2009 Hyundai Elantra Gets a Refresh for the Beijing Auto Show

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Hyundai is going to unveil a revised 2009 Hyundai Elantra at the Beijing Auto Show later this month.



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80s Nostalgia Comes To Rampaging Life On The Race Track: Huey Newis And The Lose! [24 Hours Of Lemons]

Not all the cars at next month's 24 Hours Of LeMons Arse Freeze-A-Palooza are as gloriously twisted as the CBR900RR-powered Geo Metro or Ghettocharged Frankenmiata, but even a run-of-the-mill Fox Mustang can show up with a great theme. That's exactly what's going on with Team Huey Newis And The Lose, who have painted their '85 Mustang in a painfully 80s pink-and-gray combo and are now assembling team uniforms comprised entirely of Members Only gear. Yes, these guys have a rich cultural vein to mine with their schtick, and you can read their mission statement (and see all the photos) by merely making the jump.


Here is the letter written by the esteemed wordsmith Warren G. Taylor (Ok, his middle initial isn't G. but it should be.) that got us accepted into the race. yes, its both silly and true.

To whom it may concern,

I have been enlisted, through threats, bribes, blackmail, and the bartering, crossroads-like, of one slightly under-utilized and threadbare soul, to entreat you, through the use of eloquent and mellifluous prose, to allow the entrance of one Team Huey Newis and The Lose into the hallowed and oil-stained halls of the LeMons. This is a Sisyphean task that I take to with neither joy nor relish; but like the man who has sat down to consume a jar of mayonnaise at one sitting, I will dree this grim weird one spoonful at a time.

While I cannot truthfully profess to be an expert on many things, the entrance into a race I've never seen, by a group who, to my knowledge, have limited their racing to the variety that occurs between the car and the darkened rest-stop men's room when that urge that Dare Not Speak Its Name hits, is something I can clearly lie about, and with gusto. My understanding, without having consulted either the LeMons handbook or the actual entrants into the race, is that there are three very important standards that must be met for entrance into the Hallowed Race, and I posit that all are not merely met by this crew, but bested in a manner befitting the knights of old. That is to say, they literally got on horseback and, at full gallop, drove a lance through the heart of the LeMons rulebook.

They are not very bright, and this is but one example of that fact. But I digress. As follows, the standards they bear, and their unique methods for upholding same:

The Theme: This LeMons standard is, at least to the members of the team, something that they have not knowingly ascribed to. I say "knowingly" because, as you've no doubt gathered by the name of the team, they have inadvertently stumbled, like Peter Sellers from "Being There", onto genius. To put it simply, these are not men of their own era. They, like the eponymous song lyric from a later age, have simply been born too slow. While the rest of the world has soldiered on, through Clinton and Bush presidencies, the rise and fall and Phoenix-like rise again of Britney Spears, and not one but two Silicon Valley booms, these brave few have refused to buckle to the whims of passing days; they have been steadfast, resilient, and, indeed, mocked. While we live in an era of suddenly plummeting DJI's and the possible dissolution of a Major American Automaker, they have stayed in the comforting, womb-like era of suddenly plummeting DJI's and the possible dissolution of a Major American Automaker. Their ties? As thin as a rail of coke on a hooker's ass in the '85 Mets' locker room. Their suits? Clad with shoulder pads that not only protect, but surround and enfold, much like your mother's thighs. Their jeans? Jordache, stonewashed, and matching their jackets. These are not merely pleasant anachronisms, but severely deluded and, frankly, frightening men. They claim to be music aficionados, but when they give prospective girlfriends mix tapes, they just consist of two sides of a 90-minute Memorex with nothing but a repeating loop of "In the Air Tonight" and "Karma Chameleon". To put it succinctly, in their minds they are nihilistic loners who are flouting the spirit of the competition by wearing their street clothes. Their minds are wrong.

The Team: Think back to the 80's. What was a common theme in the shows that you loved? Was it the constant, uncomfortable references to how you should tell an adult if the creepy old guy next door tried to touch your personal stick shift? Was it the repeated instances of the heroes testing a bag of white powder by sticking their finger in and tasting it, oblivious to the possibility that, at best, they were putting enough pure, uncut cocaine on their gums to light up downtown Miami, and at worst they had just eaten a tablespoon of finely powdered soap? Was it the profusion of nihilistic outcasts with, to say the least, odd living arrangements? Magnum in the guest house, Crockett living hobo-like on a marina with a pet alligator, Hannibal et al living like a pack of well-armed transients. Yes, these were all themes. But the force that drove these themes, that was the touchstone in a time of uncertainty, was The Team. Michael and KITT. Joe Penny and the guy with the mustache. The A-Team. The goddamn A-Team. Sweet Jesus, the word "team" is right there in the name. The Team was everything; if the team stuck together you were guaranteed success. Without the team? Failure. The Team was not built of characters, it was constructed of archetypes, individuals that were each born to a task that they were invariably called upon to do. And do it they did, with aplomb, with vigor, with style. Never were they expected to vary from the path that fate had sent them down. Was Face ever to pilot the get-away copter? Of course not. And neither was Hannibal called upon to woo the comely lass, or Murdoch to perform incredible feats of strength right before being poisoned by his closest friends, failing once again to resist the temptation of the sweet, sweet elixir that was a cold glass of milk. Were any of that to occur, it would lead to the unknown; and that way, as we all know, lies madness.

Perhaps the place where The Team becomes most evident, where the archetypes are stripped of unnecessary encumbrances like "character development" and "acting", is in the realm of the cartoon. And among the cartoons, Voltron stood tall, for he was the mighty Defender of The Universe. That's right, sonny boy, The Universe. Not "The Kitchen" or "The Block Between 4th and 5th Streets" or even "Miami". The motherfucking Universe. How, you ask, could one group defend an territory that encompasses all known space? The answer is simple. The Team. They depended on The Team, for it was the life's blood of their mission statement. And, as with all good teams, the archetypes were clear. The Leader. The Byronic Cool Guy. The Ox-Like Man-Child. The Short Guy. The Chick The Loses Her Bikini Top With A Frequency That Seems Inappropriate For A Show Aimed At Pre-Teens. With a team thus assembled, there was no threat, no matter how great, no matter how terrifying, that they could not be beaten up by for 3 minutes while defending themselves with new, interesting, and completely useless weapons, until finally getting bored and cutting said threat in half with The Blazing Sword.
Team Huey Newis and The Lose is not a team thus constructed. There is no leader. There is no cool guy. Sadly, there's not a single one of them that would look good in a bikini.

It's five Pidges and a Hunk.

But they're here. And they're...well, they're here. My understanding is that that's all that's really required of them.

The Car: The 80's were a time of great turmoil. Saturday morning cartoons were telling us horror stories of families separated by the Berlin Wall, Robert Ludlum was assuring us that Mutually Assured Destruction was only moments away if Jason Bourne didn't get off his amnesiac ass and do something about it, and Bono still hadn't brokered a peace in Belfast. Cocaine use was rampant, Star Wars had only recently primed your childhood for being raped, and children were learning, through the combined propaganda of Ralph Macchio and Duke, that not only was "Knowing Half the Battle," but "Kicking Your Enemies in The Teeth" was the other half. Forged in this fiery foundry of fear was the car that was the car, as the man says, for its place and time. The 1985 Mustang GT 5.0. But not any Mustang 5.0—this is the last of the carburetor 5.0's, with all of 210HP and 270LB/FT of God's Own Torque, puking enough unburned hydrocarbon out its tailpipe so that if you were to order the convertible model, it would create a portable hole in the ozone layer above your car that would double your tan efficiency as you drove. When new, this was a car that burned rubber, loosened morals, and lubricated lasses.

The Lose's car is, sadly, no longer that car. The only thing it burns is oil, and the only thing it will loosen is the valve gear, most likely at an inopportune time. Unfortunately for that very valve gear, the only thing that will be well lubricated is whatever parking spot the car currently sits in. It is old. It is tired. And it is time for this old mare to be put out to pasture. But before that time, before the crushing teeth of an automotive purgatory await, this old girl has a final mission to accomplish. And who are we to deny the dying their final wish?

FIN
And so. Three standards, all well met. The only thing standing between this ragtag bunch of misfits and the glory of victory is the acceptance of this entry form, and the possibility that their car won't start. The second part is almost a given. Don't be like Sarah Jessica Parker's father in Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Don't be like Dean Rooney. Don't be like Principal Vernon. Don't be like...well, there's a lot of them. Don't be that guy. Pharaoh, let my people race.



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Ezra Dyer pits the Nissan GT-R versus... the Hummer H3T

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Automobile's Ezra Dyer has a knack for positing the most intriguing vehicular questions in an inimitable, screamingly hilarious style. Who else would send Hummer's junior-level H3T against Nissan's heavyweight GT-R, and why? "I want to go bash around in the boonies with a jacked-up truck before somebody decides that that sort of thing is really so much fun that it should be illegal" is the perfect answer to that question. If vehicles weren't in some way about fun, we'd all be lining up for coveted used Trabants. The challenge was thus: run one vehicle on the road from Telluride to Lake City, while another hits the trail, Duke-Boys style. Both vehicles can be painted with anti-green when one considers their respective purposes. The GT-R is for chewing up miles and passing everything short of determined Porsche drivers, while the Hummer doesn't enjoy the free pass enviros give a Wrangler, but is a capable alternative to the Jeep when things heads off road. Hit the link to see whether an as-the-crow-flies route bests turbocharged brute force. Here's one thing we'll play spoiler on: the Hummer used less fuel.

[Source: Automobile]

Ezra Dyer pits the Nissan GT-R versus... the Hummer H3T originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nissan Xterra From “The Office” Failed To Auction on e-Bay

The Office’s xterra

TV Crunch discovered that the Nissan Xterra which Dwight Shrute bought from Andy Bernard was on auction at e-Bay. However, it looks like the reserve for the auction was not met so no one wins.



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SPOILER ALERT: Reversals of Fortune at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix

Posted by Autoblog

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2009 Belgian Grand Prix – Click above for high-res image gallery

You asked for it, you got it, racing fans. For decades, Formula One has been dominated by a handful of teams. The world titles have…



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2009 Dodge Ram and Ford F-150 come at a bad time

 The full-sized pickup segment came to sudden fall and at a horrible time for Ford and Chrysler as they get ready to bring their new updated pickups to the market. The segment is expected to fall...



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Suzuki Concept Kizashi 3 Sport Sedan Unveiled...It's Quite Impressive

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Suzuki used the New York Auto show to unveil its Concept Kizashi 3. The concept is the third vehicle in Suzuki's Concept-Kizashi Series and definitely the most impressive.



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Fiat and PSA Peugeot/Citroën to merge?

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Two storied European nameplates might combine operations as rumors are flying that Fiat and PSA Peugeot/Citroën may find the road to future profits easier to travel together. The first rumblings of potential trouble at Fiat came when its CEO Sergio Marchionne suggested his company's future looked bleak without a major partner and that there was only room for six global automakers in his estimation. Now, according to Italian newspaper Milano Finanza, leaders of both Italy and France have discussed a possible tie-up between the two companies.

Both countries are said to be considering offering financial aid packages to their respective home-grown automakers, and a merger may be seen as another way of ensuring their future viability. Although the two automakers specialize in small cars and therefore have many overlapping products, the only joint-ventures currently shared between them are for commercial vehicles and MPVs. If the two Euro giants were to merge, the resulting company would roughly match the size of Nissan/Renault and Volkswagen.

[Source: Reuters]

Fiat and PSA Peugeot/Citroën to merge? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chisato Morishita

Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita originally got her fame being known as the Japanese Race Queen, but that was only the gateway for her opening up to her career as an actress and a singer. She still can’t forget about how she got her start though, and is still often seen at race shows and doing exhibitions.

Chisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato MorishitaChisato Morishita

Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita
Chisato Morishita


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Cool Caravans and RVs


I am the first to admit that I am not into Caravans or RVs. It’s just not my thing. If I find myself travelling long distances I always use hotels. However there are some cool vans out there. Check out this collection from the Herald Sun.

vans



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Best and Worst of Re-Badging: GM Sinks, VW and Chrysler Soar

Routan: Can you see the Caravan hidden inside?

Routan: Can you see the Caravan hidden inside?

Back in 2008, Chrysler and Nissan announced plans to help each other out by swapping some vehicle designs.

Now those plans are canceled, mostly because Fiat now owns Chrysler and doesn’t need Nissan to provide fuel-efficient small autos. It’s too bad, really, because Nissan’s contribution to Chrysler might have been branded as a Dodge Hornet. That could’ve been cool! 

Chrysler would have given Nissan a truck based on the Dodge Ram Pickup to replace the aging Nissan Titan.

Even though none of this will actually happen, it got me thinking about some of the best (and a couple of the worst) results of this common platform-sharing practice. Here are some of my favorite examples:

Suzuki was getting sick of seeing its popular ATVs and motorcycles getting lugged around by non-Suzuki vehicles. So the company commissioned Nissan to rebadge its Frontier pickup with some new sheet metal. The result? A solid entry in the compact truck market and a Suzuki to tow people’s Suzukis.

Getting Toyota to build a car for General Motors is equivalent to getting the Pittsburgh Steelers to play football for Mississippi Valley State. It’s a can’t-lose situation, and GM scored big with the versatile and reliable Vibe, which was copied from the Toyota Matrix. Pick one up and watch it last forever.  

The Grand Caravan/Town & Country minivans are easily the best vehicles Chrysler builds. For whatever reason, Chrysler is a minivan king, so V-dub was smart to commission the company to build the new Routan minivan. While Chrysler wouldn’t add its popular (and patented) Stow n’ Go or Swivel n’ Go seating to the Routan package, the rest is Chrysler-engineered and VW-tuned minivan perfection. If there is such a thing as “minivan perfection.”

Of course, there have been some bad examples of platform sharing too…

Ugh. While the end result was pretty, the car itself didn’t even come close to competing with the BMW 3 Series as an entry-level luxury performance sedan. It wasn’t reliable, it wasn’t fast, and it handled like a Ford. Thank goodness Jag came to its senses and discontinued this afterthought of a vehicle.

General Motors has a way of removing the “cool” factor from whatever it touches. Saabs had a quirky Swedish personality before GM swooped in, but with the 9-7X, Saab officially became re-branded Chevrolet. Why pay a premium for a Chevy Trailblazer? Here’s to hoping Koenigsegg brings the Sweden back to Saab.

Do you have a favorite (or least favorite) re-branded vehicle?

-tgriffith

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WRC switching to S2000-spec car for 2010 season

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For whom does the cost-cutter's bell toll? It tolls for Formula 1... and for the World Rally Championship. The FIA has announced that from 2010 the WRC will use Super 2000-spec cars, instead of the current championship's Group N racers. As with the FIA's moves in F1 to standardize components in order to help teams save money, the S2000 cars all have third-party-supplied gearboxes and drivetrains, use 2.0-liter engines with 8,500 rpm rev limits, and are prohibited from being excessively modified (if you have some time, check out the FIA-mandated S2000 specs), among other things. Should manufacturers wish to sell their S2000 cars to privateer teams they can charge no more than €168,000. Five time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb has spoken out against an S2000 WRC, saying he won't be interested in rallying if the 2010 regs actually take effect. The Group N cars that drivers like Loeb currently pilot will be relegated to the P-WRC come 2010. We'll find out then if Sebastien Loeb goes with them.

[Source: WRC]

WRC switching to S2000-spec car for 2010 season originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ford Flex rolls of the line, high-quality ensured with engineering checks

With all the hype surrounding the new 2009 Ford Flex, we’re really looking to see how the new Ford crossover does when it hits dealerships later this summer. Ford today announced that...



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Go slow and be rewarded with flat speed bumps

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We happen to know of a housing development in Southern California that recently had its central road repaved. Out went the crumbling asphalt and nasty old speed bumps, and in went shiny new black pavement... and an additional helping of nasty new speed bumps. The paving company had actually doubled the number of bumps, presumably in an attempt to slow down traffic through this residential area. What actually resulted was cars now speeding up even quicker and slowing even faster between the bumps, wasting gas, wearing out brakes and putting out more emissions in the process. Too bad they didn't know about these new speed bumps from the fertile minds of designers Jae-yun Kim and Jong-Su Lee.

These sleeping policemen actually flatten when the vehicle is traveling the speed limit, but stay upright when someone is speeding. The new design uses a small damper inside to flatten out when a car drives over it at low speed, but higher forces from a faster vehicle keep it upright, causing a nasty jolt. To make them more visible than your typical speed bump, they're outfitted with LEDs all around. The designers say their goal was to encourage drivers to maintain a constant slow speed, reducing the amount of stops and starts made, and thereby the amount of exhaust pollution from the car. The world's first green speed bumps? These are just a concept for now, but hopefully someone will put them into production soon, and bring them to So. Cal.

[Source: Engadget]

Go slow and be rewarded with flat speed bumps originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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