China, the WTO, and the automoible exports

Hi folks -- Recently I have been listening to the English language "China Drive" radio show in the morning before I go to school. This morning there was a report that contained an interesting statistic: in 2000, when China joined the World Trade Organization, it exported a total of 15,000 cars; last year that number was 556,000 vehicles! Certainly by joining the WTO, the country was not hurt in terms of its automobile industry. In terms of imports, it has a 25% tariff, pretty high in terms of protectionism. So you just have to make your cars for that market in China!

Top ten destination countries of China 2008 automotive exports by value:
Country Value
U.S. $9.406 billion

Japan $4.533 billion

Russia $2.133 billion

Korea $1.916 billion

Germany $1.490 billion

Iran $1.220 billion

UAE $1.219 billion

Nigeria $1.165 billion

Brazil $1.113 billion

Italy $1.013 billion
source: gasgoo.com

The New 2012 Dodge Dart and A 1961 Dodge Dart from my past!

Hi Folks -- below is a post about the all new Italian-influenced Dodge Dart that will be shown at the Detroit auto show. The post brings back memories from my childhood of cousin Freddy's 1962 Dodge Dart. I was 12 at the time, and Freddy, 17 years older than I, had a wonderful Thunderbird-powered 1957 Ford. On a whim, he decided to trade it in on a blue 1962 Dodge Dart with a 361 cubic inch engine. I remember him trying to set the dual points on the "fart, " as well as carburation. It never really ran right, and in early 1964 Freddy traded the disappointing car in a part of a deal on a new 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible in Midnight Blue. I don't miss the Dart, but would give anything for that GTO!

Dodge brings back the Dart, with an Italian flair


By Justin Hyde
Senior Editor of Motoramic
Dodge's newest small car replacing the woebegone Caliber next year will carry the name "Dart" -- the first time Dodge has used that name on these shores in 36 years. This is not grandma's Slant-Six lead sled.
Based on the European-only Alfa Romeo Giulietta, the new compact hatch (shown here in the only frontal shot Dodge released) is the first true mechanical combination born of the Fiat-Chrysler merger. Chrysler says the 2013 Dodge Dart will arrive with a choice of three engines, two of which are updated Chrysler four-cylinders suddenly renamed "Tigershark," because it's cool to get nicknames in middle age. To be competitive with the all-new fleet of compact cars in America, at least one model will need to hit 40 mpg on the highway.
For those unfamiliar with the proud history of the name, the first Dodge Dart arrived in 1960 as a nod to the Space Age, and persevered as a stoic, low-cost compact car until 1976, often powered by the ancient but bulletproof Chrysler straight-six engine tilted at a 30-degree angle. True Dart fans pay respect to the GTS muscle version of the late '60s, but thanks to its low cost and ubiquity in TV shows of the late '70s -- and even "That '70s Show" -- it became known as grandma's car. For the new Dart, Dodge plans to skip ahead at least a couple of generations.
We'll see the real thing at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

Suppression of Risk? The Chevy Volt, Battery Fires, and the NTSHA

Fires can also start from faulty electric car charging units, as this one in a home in NC.

Hi folks -- below is from Autoweek on recent developments. The Federal Government is doing all it can to save America and at the same time ensure the viability of the Volt. The question is not whether the electric car will become the future mode of personal transporation, but when? Cleaner air -- and most importnatly less dependeance on foreign oil and the Middle East is the payback. The electric car has the potential to become the leading edge of a technological revolution in America. But do we have the collective will to realize the consequences of this transition?

