Danase Detailing Supply Blog

First we loose one of motorcycles biggest icons with the passing of Evel Kenievel and now we lost one of the biggest hot rod icons….

It’s a sad day to have to report the passing of 63 year old hot rod legend Boyd Coddington.  Mr. Coddington built a fabulous reputation as one of the worlds best hot rod builders.  He gave a lot of people their start in the automotive industry and did a lot of good for the industry as well.

 You’ll be missed Boyd!

Drive your car to death, save $31,000

(CNNMoney.com) — By keeping your car for 15 years, or 225,000 miles of driving, you could save nearly $31,000, according to Consumer Reports magazine. That’s compared to the cost of buying an identical model every five years, which is roughly the rate at which most car owners trade in their vehicles. In its annual national auto survey, the magazine found 6,769 readers who had logged more than 200,000 miles on their cars. Their cars included a 1990 Lexus LS400 with 332,000 miles and a 1994 Ford Ranger pick-up that had gone 488,000 miles. Honda Civic Consumer Reports calls the Honda Civic a “Good bet” to make it to 200,000 miles. Calculating the costs involved in buying a new Honda Civic EX every five years for 15 years - including depreciation, taxes, fees and insurance - the magazine estimated it would cost $20,500 more than it would have cost to simply maintain one car for the same period.  Added to that, the magazine factored in $10,300 in interest that could have been earned on that money, assuming a five percent interest rate and a three percent inflation rate, over that time. The magazine found similar savings with other models. To have much hope of making it to 200,000 miles, a car has to be well maintained, of course. The magazine recommends several steps to help your car see it through. * Follow the maintenance guide in your owner’s manual and make needed repairs promptly. * Use only the recommended types of fluids, including oil and transmission fluids. * Check under the hood regularly. Listen for strange sounds, sniff for odd smells and look for fraying or bulges in pipes or belts. Also, get a vehicle service manual. They’re available at most auto parts stores or your dealership. * Clean the car carefully inside and out. This not only helps the car’s appearance but can prevent premature rust. Vacuuming the inside also prevents premature carpet wear from sand and grit. * Buy a safe, reliable car. Buying a car with the latest safety equipment makes it more likely you’ll feel as safe in your aging car as a newer model. The magazine recommends several cars that have the best shot at reaching the 200,000 mile mark and a few that, according to its data, aren’t likely to make it. All the cars in the magazine’s “Good bets” list are manufactured by Honda  and Toyota. (One extreme example was not enough to get the Ford Ranger onto the list.) The “Bad bets” are a mixture of European models and two Nissans.

Consumer Reports’ “Good bets” for making 200,000 miles: Honda Civic, Honda CR-V, Honda Element, Lexus ES, Lexus LS, Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Highlander, Toyota Land Cruiser, Toyota Prius, Toyota RAV4

Consumer Reports’ “Bad bets” for making 200,000 miles: BMW 7-series, Infiniti QX56, Jaguar X-type, V8-powered Mercedes-Benz M-class, Mercedes-Benz SL, Nissan Armada, Nissan Titan, Volkswagen Touareg, V6-powered Volvo XC90.

By Bruce Martin, Special to SI.com

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Thursday could be one of the most important days in IndyCar racing history as a resolution that would bring Champ Car teams into the IndyCar Series is nearing completion and could become official in two days.

The deal has not been completed as of late Tuesday afternoon, however, because IndyCar founder Tony George is in Orlando, Fla. at a meeting for ACCUS, the arm of the FIA which rules all international motorsports. Champ Car principle Kevin Kalkhoven is in London for a family anniversary and is not expected to return until Thursday.

“Discussions are ongoing,” said IndyCar Series vice president of public relations John Griffin. “There is still an agreement that needs to be completed.

“We’re confident but discussions are ongoing.”

Drafts of an agreement between the two sides were exchanged on Tuesday, according to sources.

This would end the 13-year war that began when Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George announced the creation of a new racing series on March 20, 1994. At that time, most of the teams that competed in the Indianapolis 500 were in CART, a series that went bankrupt and would later be revived as Champ Car. The series didn’t move toward reality until 1995 and began competition on January 27, 1996.

George’s original intention was to have CART teams participate in what was then known as the Indy Racing League but most of those teams refused, starting a lengthy and divisive battle for supremacy in North American open wheel racing.

