The victims Saturday were returning to Chinatown on a chartered bus from the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn. Some on board described grisly scenes of mayhem: at least one person decapitated, others maimed, people hanging upside down, victims gashed by flying glass, screaming in the darkness and struggling to get out. Some were thrown out on the ground, others were trapped in a maze of metal.
The driver, Ophadell Williams, 40, told the police that his bus, which was roaring south on the Interstate 95, was clipped by a passing tractor-trailer, which sped away, an assertion that was later under investigation. Out of control, the bus began swerving, toppled on its right side and skidded for 100 yards along a guardrail in showers of sparks, then rammed into the support pole of a large green sign pointing to the Hutchinson Parkway exit.
The pole burst through the front window and sheared the bus in half laterally, from front to back, along the passenger window line, the police said. Firefighters found a section of guardrail inside the shattered bus interior. Aerial pictures showed scenes of carnage and chaos as police emergency service and medical teams converged in a bedlam of wailing sirens and flashing lights.
Toyota, Volvo Trucks, Honda, Nissan, and Subaru plants in the north have shut down. Mazda, Suzuki, and Mitsubishi were spared though suppliers could be affected.
A death was reported at a Honda R&D facility.
Affected vehicles may include, but are not limited to the Toyota Yaris, Scion XB, Scion XD, Honda Fit, Honda Accord, and some Acuras. Fires suspended production of the Infiniti M and Nissan GTR.
Cars ready to be loaded on ships for export parked in Hitachinaka City:
Vehicles crushed by a collapsed road at a parking lot in Yabuki:
Below: Fishing boats and a van at Onahama Port
A sidewalk and parking lot shifted upward:
Cars swept by the tsunami:
——————————————————————
The disaster’s impact on Japan’s economy, the third-largest in the world, drove crude oil prices down to $100/barrel, providing modest relief after weeks of unrest in the middle east.
In 2012 you’ll be able to rent a Saturn Vue but it won’t be a Saturn. Instead, it will carry a Chevy bowtie on its chest and bear the name “Captiva,” but you won’t be able to buy one at a dealership. This is, other than the badge, a full clone of the Saturn Vue, known in other parts of the world as an Opel Antara, and its available only to fleets. Darn, I really wanted one too. [Sarcasm]
———————————————————————-
GM press release:
DETROIT – Chevrolet will introduce the Captiva Sport, a new entry to the U.S market, later this year to help satisfy growing demand for compact crossovers by fleet customers. The Captiva Sport is a variant of the globally successful Chevrolet Captiva compact crossover.
Variants of the compact crossover are sold in more than 50 markets across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Middle East and South America. The U.S.-specific version will give fleet customers a contemporary five-seat crossover with a comprehensive range of features and amenities, and will also address their need for roominess, utility and fuel efficiency.
“It says a lot about our ability to draw on international programs and proven, quality crossovers that we were able to identify and federalize a strong new entrant such as Captiva Sport for the U.S. market,” said Alan Batey, U.S. vice president, Chevrolet Sales and Service. “We turned to our global network for a solution to quickly meet the rising demand from local fleet customers and continue to meet strong retail demand for the Equinox.”
The Captiva Sport will be available for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2011, as a 2012 model.
The Chevrolet Equinox continues to show strong retail sales growth, with retail sales up 98 percent in February compared with the same month last year. Chevrolet expects sales retail sales to remain strong, in part due to its 32 mpg highway fuel economy rating, higher than the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, or Ford Escape.
The Captiva Sport features either an Ecotec 2.4L direct-injected four-cylinder or 3.0L direct-injected V-6 engine – each matched with a fuel-saving six-speed automatic transmission. Because the crossover is based on a proven GM global architecture, only minor revisions are required to meet federal standards, allowing Chevrolet to fast-track the Captiva Sport for the United States.
