In our last episode of Car Shopping we introduced our contestants:
the Ford Escape 4×4,
Ford Fusion AWD, and
Ford Taurus AWD;
the Jeep Patriot 4×4, and
Jeep Liberty 4×4;
the Honda CR-V AWD,
the Subaru Forester, and
the Toyota RAV4 AWD, with
the Chevy Equinox AWD rounding out the group.
So how did we come up with this cast of characters. Also from last time, here [...]
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[cue ominous movie trailer music and Don LaFontaine]
In a world where filling your gas tank means taking out a second mortgage and hoping for a Congressional bailout…
Yes, we’ve finally decided to make a change. But it’s not the Suburban that’s going - not this time, anyway (evil laugh). It may be a gas hog, but [...]
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Posted in Automobiles, Business, Government, Life, News, News and Politics, Politics, Science, Science and Technology, Technology, Uncategorized on April 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Two weeks ago I was critical of Senator John McCain’s proposal for a national “gas tax holiday.”
Now Senator Hillary Clinton is backing a similar idea. Though she has added a twist to the proposal with a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, the idea of a gas tax holiday is still a bad one, regardless of [...]
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So, on our recent tour of colleges in the Baltimore-Virginia-Washington, DC-New York-New Jersey areas we rented a car from Budget. One of the options was the Where2 GPS for another $48 for the week.
What a bargain.
On our trip, rather than struggling with paper maps, we used the Garmin StreetPilot C550-based Where2 GPS. An absolute God-send. [...]
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No college visits today. It’s time to go home. Our companion (well, one of our companions, but more about that later) was a 2008 Ford Fusion SEL like the one pictured above. Acquired temporarily through Budget Rent-A-Car, the Ford Fusion was a worthy mount for our tour of schools in the Washington, DC-Baltimore-Virginia and New [...]
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Our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling. Fuel tax revenues have not kept pace with the cost of maintaining our transportation infrastructure. This is because they are charged at a fixed amount per gallon, because overall fleet fuel economy is rising, and lately, demand has begun to slow. And we have a candidate for president who [...]
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Posted in Automobiles on March 3, 2008 | No Comments »
Recently, I was lamenting the apparent lack of urgency on the part of automakers to adapt their products to a world where being stingy with fuel is a plus, not something to be sniggered at. While I held the Jeep Renegade concept out as an example of where automotive technology should be headed, I also [...]
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Chalk one up for common sense. When it comes to improving fuel efficiency in the face of rising oil prices, increasing global demand, and (likely) decreasing supply the emphasis has been on technology, particularly in the form of hybrids. With all the major automakers are getting into the hybrid game, too much of the focus [...]
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Would it be too cliché to say I hate car shopping? Yes. Not only that, it wouldn’t be entirely true.
Doing the research is interesting, but I don’t mess around with a lot of the typical negotiating, let-me-go-talk-to-my-manager BS. The last three times we’ve bought a ‘new’ car it’s been a used car. One advantage to buying [...]
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Combine a Ford F-650 work truck with the body of an Excursion and the interior of a Circuit City, and you get the Alton F-650. There’s conspicuous consumption, and then there’s this. See my first post about this below.
read more | digg story
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