A Look Inside the Studio

PA couple accused of trying to blow up Ford Fusion with flaming tampons

Two Pennsylvanians recently found themselves in trouble with the law after vandalizing a 2006 Ford Fusion in a decidedly inventive manner. Patricia and Quentin Deshong, 25 and 22, respectively, are staring down the barrel of charges ranging from attempted arson to public drunkenness, criminal mischief and making terrorist threats. The Deshongs reportedly broke or cracked multiple windows in the vehicle, ripped various hoses from the engine bay and attempted to set the vehicle ablaze by sticking lit tampons into the fuel tank and oil cap. They were not successful. Investigators aren’t certain why the Fusion found itself on the raw end of the Deshongs’ rage. The vehicle is owned by 25-year-old Falon Clark, and while Clark and Patricia Deshong are reportedly Facebook friends, Clark’s page states she’s currently “lookin for some revenge…” Gary Boggs, a friend of Clark’s, told Pennsylvania state troopers Patricia Deshong threw a beer bottle through the back glass of his Ford F-150, though it’s unclear when that incident happened or how Boggs knows the Deshongs. After officers arrived on the scene, the Deshongs were found to be under the influence of alcohol and Patricia had the license plate and registration to the damaged Fusion on her person. She was charged with theft as a result. Both individuals were then released after they each posted a $25,000 bond, but not before Patricia took the time to threaten that she was going to “f***ing kill” a trooper,” landing her the terrorist threat charge.

L.L. Bean celebrates century of mucking about with Bootmobile

The L.L.Bean Bootmobile is perhaps the diametric opposite of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, promoting outdoor activity instead of consumption of sodium and saturated-fat-laden sausages. The well-known maker of high quality outdoor goods is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and the Bootmobile has been created as a way to celebrate the product that helped start it all. After being unveiled to L.L. Bean employees at the Brunswick, Maine facility where the boots are made, the wheeled boot tribute is headed to Times Square to kick off a nationwide anniversary tour. The tour is intended to inspire people to frolic outdoors and L.L.Bean Outdoor Discovery School guides will be traveling with the Bootmobile to help people learn how to do so. Most important to auto enthusiasts might be what’s underneath it all. The underlying truck is a Ford F-250 Super Duty Diesel, and piled atop that base is a fiberglass body that stands 13 feet tall. Das Boot equates to a Size 747 bit of footwear – that’s the perfect size for a 143-foot tall person, but they are too big for the Statue of Liberty. Echo Artz of Florida handled the design and build process, first sculpting the body in foam and then laying the fiberglass and paying obsessive attention to the details along the way. L.L. Bean officials declined to tell us how much the unique build cost them, calling the Bootmobile “priceless.” It’s a big way to celebrate a company that started as the result of cold, wet feet after a hunting trip. 

Average age of car is record-setting 10.8 years old

 

Americans are driving their vehicles longer, as the average age of vehicles has nearly hit 11 years, according to a new study by Polk. Blame a wretched economy and more reliable modern automobiles, but cars and trucks continue to stay on the road much longer than they did 15 years ago, when the average age was just 8.4 years. According to a report in The Detroit News, there are other reasons for the change, including a decline in the number of miles driven last year and improved resistance to rust and corrosion. Regardless of the reason for the record-setting age of our American fleet, the news has the auto industry salivating at the prospect of boom times ahead. The National Automobile Dealers Association is predicting that new vehicle sales this year will hit 13.9 million. “The economy, unemployment are still going to be stubborn, but there’s so much pent-up demand I think the industry is going to have an awesome year,” Toyota President and CEO Jim Lentz told 

