vonVeezelsnider

Only BC and Southern Ontario have emissions but in places like Nova Scotia they have a semi-annual safety inspection. We don't even have that unless you are registering the car for the first time in the province.

I don't see how he could have possibly faked it... The cop pulled alongside him and saw him with both feet on the brake and he smelled completely burnt out brakes. If he had the cruise control on, putting the brakes on would have simply turned the cruise off and since he doesn't have three legs there's no way he could have been on the gas as well.

I honestly can't understand how this would even work.

Same here, when I think safety I think Volvo, Saab, Benz. I guess it shows just how built up peoples high opinion of Toyopet was.

At some point, if it hasn't happened already, every accident involving a Toyota will be blamed, at the very least mentally, on a perceived safety issue. It won't be long now before Toyota is a bigger corporate pariah than Ford was back in the day. Certainly not Union Carbide bad but comparatively speaking people will always walk into a Toyota showroom and have this in the back of their minds.

one of my best friends just bought a sweet white/ red leather 1991 Trofeo, complete with the Touchscreen CRT.

On the bright side it's a great buying opportunity. My parents always wanted a place in Metro Phoenix and it looks like they might just get their wish with prices they way they are. Apparently they're considing buying a place down there this December. Houses were real cheap when I was there in December. They had a real estate display at Paradise Valley mall for 3 car garage, 1400-1800 sq. ft homes in gated communities for less than 150k$

You'd laugh at what I saw the other day. A 1980 or so gold Olds 98 stopped beside a gold 200x Aurora 4.0 at a stoplight.

Update from Jalopnik: http://jalopnik.com/5489244/runaway-toyota-prius-driver-had-to-be-told-to-use-emergency-brake

once again...

Other stories say the driver reports he took the car to a local Toyota dealer in recent weeks concerned about the acceleration issue but was informed that his car wasn't part of the recall and turned away.

Whether he couldn't turn off the engine or simply did not know how (also a possibility) the patrolmen who helped him stop smelt burning brakes, so obviously Toyota's claim that if you get on the brakes hard enough it will overpower the acceleration is bogus. On one of the Detroit TV stations they took a Camry out and demonstrated how at full throttle the brakes are supposed to counteract the gas pedal but this didn't happen, did it. Also the news up here is reporting that one of the things that the driver did while trying to stop the car was move any floormats (there wasn't an issue there) and physically used foot and hand to unstick the gas pedal- to no avail.

That's happening in a big way up in Canuckistan too.. the media up here seems to want to tie this to other manufacturers. The News/Talk station's lead story this AM was about how some lady in the city broke the gas pedal off her Dodge Journey and how the pedal was made out of plastic. Never mind that almost every car has a plastic gas pedal these days, but how to you stress fracture something that is hinged? The only way she could have broken it is by mashing the pedal to the floor hard. Ironic since they had a soundbite of her crying on the radio about how she just wants "her little boy to be safe". With driving like that who needs sudden acceleration. This damn thing is just giving the media and other assorted idiots a voice.

from Leftlanenews.com... Additionally the Prius is not under the pedal recall. http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-prius-unintended-acceleration-san-diego.html

Since I posted this both articles were updated with more info but the original article stated that he was screaming into the phone about not being able to put it in neutral.

Just read this and it literally blew me away. The similarities between this incident and the Lexus ES incident in San Diego are pretty alarming. Seems pretty damning to me... And eerily similar to the Lexus incident. I was talking about this with my dad in the early days of the recall and he (retired police) always suspected there was more to this than the pedals because anyone with the level of training he had to go through to serve on a police force would have been able to survive that ES350 accident mainly because they apparently show you in training at least five different ways to make an out of control car stop. His guess was that the car was at the mercy of the electronics and probably couldn't have been shifted into neutral or turned off, and low and behold almost the same thing happened here, mercifully with more acceptable results.

I was gaga over those and the coupes when I was but four or five years old.

The dealership I deal with leaves all their used cars unlocked on the lot... I guess they can get away with that because the lot is secured after hours.

Out of every vehicle we've ever had in my memory the one that has shown dirt in the best light has to be the Dark Silver Metallic color on my 07 Impala. The Red on the Malibu ain't bad and neither was the Bronzemist color on our 02 Venture. That being said, the Slate color is terrible for showing dirt and so was the Navy Blue color of our 05 Venture.

I'm not convinced that the AWD in the Volvo SUVs is all that great. We had a freak icestorm mid-day in late November and a Volvo XC90 with snow tires couldn't seem to make it up an icy hill that my FWD Cobalt with all seasons just carved right up... given I had narrower tires and whatnot but even so... I am kinda distrustful of AWD if it's not full-time or set via a transfer-case. Those computers that distribute the power get REAL confused (I've seen it) on icy Canadian roads. With 2WD you always know what the car is going to do, it's predictable (even RWD) and that's how I like it.

Those wheels really bring out the look of your Intrepid!

Went to visit my grandmother today and this hunk of iron was taking up what seemed like the entire front of her duplex... Presumably they call it the Mark IV as a homage to the Mark IV nuclear bomb.

This is sorta spring cleaning and errand month for me. The 09 is new and doesn't need anything The Cobalt needs a full interior detailing which I will do as a favor to my brother My Impala, well since I'm driving it daily now I am making a laundry list of stuff that needs to be fixed before the GMPP kicks in in June. The Malibu is fine, except it still needs new struts, a new ISS, and copious amounts of DynaMat.