Free Republic

With sport-utility vehicles at the altar and auto workers in the pews, one of Detroit's largest churches on Sunday offered up prayers for Congress to bail out the struggling auto industry. "We have never seen as midnight an hour as we face this week," the Rev. Charles Ellis told several thousand congregants at a rousing service at Detroit's Greater Grace Temple. "This week, lives are hanging above an abyss of uncertainty as both houses of Congress decide whether to extend a helping hand." Local car dealerships donated three hybrid SUVs to be displayed during the service, one from each of...

All those folks who unloaded their sport-utility vehicles when gasoline shot past $4 a gallon this summer might be developing a case of seller's remorse. Americans love their wheels. The bigger the better, if the past is any guide. The ideals of personal freedom and mobility embodied in the automobile haven't changed in the least. So, no surprise, with gas prices down around $2 again, the much-maligned SUV is making something of a comeback.

Repent, all ye owners of Suburbans, thou drivers of Explorers. Mend thy ways, ye Escalade-loving louts! Take heed of the warning the prophet Mika has vouchsafed unto you: greedy thou art; verily, destroyers of the environment be thee! Oy. Mika Brzezinski was on quite a roll this morning. On the one hand, free-marketers would find much to agree with in Mika's arguments. As noted here yesterday, whereas Joe Scarborough has been vigorously advocating a federal rescue of Detroit, Brzezinski favors bankruptcy over bailout. But Mika couldn't help muddling her message, delivering a jeremiad against Detroit for producing larger vehicles and...

Confirmed: Chrysler's hybrid 'utes DOA Posted at 8:04AM by Well, that didn't last long, did it? We wondered about the fate of the Chrysler Aspen hybrid and its sibling, the Dodge Durango hybrid after the automaker announced its plans to close its Newark, DE assembly plant, where the hybrid 'utes are built. We didn't need to wonder long, as a report on Green Car Advisor confirms the demise of the two hybrid SUVs. Oddly, it was just two months ago that the two vehicles were first introduced, and we found that the two large vehicles actually performed rather well when...

Now that gas is about to dip below $2 here in San Antonio, it is time to buy a bigger vehicle for camping (towing) and long-distance travelling (Texas to Ohio). I am considering an Expedition (have the Ford A Plan) and Toyota Sequoia. Any owners out there that want to state their case? Any others I should look at? Thanks in advance!!!

With little fanfare, a new car factory opened in America earlier this month. The new Honda assembly plant in Greensburg, Ind., will produce 200,000 compact Civic models annually after reaching full capacity late next year. The contrast couldn't be starker between Detroit's woes and the continuing U.S. expansion of Japanese, German and Korean car companies -- in both market share and manufacturing capacity. There are two American auto industries, one generally thriving and the other drastically shrinking. The shrinking is accelerating dramatically. Just yesterday Chrysler said it would ax 25% of its white-collar employees, about 5,000 people, next month. General...

Is history repeating itself in the automobile industry? The latest data on vehicle sales suggest that it might be. Auto sales hit the skids in September, sinking to their lowest level in more than 15 years, as the faltering economy and credit crunch combined to squeeze the business. But amid the carnage, sales of large pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles held their own, according to Edmunds.com. Yes, you read that correctly: trucks and SUVs, the very same gas-swigging monsters that Americans have stampeded away from this year as gasoline prices rose to record levels. Surprisingly, as the rest of...

SOUTHLAKE — Tips keep pouring into Southlake police after releasing the now-infamous video of a gray-haired man using a key to vandalize a Hummer. The crime was captured on the vehicle's own surveillance system, which had been installed because it had previously been defaced in a similar way. There have been no arrests yet, but there is legitimate speculation that this could be a case of suburban eco-terrorism against a certain gas-guzzling SUV. Police say they don't yet know the identity of the man videotaped using his key to gouge "X" marks into the side of a Hummer. But the...

The man wanted for vandalizing a HUMMER in Southlake surrendered to police Friday. Several tips and surveillance video from the vehicle pointed to the 72-year-old suspect.

It started in 1961 with chicken. Trying to stop a surge of chicken imports into Germany, the European Common Market bowed to the European poultry lobby and almost tripled the tariff on frozen chicken from the United States. Washington, of course, struck back. In 1963, it raised tariffs on a range of European products: brandy to hit the French; dextrine, a food and glue component, to hit the Dutch. To target Germany, the Johnson administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on light-truck imports, a barrier that fell on Volkswagen, which exported vans to the United States. “Why should we be...