Now it appears Champ Car will agree to cease operations, which will allow its teams to accept George’s offer of a free Dallara chassis and free Honda engines to make the transition to IndyCar. In addition, IndyCar is expected to get Champ Car’s race dates for the Long Beach Grand Prix along with street races in Edmonton, Alberta; Surfer’s Paradise Australia. Mexico City and Toronto could be added in 2009.

This would not be a merger of Champ Car and IndyCar because the IndyCar Series will be the only series in competition. And it is not technically an acquisition because IndyCar will not be acquiring all of the assets of Champ Car.

The proper term would be an “amalgamation” which means Champ Car closes up business and its teams join IndyCar.

In recent weeks while George was making his offer to bring the two sides together, Champ Car’s principles which include Kalkhoven, Gerald Forsythe, Paul Gentilozzi and Dan Pettit have considered one last effort to stage the 2008 season or to file bankruptcy.

Either way, the IndyCar Series will now have the opportunity to lead this form of racing into the future with the Indianapolis 500 as its cornerstone event.

But, any agreement does not necessarily mean a large contingent of Champ Car teams will be joining IndyCar this year. Some teams may close up or enter a new form of racing, such as sports cars.

Champ Car teams Walker Racing and Newman-Haas-Lanigan are expected to join the IndyCar Series but some of IndyCar’s current teams, such as Dreyer & Reinbold and Vision Racing, which ironically is owned by George, may have to reduce the number of cars it fields this season.

Dreyer & Reinbold campaigned two cars in IndyCar last season but may run just one car in 2008. Also, Vision Racing has 10 cars in its possession and will be the main source of cars that will be heading to Champ Car teams that decide to join IndyCar.

Larry Curry is the team manager at Vision Racing and will be in charge of not only preparing the cars that will be going to the new teams joining the IndyCar Series, but also his own effort for his drivers.

“I think certainly we’ve anticipated this was in the works and I want to say that we are prepared,” Curry said. “If and when we get the final word that we need to get some of that stuff distributed we’ll be able to answer the bell. It hasn’t been totally defined exactly yet how all of that transpires if and when it becomes official to tell you the truth.

“You’re going to expect more of your people and things of that nature but to me the sooner it’s official the better You want to get done what you need to get done for that and then move on because you are 100 percent right. Vision Racing has had aggressive testing in the offseason and are very well prepared for the upcoming open test. I think the sooner you can get a single focus the better.

“If they announce this thing tomorrow, it’s not too soon for me.”

Curry said his crew at Vision Racing will be working throughout the weekend to get all 10 of its cars prepared for use at next week’s IndyCar Open test at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“It adds work to the plate for sure,” Curry said. “Even though you have all these cars, they are in a cycle and you have to bring that to the forefront quicker than anticipated. What Vision was doing with all of these cars was the 2008 modifications with the anti-intrusion panels. We’re installing those on all 10 of those cars. That’s a process in itself that is new to us and has added more time to the physical build of the cars.

“We’re going to run two cars full time. Tony George needs to officially announce his driver lineup with that but what we would do beyond that is yet to be determined.”

If the IndyCar Series began racing tomorrow, there would only be 16 cars and that’s assuming Rahal Letterman competes this season along with Marty Roth running two cars.

It remains unclear which Champ Car teams will actually join IndyCar.

“I hope they all come,” Curry said. “If you have eight cars plus the 16 you have and get to 24 that would be pretty damn big. Once we get it and get it done, it’s who all is really going to come? Hopefully, they all do.

“I want to see open-wheel racing gets back to where qualifying actually means something. That would be pretty cool. It hasn’t been that way in a long, long time.”

Curry has been involved in the IndyCar Series since it was called the Indy Racing League in 1996 when he was the team manager at Team Menard and Tony Stewart was one of his drivers.

Prior to the 1996 season when CART and the IRL went separate ways, a case could be made that IndyCar racing was the dominant form of racing in the United States over NASCAR in terms of general, broad-based interest.

That was before NASCAR pulled away from the field.

Now that IndyCar could be one unified group, Curry is hopefully the building process can begin.

“Once this announcement comes down, let’s everyone focus on what needs to be done to make this series the best it could be,” Curry said. “Let’s make a single focus about where we need to take this thing for the future. That’s the only way we are ultimately going to get to where we need to get.

“I want people in open wheel racing to always believe they have the best guys in one series and not in another series.”

Curry believes the addition of the Champ Car drivers will be a very interesting mix to the series.

