Free BMWs, the Prius and the blind, and world cars of the year.
2008 Ford Five Hundred |
Free BMWs!
I know your company does not get a lot of these requests but I was wondering if there is any chance that I get any of your BMWs free of charge. (I mean just like a gift.) Your slogan says get in the driver's seat but there is no way I can get in the drivers seat of a BMW car so I am writing this message to you hoping something can turn out for me.
I am a student at Green River Community College majoring in aviation. To finish my program I have a long ways to go, and a car that I drive has been voted to be laugh for few years already. So I decided you write this letter with my spare time, hoping that it would bring some happiness in some way. Writing this letter makes me feel that there is something good left in this world and that it just might happen to me.
Andrey Chebotarev
Kent , Wash.
The Prius and the blind
Your article on the NFB lobbying for noise generators on the Prius made me laugh. I was an engineer for GM on the EV1 program and had to conduct similar tests when a group representing blind citizens of California lobbied against EVs for the very same reason. I tested a BMW 3-Series, a Camry, and a Lexus (I think) against the EV1 and found that all had similarly low levels of noise at idle. When the A/C was turned on for all vehicles (thus turning on the front-mounted cooling fan), the EV1 was the noisiest of the bunch. I doubt that anyone would claim that most vehicles today are noisier than ambient levels in a busy metropolitan downtown area.
Those Flint guys are really good. As you know, print media depends on writing. The Flints ' knowledge comes thru in Tom McCahill fashion (including the irascibility). Or, come to think on it, in R. Cumberford fashion.
JB
A Ford Taurus revival
As you have the unusual gift of a literary bent with an acerbic wit as well as knowing what goes on under the hood, I am interested in your opinion regarding Ford's Mulally renaming the Five Hundred as a Taurus.
With all that's going wrong at Ford, resuscitating the Taurus name is almost akin to calling a Ford car an Edsel! What with the head gaskets problem on just about all the 3.8-liter engines for which Ford refused to contribute a penny towards the repair for more than a decade and with an automatic transmission that refused to function much over 90,000-110,000 miles, the taste left in our collective mouths from that experience just turned us off Tauruses and Ford.
And two years later to reuse the moniker?!? Small wonder that the Japanese will soon own all of us.
Anonymous
TCC has featured articles about all of the dead nameplates from Detroit . The former Big Three, and especially Ford, will come out with a vehicle, and then abandon it when the sales fall off. Then they will revive the name on another vehicle. Renaming a vehicle that has been out a couple of years after another vehicle that just bowed out is stranger still. If Ford thinks this will increase sales, they are terribly misguided. I thought the Five Hundred moniker was kinda stupid, but the vehicle is not bad, it just isn't anything. What this means is that the rental-car companies will have larger cars in their stables. No wonder Ford is in trouble.
Hi TCC Team. First off, great job with the Web site and its content! I just got finished cruising over the "World Car of The Year Finalists" article and something made my brain itch. I really must not know the true definition of a "world car," but I thought part of being a world car was being sold in all or at least most major markets around the world! A few of the finalists like the Citroë n C4 aren't even marketed in the U.S. (thank God!) which I thought for sure was considered a major market! Please help me understand this!
Jason
Here's the explanation straight from their Web site: "To be eligible for the overall World Car of the Year title, cars must be on sale in calendar year 2006 on at least two continents." As always, we're glad to relieve itching where and when we can.
;)
