Two Dogs In A Bag: The UAW And General Motors
Just how onerous are pension/health care liabilities for American automakers?
Here's a sampling:
General Motors currently employs around 5,700 workers in the state of Indiana. Want to guess how many retired GM workers there are in Indiana? More than 90,000 of them - all of them drawing benefits.
You do the math.
Common Driving Mistakes - And How To Avoid Making Them
Nobody's perfect behind the wheel - from the best of us to the worst of us. But it's not difficult to avoid making common mistakes when driving. No special skills or training are needed. Just a little forethought - and a little common sense.
Here's a list of particulars - the to do's (and not-to-do's):
* Maintaining lane discipline
All this means is using the left lane to pass - and when you're driving faster than the traffic around you. Otherwise, stay in the middle or right lane - and always yield to traffic that's moving faster than you are, even if you're doing the speed limit. It's true the car driving above the limit may be breaking the law - but if you're impeding the flow of traffic, so are you. Besides, it's not your job to enforce the speed limit - and by allowing cars that want to go faster to get by, you'll defuse tension (yours and theirs) as well as contribute to a smoother (and therefore, safer) flow of traffic.
New Car Review: 2008 Nissan 350Z
Sports cars - like supermodels - rarely have long careers. It might be those fine lines around the eyes.
Or (for our sheetmetal eye candy) an engine that's suddenly been outgunned by the latest competitors.
Either way, the pace of change is swift. Yesterday's star is often tomorrow's also-ran.
The Shocking Price Of Electric Cars
It's not that electric cars don't work -- they're just so expensive they aren't workable as mass market consumer products.
GM stopped making its EV1 battery-powered coupe because even with subsidies, the retail cost per car was comparable to what you'd pay for something like a BMW 330i luxury-sport sedan. And rather than a powerful, fun-to-drive BMW, your $30,000-something would get you a minimalist two-seater with a range of about 100 miles under absolutely ideal conditions that needed several hours (or longer) to recharge itself.
