Family Car For The New Ice Age

Perfect for January in the Finger Lakes.

Everybody's Gone Surfin'

Photo by Loomis Dean, 1950.  Click image for larger.

Every Young Man's Dream

h/t JEG

These deals won't last

Glenn Beck visits Finger Lakes

Talk radio superstar Glenn Beck was in the Finger Lakes this past weekend for his daughter's wedding.  After the happy event, Glenn and family returned to their rented cottage on one of our lakes.  As has happened to so many of us, the Beck family's unoccupied rental vehicle got away from its parking space, rolled over the cliff, and wound up on the beach.  There were no injuries.

Does anyone know where this took place?

Update:  Per FingerLakes1, the wedding was held at Suzanne in Lodi.

Photos: Glenn Beck

Pontiac

1957 Pontiac.  Like Osama Bin Laden, Pontiac was killed by Obama.

Scubaru

They're ubiquitous in the Finger Lakes.  They go in snow "like a rat with sneakers."  And even though they're made in huge factories by a giant corporation, and spew carbon like a politician explaining why higher taxes are good for you, for some reason they seem to be politically correct.  And they're waterproof!

"Ja, that ice'll hold ya." Until it didn't, and suddenly a man's 1996 Legacy wagon was at the bottom of a shallow lake in Finland. Three months later, the Subaru wagon was dragged from its freshwater slumber, and while most people would just write the car off or at most turn it into a parts donor, curiosity got the better of the rescue squad...

After removing a live fish from the engine bay, draining a lot of water from the fuel tank and crankcase, and a fresh fill of fluids and spark plugs, lo and behold, the SCUBA-ru chugged to life on the first try.

Caroll Shelby, RIP

Caroll Shelby, 1923-2012. 

Back in the 60s, we got to drive a 289 Cobra - green with black leather. 

Honda evolution

Honda's first product, released in 1947, was the A-Type.

Afraid of Flo? You should be.

Annoying Progressive Insurance TV flack Flo is despised by almost everyone, including Midwestern mom Stephanie Doss.  Steph is also creeped out by clowns, so we know we can trust her judgement. 

Progressive Insurance is owned by billionaire insurance heir Peter Lewis, sugar daddy to many radical leftist causes, primarily Obama's presidential campaign.  So we should not be surprised that the saccharine Flo wants you to install a big-brother "Snapshot" device that connects your car directly to Progressive's headquarters.  The pitch is that you'll get a discount on your insurance rate.  The unstated catch is that Progressive will collect a record of when and where you drive and how fast you drove to get there.  Running a little late for that gun club meeting?  Flo knows.

Of course, unlike health insurance, we still have a plethora of auto insurance providers fighting for our business, so its easy enough to keep Progressive out of your life.  It won't be so easy when's Flo's little citizen tracker becomes mandatory in 2015.  Yes, your elected representatives in Washington are planning to nationalize Flo's little pilot project.

The latest brick in the wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (See here for the full text of the bill itself; the relevant section is 31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be passed by the House -- will impose a legal requirement that all new cars made beginning with the 2015 models be fitted with so-called Event Data Recorders (EDRs). These are the "black boxes" you may have read about that store data about how you drive -- including whether you wear a seat belt and how fast you drive -- ostensibly for purposes of post-accident investigation.

Once the snoop-o-matics are in new cars, author Eric Peters is confident your older car will be next.

In fact, sure as the rooster crows in the morning, you can bet the next step will a law requiring older cars not originally fitted with the technology be fitted with it -- or else decommissioned. It is inconceivable that they -- the government and its insurance company cronies -- will allow anyone to drive a vehicle not subject to this monitoring and control. They will insist it's not "safe" -- and of course, "unfair" that owners of older cars not equipped with EDRs are able to "get away" with "speeding" and not wearing their seat belts.

With the feds planning to to roll out EDRs in 2015, cynics might suspect that the Lewis-owned Progressive's Snapshot program is not just a coincidence.

Earth Week

Iowahawk's 7th annual Earth Week Cruise-In is underway.  This year's planet-fest kicked off with the Australian F-650 family hauler pictured here.  We're sure the big Ford is "capable of being converted to biodiesel" (but don't hold your breath).

