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2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 Sketch Leaks
Our colorful colleagues over at Jalopnik.com have managed to get their hands on what they claim is an official design sketch of the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8.
While little is known about the upcoming crossover, it shares much of its exterior design with the standard 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee which just debuted at the New York Auto Show. The most noticeable changes appear to include a revised front bumper with aggressive air intakes, massive five-spoke wheels that cover what are most likely Brembo brakes, and sporty side sills which help to give the sport-ute a lowered appearance. Other exterior goodies include a hood scoop, a roof mounted rear spoiler, and slightly more aggressive door mirrors. Click here to read more…
2009 Peapod Electric Vehicle (EV) Available for Order on Earth Day
The long-awaited, often-advertised Peapod will be available for order on Earth Day, April 22. Coincidentally, the 22nd also is Administrative Assistant’s Day. We expect to see a lot of greenies and maybe some secretaries tooling around in their $12,500 Peapods at no more than 25 miles an hour.
2010 Opel Insignia OPC Performance and Specs - First Look at Official Photos
The first official photos of Opel’s high-performance Insignia OPC are finally out in the open. The new sports sedan from GM’s European unit that will be sold in the UK under the name Vauxhall Insignia VXR has been designed to compete against the likes of the Audi S4 and its ilk. However, it is expected that the Insignia OPC will be priced lower than most of its rivals. The top-grade Insignia comes with a specially modified version of GM’s 2.8-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine that produces a satisfying 325HP and 400Nm of torque channeled to all four wheels.
RX: A healthy dose of luxury 2010 Lexus RX 350
Lexus RX 2009
If you are a fan of the RX, you are going to absolutely love the all-new 2010, the next generation luxury crossover from Lexus. Furthermore, with brand loyalty numbers soaring above the 60 percent mark, Lexus officials believe most of their sales for the new RX, which began arriving in dealerships in February, will come from existing RX owners looking to capture the new safety and technology features available in the vehicle they already love.
I had a chance to log seat time in both the 2010 RX 350 and the hybrid RX 450h, which will arrive later this spring. The 2010 RX 350, which is available in both all-wheel and front-wheel drive versions, is slightly larger than its predecessor, and thanks to a new rear double wishbone suspension system, offers a great deal more cargo room in back - more than 40 cubic feet. While staying true to what customers love about the five-passenger RX, Lexus has incorporated a number of new technology and safety features that will enhance the RX experience. Click here to read more…
Chasing the Quintessential British Sports Car
Does the Lotus Elan embody the British sports car? (Courtesy the Lotus Group)
There’s a black Jensen Interceptor that’s often parked around my block. It’s an eye-catching car with a long nose and a large rear window that bulges like a glass bubble. And it oozes ’60s swinging London in the middle of Brooklyn.
Shortly after my parents were married, they moved into a small house in Virginia, and my dad bought a used blue Triumph TR3, which my mom had painted a brilliant red. She also reupholstered the seats and took scraps of used carpet and hemmed edges to make mats for the back seats. Click here to read more…
Car Shopping the GeekDad Way
So the family is considering a new car. We’re looking at a window 4-6 months in the future when the conditions may be right for us to make such a purchase, but we’ve started our research now. Being the good geek family, we discussed our needs and desires as a group, and settled upon the (potentially sad) fact that we’re probably going to get some sort of mini-van kind of transport. We did a bunch of research on the internet, and came up with some strong possibilities, and as a fun Saturday activity today, we decided to go and check a few of them out.
Now, we’ve been through the joy of car-purchasing before, and came away with the knowledge that it’s rather like trying to skinny-dip in a pool of sharks and chum. We wanted to see the cars, really be able to evaluate them, without feeling the high-pressure sales tactics that are so common. Fat chance. But what we did decide to do was to turn it into a little bit of a game. So, as a way to evaluate the sales staff as well the cars, we decided to time them - see how fast we would be beset by a sales person at each dealership. So, with the timer on my iPhone at hand, we set out.
The Dodge/Chrysler dealership wasn’t bad - 2.5 minutes to our first contact, and the salesman was amenable and still helpful even after we explained it was only a recon mission. It didn’t stop him from mentioning the available incentives every three minutes, but he was polite about it.
The Toyota salesman was on us in 30 seconds, but the shock and awe quickly gave way to a poorly planned and executed campaign with little sign of an exit strategy (for him). We told him what model and features we were looking for. He took us over to one in a row of vehicles, and then declared that he needed to go get the key. He ran off for about three minutes, came back, unlocked one door, and then declared that the battery was dead so the autolocks wouldn’t work. He went off in search of a charger, while we took a closer look at a vehicle that had none of the features we were looking for. He came back and jumped the car. When we told him it didn’t have the features we wanted, but the next one over did, he said he’d run right off and get the key for that one. We said “don’t bother.”
We drove by the Honda dealer. We pulled in the drive, and up towards the front of the showroom, when we saw - as my son described - a “pack of salesmen in a v-formation ready to attack.” We feared for our lives, and kept on driving.
We finished at the Ford dealership, where we ended up actually having to find someone to help us get a look at the vehicle we were interested in after about 5 minutes of wandering around. He was more helpful than the Toyota guy, but still not completely up on the model we liked, and the first one he opened had, like at the Toyota dealership, a dead battery. When we finally left, there were no brochures available either.
All-in-all, not the most successful day, at least from the salespeople’s POV. We saw a couple cars to keep on our list, and wrote a few dealers off as places to avoid at all costs. But I’d love to hear stories from you the readers. What have been your car-buying experiences, good and bad? Has anyone tried the internet purchasing systems available? Or Costco? Or AAA? Let us know in the comments, thanks!
Microsoft Sync and an External USB Hard Drive: The Proof of Concept Works
Last week I wrote about the new car we bought, and the nifty USB input feature for the entertainment system. I hypothesized about hooking up an external hard drive to the system to see if it would be possible to bring our entire music library with us on the road. In the comments, someone kvetched that in the time it took me to write the post, I could have just gone out and tried it. Well, obviously it was too late for that post, but knowing I should do a follow-up, I finally did go out and try the idea. And it worked!
Yes, this is the kludgy version of the idea. I copied our iTunes music library onto an old 40 gig external drive that required plugging into a 110v source. There is one in the car, but I didn’t want the cords sticking out all over the place, so I hooked up an inverter to the 12v outlet in the console. The Sync system took about 5 minutes to index all the music (well, most of the music - it gave us an error about drm’ed files which meant anything we’d bought via iTunes that we haven’t converted yet was not indexed). Once that was done, we had thousands of hours of music available to us.
My New Car Needs a Software Update
Due to a confluence of unfavorable (my wife’s commute car has over 110k rough miles on it and has lived through the first 9 years of both boys, plus three large dogs) and favorable (a little surprise cash, some very low interest rates, a “deal” on a demo model) conditions, we bought a new(ish) car this weekend. While we had done our research on the make and model we wanted, and even some of the features, and we went looking to see what we could find a deal on, with an open attitude towards what the final package would be. When we drove home Saturday night (very late, having gone to the dealer *after* a little league game that went into extra innings), we had a car with many bells, and even a few techie whistles.
The most interesting of these is this Sync system from Microsoft. Yes, I know, the first thing that comes to mind is that old joke about the CEO of a car maker traded jibes with Bill Gates about the progress and pitfalls of each business - will I ever get a blue screen of death on my car? But Sync is a handy little bit of tech that allows the bluetooth connection of phones and media devices to a voice-activated system, making hands-free calling and other nifty features very easy. There’s even a usb port in the center console for software updates, and to which you can connect your phone or media player to charge from, and through which access files.
But being the GeekDad I am, I’m just a bit dissatisfied. There’s one more nifty feature: you can put CDs in the player, and it will rip them to a hard drive built right into the car.
A 10GB hard drive. Wha-?! Only 10 frakking gigs?
Well, I’m not quite ready to take anything apart to see if I can swap it out for a nice half-TB drive filled with more music than we could listen for the life of the car, but 10 gigs just seems so… paltry. I have one other idea to try, though. Remember above when I mentioned the usb port? Bascially the system will recognize mass storage devices from media players and thumb drives. So why won’t it recognize something a little bigger, like a portable hard drive? There’s a 12v outlet in the nook where the usb port it and I have an inverter and an old 160GB portable drive lying around. I’ve looked around at various sites online, and no one seems to be saying it won’t work, so I’m going to give it a try. If it works, I promise I’ll report back. Wish me luck!
Oh Hell Yes: The Rinspeed sQuba Car
Well I was about to go apeshit on the Rinspeed sQuba car until I read they admitted to it being inspired by James Bond’s Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me. So after I calmed down a bit and drank my weight in cough syrup I passed out in the driveway on the way to the mailbox. When a passing street-sweeper finally woke me I pissed myself and fell back asleep.
Anyways, the sQuba car can drive on land and “at the push of a button will autonomously transform into an amphibious vehicle capable of diving to a depth of about 33 feet.” Hell yes, now that is what I’m talking about. Well, that and passing out in the driveway.
An electric motor with powerful torque drives the rear wheels. The propulsion on the water is ensured by two propellers in the stern and two powerful jet drives in the bow propel the vehicle under water while diving. With zero emissions, zero pollution in the seven seas of this world. The light weight body with components made of futuristic Carbon Nano Tubes encloses in a streamlined manner the driver and passenger who are supplied with fresh breathing air by the self-contained on-board system.
While the pictures above are clearly not real, the car does (or will) exist, and is going to be on display at the Geneva Motor Show from March 6th to 16th. So check it out if you get the chance. And by “check it out” I mean “steal it for me”. You see, I’m a professional treasure hunter, and this is just the thing I need to cruise the seafloor searching for treasure. It’s been far too long since I’ve spotted any booty. Well, except my roommate’s — he’s somewhat of an exhibitionist.
20 Cool Car Wallpapers
Designers often combine their passions for design with other passions in life and a good example of this is taking a love of cars and turning that love into cool car wallpapers. Currently I have a space scene as the background of my computer, but I’m thinking of switching it to one of these cool car wallpapers for a while!
My favorite car happens to be the Chrysler Crossfire, which unfortunately isn’t below so I think I will design my own car wallpaper for my desktop when I have some free time!
Just out of curiosity whats everyones favorite car? Enjoy the free car wallpapers below!
