Supercars That Spoil

What cars make you feel like a star?

For me, they are speedsters and ultra-luxury vehicles. Nothing compares.

Buyers of ultra-high-end cars have traditionally fallen into one of two camps: performance or luxury. There are the thrill seekers, strapped into million-dollar Bugatti Veyrons, zooming down the autobahn at 200-plus mph. And then there’s the chauffeured set, lounging in the backseats of Rolls-Royce Phantoms while sipping glasses of Cristal, according to MSNBC.

Judging by the latest crop of supercars to hit the market, automakers are betting more big-spenders fall somewhere in between the two extremes. You no longer have to choose between ultra-fast acceleration and hand-stitched comfort. In some new models, you get the best of both worlds.

No car embodies the Goldilocks approach better than Fiat’s Maserati GranTurismo, a supercar that made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show. A sportier update of the four-door Quattroporte, the Pininfarina-designed GranTurismo is more compact and more curvaceous than its predecessor, with a wider grille.

Maserati also wanted to cater to the power-hungry driver by giving it a 4.2-liter V8 engine capable of 405 hp at 7,100 rpm. That produces a top speed of 177 mph and zero-to-62-mph acceleration of 5.2 seconds — not the quickest of the supercar lot, but a first for the luxury nameplate. Drivers aren’t likely to forget they’re inside a $110,000 Maserati, either: The interior is covered with Italian leather, and the trunk has its own set of designer luggage co-branded with Italian luxury design house Salvatore Ferragamo.

In its bid to trump German rivals BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche with an aggressive coupe of its own, Volkswagen’s Audi division in 2007 introduced the R8.

Some carmakers are betting there’s a strong market for the all-out performance supercar. That’s the statement Lamborghini made when it introduced the Reventon at this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, the rarest, most expensive, and most powerful car the company has ever produced. Modeled after a stealth fighter jet, the sleek, metallic car has a V12 engine capable of 651 hp. It comes in just below $1.5 million, and only 20 will ever be produced.

Spectra5 Ranked Number One!

Whoa! Hold your brake calipers right there. Kia Spectra5… number one? This news from The Auto Channel really caught my attention big time. I have my share of love and respect for Kia, but I never thought it would be ranked as the number one car in U.S. News & World report’s 2008 Best Cars and Truck rankings. This is totally surprising… very astonishing news, and a good one!

According to TheAutoChannel.com, the 2008 Kia Spectra5 which is identified as the Cerato 5-door in various markets is placed in the number one spot in U.S. News & World Report’s 2008 rankings which was released yesterday.

“Spectra5’s top ranking proves that style and substance do not have to be compromised when combined with safety, value and quality. This is a great distinction for the Spectra5 in what is known to be a tough, competitive segment, and rounds out an awards-laden year for Kia’s full line of vehicles,” says Len Hunt, the president and CEO of Kia Motors America.

Goodyear To Develop Lunar Tires

NASA is set on conquering Mars. But before they send a craft to the planet, they would need to take care of all equipments.  And for their need of a tire, they turned to Goodyear, the makers of run-flat tires.

Creating the perfect tire for use outside of Earth poses a lot of problems. Vivake Asnani, NASA principal investigator had this to say according to The Auto Channel:  “The basic rubber-pneumatic design used on Earth does not have the same utility on the moon.  The challenges associated with creating a lunar tire are further complicated by the fact that there are no lunar roads. Lunar tires need to be designed to develop traction on sandy undulated terrain, in regions that humans have never even seen up close. Plus, the prospect of an immobilizing ‘flat tire’ would be devastating to the mission.”

Joe Gingo, Goodyear’s executive vice president and chief technical officer believes that they have the capability to create the tire that NASA needs.  “The mission performance goals for these tires will push known tire technology well beyond its comfort zone,” said Gingo.  “I am confident we have the capabilities to do that,” he added.

Dave Glemming, Goodyear’s principal investigator added:  “Not only will the outcome of this project deliver a product that can handle the performance capabilities required for lunar mobility and beyond, we expect the outcome will yield answers to how future non-pneumatic tires may be designed for Earth applications.”

The Auto Channel reported that the tire manufacturer will not start from scratch so a one year timeline is reasonable. The LRV tire which Goodyear will be looking to upgrade was described by the report which goes:  “The LRV tire was woven out of piano wire, in order to provide a soft, springy surface to contour to the ground and provide good ride quality. It looks a bit like the skeleton of an Earth tire. This approach worked very well, because each LRV tire was only required to support about 60 pounds of weight (all things weigh 6x less on the moon than on Earth) and be used for a maximum of 75 miles.”

Car Talk: Who’s Mean With Cars?

Who’s mean with cars? What’s the most meticulous gender? What’s the most passive? Men? Women?