We'd love to see the Finger Lakes represented in this year's hydrocarbon extravaganza.  "Earth is in the balance" and "there's no time to waste," so get your entry in to Iowahawk today.

How Ford survived without a bailout

Apologies for the odd sizing.  Read more at Yahoo Finance.

Its official: you're subsidizing Peugeot

The joke's on you

As we predicted, the Obama administration is giving hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to failing French automaker Peugeot.

Attention U.S. taxpayers:  You now own a piece of a French car company that is drowning in red ink.

That’s right.  In a move little noticed outside of the business pages, General Motors last week bought more than $400 million in shares of PSA Peugeot Citroen – a 7 percent stake in the company.

Because U.S. taxpayers still own roughly one-quarter of GM, they now own a piece of Peugeot.

Peugeot can undoubtedly use the cash.  Last year, Peugeot’s auto making division lost $123 million.  And on March 1 – just a day after the deal with GM was announced – Moody’s downgraded Peugeot’s credit rating to junk status with a negative outlook, citing “severe deterioration” of its finances.

In other words, General Motors essentially just dumped more than $400 million of taxpayer assets on junk bonds.

"“severe deterioration” of its finances," indeed.  Next time your local Democrat-friendly congressman comes to town, be sure to ask him about this.

US taxpayers buying into French automaker?

1983 Renault Alliance

Congratulation, Finger Lakes taxpayers, you're now going to subsidize the French auto industry.  Our own government-run car company sees opportunity in the land of escargot.

PSA Peugeot Citroen may announce as soon as this week plans to sell a stake of about 7 percent in the French carmaker to General Motors Co. as part of a development alliance, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

GM, which still owes billions to US taxpayers, has been using those confiscated funds to dish out big bonuses to the same employees who ran the industrial giant into the ground.

Does it make sense that a company who can afford to pay bonuses needs government subsidies to sell its cars, like the Chevy Volt?

According to all the reporting news sources, most managers could see bonuses for 2010 equaling 15 to 20% of their annual salary. Other reports are indicating as much as 50% of salary, while some blue collars might merely get $10K on average.

Question is, why is there any bonus at all at GM?

It is no small thing that General Motors and Chrysler are still in business today, due to the extreme generosity of the American taxpayers.

So, why should either company even think of giving bonuses to the blue collar and white collar workers at all before paying back the loans?

For those with short memories, the rotting hulk pictured above is a Renault Alliance, the ill fated offspring of the last time a US automaker got in bed with the French.

All smiles

1961 DeSoto.

GM profitable? So was Whitey Bulger

Whitey and Catherine hiding out from the feds

Now that crack federal gumshoes have finally located Whitey Bulger in his California condo, and just in time for the presidential election, Americans who get their news from the mainstream media have been inundated with the "General Motors Turns a Profit" story: all praise to Barack Obama for rescuing Detroit. Let's check in with Jerry Hirsch at one of the house organs of the Democrat party, the Los Angeles Times.

Three years after nearly collapsing into liquidation, a resurgent General Motors Co. has posted its best annual profit, surpassing what it earned during its heyday in the mid-1990s.

In earning $7.6 billion last year, the automaker demonstrated how it has capitalized on its 2009 bankruptcy reorganization and federal bailout to shed brands, slash debt, rewrite union contracts and close surplus factories.

The record annual earnings represented "a remarkable turnaround from what appeared to be a hopeless situation," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with automotive information company TrueCar.com.

But there's a problem with  Comrade Hirsch's rosy analysis.  In a comment posted on that article, Teresa Trujillo fills in the missing pieces.

The only reason Chrysler and GM are profitable today is because the government allowed them the discharge huge amounts of debt. Vendors, shareholders--including many retirement acount vehicles like mutual funds--were forced to take HUGE losses on their GM stock holdings when the previous version of GM, was for all intent and purpose, dismantled.

The American taxpayer has assumed a very large burden for the GM "reorganization." Anyone can see what the individual federal deficit burden is by visiting usdebtclock.org 

The U.S. federal debt is now $15.4 trillion dollars, and the debt per citizen is nearly $50,000. Rather than bailing out the "too big to fail" organizations, the government could have written a check for $10,000 to every social security number that appeared on a 2007 tax return. The federal bailouts that were authorized by congress only bailed out the tycoons and oligarchy--they could have chosen to bail out families. 