The Captiva Sport will be offered in LS and LT models, with four trim packages, including an all-wheel-drive model (LTZ). All models feature 17-inch aluminum wheels, XM Satellite Radio, six-speaker sound system, four-wheel disc brakes with antilock, traction control, StabiliTrak electronic stability control, air conditioning, power locks and windows (with driver’s express down) and remote keyless entry.
Uplevel LT and LTZ models include the V-6 engine (with dual exhaust), along with OnStar and Bluetooth phone connectivity. A rear-view camera and leather trim package – including leather-trimmed and heated front seats – are standard on LTZ and available on other trims. The LTZ trim also includes a 10-speaker sound system and a sunroof.
“The range of features offered by the Captiva Sport is as rich as any Chevrolet vehicle,” said Batey. “Our fleet customers will find it to be a versatile vehicle that gives them the cargo capacity they need, in a fuel efficient package that will help keep their ownership costs in check.”
At the core of the Captiva Sport is a European-inspired driving character, with a stiff, steel body-frame integral structure complemented by a MacPherson strut independent front suspension and independent multi-link rear suspension. An isolated engine cradle enhances quietness and contributes to a smooth ride.
Standard on all models are four-wheel antilock disc brakes, traction control and StabiliTrak electronic stability control– systems that work together to provide outstanding vehicle control.
In addition to handling features such as StabiliTrak that help drivers avoid crashes, the Captiva Sport helps protect occupants with its high-strength steel structure and a long list of standard occupant-protection safety features. Dual-stage front-seat air bags, front-seat side thorax air bags and rollover capable head curtain air bags covering front and rear rows are standard on all models.
Other standard safety features include front-row safety belt pretensioners, Pedal Release System that decouples the brake pedal in a crash to avoid injuries, active head restraints, tire pressure monitoring system, automatic power door locks and side turn signal lamps.
Should you care? Probably not, but in case you approach the counter at Enterprise and ask for a small SUV and they say “We have something called a Captiva,” this is what it is.
With Saturn gone, this unequivocally cements Chevrolet’s position as the “Heartbeat of America,” err, Mexico, which is where this is built.
Australia is roughly the size of the continental United States with just under 15% of our population (21 million). This combination of undeveloped vastness and rural sparseness introduces cost, distance, and efficiency problems. Overwhelmingly, the Aussies have chosen road trains, tractor-trailers more than four times the length of American tractor-trailers.
Road trains reach rural areas not served by rail and have the ability to cross unpaved or even flooded stretches of road.
Training and licensing are heavily regulated, and legal speeds are limited to 62mph. Most cities in Australia disallow road trains from driving on local roads, so most are loaded and connected outside of town with standard trucks that carry goods into and out of the city.
Road trains longer than four trailers are typically operated on private property, usually in quarries and mines.
The world record for length is held by John Atkinson, who pulled 113 trailers with an unmodified 620hp Mack Titan cab. To qualify for the Guinness Record, the 2,865,980 lb load had to be pulled 328 feet under its own power. The total length was just under a mile.
For perspective, imagine a truck that stretched almost the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge:
If this truck was moving at 60mph and you attempted to overtake it at 70mph, it would take you ten minutes.
If you’re a regular at Jalopnik, you’re probably annoyed with the new layout that’s been applied to all Gawker Media blogs. Gawker’s web traffic is down 30% after the disastrous change.
“Fuck” has little impact in a digital world of Tubes and Twits and Books of Faces and such, but in a major corporation’s official communication medium, in this case Chrysler’s Twitter account, its enough to get a “fucker” fired.
The now-unemployed sap who tweeted it worked for New Media Strategies, the firm hired by Chrysler to handle its online branding and marketing. He made the career-ending mistake of posting the following:
Well, that is rather ironic. He says he intended to post that on his personal Twitter account rather than sharing it with Chrysler’s 8,000 followers on Twitter. Oops.
Chrysler says their primary complaint wasn’t the use of the f-word. Rather, they took offense to the anti-Detroit sentiment behind his Tweet, which reflected poorly on the company’s newly cultivated “Imported from Detroit” image.
