NewCarAmerica Blog

Telsa Motors hit Wall Street with its IPO that opened at about $17 a share which was higher than the expected $14.  It hit over $28 the first day, then dove back to $14 and now trades about $20-$22.  Named after Nicoli Tesla, the famed inventor and rival of Edison, Tesla Motors is in the electric car business.  They offer only the Model S Roadster that is to be delivered in 2012.  It is to hit 60 mph in 5.6 seconds, get 300 miles per charge and operate with zero emissions.  Sounds like it will put the Chevy Volt in the scrap heap.  But wait, the pricetag is $100,000!  I think I’d save a lot more money paying about $10 per gallon for gas!  Don’t write this company off just yet.  They just signed a deal with Toyota to manufacture an electric RAV4.  Is this company for real?  Is $21 per share a steal or a bust?  I wish I knew.  What I feel safe about believing is that the electric auto will someday dominate our highways and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Tags: Electric Cars, Tesla Model S, Tesla Motors, Toyota RAV4

How do you keep the auto repairman out of your wallet?  Buy an American made pickup truck!  Well, maybe it’s not that simple.   J.D. Powers and Associates reports that pickups incurred 95 problems per 100 vehicles during the first 3 months of ownership as opposed to 109 for other light vehicles.  That’s a wider spread that prior reports.  The American pickup models were at the top of the list.  The Chevy Avalanche and GMC Sierra were the leaders with 81 complaints followed by Ford’s F 150 with 85.  Here’s another bit of patriotic news – Detroit’s Big Three sold 1 million of the 1.4 million trucks sold last year.  Trucks are moneymakers especially now that creature comforts are demanded.  Detroit has to make ‘em right or lose that market.  Keeping them on the road on the job and out of the repair shop is what sells the American worker.  But how do you figure that 81 complaints out of 100 vehicles is good?  Well, the key to the statistic is the “first 3 months”.  This is when complaints include minor kinks expected of new cars.  Hey, J.D., how do the American trucks do after the first few years when the complaints tend to be major?

Tags: Chevy Avalanche, Ford F-150, GMC Sierra

Yesterday I talked about the older generation of the Mitsubishi Eclipse.  We bought a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS for our daughter which heightened my interest in the car.  The Eclipse is sleek and quick.  Its 265 hp, 3.8 liter V6 even offers reasonable miles per gallon figures of 20/28.  It is priced in an affordable $19,000 to $29,000 range.  Even the 4 cylinder models are fairly peppy while saving a little more money at the pump and still giving the driver that sports car feel.  However, models from prior years were short on durability especially when it came to interior materials.  Time will tell how this new generation of Eclipse will perform.  It has never scared German engineers when it came to mechanical soundness.  While the price is as attractive as the body styling, the auto consumer needs to do his homework on the Eclipse.  We bought an older model that gave its original owners good service for 57,000 miles and we likely won’t put more than another 30,000 on it.  Hope we have good luck with it.  The new models have made great advances in design and production.  Will they likewise show improvement in durability?

Tags: Mitsubishi Eclipse

We recently purchased a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse for our daughter from friends.  She needs a dependable car for college next year that won’t kill us on the insurance bill.  It’s in great shape and we got a great price.  It sure has a sports car look not totally different than the 2011 Eclipse.  Ours is the base RS model with the 2.4 liter 4 cyl. engine that puts out a whopping 150 hp. with a 23/30 mpg rating – great for her needs.  Here’s the thing… I love driving this car!  I’m trying to figure out why.  The performance numbers are not the envy of every NASCAR wannabe.  Little bug-like cars beat me at stoplights.  This is just another small car underneath the hood with no fancy gimmicks other than power windows.  But it’s the body style - it’s really cool!  For an instant, you feel like you’re behind the wheel of an expensive sports car but you feel pretty good about saving a lot of money at the pump and on the sticker price.  You don’t go real fast but, nothing good comes from street driving at high speeds.  This car gets you into traffic acceptably and makes you feel better about driving it than an ugly bug would.  My daughter loves it and my son wants it! 

Tags: Mitsubishi Eclipse

I don’t think this morning’s announcement out of Detroit that Ford’s Mercury brand will be discontinued at the end of the year came as any surprise.   Yes, they were my father’s Mercury’s.  The days of the Grand Marquis being a hot commodity have long since passed, not to say that’s a good thing.  Nothing stays the same, especially in the marketplace.  When this is all over, Ford will probably offer just as many models under the Lincoln name as they did under the 3 names to date.  Here’s the problem.  When you take a Mercury model, put the ”Lincoln” label on it, the price will automatically go up.  Those models that live again with a “Ford” label on them will likely carry the same price tag as they do today being sold under the “Mercury” name.  How many jobs that may be lost or created is a cloudier issue that is particularly painful to Americans right now.  (May’s Jobs Report is released tomorrow).  Is this a good move for Ford?  In the long run, it probably is.  How about for America?  Let’s hope so.

