Free Republic

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY – It's not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma's rural highways. But an elephant? A couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.</p>

Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners. Well, that's a rough paraphrase of a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV. In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog — including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food — give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat's pawprint was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, "New...

Environmentalism: As polls show belief in global warming is dropping, a new study suggests that dogs and cats, like people, are a plague upon the earth. They say people should have edible pets. Here, kitty, kitty. A new Pew Research Center study conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 says the number of Americans who think there's solid evidence the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has plummeted from 71% in April 2008 to 57% today. Over the same period, there's been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising...

Speeds of 150 mph were clocked early Friday by Grapevine police as they tried to stop a sports utility vehicle on Texas 114, according to reports. The driver of the 2008 Buick Enclave, Ismael Esparza, 37, of Southlake, was arrested for driving while intoxicated, said Lt. Todd Dearing, spokesman for Grapevine police. An officer was sent at 2:18 a.m. to check on a report of an intoxicated driver on Texas 121, north of DFW Airport, Dearing said. It was unclear if the Enclave was the same vehicle, but it passed the officer's patrol car at a very high speed,...

<p>When two Visalia, Calif., police officers swung their cruisers behind a sport utility vehicle that had been carjacked at gunpoint early Sunday, they prepared for a dangerous high-speed chase.</p> <p>The 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe roared away with officers in pursuit, but shortly after the suspect made a right turn, operators at General Motors Co.'s OnStar service sent a command that electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to a halt.</p>

Hummer, the off-road vehicle that once epitomized America's love for hulking trucks, is now in the hands of a Chinese heavy equipment maker. General Motors Co. and Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp. finally signed the much-anticipated deal for GM to sell the brand on Friday. Tengzhong will get an 80 percent stake in the company, while Hong Kong investor Suolang Duoji, who indirectly owns a big stake in Tengzhong through an investment company, will get 20 percent. The investors will also get Hummer's nationwide dealer network. Financial terms were not disclosed, although a person briefed on the deal said...

The sapphire blue 2001 Nissan X-Terra was still in pretty fine shape - but, getting only 17 miles or so a gallon, it had “Cash for Clunkers“ written all over it. So in August, Dan Hoang and girlfriend Tara Bui gathered up all the paperwork required by “Cash for Clunkers” - registration, title, proof of insurance - and went to Volkswagen of Garden Grove to ditch the gas guzzler and replace it with a more environmentally friendly VW Jetta. They wanted the clean diesel Jetta - which would have qualified for the maximum $4,500 credit - but alas, the dealer...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Vandals in Portland targeted some pretty pricey cars over night, throwing acid or paint stripper all over them. No one has claimed responsibility, and there's no telling just how many people were involved. The damage to as many as 15 cars is expensive. Here's one, a Hummer from the besieged Vic Alfonso Cadillac Dealership in Northeast Portland. You can see a number of spots where the paint is now peeling off the car. A sociology professor at Portland State University said there are plenty of reasons that could have motivated the vandals to do all of...

An 8-year-old Texas boy—in a sling—asked to use the bathroom at school, slipped out a door and drove away in an SUV parked in the schools parking lot with the keys still in the ignition. The boy proceeded to a gas station, where customers called the police. The 8-year-old will not be charged with a crime. However, some parents are raising questions about how the boy was able to slip out of the school. Watch video: http://www.cardealerreviews.org/?p=118384

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- Big cars and trucks are out. Smaller ones that offer more for your dollar are in. And many drivers will hang onto the new cars they buy longer. We've seen some of this before -- in the 1970s. But there's reason to believe that this time, American car-buying habits have changed forever. Scarred by the worst financial crisis since the 1930s and still leery of high gas prices, people are walking into showrooms intent on spending less. The trend is strongest among baby boomers, who are 44 to 63 years old and make up a...

Like a scene out of the "Dukes of Hazzard," a driver launched his SUV from the road into the second-floor of a Long Island home early Saturday. "All hell broke loose," said homeowner John Sarli, 58, who was sleeping at the far end of his E. Moriches house when the 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee crashed through the front. "I was kind of in shock." Suffolk County cops said Adam Clark, 20, was driving drunk when he hit a dirt berm 20 feet off E. Moriches Blvd. about 12:20 a.m. The Jeep flew 65 feet into the grand foyer of Sarli's...

