Scanning the Auto Blogosphere

Автор: DarrenFerris on среда, 29 июля 2009 г. / Ярлыки: , , , , , , ,
Terrafugia's Transition in flight

Terrafugia's Transition in flight

The auto-blog world offers lots of coverage of a few big stories this week. As we noted in our last post, Congress will consider a “Cash for Clunkers” bill that would offer a voucher of $3,000-5,000 to anyone trading in an older car for a new one assembled in North America that costs less than $35,000 and gets at least 27 mpg on the highway. New-car deals get sweeter and sweeter, eh?

The government also earned a lot of auto-blog coverage today by approving a $5 billion plan to provide help to automotive parts suppliers, which have been hurt badly by the Big Three’s cuts in North American vehicle production. The Detroit News has lots of details.

Another topic that’s gotten lots of coverage today has to do with the latest J.D. Power vehicle dependability study results. Surprisingly enough, Buick and Jaguar both managed to outscore perennial winner Lexus this year, which took third. eGMCarTech has full results and the press release.

Two more stories generated auto-blog buzz this week. A number of folks published stories on the debut flight of Terrafugia’s Transition flying car (above). It’s still got a long way to go before you’ll find one at a local dealer, and the Transition doesn’t look particularly graceful airborne, but the (very short) video looks promising.

MR2 fans are getting into a lather over another story reported this week: Toyota is considering a performance hybrid based on a special version of the Prius’s powertrain that will carry on the name of Toyota’s much-loved roadster. Auto Express’s “artists’s impressions” look pretty hot.

We’ll conclude this week’s article with a couple of quick bits about the Big Three that suggest the times really are a’changing.

First, GM CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday that he thought increasing the federal gasoline tax to price gas at $4 per gallon is “worthy of consideration” (you’ll see that quote in almost every article on this topic). While gas taxes are regressive and therefore unfair, Europeans’ generally much higher gas taxes have driven them to select much more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly cars as a group. And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing here, would it?

Finally, as Chrysler happily points out on its own blog, the state of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality has awarded a Clean Corporate Citizen award to the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance (GEMA) plant in Dundee, MI. The GEMA plant is a joint venture of Chrysler, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi, so they can’t take all the credit, but it’s nice to see Chrysler participating in an exceptionally clean, efficient, and low-impact manufacturing process.

Anything you’d like to see get more - or less - coverage here on the CarGurus Blog?
Let me know.

-Steve Halloran



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