GM retakes global sales crown with over 9M units shifted in 2011

Look who’s back on top again? Just 30 months since General Motors emerged from bankruptcy, the Detroit-based automaker can once again call itself the world’s largest. GM sold just over 9 million vehicles globally in 2011, its highest sales total ever, while chief rival Toyota may slip as far as third place, according to TheDetroitBureau.com, which reports that Volkswagen will pass Toyota to claim the runner-up spot. Led by a record-setting 4.76 million sales year from Chevrolet, GM saw sales rise in all four of its reporting regions. The company says it now claims 11.9 percent of the global market. Sales in the U.S. were up 13 percent with 1.7 million vehicles sold. It wasn’t a good year for Toyota, the largest carmaker by sales volume for the past three years, sinceunseating GM in 2008. The Japanese manufacturer experienced production interruptions from the earthquake and resultant tsunami in Japan in early 2011, and then again when Thailand experienced widespread floodinglater in the year. While GM’s legion of critics will no doubt point to the natural disasters in an attempt to diminish the significance of GM reclaiming the top spot, the company has to be feeling pretty good about its accomplishments last year. Not that being number one matters that much. As analyst Aaron Bragman of IHS Automotive tells The Bureau, “Being biggest in the world is not necessarily an advantage to anyone.” But it’s certainly good for bragging rights and positive morale. As they say in sports, “scoreboard, baby.”

A doctor in your dashboard – Ford cars that monitor your vitals

The technology exists to build a car that will act as your own private nurse. The car will notice if you have low blood sugar and prompt you to eat a snack. The car will also check local pollen counts and roll up your windows when the pollen gets too high. At lunch time, the car is going to give you directions to the nearest restaurant that serves you a healthy lunch. This and much more is what Ford has in store for its consumers in the future, some of these applications of technology may be available in a year or two. Using a suite of new apps Ford announced Wednesday, starting up your car will supply you with your own personalized medical evaluation. Three medical technology firms are working with Ford to build web-connected apps for it Sync on board communications interface. Ford’s Chief Technology Officer, Paul Mascarenas, said today that the technology to monitor these vitals won’t be available for another year. The Ford Company wants to focus on the consumers health in the up and coming cars of the future. While apps to monitor blood alcohol would be a tremendous safety tool, Ford executives have no plan on offering these apps in the cars, they are going in a more keeping healthy way instead of monitoring the laws apparently. The crashes reported by hypoglycemic patients because of their sugar levels going awry, may be a thing of the past with the new blood sugarmonitoring system. Of course alcohol indulgence also causes crashes, but this again is apparently not health related enough to add in with the other apps. Ford’s vision is to turn cars into tools that work for the consumer as life coaches and personal assistants. They liken this to the way Smartphone apps have transformed the cell phone. Ford does not have a target population in mind when developing this technology to use in their cars. They want to offer it to their frugal Fiesta drivers all the way through to the high end cars, such as the pricey Lincolns.

 

CD PLAYERS BECOMING EXTINCT

CD players in cars look set to go the same way as Van Halen’s career, according to a report in industry trade publication Automotive News. With content and computing power migrating to smartphones, which can now channel music, navigation and other applications to relatively simple and low-cost on board infotainment systems, CD players are becoming increasingly irrelevant in cars, the report says. Automakers also want to get rid of optical drives — that is, CD or DVD players — because they are expensive and appeal mainly to older motorists, according to the report. Indeed, the 2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS, which debuted this week at the Detroit auto show and will go on sale in the United States this summer, features an optional MyLink infotainment system that lets motorists make hands-free phone calls, listen to MP3 music and get route guidance by linking their smartphones to the vehicle’s infotainment system, but no CD player, Automotive News said.  “We asked potential Sonic and Spark customers what they were looking for in infotainment,” Sara LeBlanc, MyLink’s global infotainment program manager, told Automotive News. “They were very worried about cost. They said to us: ‘Get rid of the CD player. We don’t use it.’”

Infamous Le Mans 1955 Austin-Healey 100S Prototype sold for $1.3 million

Motorsports has had plenty of dark days in its history, but few compare to the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans. That race saw Lance Macklin enter this Austin-Healey 100 S Prototype in the legendary European 24-hour race in his name. The vehicle packed a 140-horsepower inline four-cylinder engine with a massive cam and dual carbs, and while Macklin was able to keep the vehicle in decent standing throughout the first racing stint, he eventually found himself being lapped by the substantially quicker sports-prototype vehicles fromJaguar and Mercedes-Benz. As the Austin-Healey came barreling past the pits, a Jaguar D-Type slowed abruptly as it came in for fuel, forcing to Macklin to swerve out of the way. That’s when the Austin-Healey was struck from the rear by a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR on the rear quarter. The Mercedes-Benz catapulted into a retaining bank and disintegrated, spraying the crowd with flaming debris, including the vehicle’s engine. A total of 84 individuals died as a result of the crash, including Pierre Levegh, the driver of the 300SLR. A further 120 people sustained injuries of varying severity, and the crash prompted an international revision of safety precautions at race tracks. The Austin-Healey, meanwhile, spent a year in police impound before being repaired and sold to a private individual. It’s spent the last 42 years owned by a single individual, with many of those in storage.