An Iranian-born former student has been sentenced to up to 33 years in prison for plowing his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Chevrolet Silverado is arguably the best half-ton truck for towing and the Two-Mode hybrid version is arguably the best half-ton Silverado for towing. It's absolutely amazing watching a Silverado pull a 5000 pound trailer and not hearing anything as the rig pulls away. If you're gentle with the gas, you could make it to 30 mph before the gasoline engine fires up. The silent operation is eerie, but the big news is how smooth this half-ton truck feels with a trailer in tow. Some may think of hybrid systems as being fragile or only useful for improving fuel...

...High energy prices also have an unforeseen bright side, forcing the nation to reduce its carbon emissions and delivering the encouraging message that, although we might not regain the freewheeling way of life that came with cheap gasoline, we have more ability to shape our fates than the caricature of the soft, spoiled American implied. The first sign was when SUVs went from being the belles of the freeway to oversized wallflowers. Thirteen miles per gallon isn't just expensive; it's no longer chic. As U.S. automakers gear up for a new motoring sensibility, we can look forward to a more...

Which gets better gas mileage, a Hummer or a scooter? No contest. But which is more polluting? It may not be what you think. "It's true. The cleanest scooter is still dirtier than a car," said John Swanton, air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board.

Should Detroit have seen this disaster coming? Yes. Gasoline prices have been climbing steadily for more than three years now. The Bush-Bernanke debasement of the dollar didn't do Detroit any favors, because the dollar's collapse has contributed mightily to the soaring price of crude oil. But the Detroit Three stuck with a business model based on leasing SUVs for way too long. The two things wrong with that model were, well, leasing and SUVs. The residual values on which SUV lease payments are based turned out to be enormously inflated. With gas around $4 a gallon, the auto makers can't...

NORFOLK, Va (WAVY.com)--It was supposed to be a news conference by supporters for Democratic Senator Barack Obama. They wanted to blast Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain's plan to give a brief 'gas tax' holiday. When State Senator Louise Lucas showed up in a gas guzzling Hummer to blast McCain for his stand on the oil crisis, the story changed. Lucas said, "While Virginia's families are confronting the reality of gas, the oil companies continue to record record profits." That, from an elected official who showed up in a vehicle that gets some of the lowest gas mileage per gallon. WAVY.com...

Love 'em or hate 'em, the American land yacht is rumbling into the sunset. Rejoice? Let us, first and foremost, be perfectly clear: it ain't over yet. Millions of dinosaurs still roam the Earth, the giant meteor of merciful annihilation has yet to strike, complete and total upheaval is still merely pending. But it's coming fast. You can sense the shadow, the darkening, the imminent and oily doom. The dinosaurs are trembling, scribbling out their wills as fast as possible. They know the end is near, the signs are all in place, as that giant $63K Toyota Land Cruiser V8...

Reports on automobile sales were almost uniformly weak across Districts. Sales were especially poor for large vehicles such as trucks, SUVs, and some minivans. Indeed, auto dealers in the San Francisco District were increasingly reluctant to accept trade-ins of trucks and SUVs due to a lack of a wholesale market for these vehicles...

The Disinformation Age: OPEC lies, the SUV dies By Clifford D. May The Disinformation Age: OPEC lies, the SUV dies The folks over at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, must think we’re pretty stupid. The other day, Chakib Khelil, the current OPEC president, asserted that "the intrusion of bioethanol on the market" is responsible for 40% of recent increases in the price of oil. Now how exactly would that work? How does growing sugarcane in Brazil or corn in Iowa push up the price of oil sucked from holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela?...

The folks over at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, must think we’re pretty stupid. The other day, Chakib Khelil, the current OPEC president, asserted that “the intrusion of bioethanol on the market� is responsible for 40 percent of recent increases in the price of oil. Now how exactly would that work? How does growing sugarcane in Brazil or corn in Iowa push up the price of oil sucked from holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela? If we roasted the corn and put the sugar in coffee — instead of making it into alcohol fuels...

Disinformation Age OPEC lies, the SUV dies. By Clifford D. May The folks over at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, must think we’re pretty stupid. The other day, Chakib Khelil, the current OPEC president, asserted that “the intrusion of bioethanol on the market” is responsible for 40 percent of recent increases in the price of oil. Now how exactly would that work? How does growing sugarcane in Brazil or corn in Iowa push up the price of oil sucked from holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela? If we roasted the corn and put the...