Let’s have some car talk…

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, syndicated columnists of Seattlepi.com have shared their thoughts regarding the matter. It started with a brief letter:

Dear Tom and Ray: My dad was the kind of man who seemed to know about everything mechanical. Since he died, I miss being able to call and ask him some obscure question that he could answer; he really did seem to know everything. The other day, I realized that reading your column is the closest thing I’ve had to having my dad here for a resource. So, thanks for your humor and the information. My question: In your years of experience, who would you say is harder on a car — men or women? I know what my dad would say; what do you say? – Theresa

Let the conversation begin…

Ray: Our theory is that men’s relationships with cars are like women’s relationships with men.

Tom: Look at the similarities. Is a man content to simply “have” a car? No. He has to be in constant communication with his vehicle so he always knows how it’s feeling. He needs to know where he stands with the car. He likes to open the hood, look around, check the levels. He wants to know when something is wrong. He may even “sense” a problem before it’s obvious. Then he’ll want to “deal with it” right away, so it doesn’t fester.

Ray: This essentially describes a woman’s relationship with the man in her life, doesn’t it?

Tom: And how does a woman treat her car? To most women, the car originally was selected because it was cute and the right size. What does she require after that? That it start. That’s about it. The fact that the car is still there in the morning and starts up for her that day is good enough. If there’s a little hiccup … a little blue smoke, a little hesitation, a wobble in the front end, why worry about it? And if it gets so bad that the car stops running, she’ll worry about it then. Otherwise, she’ll ignore it and hope it goes away.

Ray: This is how men are in human relationships. Am I right, ladies?

Tom: Are we in trouble yet?

Ray: Oh, no. Keep digging.

Tom: Well, our relationship analysis would suggest that women are harder on cars than men, because they’re not as aware of problems in their early stages, when they might be cheaper to fix.

Ray: But then you have to factor in the basic nature of men and women. Women, by their very nature, are gentler and less aggressive. That would suggest they’re easier on cars.

Tom: While men are animals. We stomp on the gas, jam on the brakes, swerve between lanes and whack things when they don’t work.

Ray: So who’s harder on cars?

Tom: I don’t know. But I know we just gave every man in America an opening to say, “You know, hon, if you paid half as much attention to your car as you do to our relationship, you’d never run it out of oil again.”

Ray: And we’ve given every woman in America an opening to say, “You know, if you were half as sensitive to my needs as you are to your car’s, I’d never have to ask you for anything again.”

Tom: So, we’ve either solved the world’s most pressing problems or started World War III.

America’s Most Expensive Cities To Buy Gas

Here in America, what state do you think spend the most on gasoline?

It’s San Francisco.

Yes, the 4th most populous city in California and the 14th most populous city in the U.S., is on the top spot in the list of most expensive fueling territories.

MSNBC reports:

Drivers in San Francisco enjoy views of the Golden Gate Bridge, with scenic stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway to the south and the rural shoreline to the north. And they pay for it at the pump. There, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.546 at the end of November, up from $2.524 a year ago.

Things don’t look much better in other parts of the state. San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles posted the country’s next-highest per-gallon prices, respectively, according to Gasbuddy.com, a Web site that tracks gas prices nationwide. Such high prices are not confined to California. Among the country’s 40 largest metros, New York City, Buffalo, Seattle, Miami and Chicago rounded out the top 10 priciest places to buy gas.

The surge at the pump is the result of rising crude oil prices, which have grown significantly since 2004, when a barrel sold for $26. On Wednesday, a barrel went for $93.

Still, west coast drivers are hit hardest. Those in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles pay more at the pump than those in Houston or Dallas, where the average price per gallon Wednesday was $2.90 and $2.923, respectively, due to such factors as fuel taxes, environmental standards and costs of business like regulatory burdens and taxes.

What’s more, the difference between, say, San Francisco and Houston is more pronounced this time of year since California requires cleaner fuel year round. Texas, like many Southern and Midwestern states, eases up on such requirements during the winter months when consumption slows. California’s higher environmental standard increases refining costs, which get passed along to the consumer.

One of America’s burdens is too much reliance on foreign oil. As such, has San Francisco evolved into a market in disarray? Apparently, a number of factories in North America and Australia have completely shut. Would San Francisco follow?

“Initially, [the subsidies] looked like a pure handout, but now it looks like its suckered investors into losing a lot of money,” said Michael Liebreich, CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based analyst firm. “Right now oil could be at $120 [per barrel] and it wouldn’t make any difference … the speed that the private equity industry poured money into the industry is beyond its profitability.”

“There’s room for us to expand upon our management of the system,” concluded David Schrank, co-author of the TTI study. “We can make our operations much more efficient through things like service patrols or ramp metering … very few areas that are managing 100 percent of their system, and there’s room to improve on their management by going beyond the freeway to the arterial streets.”

I will be trailing the progress…