Chrysler, headquartered in the distant and quiet suburb of Auburn Hills, is spending millions in advertising to remind the public of its connection to Detroit. This comes after a miserable decade of being shackled up in a badly mislabeled “merger of equals” with Daimler-Benz, with ads that once declared the greatness of American creativity backed by German engineering.
General Motors said Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell will leave a little more than a year after joining the U.S. automaker from software giant Microsoft.
Liddell, 52, will leave GM on April 1. He joined the company in January 2010 and saw it through its record initial public stock offering last November.
“I came to General Motors to be part of something great,” Liddell said in a statement. “My objective was to help rebuild this iconic company.”
Liddell left Microsoft, where he was CFO, in November 2009 to look for a bigger job. When he joined GM he was seen as a well-regarded outsider who could possibly succeed then-Chief Executive Ed Whitacre when he stepped aside.
Microsoft said when Liddell left that he was looking at opportunities to “expand his career beyond being a CFO.”
However, last August Dan Akerson, 62, was named CEO, immediately leading to industry speculation Liddell would eventually leave.
“The decision to leave was Chris’,” GM spokeswoman Lori Arpin said. “He came here to be CFO and with the company on proper footing, he decided that it was the right time personally and professionally to pursue other opportunities. He has not announced his future plans yet.”
Executives from outside industries are eager to try the auto business, figuring “I can’t do any worse than these guys.” They find out the hard way that it’s unique, with an intensely competitive global operating environment and customers with ever-higher demands. Success in software or telecommunications doesn’t always translate into an understanding of the issues facing Detroit.
While China enjoys a refreshed SLS sedan, the American STS is ending production at the end of 2011. Chinese media are inaccurately reporting the SLS (a long-wheelbase Chinese-only version of the Sigma-based STS) as the world’s first turbo four-cylinder Cadillac.
Did you notice the T-series badge at the end of the ad?
The first four-cylinder turbo Cadillac was actually the BLS, a Saab-based front wheel drive compact car built in Sweden for the European market. Even the switchgear came from Saab, while the 2.0L turbo Ecotec is a GM staple, available in everything from the Cobalt to the 9-3 Aero. The Ecotec even powers the Ariel Atom. The BLS is front wheel drive while the bigger STS and SLS are rear and all-wheel drive.
Below: Cadillac BLS
The small BLS was supposed to help the brand expand into Europe, but only a few thousand of them sold.
Europeans typically think of Cadillacs as tail-finned post-war dream cruisers or drug dealer Escalades with nothing in between. The BLS hardly fit into the brand’s image and with its small dealer network, it had little reason to exist. Of the three million cars sold in Germany each year, just under 300 were Cadillac BLSes. There was nothing particularly bad about the car, but it was rather pointless in such a crowded and competitive market with so many well-established brands with better cars.
But I digress…
China’s SLS is a different car entirely, aimed squarely at the Chinese luxury market where the wealthy pay someone else to do the driving. In America, a car is an extension of your personality and an expression of what you’ve achieved, and being seen in the driver’s seat as the captain of your ship is a favorable thing. For the Chinese, with brutal traffic jams that sometimes last days, luxury cars are intended for rear passengers. The SLS takes the Sigma-based STS’s wheelbase and adds a few inches to improve rear passenger comfort, and the interior receives additional wood trim, a revised center stack, and a rear center console with audio and climate controls.
Below is the interior of the Chinese SLS:
Notice the beautifully trimmed rear center console with climate and audio controls. The American STS didn’t receive the updated front center console and center stack until 2008; the Chinese SLS got it in 2007. At one point, there was a glimmer of hope that China’s SLS would be produced and sold here, but the American STS carries on through 2011 without rear controls or additional leg room. With its extended wheelbase and longer roofline, China’s SLS looks long and sharp — a proper successor to the Cadillac Seville.
As for the new engine...
