, the assembly-line process was so refined that a single […]
Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Shorty
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Dailyfueleconomytip.com ran an interesting story on the 24th summarizing the results of a GasBuddy.com poll on monthly fuel expenditures. Here’s the gist of the thing:
- 6% less than $50
- 20% between $51-$100
- 33% between $101 and $200
- 21% between $210 and $300
- 11% between $301 and $400
- 9% more than $400
Okay, if I was spending […]
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Shorty
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For some time I’ve been saying that to really reach a green relationship with our automobiles we need to redefine what those vehicles mean in society. I haven’t been quite ready to give up my ride and start hoofing it, however, but I have been trying to drive more intelligently — planning the shortest routes […]
Posted on September 26th, 2007 by Shorty
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Maybe it’s just my age. I grew up in a world where people knew the movie line about plastics from The Graduate and I remember being severely chastised for putting plastic in our first microwave . . . which was in fact the first microwave period in the small West Texas town where I grew […]
Posted on August 21st, 2007 by Shorty
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Okay, I stay away from politics as a topic of discussion with a purple passion, but I do think it’s worth noting the new political cachet of hybrid tech. These days if you’re running for office or married to someone running for office, you don’t want to be caught driving the wrong thing.
Bill Clinton, for […]
Posted on August 17th, 2007 by Shorty
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