Having their S.U.V.'s and converting them, too by Fara Warner New York Times, 4/11/04 ------------------------------ KEVIN RICHARDSON, who at 32 is the oldest member of the Backstreet Boys, took delivery last week of his 2004 GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle. He raves about its "F.B.I. look" - all black and chromeless, with lacquered wheel rims - and the 5.3-liter V-8 engine that puts close to 300 horsepower under the hood. And he dreams of ordering a customized license plate for this, his perfect Hollywood ride. It would read "CLEAN." That may sound as contradictory as Mr. Richardson himself - an...

Allow me to show you a couple of mental snapshots. First imagine a picture of a family in a modern SUV. Mom and dad up front with three kids in the back, safely secured with their seat belts on. That’s snapshot number one. Now, imagine two men dressed in tuxedos embracing and kissing at their wedding ceremony. Both are wearing flowers in their lapels and a beaming clergyman is standing behind them having just pronounced them “husband and husband.” That’s snapshot number two. Now, hold these pictures in front of you and ask yourself this question: Which of these represents...

To slow its production of pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, the Toyota plant in Princeton, Ind., is letting employees decide if they will come to work on six days between now and August. The company announced today that it would refrain from producing the Tundra pickup truck and Sequoia SUV at the Princeton plant on six days before the end of August. Both vehicles are made in the west side of Toyota's factory in Princeton. The "nonproduction days" will affect about half of the 4,500 employees at the plant. The other half works in the east side of the...

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. Does the car business have the guts to follow him? “Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. "This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought." We're hunched on the floor of Goodwin's gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy--a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and...

Last April 9th, at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, two soldiers were driving a rented SUV about five kilometers from the part of the range used for live firing. It was at night, and an F-16 that thought it was firing at something in the live fire area, lit up the SUV instead. Only 70 20mm rounds were fired. Fortunately, the two people in the SUV were only injured (both from flying glass, the passenger got a dislocated shoulder as he rapidly exited the vehicle when it quickly turned off the road and stopped.) The investigation of how this happen...

With gas at $4 a gallon, there's a lot of pain at the pumps. And a lot of people looking to trade in their gas-guzzling SUV for a fuel efficient hybrid. No wonder automakers report that sales of these vehicles are in freefall. GM just shuttered four plants that make them. But even in this economy, trading in your SUV for a hybrid may not make the best financial sense. You may be better off keeping the vehicle, taking the pain – and just driving less. Or looking for a cheaper alternative car. Look at the numbers. A Toyota Prius...

In an Age of $4-a-Gallon Fuel, Some Drivers Could enefit By Getting a Bargain SUV Today's SUV deals, which include cash-back offers and special financing terms, have gotten fatter over the past several months as sales have continued to slide. In April, auto makers offered an average of $5,786 in discounts on midsize SUVs, according to the most recent data from Autodata, up from $4,909 a year earlier. On large SUVs, manufacturers offered an average of $4,829, up from $3,070. Among the better deals are Ford's flagship SUVs, the Expedition and the Explorer. An Expedition with four-wheel drive has a...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. auto sales tumbled in May as buyers fled from pickups and sport utility vehicles in the face of average gas prices that are now just shy of $4 a gallon. The trouble hit not only U.S. automakers General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), Ford Motor and Chrysler LLC -- which have long depended on sales of pickups and SUVs -- but also trimmed the sales of their top Japanese rival Toyota Motor (TM). But other Asian automakers held up reasonably well. Nissan (NSANY) reported a narrow sales gain while Honda Motor (HMC) and Kia rode American...

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — General Motors is closing four truck and SUV plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico as surging fuel prices hasten a dramatic shift to smaller vehicles. CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday before the automaker's annual meeting in Delaware the plants to be closed are in Oshawa, Ontario; Moraine, Ohio; Janesville, Wis.; and Toluca, Mexico. He also said the iconic Hummer brand will be reviewed and potentially sold or revamped. Wagoner said the GM board has approved production of a new small Chevrolet car at a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in mid-2010 and the Chevy Volt electric...