Following on from the announcement that GM is looking at redesigning the Chevrolet Volt’s lithium-ion battery system in the wake of several highly publicized fires resulting from test crashes, comes further news that both the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration delayed disclosure of their original findings by months.
Apparently, way back in June, General Motors heard about a Volt fire that happened three weeks after said vehicle was crash tested, yet it wasn’t until November that the company, or NHTSA disclosed there was a potential problem, urging both dealers and customers to drain the battery pack immediately following an accident.
As a result the public relations nightmare surrounding Chevy’s halo vehicle appears to be deepening, though a good deal of the blame in this case also rests with NHTSA.
Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”
GM designed a complex cooling system for the Volt’s lithium ion battery pack to help regulate its temperature (lithium-ion units are known for overheating), yet until July it hadn’t finalized a standard proceedure to power down the battery system, the Volt had already been on sale in the US for six months at that juncture.
The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, which crash tested a Volt back in February reported no incidents of fire as resulting from the accident, yet when a second crash test was performed in August, General Motors sent a technician to power down the battery.
An interesting point on the subject been raised by Clarence Ditlow, executive director for the Center of Auto Safety in Washington D.C. He said that he is “surprised that NHTSA didn’t drain the battery after crash testing as it is standard procedure to empty the fuel tank on conventional gasoline powered vehicles.” He also says that the NHTSA incident underlines the need for “greater transparency when conducting crash tests,” as well as setting proper industry standards when it comes to new technologies.
A spokesman for GM said the company felt it didn’t need to initially disclose the issue because the original fire was an isolated occurrence and happened some time after the vehicle was crashed. “It’s kind of odd in many respects,” said Rob Peterson. “The question became: What was making this happen and what do we have to do?”
Nonetheless in wake of the findings; GM is now working with both NHTSA and the Society of Automotive Engineers to develop standards for all electric vehicles when it comes to crash testing. It’s also continuing with its program of providing concerned Volt owners with free loaner vehicles; so far 33 of roughly 5,000 customers have signed up.
[Source: Automotive News]

Stealing a Porsche 356 and far more -- Richard Gere and "Breathless," 1983

The girl is far more important than the machine in the 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Goddard's nouvelle vague classic A bout de Soufflé, Breathless. [1] The film starred a young Richard Gere as drifter Jesse Lujack, who after a brief Las Vegas fling, becomes obsessed with a UCLA exchange student from France by the name of Monica, played by Valerie Kaprisky. The film begins with Jesse, a high-energy punk "who rolls the dice too much," uses a screwdriver and two blades to steal a Porsche 356A coupe in front of a Las Vegas casino. He comes alive while driving and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis ("You Leave Me Breathless"), but his trip to LA is interrupted by a police stop and rather unintentional murder. On the run and obsessed with taking Monica with him to Mexico, Lujack steals a succession of vehicles while eluding police, including a pink MGB, a 1957 Thunderbird, a Ghetto Buick , an old truck, and finally a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

In every case as Jesse gets behind the wheel he gains in energy as he drives, as mobility brings with it self-realization. But as a frustrated male who models his psyche after the comic book character the Silver Surfer, Jesse reflects a shallowness, having no long term future and projecting a tragic end. Yet, at times imagining he himself as the Silver Surfer, once an ordinary man from a distant plant. Forced to serve Galactus, a planet-eating God, the comic book hero preserves his world and the woman he loves from destruction. Afterward, endowed with powers of infinite movement by Galactus, he searched the galaxy for planets to feed his master, until his encounter with Earth forced him to betray Galactus and thereby redeem himself. But in the end the Silver Surfer, and indeed Jesse, is left trapped on the planet he saved. Forced with the decision to surrender or pick up a gun and die at the hands of police, he chooses the latter, perhaps realizing that Monica and Mexico are forever out of reach.
[1] Breathless, 1983, Dir. James McBride.

Clint' Eastwood's Gran Torino: its' meaning within the context of auto theft and identity

