Start Me Up!

As our first big snowfall of the season accumulates outside, I'm reminded of the joys of my garage. With the Green Monster tucked safely away in storage, the Blue Devil is free to get cozy in its new home just downstairs.

Were it not for this situation, I'd once again be pining for a remote start system. I've always wanted one, and since I bought a car with an automatic transmission, it's more of a reality than ever before. But one major obstacle still remains--aside from cost. That's the car's immobilizer system.

Modern cars (except for some cheap Chrysler products) all have immobilizer chips embedded in the ignition key. If you hotwire the car, it'll start up, but then sense that the chip isn't around, and shut right back down. I can only imagine how car thieves are attempting to get around this.

What it means for aftermarket remote start systems, though, is that in order for them to work, a key needs to be permanently installed in the car so it'll start up even when you're inside the house. Obviously this makes the immobilizer system useless, which in turn increases the likelihood that your car will get jacked.

The answer to this issue is factory-installed remote start systems. GM has been offering these on their cars for years, with nicely integrated buttons right on the key fob.

Well, Ford announced a few days ago that they would finally begin offering the feature for 2011. I really wish more manufacturers would follow suit, but I guess I'll always be waiting for the next big thing to get to my car of choice, like Bluetooth streaming audio and voice recognition. Here's to wishin!

Kick ASCII!!!

Today I discovered an ASCII art generator. For those of you not light years ahead of me in computing knowledge, it converts a picture into text. I decided to post an ASCII pic of one my favorite cars, the Aston Martin DBS. If you want to convert something, the site is here. Enjoy in both black and white.

Lane Discipline For All!

As you'll know if you've been reading this blog for a while, I deplore drivers who block up the left lane while drivers behind them want to pass. It's dangerous, since it forces faster traffic to pass on the right. It also muddles up traffic flow, creating lots of unnecessary jams.

Well, I finally decided to try to do something about it. I've turned to that model of futility and wishful thinking, the online petition. I'm hoping that I can eventually stoke a groundswell of supporters who feel the same way, and I can present the petition to local and state law enforcement to urge them to enforce the law, which is actually on the books in Michigan, to penalize left lane sloths.

The petition is here, and I implore anyone else who feels the same way to virtually sign it so I can get some momentum behind it. Also, please pass it along to anyone you know who might be willing to lend their name to the cause. If we get enough support, maybe we can turn Michigan into one of the more progressive states for lane discipline. Thanks in advance.

Deutschland, Part 9

I hadn't heard the best things about Frankfurt, which is why I chose to stop in Heidelberg on the way. The truth is, Frankfurt is the business hub of Germany, and not much else. I'm sure I could've found tons of interesting things to do there, but compared with the other major cities of Germany, it's kinda boring.

My first excursion there was the zoo. It's actually a pretty good zoo, and I took videos of some of the interesting stuff I saw there. The first is two turtles making out, with one on the other's back.

The second is some really narrow fish that wave their fins in mesmerizing patterns.

I'll admit, these videos aren't nearly as cool as they'd seemed at the time, but I did enjoy the zoo, and recommend it if you have to spend a day in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, it was raining for much of the time I was there.

There also happened to be just a random peacock just strutting around the place like he owned it. I knew peacocks can be somewhat irritable, so I didn't mess with this guy.

Soon I'll post about the Frankfurt auto show, almost 3 months late.

Who'da Thunk It?

I was listening to the Autoblog podcast from a few weeks ago--which, by the way, I highly recommend for anyone seeking unfiltered commentary from straight-up car guys--and the topic of the new Buick Regal came up. The guys mentioned that it's just a rebadged Opel Insignia, and referenced the fact that if the Saturn brand were still around, this car would have been the next Aura.

It made me think about the interesting path that these two brands, Saturn and Buick, have taken over the past few years. Can you imagine any Saturn from the early '90s being mentioned in comparison to its Buick contemporary? Saturn had been created to present a line of small cars ready to take on the imports. The Buick brand, on the other hand, was the polar opposite, representing big, spacious American iron, for the buyer who thought Toyotas were for suckers. Most people didn't even know that the little plastic-bodied Saturn SL hailed from the same company that pumped out hundreds of thousands of behemoth LeSabres.

By the end of its lifetime, the Saturn brand has moved upmarket, while Buick is on a quest to compete with the likes of Lexus and Acura. I was a big fan of the direction in which Saturn was heading, and I was sad to see it go just as it had finally gotten an exciting lineup. Fortunately, Buick has been given a lot of this displaced attention, and with a showroom that will include the Enclave, LaCrosse and Regal, as well as a spiffy version of the new Chevy Cruze, Buick will be chock full of stylish metal.

Now all we have to do is wait for the Buick name to lose its punchline status.

Party Pooper

I'm pretty excited about the impending arrival of the Ford Fiesta. It's going to be the best sub-compact in the US market, with the possible exception of the Honda Fit. Ford continues to get its act further together in the US, bringing over many of the great designs from its European arm.

But Henry's brand tends to lose a little bit in translation. The new Taurus, for example, takes many of the cues that make the Mondeo a great design in Europe, but fails to finish the job, with a slab of a rear end that suffers from too many wayward lines.

There seem to be a few missteps with the Fiesta, too, involving the grille. The European version (above) is a great design. For the US version, the front end has been revised, likely for different crash standards here. The sedan gets a chrome grille that has an inexplicable gap under the third crossbar.

The hatch gets a grille insert that looks like it's there to plug the hole that was left by taking out the sedan's grille.

Ford, you're doing so many things right, why screw it up every chance you get?

Deutschland, Part 8

One of the best aspects of my Germany trip was the opportunity to bear witness to the miraculous German public transportation system. Aside from flying in and out of Munich, and one stretch with a rental car, nearly my entire trip consisted of train travel.

Between cities I took the Deutsche Bahn regional trains, which were fast, comfortable and reasonably priced. Within each city there were two systems of trains, the U-Bahn, which is much akin to the subway system of New York, with a high concentration of stops in busy areas, and each stop only a minute or two apart. The S-Bahn, pictured above, was a more macro train system, allowing you to travel quickly from one area of a city to another. Both were wonderfully easy to use.

In between, where there might not be 100% train coverage, there were generally extensive networks of trams and buses. Anywhere I wanted to go, and just about every city I visited, I could generally get within a few blocks using public transit, and the regularity of these trains, trams and buses was commendable.

There are cities in the US with this kind of extensive transportation system, notably New York City, whose system is about just as efficient, though a lot less clean. But what is truly remarkable is the extent to which the entire country seemed to be covered by this consistent system. In the smaller towns there may not be an extensive subway system, but the buses were easy to use and got me to the important places.

There are too many cities in the US that are lacking adequate public transportation. South Florida, in which a large portion of the population is too old to even drive at night, has a few buses meandering around, and not much else. Detroit, because of the powerful auto lobby, has resisted any sort of meaningful transport infrastructure, which has contributed to the death of the city proper. Anyone who's ridden the People Mover in downtown Motown knows that it's a bit of a joke.

And although Germany also has a powerful auto industry, its focus, as with much of the rest of Europe, on sensible mass transportation has allowed it it create an efficient and extensive system that meets the needs of pretty much everyone in the country.

In the US, we--and our governments--make a lot of choices that benefit the individual at the expense of the common good. Emphasis in many areas is usually more on lower taxes than on desperately needed public works. Hopefully one day we'll realize that the common good is often just that: really good.