This is the same “LNF” 2.0L direct-injected turbo found in the 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP, 2007 Saturn Sky Redline, and Chevy Cobalt SS producing 260hp and 265lb-ft of torque, impressive numbers for a small engine. The Chinese SLS still has the option of 3.0L (272hp) or 3.6L (310hp) direct-injected V6 engines. The 320hp Northstar V8 is gone.
America is unlikely to see this engine in a large or midsize Cadillac sedan, but rumors are swirling that the upcoming compact Cadillac ATS could receive the option of a turbo-4, a direct-injected 3.6 V6, or a small-block V8 for the ATS-V. With the STS disappearing this year, and the DTS pushed on through 2012, we Americans will not see anything new from Cadillac until the 2013 XTS arrives in late 2012.
With Cadillac drifting aimlessly in the wind, “Break Through” seems like a distant memory.
Remember the 90s? Retro was back — baby boomers who conveniently forgot about segregation and polio celebrated their youth with a renaissance of mid-century pop culture and design. American muscle cars reached stratospheric prices, the Volkswagen Beetle made a return to America in 1998, the PT Cruiser arrived in 2000, and the Ford Thunderbird and Mini Cooper made a comeback in 2002, the latter still in production. And let’s not forget 2005’s retro-styled Mustang and the style-over-substance 1997 Plymouth Prowler.
Not everything from the retro fad lasted. The Thunderbird came and went like the candles on a birthday cake. Swing music made a comeback in 1998 and died by 1999. But the PT Cruiser, despite its rapidly fading popularity, soldiered on through 2010, becoming the butt of jokes among auto enthusiasts.
So here I am, putting my credibility on the line, coming to the defense of the PT Cruiser, the most-hated wagon in America (based on the “I made it up” survey).
We enthusiasts make fun of the PT for being cheap, dated, and inconsistently built. That’s all true, but we’re more shallow than we admit. We really hate it for looking dorky and appealing to grandmothers and aging boomers with outdated ideas of style.
Let’s start from the bottom and look at what else from 1999-2010 was unquestionably worse than the much-hated PT Cruiser:
–Anything from Daewoo
–The Chevy Aveo, a Chevy-badged Daewoo
–Any Kia from the late 90s or early 2000s
–Chevy Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire
I admit, its a shorter list than I imagined. Cheaper cars tend to fall into a “blah” category at the bottom, and differentiating among them is like fishing through dog shit looking for gold nuggets.
America Changes, PT Stays the Same
The PT Cruiser’s universal hatred among auto enthusiasts is mostly image-related. The parentally-favored PT was allowed to wither away on the market for over a decade without major improvements, abandoning its perch in the spotlight when Car and Driver ranked it among 2001’s Ten Best Cars. Its social acceptability is polarized by the way it draws attention to itself with bright primary colors, a convertible version with a big structural ‘basket handle’ in the center, and dweeby (but friendly) owners who love flame stickers, stick-on portholes, and dog dish hub caps.
Chrysler offered flame stickers from the factory for those who didn’t want to go through the hassle of driving to Pep Boys. Below is an aftermarket treatment.
Remember that we once loved (or at least appreciated) this car for its sharp looks, design creativity, color-cued interior accents, and real-world utility. Its genuinely usable as a family vehicle, and it inspired an entire category of car-based boxes and wagons like the Honda Element, Chevy HHR, and Scion XB. Yes, all three of its knockoffs are deplorable turds, but that’s beside the point.
As baby boomers fade away, quite literally, my generation appears to have rejected the way the PT is directly associated with our parents, the same way so many of my peers have whined ad nauseam with documentaries about the dreariness of the boomer-created suburbs (the safe and peaceful communities that raised most of today’s spoiled white youth) or the non-free-range-ness of the chicken served at KFC.
Yet, they proudly embrace retroness in the form of 30 year-old Volvos (often covered in idiotic “Coexist” bumper stickers), intentionally fuzzy photography, vinyl records, corded telephones, and vintage clothing. A fickle bunch of monkeys, they are.