(Demand picking up as price of gas soars and economic incentive rises) How's this for oil-shock value: Scott Olson of Brookfield went to his car dealership to get the oil changed on his sport utility vehicle and drove home in a new SUV that gets nearly twice the gas mileage. "I was filling it up every five days," he said of his old Ford Escape. "Now I'm only filling it up every eight or nine days." Olson, 43, now the proud owner of a blue Mercury Mariner hybrid SUV that gets nearly 40 mpg in city driving, is part of...

Jorge Fernandez strolls across the used-car parking lot littered with dozens upon dozens of sport utility vehicles the size of small tugboats. With gas at $4 a gallon, many have sat there since last summer. "The cars are literally just sitting, and it doesn't matter how much you sell them for," Fernandez says of the SUVs and trucks nobody wants anymore. Fernandez, a wholesale auto dealer who has been in the business for more than 20 years, says SUV owners are hit especially hard. The really large ones with V-8 engines that can get as little as 12 miles per...

Trading in gas guzzler may cost you By Terry Jackson • Bankrate.com Like a lot of people, you may be watching the price at the pump soar and wondering whether it's time to dump your current, less-than-efficient SUV, truck or car. It's tempting to simply haul your 15 miles-per-gallon vehicle down to the dealership and drive out in something that gets 30 mpg or more. But that may not be smart, at least from a financial point of view. People thinking of going this route need to take several factors into account. For starters, your gas guzzler is worth considerably...

Did you hear that Obama criticized us for driving big SUVs and eating our foods? I heard it on Fox News' 'Special Report' a few minutes ago. Mr. Barak Hussein Osama Bin-Laudin Obama, I do not want my GOVERNMENT to tell me either: a)What kind of car I can drive or b)What food I can eat. I live in a FREE COUNTRY -- so I don't need a NANNY STATE to tell me what to do. That is SOCIALISM you JACK@SS!!

While Hyundai offers a front wheel drive minivan in the U.S. market called the Entourage, it's only available with the Korean manufacturer's 3.8L gas V-6. It gets an EPA overall rating of 18mpg, which is competitive in its segment here in North America but no great shakes overall. Overseas, Hyundai has just released a new eight-seat rear wheel drive full-sized van called the i800. The i800 gets motivation from a 2.5L four cylinder diesel engine with common rail injection. The diesel generates 170hp and 289lb-ft of torque which won't get any enthusiasts excited in this application (what enthusiast would...

Like a lot of people, you may be watching the price at the pump soar and wondering whether it's time to dump your current, less-than-efficient SUV, truck or car. It's tempting to simply haul your 15 miles-per-gallon vehicle down to the dealership and drive out in something that gets 30 mpg or more. But that may not be smart, at least from a financial point of view. ADVERTISEMENT People thinking of going this route need to take several factors into account. For starters, your gas guzzler is worth considerably less as a trade-in than it was even six months ago....

PHILADEPHIA: As gasoline prices hit records on almost a daily basis, an increasing number of motorists in US are following a radical driving technique designed to eke out every last mile from a tank of fuel. Known as 'hypermiling,' the methods can double gas mileage, even in gas-guzzling vehicles. Promoted on a growing number of websites, hypermiling includes pumping up tires to the maximum rating on their sidewalls, which may be higher than levels recommended in car manuals; using engine oil of a low viscosity, and the controversial practice of drafting behind other vehicles on the highway to reduce aerodynamic...

...Latarian Milton is not your typical 7-year-old. Few his age have ever driven an SUV up and down several busy streets. It all started at his mother's townhouse. Latarian said he took the car keys and hopped into his grandmother's Dodge Durango.... "I took my grandmother's car because I got mad at my mom. And I saw my friend come in and he smoke cigarettes. He started the vehicle and put it into gear. I yanked. I yanked it. I yanked the thing and off they went," Latarian said. Latarian drove several miles through Lake Park and Palm Beach Gardens....

Sagging pickup truck and sport utility vehicle sales have forced General Motors Corp. to shut down one shift each at four North American factories and lay off about 3,500 workers. The world's largest automaker by sales said Monday that the cuts, to take effect starting this summer, were brought on by weak demand due to high gasoline prices and an economic downturn. The cuts will affect pickup factories in Pontiac and Flint, Mich., and Oshawa, Ontario, as well as the full-size SUV plant in Janesville, Wis. The layoffs represent just over 4 percent of GM's hourly manufacturing work force of...

