BOLD moves... And they aint kidding

Ford has just launched the BoldMoves web site. check it out at www.fordboldmoves.com

here is the Prolog:

UPDATE: 2008 Cadillac CTS spy shots!

Remeber a few months ago when the 2008 CTS was spyed and the door was left open but the photographer could not get up close to get a good shot. Well... Now we have one and it is FREAKING AWESOME!

First off let me just say that no matter what caddy says, the first CTS's interior was cheep plastic and not very well designed.
This new interior on the other hand is first rate and may even surpass BMW and Audi, asuming Cadillac can keep the gaps in check and uses real soft touch materials.

The MacPrius.

Ok, I know... The Toyota Prius is not an American car parse. BUT the Mac computer company IS, and adding things to your car to make it unique is very American. So I just want to give an All American shout out to Jeremy Kusnetz, who put a MacMini into his Prius hybrid. He says that he wanted to be able to take his iTunes collection with him in his Prius and later (as an extra bonus) to be able to play DVDs's for his daughter while driving around in his Prius. I guess nobody told him he could get a new Chevy Malibu Maxx with a 2.5mm in and a rear flip up DVD screen... Any way, some how he figured out how to program the MacMini to do everything he wanted, including use of touch screen nav. Nice.

Jeremy Kusnetz has a web site posted which shows you how he did it and what you need to do to make it work your self. I wonder if he'll do this for my GMC Sierra Denali...

Corvette to LeMans... To easy

Once again, the Corvette team posted at win in the GT1 class ahead of the second place Auston Martin team by five laps. Congrats to the Audi team for being the first winning CDI powered entry. visit the Le Mans web site so lovingly translated by the French for our injoyment. Way to go Corvette and Audi!

Gas Savings Card

Here's something different; a fuel savings card from a third party provider. The short of it is you sign up at FuelCard.org and they will send you a discount card to use at a slected and willing oil company's fuel station. the discounts are to be around 10 to 20 cents on the gallon, which for a person who spends 50 dollars each time could equate to a little over 3 bucks saved. Althogh that may not seem like much, if you fill up say 3 times a month, thats 9 bucks a month, and 108 bucks a month! Actually a little more as I rounded down my numbers.

The orginaztion has just launched their web site, and has not yet teamed up with an oil company. I would guess either ExxonMobile will be looking at this as the nations largest oil company, however Shell, BP, and others may want to get in on this action as well.

The Times saith...

This just goes to show you how the liberal media skew things to represent their twisted view of the world. I am not going to make grand sweeping political statements here, but the New York Times has not had any problem so far supporting very hard left leaning liberals over "middle of the road" libs and conservatives or hard right leaner’s. The paper is as left as left can get. Anyway, a few weeks ago the NYT’s ran an op-ed about the plight of General Motors and what the company is doing about gas prices.

There is a slight problem with many of the things the author Thomas L. Friedman says in his article. Now although I will fight to the death his right to hold an opinion, TACT is something that I feel many free people must remember to hold. Friedman clams that General Motors is not trying hard enough to make fuel efficient vehicles, especially Sports Utility Vehicles. The problem is not the over looking of facts such as GM's involvement in producing the first full sized hybrid work trucks or the first hybrid city buses. No, the problem is in the choice of words. Remember TACT goes a long way when pointing out the flaws in others.

Friedman makes a good point in that large SUV's do in fact consume a lot of gas by today’s standards. However when Friedman says GM is "like a crack dealer" you might make a few hundred-thousand (if not a few million) people upset. But this clam that GM is a crack dealer is made only to point out that in areas where gas is well over $3.00 a gallon (see a nation wide map for gas averages) the General has introduced "gas incentives".

All it is a Free first 100 miles (or something like that) on us gas card. This is more of a marketing tool than anything else. Only if the "free" gas lasts for year and you drive like Mario Andrei will you realize any true savings than if you bought an X-Tara or Tundra, or maybe your upscale tastes require the X5, which takes only high test.

The out cry from the rest of us INSIDE the automotive business but not within the realm of General Motors is one of "pot and kettle". Friedman points out that Asian manufactures do not have this problem of making gas drinking SUV's so they do not have to offer "free money" to get people to buy the car/truck/suv. However if one actually does his or her research, you will find that in America, EVERY manufacture makes at least one full sized pickup truck and at least one full sized truck based SUV. So the next time Friedman goes looking for a Puris, I suggest he also look at the Tundra sitting next to it in the showroom.

Now, as far as attacking a manufacture on his own turf, some very astute bloggers on AutoBlog link to a Wikipadia entry of something called a Toyota Century. This is a full sized luxobarge and I am sure gets poor fuel efficiency. The current second generation Toyota Century employees a V12 engine block and I can only guess how many MPG you can really go... Then again, if you have the 150,000 dollars to buy this landyacht, who cares right?