Think how much faster the economy would have recovered, how many homes would have been saved, how many jobs would have been created.  I'm still waiting to see those "shovel ready" jobs get rolling.

The Times has neglected to tell the story of how a few people are benefiting on the backs of all Americans in this story. This story is a testament to the power of the autoworkers' union.

The celebrated "recovery" of GM is really part of the largest organized crime heist in American history.  You, dear reader, your children and your grandchildren are the victims.

Self defense by snow brush

Snow brush season is well under way here in Upstate New York.  In Rochester last night, a snow brush wielding resident fought off an armed robber.

Police in Rochester say a man brushing snow off his car was shot during a robbery attempt Monday evening.

Investigators say the victim had just left a bar at the corner of Delmar Street and Otis Street and was cleaning off his car when he was approached by the suspect and robbed at gunpoint.

Police say the victim fought off his attacker with his snow brush, but was shot in the ankle.

Now that the ubiquitous winter tool has been successfully used as a weapon, expect Chuckles Schumer to soon stand before the cameras demanding federal snow brush registration.

Cuomo mandates electric cars

Mario Cuomo, that is.

In a decision that environmentalists contend will provide a major boost to the nation's tiny market in electric cars, a Federal judge ruled today that New York State can order automobile manufacturers to sell thousands of electrically powered vehicles in the state beginning this fall.

The ruling by Judge Lawrence E. Kahn of Federal District Court in Albany upholds a six-year-old state rule requiring that 2 percent of all vehicles sold during the 1998 model year, which begins on Oct. 1, be powered by electricity. The quota gradually increases to 10 percent by 2003.

That's right - by 2003, a full ten percent of cars sold in the Empire State were supposed to be coal-powered.  As we recall, the rules actually mandated that ten percent of new cars in stock on dealer lots had to be electric.

However, like unicorns, marketplace-viable electric cars never appeared.  By 1995, rino governor George Pataki was reluctantly retreating from the fantasy.

Amid a strenuous lobbying campaign by the oil and auto industries, Gov. George E. Pataki is hinting that he may push back the state's deadline for auto makers to begin selling electric cars in New York State, now just over two years away.

His decision could have an important effect on whether the auto industry will sell electric cars or other fuel-efficient vehicles across the rest of the nation. And the auto makers are pressing for a decision in the next few weeks so they can have time to prepare.

Under antipollution rules written during the administration of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, major auto companies must sell a quota of electric cars starting in New York in 1998. But the auto makers contend that a commercially viable electric car does not exist, and they have been pressing Mr. Pataki to push back, if not eliminate, the deadline.

We'd be willing to bet $10,000 that not one out of one thousand current New Yorkers has ever heard of the Cuomo/Pataki fantasy car mandate.  If they had, perhaps they'd be a little more skeptical of Cuomo Jr.'s current schemes.

Government-built cars missing brake pads

Obama with Sonic in Detroit

Customers may have noticed unusually long stopping distances when driving brand new Chevrolet Sonic rental cars.  Turns out taxpayer financed GM employees shipped the tiny sedans without brakes pads!

General Motors is recalling 4,296 Chevrolet Sonic subcompact models to inspect for missing brake pads. The missing part could lengthen the stopping distance, potentially contributing to a crash, the company said today in a statement.

Of course, theses things happen in government work.  What's missing, in addition to the critical brake components, are headlines like this:

Congress blasts Toyota for not investigating sudden acceleration, focusing on legal defense instead

We remind readers that the Toyota "problem" was determined to be fiction, pushed by union-backed politicians.  The missing brakes pads, on the other hand, were actually missing.

Kim was a Ford man - who knew?

Was that a Lincoln we saw hauling deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's coffin?  Indeed it was.  As a matter of fact, the Communist funeral procession included two three of the gas-guzzling Ford products.

Just to make sure we weren't seeing some crude third-world copy, we checked with an actual automotive expert.  Bradford Wernle confirms our observation:

As mourners wailed hysterically by the road, a procession of unmistakable luxury limos rolled past. First came the Lincoln bearing Kim's flag-draped coffin on the roof. A second Lincoln limousine bore a giant poster with a likeness of the Dear Leader; and a third, an enormous funeral wreath.

The hearses bore Lincoln's unique vertical cross design on the hood, so the cars were not knockoffs.