MIAMI - For used car dealer Ivan Hoyos, accepting a sport utility vehicle as a trade-in is no longer good business. The only SUV he's offering at his Florida Auto Sales and Finance is his mother's red 2004 Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Americans like the freedom to travel. That trait makes sense. This continent was settled by people who were willing to travel in order to make a better life. One could say that the association between freedom to travel and prosperity is in our genes. The old GM commercial said, "It's not just your car. It's your freedom." Movement has always been a defining part of our culture. Today, we have cars. In the past, we had horses. In either case, the means of travel was personal and represented a private possession. Our heritage and history are not oriented towards mass...

FAW's premium HonQi (Red Flag) division has unveiled its V12 luxury SUV concept in Beijing. While photoshopped images based on the Lincoln MKT concept surfaced on a Chinese website ahead of the show, the actual vehicle on display looks nothing like those. It is, in fact, a unique design. HonQi, you might recall, will put the 6.0L V12 engine into production next year and have it power the production HQE limousine, a Rolls-Royce Phantom doppelganger that all the party big shots are sure to be seen in. In the SUV, the engine is said to produce 402 horsepower and 405...

While most automakers are jumping on the trend of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Alton Manufacturing has taken the opposite route. They've created a whole new vehicle category with their extreme-SUV variant, the "XUV"

A New Zealand man got the fright of his life when a runaway SUV crashed into his house and knocked him off the toilet, a newspaper reported Friday. The vehicle had been parked with its emergency brake only half on, and rolled backward down a 32 foot bank into the house Thursday in the southern city of Christchurch, "The Press" newspaper reported. Police said a building contractor working next door had parked the vehicle at the top of the bank minutes earlier. "He came back to his vehicle and found it next door, basically," Christchurch police Sgt. Kim Reid was...

A New Zealand man got the fright of his life when a runaway SUV crashed into his house and knocked him off the toilet, a newspaper reported Friday. The vehicle had been parked with its emergency brake only half on, and rolled backward down a 32 foot bank into the house Thursday in the southern city of Christchurch, "The Press" newspaper reported. Police said a building contractor working next door had parked the vehicle at the top of the bank minutes earlier. "He came back to his vehicle and found it next door, basically," Christchurch police Sgt. Kim Reid was...

Last Edited: Thursday, 27 Mar 2008, 6:06 PM EDT Created: Thursday, 27 Mar 2008, 4:43 PM EDT An armed man continues to keep authorities at bay on the Walt Whitman Bridge. The Walt Whitman Bridge between South Philadelphia and Gloucester City, N.J., has been closed since about 4:30 p.m. New Jersey State Police Capt. Al Della Fave says troopers tried to stop a vehicle for a minor speeding violation, but the driver wouldn't pull over. He says troopers stopped the pursuit after a few minutes because the man was driving erratically and police feared someone would get hurt. After that,...

Foreign companies and governments sometimes spend millions of pounds on research trying to "get inside the British mind", but there is a simpler way to work out what makes the traditional Englishman tick. Just find an old Land Rover, fire up its engine, and take it for a short drive down a country lane. The noise! The discomfort! Most of all the smell! The aroma is an odd mixture of Castrol oil, barn dust and chicken droppings. For some inexplicable reason, this is true of Land Rovers around the world, from Kettering to Kinshasa. They all have that smell, even...

LOS ANGELES, CA - SUV drivers, increasingly falling victim to the bursting market bubble of the popular vehicles, are finding themselves struggling to keep their means of transportation. Faced with rising fuel prices, lengthy loan agreements, and the skyrocketing costs of rim maintenance, many SUV owners are on the brink of downsizing to smaller vehicles...

I am now considering replacing my vehicle and I was doing an ROI/Break even analysis on a conventional power vs a hybrid to see if the additional cost was worth the effort. So I built the table below in Excel and have come to the conclusion that even with today's gas prices ... it simply is not a smart move. My assumptions and math is below. If I'm wrong would someone point out my error?

After more than two decades, the ghost of the El Camino has finally risen from the grave, at least for U.S. drivers. It never actually went away in Australia. Now that the Pontiac G8 has ushered in a new era of affordable rear-wheel-drive performance at General Motors, the car-based pickup truck, or Ute as they are called Down Under, is coming back. Rumors have been flying for months about a G8 Ute and GM even showed the GMC Denali XT concept at the Chicago Auto Show last month – a four-door ute with a two-mode hybrid power-train that may or...