In the closing scenes of Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Grand Torino” the stories of one man’s personal redemption and another’s dream of achieving independent manhood come together in two life defining moments: one of self-sacrifice, and the other, a symbolic act of auto mobility. Confronting a gang that had terrorized his newly adopted family of immigrant Hmong neighbors, the cantankerous Polish-American autoworker and Korean war vet, Wait, goads the thugs into murdering him before witnesses, and thereby saves the community. By his death, Wait spares the life and innocence of Thao, the neighbor boy intent on exacting revenge for the rape of his sister by the gang. For Wait, the thought of the good he is doing may ease the haunting memory of his killing of an enemy prisoner in Korea. Thao is his last chance at redemption. Thao, whom Wait had guided in the previous months into self-respecting appreciation of hard work, independence of mind, and success with the ladies, is last seen driving Waits’ beloved Grand Torino toward what must be presumed to be a future life of dignified manhood. This story of tragic nobility takes place in the “motor city”—Detroit, Michigan. And the story all began with an attempted theft by Thao of Waits’ Grand Torino.
In today’s real world auto-theft is generally about money. However, the visual representation of auto-theft in film has more to do with what the car, the act of driving, and the act of stealing symbolize. In the early twentieth century the automobile and the act of driving became associated with many of the traditional qualities of American identity. The roots of that connection stretch back to the role that movement played in the continent's settlement. Indeed, the unrestrained capacity to move became equated early in the American cultural imagination with personal reinvention and self-determination. Over time, mobility became connected to a host of liberal-republican ideological expectations: egalitarianism, self-sufficiency, independence, and personal as well as social progress. Because these qualities were largely denied to any other than white males, the American vision of the mobile liberal individual was both raced and gendered. Consequently, the lack of mobility marked the African-American slaves and the women’s as unfit for individual liberty. Yet in the 20th century, the automobile would change all of that. In short, the capacity of movement was equated to sovereign selfhood.
By the early twentieth century, however, the realization of autonomous manhood was limited by a growing personal dependence on industrial production, corporate institutions, and mass consumption. Yet, it was precisely at this moment that the automobile replaced walking, the horse, railroad, and bicycle as the primary mode of personal transportation. As Cotten Seiler observed The Republic of Drivers, the mass produced automobile arrived “as a meliorative response to the crisis of legitimacy in turn of the century capitalism brought about by the Taylorist transformation of production.”[1]
Of course the “Model T Revolution” began a transformative process that unfolded with ever increasing social and psychological consequences as the 20th century progressed. In particular, in the years after World War II, automobility radically reshapedAmerican geography and society. And it was a primary engine of change in the world in which Wait lived. Here it played an equally expanding role in construction and maintenance of autonomous manhood and its association with labor and economic independence. This transition was subliminally captured in Waits’ fetishistic worship of a blue Ford Torino during his years working at the auto plant. Working with machines and to a degree like a machine, and as a small cog at the Ford Motor Company, the car became for Wait a substitute for his liberty. Indeed, the car was a representation of Waits’ manly independence. Driving, like the motif of movement more widely in American cultural history, served as an arch signifier of the autonomous self-determining subject—coded male—at the heart of American individualism. With this in mind then, auto-theft frequently can be read as the usurpation, disruption, and recovery of that lost ideal of masculine selfhood.
[1] Cotten Seiler, Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 41.

Top Car and Truck Sales, November 2011: GM on top in U.S. Market, Ford Second

1. Ford F-Series -- 47,740
2. Chevrolet Silverado -- 34,251
3. Toyota Camry -- 23,440
4. Ford Escape -- 21,823
5. Nissa Altima -- 20, 613
6. Ford Fusion -- 19,912
7. Dodge Ram -- 19,739
8. Honda Civic -- 17,133
9. Honda CR-V -- 16,426
10. Toyota Corolla/Matrix -- 16,115
11. Hyundai Sonata -- 15,668
12. Toyota Prius -- 15,208
13. Chevrolet Equinox -- 14,936
14. Jeep Grand Cherokee -- 13, 545
15. Chevrolet Cruze -- 13,238


Automaker Results, November 2011

1. General Motors -- 180, 402
2. Ford -- 166,441
3. Toyota -- 137,960
4. Chrysler -- 107,172
5. Nissan -- 85,182
6. Honda -- 83,925
7. Hyundai -- 49,610
8. Volkswagen -- 38,283
9. KIA -- 37,007
10. Mercedes -- 28,257

Film Review -- "Young and Wild," 1958

It began with a car theft -- a 1957 Ford to be specific. it ended with vehicular homicide, as an old woman was run down by that 1957 Ford, driven by an unrepentant thug and aided by two greaser accomplices. In between the bullies push off the road a clean cut young man and his pretty date in a 1957 Ford convertible. And it trying to cover up their crime, the trio lie, intimidate, and threaten not only the young couple but parents as well. But in the end the heroine of the story, Valerie Whitman (Carolyn Kearney) decides to make a stand and that ultimately leads to the arrest of the three law -breakers.

What to do about teenage punk hoodlums? We can't just execute them. Rick Braden (Scott Marlowe), "Allie" Allison (Weston Gavin), and "Beejay" Phillips (Tom Gilson) go on the tragic joyride, beat up boyfriend Jerry Coltrin (Robert Arthur), assault pretty Valerie, before having to flee when a by-passing vehicle comes upon the scene. Despite their formidable looks they seem to be impotent with girls their age.

Yet it is Det. Sgt. Fred Janusz (Gene Evans) who patiently works the case, deals with reverses, and ultimately puts the three delinquents behind bars. The three should have been drafted and sent to Korea. Good triumphs over evil, but we should never forget that there are plenty of young troublemakers out in the world, ready to make our lives hell if we let them!