Here is video of a cyclist being hit by an SUV in Wisconsin that ran a red-light. The SUV was driven by a Wisconsin state lawmaker. Miraculously, the cyclist was not seriously injured. . . . . (Watch Video)

Video taken from inside a city bus shows a Wisconsin state lawmaker running a red light and smashing into a bicyclist. Rep. Fred Clark, a Democrat, was ticketed by Madison police for running a red light on Aug. 18. The video was released this week by Madison Metro.

Ranking is based on the base model MSRP. You should be able to negotiate a lower price for the base model. Also, remember if you add additional features, you’ll could pay more. Top 10: http://www.cardealerreviews.org/?p=116813

For your amusement ... Would Bammy approve of the Hummer?

Can't post an excerpt due to copyright restrictions from Bloomberg, but the gist of the story is that Government Motors announced a new Buick SUV and then pulled it off the market within the week because, to quote a similar article from AP: "The Buick crossover we showed received consistent feedback from large parts of all the audiences that it didn't fit the premium characteristics that customers have come to expect from Buick," Stephens wrote. "We were all struck by the consistency of the criticism of the compact crossover." In other words, it was a dog. You can read...

List: SUVs dominate the list of vehicles that topped the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration highest crash-test ratings. View the Rankings: http://www.cardealerreviews.org/?p=116407

Because of distorted sales figures, Ford's Escape cross-over SUV, not the Focus small car, tops the list for most popular 'clunker' buy. What are people trading their clunkers in for? It depends on who you ask. The government's results showed small cars as the top choice for shoppers looking for Cash for Clunker deals. But an independent analysis by Edmunds.com disputed those results, and showed that two full-size trucks and a small crossover SUV were actually among the top-ten buys. The discrepancy is a result of the methods used. Edmunds.com uses traditional sales measurements, tallying sales by make and model....

...an independent analysis by Edmunds.com disputed those results, and showed that two full-size trucks and a small crossover SUV were actually among the top-ten buys. The discrepancy is a result of the methods used. Edmunds.com uses traditional sales measurements, tallying sales by make and model. The government uses a more arcane measurement method that subdivides models according to engine and transmission types, counting them as separate models.

Calif. man pulls girl from burning SUV on freeway The Associated Press Jul. 23, 2009 LOS ANGELES -- The California Highway Patrol is calling a Southern California man a hero for rescuing a 3-year-old girl from a burning vehicle on a Los Angeles-area freeway. John McDonald of West Covina was driving on Interstate 10 in El Monte Wednesday when he saw an overturned sports utility vehicle engulfed in flames. Video footage shows him running to help as three people who escaped the burning SUV ran away. The CHP says the driver of the SUV shouted that her granddaughter was still...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has pushed an ambitious green agenda and cast himself as a national environmental leader, routinely runs afoul of his own anti-pollution policy by letting his official SUVs idle, sometimes for more than an hour. In spot checks over the past week, The Associated Press timed idling periods for the mayor's city-owned SUVs, which shuttle him around the city or trail him when he takes the subway. The parked vehicles idled at least eight times for periods of 10 minutes to over an hour. The mayor earlier this year strengthened the city's anti-idling law -- which allows...

NEW YORK – Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has pushed an ambitious green agenda and cast himself as a national environmental leader, routinely runs afoul of his own anti-pollution policy by letting his official SUVs idle, sometimes for more than an hour. In spot checks over the past week, The Associated Press timed idling periods for the mayor's city-owned SUVs, which shuttle him around the city or trail him when he takes the subway. The parked vehicles idled at least eight times for periods of 10 minutes to over an hour. The mayor earlier this year strengthened the city's anti-idling law...

A group of people including two off-duty firefighters and an off-duty police lieutenant rescued a woman and her two children from a burning SUV that crashed on Milwaukee's south side Sunday afternoon. Most of the rescue was filmed by a bystander. The video shows the 1992 Chevrolet Blazer on its left side near S. 22nd Place and W. Layton Ave., its back half engulfed in flames and black smoke. Two men eventually use metal pipes to break through the windshield, freeing the woman, who is a 32-year-old Tennessee resident, and her 2-year-old daughter.

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump.Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

If you've got your eye on a new SUV, don't blink. It might be gone. Even with the auto industry mired in depression – sales are down nationally 36.5 percent – big vehicles such as the Ford Expedition and Chevy Tahoe are in tight supply because of drastic production cuts that automakers imposed last year as sales began to plummet. Now, a year after $4-a-gallon gas nearly killed SUVs, some dealers in this market are selling them for window-sticker prices. Moreover, most late-model used pickups and SUVs have regained all of the thousands of dollars in trade-in value they lost...