“The majority of the drivers coming over are all very high level road racers and of course Paul Tracy has the oval background and has won races on ovals,” Curry said. “We have some good road racers on our series, too and we have some guys equally as good road racers. It will be an interesting mix in how all of that works out. On one side it will be a steep learning curve but as Ryan Hunter-Reay proved when he came into our series and got in Rahal’s car, he adapted very easily.”

But as former CART and IndyCar driver Robby Gordon said at last week’s Daytona 500 — “Getting the cars together is the easy part; the hard part was getting the two sides to finally agree to become one.”

The lengthy war for control of open wheel racing in America coincided with NASCAR’s rapid growth to become the premier racing series in the United States.

Even with one unified IndyCar Series, it may be difficult to compete in the racing world with NASCAR’s huge sponsorship, media and fan base advantages.

But at the very least, it will help restore stature to IndyCar’s premier event, the Indianapolis 500.

“I’m extremely relieved just because being in the sport as long as I’ve been in the sport, for once the things that are happening is what is right for the sport,” Curry said. “Hopefully, the two sides coming together and one open-wheel racing series in the United States that corporate America may notice and wanted to jump on board because there will be continuity and direction.

“If you get a series sponsor that will be the beginning of getting sponsors for teams. Our series needs to have a name besides being the IndyCar Series. We need a partner to jump on board and start to really promote the series that you can do when you have that kind of backing.”

Chrysler offers buyouts to 13,000 in Detroit area 

January 29, 2008 

BY TIM HIGGINS 

FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER 

Chrysler LLC offered buyout and early retirement packages Monday to about 13,000 Detroit-area hourly UAW members as the automaker works to cut its overall hourly workforce by as many as 10,000 people. 

Monday’s effort aims primarily to reduce workers at support facilities that are seeing the domino effect of recent production cuts at the automaker’s assembly plants. 

Packages offering lump-sum payments as high as $100,000 were offered to UAW workers at the Sterling Heights and Warren stamping plants, the Trenton and Mack Avenue engine plants, Conner Avenue Assembly Plant, Detroit Axle, Mt. Elliott Tool and Die, and the Sterling Heights Vehicle Test Center, Chrysler spokeswoman Michele Tinson said. 

In addition, she said, the 1,140-person second shift at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant was offered packages, and 770 hourly workers at Warren Truck Plant, which is idle this week, are expected to be offered buyouts, too. 

Also, 110 salaried UAW members at the company’s Auburn Hills technology center and elsewhere will be able to take early retirement effective Thursday. 

About 500 workers at Jefferson North Assembly Plant already had a chance to show interest in a buyout package this month, Tinson said. 

Outside the Detroit area, workers at assembly plants in Belvidere, Ill., St. Louis and Toledo already faced deadlines to express interest in buyout packages that were offered. 

Chrysler had said it wants to eliminate about 900 jobs at the Jefferson facility in Detroit, 780 jobs at the Toledo North plant and 1,096 jobs at the Belvidere factory. 

“That seems to be on plan,” Aaron Bragman, an analyst at Global Insight, said of Monday’s announcement. “This is reducing headcount so they can get costs down.” 

Of the packages offered Monday, an estimated 4,600 are early-retirement eligible. The early-retirement package includes a lump sum of $70,000. The $100,000 buyout package is for eligible employees with at least one year of service. The deadline is Feb. 18. 

Chrysler negotiated the packages with the UAW, which did not want to make a comment Monday. Tinson said the job cuts are related to volume reductions. 

Monday’s offers seemed to focus on facilities that do so-called noncore work. Under the new UAW contracts with Chrysler, non-assembly workers can be replaced by new hires whose pay and benefits cost half as much as those for current assembly workers. But Chrysler has indicated that the current cuts are solely related to cutting capacity to meet falling consumer demand. 

Chrysler is not alone in Detroit in its efforts to reduce its workforce. Ford Motor Co. has started rolling out buyout offers. GM has only begun the first phase of its program and aims to offer packages to the rest of its UAW workforce next month. 

Some analysts wonder whether Chrysler will have a greater challenge getting workers to take buyouts because its workforce is younger than GM’s. 

The average age of Chrysler’s UAW hourly workers is 46 with 30% of workforce eligible for retirement within five years, according to research by Sean McAlinden, vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. 

Meanwhile, 64% of GM’s workforce is within five years of being eligible to retire; the workforce’s average age is 49. 

“They’re young and looking around going, ‘There’s nothing else in this market. I can’t necessarily leave because the housing market is so awful,’ ” Bragman said of Chrysler workers. “It is still a difficult decision to actually leave the company — $100,000 notwithstanding.” 

