Industry News
•It's being said that GM will spend $1 billion to refurbish its fullsize pickups, which haven't been touched in a major way since 2006. We'll refrain from naming Jp staffers in the same boat.
•$187 million is what it will cost the Obama administration to fund nine fuel-efficiency projects. The recipients of the cash include Cummins, which is getting $38.8 mil to develop a clean diesel, among other things, and Chrysler Group, with $14.5 mil to develop a flexible combustion system for the minivan.
•The California Desert Protection Act of 2010: It's legislation that will create national monuments to protect land and land use-in the good way.
•Now partners: Jeepspeed, OC Motorsports, and Orange Coast Chrysler/Jeep Dodge, which will make OC Motorsports exclusive home of Jeepspeed, as in vehicles, parts, and accessories in a one-stop-shopping format for custom products.
•Chrysler is investing $179 million to kick off production of the advanced, fuel-efficient FIRE engine, or the 1.4L Fully Integrated Robotized Engine, a collaboration between Chrysler and Fiat powertrain groups. It will be built at the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and should create about 573 new jobs.
Petty Cash Racing Jeep Su...
Petty Cash Racing Jeep SuperCherokeeBird.
•Matt Adair from Master Pull sent us the photo of the Petty Cash Racing Jeep SuperCherokeeBird competing in the budget-friendly 24 Hours of LeMons race at ThunderHill, where they finished 63rd out of 158 vehicles. "We're pretty damn happy," he said. "When you think we took a Jeep and competed with-and beat-BMWs, Miatas, Mustangs, Camaros, and we were out for three hours, it ain't half bad."
•The Firestone brand has become the first-ever "Official Tire" of Major League Baseball.
•Chrysler is now prohibiting employees from texting while driving company-owned vehicles.
•OK, yeah, it's a new website brought to you by Toyota, but trailtracker.com is still worth eyeballing. It's all about favorite trails as deemed by users, who can add photos, write all about them, add GPS coordinates, and more.
•DieHard has launched diehard.com and mobile.diehard.com, where you'll find videos, instructions, and more on battery-related stuff, like how to jump-start, how to check cables and charge, how to winterize the battery, and much more.
•Mark your calendar for March 25, when three Miss Mint 400 finalists will attend the kickoff party for the General Tire SNORE Mint 400 race in Las Vegas. The winner will help start the desert race on the 27th.
•Cyclone Power Technologies is working with Phoenix Power Group to develop a prototype electric generator system powered by Cyclones heat-regenerative, external combustion engine running on waste oil. In other words: clean-burning engine + used motor oil.
Quote Without Story
"My stance is that it cannot be done in less than 24 months. I have every intention of trying to break that record."
-Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Chrysler, according to the Wall Street Journal, on taking two years to change the image that Chrysler produces low-quality vehicles
Auto Graphs
•Distraction.gov-it's a site brought to you by the U.S. Department of Transportation and is all about distracted driving. As in, how not to be, and there are tons of stats about that and what happens when you are.
Cooper's worse than an SU...
Cooper's worse than an SUV.
•MSNBC has reported that a teen in New Zealand was found guilty of disorderly behavior. She had been flashing her, uh, chestular area at passing cars, and then one ran into her.
•The Mirror ran a story about a woman who sustained a damaged nerve in her pelvis during a car accident. Why's it newsworthy? She's now "constantly craving sex" from the injury, she claims.
•The book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living compares the carbon footprint of various pets to that of an SUV (a 4.6L Toyota Land Cruiser), and according to a review of the book by NewScientist, the footprint of the Cruiser (how much it's driven as well as the energy to build and fuel it) was less than half of that of a medium-sized dog (footprint based on land used to generate his food).