Ten people "stacked like wood" in the back of a sports-utility vehicle were killed when the driver lost control on a remote southeastern Arizona highway, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said Sunday.DPS Officer Joy Craig said at least 27 men and women were in the vehicle traveling on State Route 82 about four miles east of Sonoita when the vehicle rolled for an unknown reason shortly before midnight Saturday.Most of the vehicle's passengers were ejected.Authorities said all the victims are believed to be illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Equador and perhaps Mexico."There was no...

<p>SONOITA, Ariz. — Ten undocumented immigrants "stacked like wood" in the back of a sports utility vehicle crammed with at least 22 people were killed when the driver lost control and rolled over on a remote southern Arizona highway, authorities said Sunday.</p>

<p>DETROIT (AP) - Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Carpenters will still haul materials around in pickup trucks, but they will cost more. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.</p>

BRENTWOOD — A 17-year-old girl had to be airlifted to a local hospital Tuesday evening after she was run over by her own car while trying to "ghost ride," a car stunt popularized in the East Bay, police said. "Ghost riding" typically entails a car owner walking or dancing alongside or on top of a vehicle that is idling forward without a driver. The stunt has local origins, particularly in the Bay Area rap scene radiating from Oakland and Vallejo. The injured girl was "performing a horseplay maneuver" as her 1980s-model Chevrolet Blazer idled along about 6 p.m. near San...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Ford Motor said Wednesday it will spend $550 million to convert a plant, which previously produced trucks and SUVs, into a "green" manufacturing complex building small fuel-efficient and electric cars. [snip] "We're changing from a company focused mainly on trucks and SUVs to a company with a balanced product lineup that includes even more high-quality, fuel-efficient small cars, hybrids and all-electric vehicles," said Mark Fields, Ford's president of The Americas, in a statement.

Introducing Subaru's new line of SUV's for conservatives.

Read Full Article Here: http://www.rasertech.com/media/videos/the-electric-h3 Watch Video: http://www.rasertech.com/media/videos/electric-h3-hummer-unveiled Raser Technologies, Inc. unveiled a 100+ mpg Hummer H3 powered by Raser’s plug-in hybrid E-REV (Extended-Range Electric Vehicle) at the 2009 SAE International World Congress, Cobo Center, Detroit, MI. ...

DETROIT, MI - General Motors intends to create a new auto division as part of its plan to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to sources inside the company. The division will focus on the production of wind hybrids - a new, yet unproven technology that combines wind power, battery operated electrical motors and conventional gasoline engines. Executives believe the move will satisfy consumer demand for environmentally friendly cars and fulfill government requirements for continued public funding...

SUVs, crossovers dominate at 2009 New York auto show ___ The smart set here in New York has long declared the SUV dead. That gas-guzzling, pollutant-spewing darling of suburban and rural America is a passé relic of a bygone era, according to the book editors, fashion photographers, literary critics, Broadway choreographers and other practitioners of the bedrock industries that built this country. They’d better stay away from the New York auto show this week because there they will see car manufacturers showing off their latest off-road contenders, and the majority of the new models unveiled at the show’s press preview...

NEW YORK (AP) -- It sounds crazy: Just a week after the White House scolded Chrysler LLC for relying too much on gas guzzlers, the company is heading to a marquee auto show Wednesday to unveil a new SUV. Chrysler insists the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which clocks in at 20 mpg in its two-wheel-drive version and 19 in four-wheel-drive, is a crowd favorite and a crucial part of its lineup.

Family survives deer landing inside SUVApril 01, 2009 COEYMANS, N.Y. (AP) -- Five people riding in an SUV escaped with minor cuts and scratches after a deer hurtled through their windshield and landed in the vehicle's cargo area. Heather Sherman says she and her boyfriend, her two daughters and her mother were driving Saturday night on Route 32 in the town of Coeymans (KWEE'-mihnz) when an oncoming car hit the deer, sending it into their windshield. Sherman says she and her boyfriend were covered in blood after the impact. They pulled over, and when she went to the back of...

You know you're in trouble when Old Europe chastises you for being too socialist. But, hey, nobody's perfect — except maybe Michelle Obama, who landed in London with a huge Obama entourage, wearing a daffodil yellow dress and looking like a confident ray of U.S.A. sunshine. As President Obama renegotiates the terms of American leadership this week in Europe, those of us left at home struggle to get over our affluenza. That condition, the bane of the middle class, is defined in a book of the same name as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and...