Again, I feel as though any one can say what they will about a powerful being. Be he the President, or a CEO, or a company as a whole; this country was founded on the belief of free speech and that of a free press. However choose your words carefully. I do not want to attack the character of Thomas Friedman, but I will say he knows NOTHING of the automotive world and as such needs to do more research than others who may be "in the know"

Deifne; Buick

Ok, so General Motors is like an alcoholic family. there is the kid who does all the work to support the family (Chevy); the kid who looks good for the neighbors (Cadillac); the kid who just doesn't care about the rules (Pontiac); the kid who left the family (Olds); and the forgotten kid (Buick). Well Buick is not ready to give up and die on the vine like Olds did and the entire lineup has been completely redone.

Enter the Lacrosse, the Lucerne, and the still in development Enclave. I never thought much about the naming of cars mostly because of the late 90's need to have alpha numeric codes and not real names. The new Buick philosophy is now much more "beyond precision". I have no idea what that means, but I sure hope Buick does. They claim to be narrowing gaps and using higher quality materials and French stitching EVERYTHING.

Buick has still only had marginal sales and seems to be failing in the quest to find more buyers and younger buyers. It is hard to see Buick in this bad of shape, seeing how many of the baby boomers are now in the average age of Buick owners; the problem seems not to be a lack of possible buyers but rather one of not being the best for the money.

It is clear that Buick is the forgotten child of General Motors and as such gets mostly left over capacity. The Lacrosse for example is built on the Grand Prix platform, the Lucerne is a Cadillac DTS, the Terraza is a Buick badged GM global minivan, the Rendezvous is built on the old GM global minivan platform and the Rainier is the millionth recreation of the GMC Envoy. So even though Buick is still alive in General Motors eyes, as far as the market is concerned Buick is dead in the water.

So what is the Enclave anyway? Well that all depends on your view. Some see it as just another SUV to crowd up the parking lot at Target; some see it as a totally new way of life for Buick and others see it as just a waste of time. I don't have any personal view on the Enclave so I looked up the work enclave in the dictionary. This is what I got from Wikipedia: "In political geography, an enclave is a piece of land which is totally surrounded by a foreign territory." Wow, that is quite a loaded statement as far as design goes, and it really fits this Buick.

Now I know some of you will be asking (or rather yelling) that any new SUV cannot be an enclave. First, it is not a land mass; second, it is not any different from any other suv. Well no it is not a land mass, but the thing is huge enough to be one; and although it is another suv, it is different from any other crossover in is conceptual form.

I am a design student so I want to try and decode the design bibble-babble for you. Buick had the chance to build a one of a kind concept here. They did do a lot of things that Buick and General Motors simply does not have the money to build in actual production, like the wood trays in the second row. They did not go too far off into la-la land though and, like the Camaro, created a concept that for the most part could be built as is from the show.

The designers sourced major parts and built the show car on a platform that is (going to be) real and tried not to push to the point of no return. That is not to say they didn't push at all but they knew what could be and could not be done. I would expect to see the show car (minus some wood and with more seats) in CXL trim.

I am afraid that the brass over at GM global design will plastic up and wood down this Buick and then wonder why nobody wants to pay 40 large for it. oh well.

So enough about reactions to the car and lets actually talk about the design! This Buick has all of the traditional Buick style you would expect to see right down to the waterfall grille. What is so nice about this crossover is that it is curvaceous, but not bloated. Just about ever peace of the exterior fits in such a way, you are drawn toward this van in truck's clothing as soon as you set eyes on it. When you open the door to the concept, and look inside for the first time you wonder if the badge on the steering wheel is really a Buick tri-shield or if all of a sudden Lexus bought the Buick logo.

Wood is everywhere in this concept and I hope it stays and that some trees actually die in the process of making this crossover. There is a nice blend of wood and brushed aluminum on the flat dashboard and a seamless integration of the "infotainment" system General Motors is so proud of. The two tone leather dashboard is lovely with its French stitching on every seam, and the black plastic surrounding the 6.5 inch DVD navi screen goes unnoticed. When your eyes settle you will find not just one tree but a whole forest was leveled and a farm of cows killed to bring you this vehicle with a polished wood and leather wrapped steering wheel.

Look toward the rear and you will find that this Buick does not have a bench in the back two rows but rather what Michael Burton calls intimacy or romance, with the sense cachet like that of a private jet. Wow. That’s nice. The Enclave is not your typical eight passenger suv, it is a SIX passenger suv. That means that each person has his or her own personal space. There are DVD screens that fold down, and there are trays for the second row, everybody has something to play with!

Power is going to be a big concern for the final production of this vehicle and we will have to see what Buick is told to put in. For now the Enclave is powered by a 3.6L V6 making 270 horses and driving the front wheels. The engine uses duel cams and VVT technology, so it should run smoothly, especially with GM's new six-speed tranny.

All in all, I would say this is a good trade up for Buick and for General Motors. There will be a total of three Lambda based crossovers including a GMC and a Saturn version. I would also expect to see a bowtie version sooner or later after the 2008 launch. Each version has a different set of rules to play by so don't expect to see three of the same with different badges on the grille.