Sometimes, being outwardly unique earns a cult following, like Saab, Subaru, or Freddie Mercury. In other cases, it invites well-earned scorn, like the white-faced goth kids I remembered roaming the halls in high school. [I’m sure half of them are working in cubicles now, driving Toyota Highlanders to and from work.]
The little PT boldly puts itself out there like an amateur dressed up for the Olympics without any actual training. The PT’s tall, arrowhead-shaped hood looks fast standing still and its large wheel arches suggest power and V8 strength, but in reality its a quiet, economical, loudly styled Dodge Neon. Like the Plymouth Prowler, which I admittedly love, it was style over substance.
How It Drives
The Dodge Neon was a decent little car, highly regarded for its safety, handling, and clean, friendly design. Neons are autocross favorites, and despite the occasional SOHC head gasket failure, they’re mostly dependable cars if you get the manual transmission.
The PT Cruiser drives little like its sporty Neon sibling. It looks like something quick and exciting, but it moves like an average lump of car.
I had the misfortune of renting a particularly bad one in Tampa. I can’t blame Chrysler for the way it smelled (like wet diapers), but it felt competent enough for commuting. The sound system was decent and there was more than enough room for luggage and passengers with rear seats that folded flat.
It really could have used more power. Much of this mediocrity can be attributed to the vehicle’s weight which overwhelmed its Dodge Neon platform. This also resulted in premature wear on suspension components.
Nothing makes me more hateful than flying, and by the time the plane landed in Florida I was starving. The guy at the Enterprise rental counter was a dick and there was obvious dirt and grime all over the inside of the car. I didn’t get more than a few miles out of the airport before calling, complaining, and giving it back.
To the PT Cruiser’s credit, the 2007 (2006?) Kia Optima I received as a replacement was miserably bland by comparison, but at least it was clean. The Optima’s stereo sounded like a boombox shoved under piles of blankets and the steering and brakes were completely lifeless. Proof again that there are cars in this world that are worse to drive than the PT Cruiser.
It would also be incorrect to call the PT Cruiser crude. It may be a bit cheap, but nothing seemed outstandingly bad for its class, and the cheerful body-matched interior panels, spherical painted shift knob, and white face gauges gave it some life. It beats the usual swaths of grey and black plastic you see in every other econobox.
On the highway, it was quiet and soft with light and easy steering. The automatic transmission did its job, but the 150-hp 2.4L engine was noisy and seriously showing its age, somewhat insufficient for moving 3100lbs of stationwagon. In this day and age, a car with the PT Cruiser’s specifications might see 30mpg, but the combination of a wheezy four-banger and 4-speed auto produced no more than 24mpg on the highway.
I can’t recall if the seating was any good — the diaper odor made me want to climb out as soon as possible. The seating position itself was tall and comfortable with good visibility, much like sitting in a 5-door Saab 900/9-3.
I suspect the turbo version may have been a hoot, with 230 horsepower and a stiffer suspension in the GT.
Don’t get the wrong idea — I’m not in love with it and its highly unlikely I would buy one for myself, but this now-discontinued little automobile is hated for the wrong reasons by my fellow car snobs. Like a victim of unnecessary bullying, I was compelled to come to its defense.
The PT Cruiser was originally intended to be a Plymouth (PT means Plymouth Truck) in a full lineup of retro-styled cars, and came out of Chrysler’s 1990s design renaissance, the era that gave us the Viper, Ram, 300M, Grand Cherokee, and several stunning concept cars. In the end, more than a million PT Cruisers were sold, though a large number of them went to guys named Hertz, Avis, Alamo, and Enterprise.
If the jackasses at Daimler-Benz hadn’t taken over and squeezed the life and soul out of the company, the PT could have evolved into an impressive little econo-utility vehicle, just in time for $4 per gallon gasoline.
But that seems to be the story at Chrysler over the past decade: what could have been versus what really happened.