Ah, spring, when the earth slowly wakes from its winter slumber, a warming welcomed by nearly every living thing. Hard to believe some silly people are deathly afraid of warming weather — worried sick because the earth has warmed a degree or two over the last 150 years. Make no mistake — the earth has warmed. Unfortunately for the climate-change catastrophists, warming periods have occurred throughout recorded history, long before the Industrial Revolution and SUVs began spitting man-made carbon into the atmosphere. And as might be expected, these warm periods have invariably proven a blessing for humanity. Consider: Around the...

Fate of Hummer brand is hours away March 30th, 2009 Matt Degen In a day in which we’ve seen more than enough upheaval in Detroit, there comes this bit of news: The fate of GM’s Hummer brand is to be decided by Tuesday, and things aren’t exactly looking rosy. According to an AP report, General Motors must decide by the end of the first quarter — that’s Tuesday — whether to sell the brand or let it die. GM is reportedly still talking to buyers for the brand that made military-derived four-by-fours a common sight in Orange County, but no...

Lehman and his wife expected a relaxing evening at a north Fresno hotel Monday night. Rick Lehman had a meeting Tuesday in Sacramento and didn't want to get snowed in at their home near North Fork.

SEMA is opposing an effort by some Washington lawmakers to include a national car crushing program in the upcoming economic stimulus package. Vehicles targeted for the scrap pile will likely include Chevy Blazers, Silverados, S-10s and Tahoes; Dodge Dakotas and Rams; Ford Explorers and F-Series; Jeep Cherokees and Wranglers; and any other SUV or truck that obtains less than 18 mpg.

An US dietician says that has branded Americans food habits an "SUV eating style", which contributes to global warming more than the cars they drive, in her book. Kate Geagan, registered dietitian in Park City, Utah, refers to a University of Iowa study that has found that food on average travels about 1,500 miles to reach people's tables. "When we choose highly processed packaged foods, we contribute to global warming, so food is a new part of the dialogue about the environment. And this is something that everyone can do now and not wait for politicians to enact changes. An...

General Motors Corp. is counting on the 2010 Cadillac SRX crossover vehicle to lure luxury car buyers with new design and performance features. The redesigned vehicle was unveiled Sunday and is set to go on display at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit later this month. It replaces the SRX model first launched in 2004. To help compete with better-selling rivals like the Lexus RX, Acura MDX, and the BMW X3 and X5, the SRX's designers took elements from other Cadillac models and melded them into this one. The new SRX looks faster than its boxy predecessor,...

Big is back: As pump prices plunge, SUV sales surgeBuyers with short memories when it comes to gas prices find hot deals on big vehicles. By Adrianne Jeffries | Special to the Daily Press December 30, 2008 NEWPORT NEWS - It looks like the Highlander is in and the Prius is out — for now at least. Trucks and sport utility vehicles will outsell cars for the first time since February, according to a December report by Edmunds.com, which tracks industry statistics. "Despite all the public discussion of fuel efficiency, SUVs and trucks are the industry's biggest sellers right now...

<p>A former Beverly Hills, Calif. liposuction doctor claimed to have the environment's best interests at heart when he began fueling his and his girlfriend's SUVs with human fat sucked out of his patients.</p> <p>Unfortunately the practice was illegal, according to California state health officials.</p>

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are reigniting America's taste for big vehicles. Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn't happened since February.

Even a federal bailout could not save three of the last remaining plants in the United States still making sport utility vehicles.

Even a federal bailout could not save three of the last remaining plants in the United States still making sport utility vehicles. Reeling from its financial problems and a collapsing S.U.V. market, General Motors on Tuesday closed its factories in this city and in Moraine, Ohio, marking the passing of an era when big S.U.V.’s ruled the road. The moves followed the shutdown last Friday of Chrysler’s factory in Newark, Del., which produced full-size S.U.V.’s. snip The fate of the Janesville, Moraine, and Newark plants was sealed this spring, when rising gas prices suddenly made S.U.V.’s unpopular, and long before...

SISSONVILLE, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A scary wake up call for people in a mobile home in Sissonville Saturday morning. Dispatchers tell WSAZ.com that a car hit the trailer and then landed on its roof. The accident happened just after one o’clock on Saturday morning on Sissonville Drive in Sissonville. The people that live in the mobile home were home when the accident happened but no one in the trailer was injured. No information is available on the condition of the driver of the car. We will bring you more information as soon as we get it.

Standing by while your car gets towed is terrible. This Shangainese Chevy owner used its car's remaining two wheels to counterattack. Note to Chinese tow companies: either get heavier trucks or remember to take them out of neutral. [Chinasmack] WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLC1Iy1UkE