Category Archives: Car
Car: Decisions, Decisions, Navigating the 2011 Greater Kansas City Auto Show
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I went to the greater Kansas City Auto Show twice last week
On Friday my gear head brother Steve and I raced through the show
He knows everything about cars
If he doesn’t know something his commitment to baffling you will win any automotive argument
Saturday, I went back with my wife and our ten year old was along for the ride
There are so many makes and models
How do you choose?
I am all over the place when choosing which vehicle I want to drive full time
I mean I am hot on one model and then just like that I will turn and want something else
But what about you?
Car: Here’s What’s Wrong with The Kansas City Star’s Automotive Section
To put it plainly, The Star sold out…
Once upon a time, the gentleman who writes car reviews for the newspaper – Tom Strongman – was a straight down the line automotive journalist. Never cutting edge, but legit.
No mas.
A few years back the Star decided to follow the money and circle the journalistic wagons around its key remaining local advertisers. As in car dealers. To do so, it needed to abandon what remained of its automotive objectivity. So it relabeled the weekly sections as advertising – just prominently enough to claim the high road but low key enough that most readers wouldn’t notice.
Very slick…
Car: Stuff You Won’t Learn About at This Week’s KC Auto Show
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Here’s the deal…
Check back a little later and I’ll take you down the long and winding road of this year’s Auto Show at Bartle Hall. I’ll touch on the hotties, the notties, what to expect and the unexpected. But first, a few words from Speeding Ticket lawyer Casey Raskob from the April issue of Car and Driver. You know, a little news maybe you could use.
Starting with the "biggest truths about why and whom cops give tickets to."
""Realistically, when it comes to tickets, sports cars come first, then motorcycles," Raskob says. "Anything that makes speed obvious. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it just has to get their attention; put a wing on your Civic.
"Rich guys go second.
Car: Great Kansas City Auto Show; You Are There
Forget today’s annual Star front page Auto Show suck up…
The newspaper got the ad money, the readers get the puff piece. In the form of a bit of inconsequential reporting about some cars offering better mileage with gas prices rising.
Think of it as a journalistic rebate on the advertising, because there’s nothing new that passes for front page news.
I mean, really.
The reality is – but for a couple of already reported on electric cars – this year’s show is about like every year’s. Except for a handful of distractions for the kids to free up parents to be courted by the cars.
Let’s take a look….
Car: Greater Kansas City Auto Show Next Week Triggers Harrowing Muscle Car Flashbacks
The Greater Kansas City International Auto Show revs up next week…
The Kansas City Convention Center will be filled with that new car smell. I go every year with my brother Steve and our boys. Cars are a passion for us and I think Detroit has come full circle on some of the models I drove in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
The new Chevrolet Camaro, the Dodge Challenger and the Ford Mustang remind me of the muscle cars I fell head-over-hot rod heels for back then.
I’ve owned a few fast cars in my life and hindsight being 20/20. I’d give almost anything to have one or two of them parked in my garage right now.
My High School love Mary dropped me like a Ford Pinto gas tank in the early 70s.
Car: The Italian Job Comes To Olathe, Mini Cooper Killer Splashes Down
The Italian Job has landed…
It’s more than a little ironic that the movie that put BMW’s Mini Cooper on the map was 2003’s "The Italian Job." Now that Italy’s spanking new Fiat 500 looks to be the car that wipes said MINI off that very map. The 500 comes into the marketplace for between $4,000 to $6,000 less money than similarly-optioned MINIs with better mileage on regular fuel and equal parts style and smile.
Trouble is, no one around these parts has so much as caught a glimpse of the 500, let alone driven one
Until now.
Car: Game Afoot, First New Fiat in Three Decades Splashes Down in Olathe
This just in…
After 28 years, Fiat has returned to Kansas City. Fiat of Olathe just received its first new Fiat 500 car – a demonstrator – and plans to complete its dramatic, new Fiat Studio and begin selling new 500s in May.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, beginning next week, locals can visit the dealership (now Olathe Dodge / Chrysler) and test drive the car, says general manager Jeff Briggs.
"It’s a Sport model with a manual transmission and a sunroof and it’s grey," Briggs says. "And starting Monday it will be available for test driving during the weekdays. We’re not taking orders until May. They’ve only made 2,000 cars at this point and the vehicles are not available for sale yet."
CAR: Electric Car Dealer Don Kahan Headed to 79th & Metcalf in Overland Park!
Move over all you handicapped drivers hogging the primo parking spots at stores and businesses.
Get ready to make way for charging stations for electric cars!! Because drivers of green technology are likely to need priority parking near the buildings they visit so they can plug in to charging stations.
Has the new Kauffman Performing Arts Center thought of this? How about St. Luke’s? Arrowhead Stadium? For $25 you can park, but for $35 you can recharge while you tailgate.
Now for some breaking news on electric cars coming to Kansas City…
CAR: Hot Tub Flashback; Coming Kahan Electric Car Dealership at 79th & Metcalf a Perfect Fit
Those were the daze…
Regarding Tracy Thomas’ story yesterday about Chevy dealer Don Kahan opening a second area electric car operation at 79th and Metcalf…
If it seems a strecth that an established area auto dealer would convert a hot tub shop into an car dealership, think again.
It’s not.
CAR: Stanford’s Comedy Club Honcho to Buy James Bond-mobile
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Stanford & Sons main man Craig Glazer is in the final stages of negotiating the purchase of a Lotus Evora sport car. The comedy club impressario and ladies man is following in some pretty big footsteps. James Bond has driven no fewer than three Lotus cars in the spy movie series. And actor Daniel Craig – the current 007 – owns an Evora. In reral The 160 mph super steed was introduced to the USA for the first time last summer.
It’s like this…
"I know this, when I get this car the ‘I hate Craig Glazer’ meter will only climb up, not down," Glazer says. "And I won’t even be doing anything, that’s just the way it is."
CAR: First KC FIAT Due Any Day, Fiat Studio to Open in March
Be it ever so humble…
In a matter of days Olathe Dodge will add Fiat of Olathe and become Kansas City’s exclusive area Fiat car dealer. And in mere days, it will get its first demo in – a spanking new 2012 Fiat 500. Meanwhile, the game is afoot on designing and morphing its used car office building in a snazzy, new Fiat Studio.
"What’s funny is we are starting on the building February 1st," says general manager Jeff Briggs. "But I will have a new Fiat 500 here in the next few days for people to look at and test drive."
The official launch for Fiat North America’s new 500 goes down Feb. 8 to 10 in Los Angeles, Briggs says.
Car: Support Our Troops. No Really.
It’s time for a reality check in the automotive world…
Past time, actually. For years automotive journalists have deluded the public by ignoring the realities of energy consumption. As in gas mileage. Oh, they’ve known better.
Car magazines grudgingly began putting a bit of emphasis on fuel consumption during the gas crunches of the late 70s. No way did they want to piss off advertisers – most of whom manufacture the gas guzzlers this country in known around the world for. But when you could barely even buy the gas, they had to do something. That emphasis on mileage has long since gone the way of the dinosaur. With rare exception.
The other day I passed a massive SUV with one of those Support Our Troops bumper stickers on the back.
How ironic.
Car: USA Today SUV Delusional, New Explorer & Prius / Sheep Flatulence
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To say USA Today is mindful of advertisers might be an understatement…
Take its recent front page Money section story headlined, "Improved fuel efficiency leads SUVs to a comeback."
Oh sure, it’s based on the statistic that SUVs and crossover vehicles in November was the highest percetage of overall new vehicle sales in eight years. But clearly the headline and overall gist of the story was to spin what the money quote in the artical clearly stated:
