Webmaster, Steve St. Laurent, found this photo in one of his many web surfing expeditions. It is common knowledge that the truck will be redesigned for the 1500 series customer for model year 2009 and for us Turbo Diesel owners in 2010.
I was asked by the TDR to cover the SEMA show for the magazine and the website. This being my first time at the event, I have to say it was overwhelming. I've seen it on TV shows and in magazines, so I thought I was prepared. But the sheer magnitude of the event is beyond what you could possibly envision. It's simply enormous! . . . . . .
Recently, Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG of Germany purchased minority shares in biofuel manufacturer Choren Industries GmbH. (Another minority Choren shareholder is Royal Dutch Shell.) What’s particularly noteworthy about Choren Industries is the fact that it makes what is called "friendly synthetic biofuel" or second-generation biofuel. These second-gen fuels are made from cellulose-containing surplus materials such as woodchips, straw, or plant stalks, rather than from corn, wheat or sugar cane. The big advantage is that they don’t reduce our supply of human or animal foodstuffs, nor increase demand and prices of these commodities.
Already here in North America--although biofuels have not reached the level of popularity as in Europe--price hikes for everything from bread to eggs to meat and poultry are being blamed at least partially on the tightened supply and subsequent higher costs of the grains used to produce foodstuffs.
There is also concern that if grains such as corn are used extensively to produce biofuel, there will be far less reduction in carbon-dioxide compared to petroleum, because of the energy needed to plant, irrigate, harvest and transport the feedstocks to biofuel plants. On the other hand, if waste products such as cornstalks are used and collected while the corn is harvested, there will be considerable savings. Corn may still be used as food for humans or animal feed, while the leftovers are made into biofuel, significantly improving the carbon-dioxide tally.
There’s another interesting angle to this. If the automotive industry controls the price of fuel, it will be to its advantage to hold down prices, to spur vehicle sales. This is the exact opposite of the oil industry.
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Remember racing when all you needed was a good car, a good driver, and a little luck? Long gone I fear, replaced by the sponsor-driven world of motorsports.
It’s gotten too expensive to go big-time racing without a sponsor, and big-time drivers frequently change series looking for the big-time salary (as would I). Follow the money, right?
Somebody has to pay the fines when racers behave like racers rather than Nextel-Disney puppets, or somebody breaks a rule. This happens all the time from racing incidents, “avoidable contact” (no, I meant to hit him right in the jaw) and illegal equipment: Please pay $50,000 and lose 25 championship points (out of 5,000 or so).
That’s cheap. In “world championship” Formula One, this summer’s brouhaha over Ferrari engineering documentation in a Maclaren employee’s possession resulted in, the Maclaren team out $100 million and all manufacturer points (the drivers are still in it) 2008. I’m guessing Max Mosley or Bernie Ecclestone, the power and money men behind F1, needed a new yacht.
Here’s NASCAR’s money problem this year, decided in court and not on track:
Cingular (partly owned by AT&T at the time) coughed up $150 mil to sponsor the #31 car starting in 2001. When AT&T expanded and bought up what it didn’t own of Cingular, it wished to change the logos to reflect the AT&T name rather than the defunct Cingular name.
Naturally Nextel/Sprint, which will spend $750 million over 10 years to be the series primary sponsor, cried foul, arguing that their contract was to be the only telecommunications company sponsor except for those already on board. It probably didn’t help that most surveys from the first half of 2007 found Nextel/Sprint ranked well-behind leaders Verizon and AT&T in terms of revenue, subscribers, added subscribers per quarter (what Wall Street likes), or customer service. This was Nextel/Sprint’s best chance to get AT&T out of the NASCAR picture(s).
Personally, I think since AT&T was already a partial sponsor of the 31 they should be able to keep their contract and stay on. Last I heard, it seems Nextel had a more successful lawyer than AT&T and the logos can stay for a while but must be off by 2009. And you know with television rights involved, no company is going to pay tens of millions for a car they can’t have a logo on.
I’ll suggest to AT&T that they decorate Burton’s car like a giant Apple iPhone minus any AT&T logo. With a five-year exclusive deal to one of the hotter phones on the market, they could really rub it in. Or maybe sponsor the blimp and equip it with a jammer to render Nextel/Sprint phones useless at tracks.
And then I’m going to the local dirt track to watch Mike’s Muffler and Ernie’s Excavating duke it out, with at least one of them “explaining the rules” to the unenlightened flagman after the race.
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Pickup trucks, which are dear to our hearts, have seen a lot of changes over the years—or have they? Yes, the engines are more powerful, they can haul more weight faster, and they coddle their passengers with more amenities and electronic do-dads then ever before. But look at a Ford Model T pickup, and you’ll see the same basic layout, radiator and engine hood out front, followed by a cab and then a cargo bed.
Back in the '50s and ’60s several interesting designs were introduced, such as the Jeep FC-150 and 170 series, VW, Ford Econoline and Dodge A-100 van-based pickups, which all had their engine between driver and passenger, along with the rear-engine Corvair pickups.
These trucks, which are all defunct, provided exceptional packaging efficiency, fitting a lot in a short overall length. One of the tradeoffs was a reduced crush zone to protect the driver in a frontal crash. Since then there has been very little innovation in the basic pickup truck layout. However, today’s need to reduce fuel consumption, combined with increased urban congestion and parking problems, call for us to rethink the basic design of current and future pickups. Perhaps with current technology, including better seatbelts, airbags and computer-aided design, occupant protection in a flat-front pickup could be improved, like it is with the tiny Mercedes Smart car. The front could also slope backwards in an aerodynamic shape.
What do you think needs to be done, and what would you like the pickup truck of the future to be like?
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I was asked by the TDR to cover the SEMA show for the magazine and the website. This being my first time at the event, I have to say it was overwhelming. I've seen it on TV shows and in magazines, so I thought I was prepared. But the sheer magnitude of the event is beyond what you could possibly envision. It's simply enormous! . . . . . .