The UAW told its members in October that Chrysler plans to close the Conner Avenue Assembly Plant in Detroit some time over the next four years. The Detroit Axle plant is slated to close after the new Marysville axle facility comes online; the union has said UAW members will have the right to transfer to the new facility. 

In November, Chrysler announced plans to eliminate as many as 10,000 hourly jobs on top of the 11,000 hourly jobs planned for elimination as part of the February 2007 turnaround plan. 

Contact TIM HIGGINS at 313-222-8784 or thiggins@freepress.com. 

The following article was taken from www.clickondetroit.com 

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Americans who want to drive Smart like their European counterparts are finally getting their chance.

The flagship dealership and corporate headquarters for Smart USA open this afternoon in Bloomfield Hills. 

The dealership is one of 68 in 31 states expected to open this month to sell the 8-foot, 8-inch Smart Fortwo micro car.

Smart is a division of Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz brand, and its cars have been sold for nearly a decade in Europe. 

The French-made vehicles are being sold through U.S. dealers that are part of racing icon Roger Penske’s network.

General Motors has released the first picture of the new Chevrolet Camaro without camouflage. In fact, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has decreed that all of the preproduction Camaros be driven without the cladding and camouflage to better test aerodynamics and cooling efficiency, Chevrolet General Manager Ed Peper said on GM’s Fastlane blog Thursday. The Camaro is to go on sale in 2009.

from the Detroit Free Press www.freep.com

If you want to cut back on automobile emissions….Stop giving every dumb, illiterate, ignorant moron a license!  I’ve always been a huge fan of the licensing program of Germany were you actually have to pay a decent fee and pass a decent test to get your license.  Maybe then people would take driving more seriously and maybe then you would not have so many idiots on the roads.  Then, maybe you would have more people using public transportation and you might see full buses.  I can not tell you how many times a day I drive past a bus in the Detroit area and see one person sitting in it.  How wasteful is this?!  Make driving test harder, make driving a privilege, have less drivers on the road and have less emissions.  Heck, insurance would probably go down too!  Win win all around!

Taken from the Detroit Free Press www.freep.com  

First Smart orders exceed supply, Daimler says

December 5, 2007

Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche said his company has more initial U.S. orders for Smart minicars than it can build. The German automaker has received “more than 30,000 down payments” from buyers in advance of the car’s U.S. introduction in January, Zetsche said Monday in Washington.

The orders total “far beyond the production capacity we have for next year,” he said, without giving details. Daimler hopes that the two-seat Smart, with a base price of $11,590, will appeal to urban consumers looking for a second car and tap growing U.S. demand for fuel-efficient vehicles.

GM seeks stake in Russian carmakerGeneral Motors Corp. is bidding for a stake in Russia’s largest carmaker as part of an effort to expand its presence in that rapidly growing market, a GM spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Spokesman Marc Kempe said GM recently submitted a formal bid for a stake in OAO AvtoVaz.

He wouldn’t say how large a stake GM is seeking or how much it is willing to pay. Kempe said there is no timeline for the bid.

With its exploding oil wealth, Russia rapidly is becoming a major market for GM, the world’s largest automaker. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Russia has about 157 cars per 1,000 people. GM had a 6.6% share of the market in 2006, up from 4.6% the year before.

Ford posts increased sales in Nov.

December 3, 2007

By TIM HIGGINS

FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

After 12 months of sales declines, Ford Motor Co. posted this afternoon an increase, albeit a tiny one.

The automaker sold 182,951 vehicles in the U.S. last month, a 0.4% increase compared to the same month last year.

Year-to-date, the company’s sales are down 12%.

In November, Ford saw a 27% increase in sales of Mercury vehicles compared to November last year, fueled by increases in sales of the Grand Marquis and Milan cars.

Overall, the Dearborn automaker credited the increase to sales of crossover vehicles and interest in the hybrid techonology and the Sync in-car connectivity system developed with Microsoft Corp.

“It is encouraging to see our newest cars, crossovers, hybrids and industry-first Sync technology resonating with customers,” Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, said in a statement. “Continuing to deliver more quality products that people really want and carefully gauging customer demand in the months ahead will help ensure we stay on track with our plan.”

Contact TIM HIGGINS at 313-222-8784 or thiggins@freepress.com.

Whether you grew up in Evel Knievel’s prime or not you know the name, who he is, and what he was famous for.  Evel Knievel, in my eyes was the pioneer of the daredevil and the best at what he did.  There will never be another like him.  His legend will live on forever.