Would you pay $8/hour to own a Ferrari?

Life is full of unattainables. Most of us will never hold the keys to an expansive beach-front property, lounge on our own personal yacht or park a Ferrari in the garage, and for good reason. The very exclusivity of those objects is part of their lure, but a new site looks to change all that. Jointli allows regular Joes and Janes to co-own property, vehicles, boats and more. The site’s tools allow users to chose potential co-owners in their area, sign agreements and manage time shares accordingly. So, how much would it conceivably cost to own, say, a Ferrari F430? According to Jointli, four people could conceivably wrangle one of the Italian exotics for as little as $8,000 per person, which works out to close to $8 per hour individually. Of course, Jonli’s math means that’s the cost after selling the vehicle after just one year of use. It also excludes any unfortunate dings or repairs that may arise as the result of four people who don’t know how to drive a Ferrari being tossed the keys. The whole scenario sounds great in a perfect world. Unfortunately, our planet is about as far from that bright center as you can get. 

Lexus and Mini offer the most satisfying buying experience

JD Power and Associates has released the results of the organization’s annual study on customer satisfaction with the vehicle buying process, and Mini has once again taken top honors among mass market brands. The study specifically looks at satisfaction among buyers and those who chose not to buy from a particular brand for a comprehensive slice of the automotive consumer masses. Among buyers, JD Power evaluated across four categories; working out the deal, salesperson, delivery process and dealership facility. Rejectors, however, evaluated ranked their experience across salesperson, fairness in price, facility, inventory and experience negotiating. Overall sales satisfaction actually increased over last year across the board, and JD Power believes this may be due to the fact that manufacturers are focusing improving their dealer experience now more than ever. That increase in satisfaction comes even as the actual buying process takes longer than in 2010. Buyers can now expect to spend an average of 11 more minutes in a dealer when it comes time to sign the loan agreement, thanks in part to more in-depth demonstrations of vehicle features. Lexus beat out the rest of the luxury brands to take first place in 2011, with Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz trailing close behind. Who took the bottom of both lists? Volvo landed dead last among luxury makes, whileJeep took the bottom spot among mass marked sellers. Hit the jump for the full press release as well as the rest of the automaker standings.

 

You Don’t Need a License Plate in Texas?

 

A one-sntence omission in new Texas license plate law could jeopardize provisions for enforcing regulations on missing and illegitimate plates. Texas State Rep. Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) asked state Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) to clarify if a missing line about a $200 fine for driving a car without license plates could make other parts of the law invalid, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The license plate bill was passed by the legislature in May and signed by Gov. Rick Perry (R) and takes effect on Jan. 1. “It was just a very huge, detailed bill that we’d already rewritten three, four, five times,” Pickett (D-El Paso) said Tuesday. “This wasn’t a first draft. We made so many corrections and changes, we thought we caught everything.” Texas has required vehicles to have two license plates, displayed on the front and back, since 1934. The misdemeanor offense can bring a fine of up to $200, though drivers who quickly correct the problem can pay a $10 fee instead. Pickett’s letter to Attorney General Greg Abbott, written with help from lawyers with the Department of Motor Vehicles, argued that the $200 penalty can be implied by the way the law was written. In addition, Texas law does not require the penalty to be included when the offense is clearly explained, Pickett wrote. The article reported that Abbott has six months to issue an opinion on the new law. Pickett said it would be tough for enforcement as there is no explicit mention of the fine in the law, but said he believes the fact the law makes such license plate-related problems illegal would continue to let the bill stand. Typos in legislation have caused issues for state governments elsewhere over the last year. These include a mistake in Hawaii that provided cancer research with one-and-a-half cents from all cigarettes sold in 2006 instead of one-and-a-half cents for each cigarette, a mistake reported to have cost $8 million. The Texas license plate law problem comes as Georgia lawmakers will be considering legislation next year that would require “In God We Trust” to be placed on state license plates. Currently Georgia drivers can purchase a sticker with the motto to place on their plates.