Auto Boston

Another week at the wheel…
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 26th, 2006

Very very - no, make that HUGELY pleased to see Prius outperformed in the fuel economy stakes by no less than 5 vehicles after testing in Europe on - of all things - actual roads instead of dynamometers. Let’s just be absolutely clear on this; Prius didn’t outperform the others by a margin of 5 cars, that’s absurd. Prius was only 6th in the rankings of green cars of all those tested.

Saab reckon they’re going to have the greenest hybrid vehicle in the history of everything by 2010 but nobody doubts Toyota will come up with something better by then. I personally don’t care - as long as it’s not the next generation Prius. Anyway, the new Saab hybrid will be on display at the Stockholm Motor Show next month. Being somewhat enamored of the old Saabs, before Chrysler took them over and turned them into the EuroToyota generic design tinfoil roller skate, I’ll let you know what I think of Scania’s new brainchild.

Old news, but it strikes me as amusing that a particular corporate website, replete with messageboard appears not to have had any activity since 9/2005 and they haven’t updated the site - it looks like - since 2003. Most amusing to me is the appearance of 3 job advertisements. I feel like applying for one, just for the hell of it. Then again, the old saying applies; if it looks and smells like an old prawn cocktail, don’t ask it onto the dancefloor.

I also love it when someone poses a stupid question in a message board. “Which is your favorite gas station?”
I’m waiting for someone to say “The one that rips me blind and sells rancid milk.” Personally, I like my gas with artificial sweetener because sugar tends to mess with the engine’s guts something fierce.
Anyway, amongst the highly predictable, Sunoco, Marathon and Getty get the nod.

Courtesy of GM, a new term for mass firings is “Rightsizing”. No longer are we downsizing, issuing redundancies or rationalizing, we’re rightsizing. I wonder, is the opposite of rightsizing “Capsizing”? That’s what it is in maritime language - as any good yachtie would know.

So, GM’s engineering branch in Detroit is expecting to be capsized on Tuesday. GM seems to be denying it. Let’s just see shall we.

Ok, can’t ignore it because it’s all over the blatts like bees on honey… Ford is re-releasing the rent-a-racer.
It’ll be on show at the New York International Motor Show, April 12-13 click here for details

Lastly, because it’s getting on for 3 in the morning and it’s highly likely I’ll start swearing if I get any more bluff and bluster from the internet based automotive interest websites, the absolute latest news from autospies.com is, at the time of my writing this, already a day old.

For example, they haven’t caught up yet with Mazda’s release of “the first street legal gasoline-hydrogen hybrid vehicle, the new RX-8″. Should I tell them or just leave that as an example of Auto Boston one-upmanship? Here’s your linkage.

Heh.. you sleep, I’ll find stuff out so it’s ready for you when you wake up.