Tags: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury

Chrysler recently announced that the popular Jeep Grand Cherokee will be offered in 2011 with a new design.  That was pretty big news.  When Chrysler announced a cutback in models during the 2008 auto crisis, Jeep models were in limbo.  But the Jeep Grand Cherokee seems to be Chrysler’s new flagship model.  It will carry a heftier price tag however, starting at over $30,000.  They never were cheap but it was possible to stay below the magic “$30,000”.    Demand appears so strong even at this price that the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit is hiring 1,100 more workers for a second shift to make these vehicles.  It’s been a long time since we’ve heard that Detroit is hiring anything but new personnel for the woeful Lions.  This is a good thing for America.

Tags: Jeep Grand Cherokee

Gee, Toyota sure is pushing the envelope.  They just announced another recall.  This third time in the past few months, it’s the Toyota Sequoia.  What’s next?  This recall is really not anything unusual for the auto industry except it comes in a spurt of Toyota bad news.  Toyota Sequoias manufactured from 4/1/02 through 4/17/03.  This has to do with steering angle sensor that might result in momentary acceleration reduction.  And yes, this can increase the risk of a crash.  If you’re pulling out into traffic and your gas pedal doesn’t deliver as you expected it would, you may misjudge your time and that puts you in line of incoming traffic.  No small risk.  Toyota’s sales numbers in April rebounded somewhat.  What effect will this news have on consumer sales?  I don’t mean to sound like I am bashing Toyota.  They sat in the catbird’s seat while the American auto manufacturers took it on the chin.  Detroit is like a ghost town.  Somehow, Toyota is not immune to the downside of the marketplace.

Tags: Toyota Sequoia

The decisions families face in this auto buying market are influenced by factors beyond just miles per gallon.  To finish telling you how we are navigating through this energy induced auto buying maze, we actually bought the Jeep Grand Cherokee after the lease expired.  Here’s our reasoning…  The car was 39 months old with 29,000 of our miles on it and cost $12,000 to buy out.   We paid cash so there is no further interest we need to pay.   We have a great 2^nd car, a 2003 Mazda B3000 compact truck that has only 50,000 of our original miles on it, looks near new and has never had any mechanical problems like the Grand Cherokee.  We have 3 children who drive so the idea of having transportation that we know and trust to pass down as their needs change without a car payment and a high insurance bill makes sense for our family.  I could have started from scratch, turned in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, taken a chance with those fees that you don’t expect when you turn in a lease, and put myself on the hook for another $25,000 – 30,000 on a smaller more economical car that I would likely have leased and had to return in another few years.  Any gas savings that we would have realized would not have compared to the savings we will see on no interest payments, lower insurance and repair bills, more dependable transportation for our children, etc.  Plus, we love the Jeep Grand Cherokee.  It’s a V6 that gets about 18 city and 21 highway mpg,  looks just like the new models and will function for several more years in its current role until one of the kids gets it.  Plus, things have changed and we’re not driving as many personal and business miles as we used to.   I think we made the right decision.

Tags: Jeep Grand Cherokee

I love my 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee.  I don’t love gas prices.  I guess that makes me a fairly typical American auto consumer. It is a leased business car but the lease is up.  Do I hang on to a less fuel efficient car or go out and spend a lot of money for one that maybe I’m not that crazy about but will save some money at the pump?  There is no one-size-fits-all solution.  Hybrids are more fuel efficient but not for the road warrior.  They also cost a lot more and have more maintenance issues.  Will we spend more on the price of the vehicle than on gas?  The bigger the hybrid the higher the upcharge.  A fuel efficient puddle jumper can be had without spending a lot but is it functional?  Will gas hang around here at in the high $2 per gallon area?   Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I did with my Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Tags: Jeep Grand Cherokee

Somehow, I can hear Yakov Smirnof’s now famous “What a Country” line in that recognizable Russian accent.  Only this time, it’s said in a more familiar American tone.  What a Company!  Toyota, always known for excellence, issued a “Do Not Buy” order with regard to the Lexus GX 460 SUV citing safety hazards.  Today, the headlines ring of a 16.4 million dollar fine levied against Toyota by NHTSA for the sticky gas pedal fiasco.  Both these events are unprecedented.  Toyota didn’t even offer a fight.  By doing so, the company admitted that it failed to warn consumers for over the 4 month limit.  Were they figuring out how they might hide it?  Now they are saying that their tests confirm the safety hazard with the Lexus GX 450 SUV in its tendencies to roll.  The consumer has to be now wondering what else is there that Toyota knows about but hasn’t told us.  Even beyond that, what else is there that Toyota doesn’t know about that we have yet to discover?

Tags: Lexus GX 460 SUV, Toyota