White,sun Roof, 4 Door Sedan, Cd Player,excellent Condition,tinted Windows, on 2040-cars

Auto blog

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Vettel steals victory from Hamilton in Australian Grand Prix

MELBOURNE, March 25 – Sebastian Vettel made full use of the virtual safety car to sneak in front of Lewis Hamilton and hold off the frustrated champion to win Formula One's season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday. The Mercedes engine's infamous 'party mode' that delivered Hamilton a blistering pole lap on Saturday could do little once Ferrari's Vettel nosed ahead when re-entering from pit-lane midway through the race at Albert Park. Pole-sitter Hamilton had appeared set to coast to victory with a clear pace advantage but the race turned on its head with the safety car, which was called after Romain Grosjean's Haas failed and rolled to a stop at turn two. In another bonus for Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen finished third, fending off Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo and leaving the unlucky Australian still searching for a first podium in his home race. "We got a bit lucky." Four-times world champion Vettel claimed a 48th overall win and his third in Melbourne following his victories at Albert Park last year and in 2011. "It was needless to say we got a bit lucky with the timing of the safety car," the German, who had started from third place and inherited the lead when Hamilton and Raikkonen had pitted earlier in the race, told reporters. "It's not the easiest track to pass." For Hamilton, the result was a bitter pill to swallow and had echoes of last year's race. Vettel also managed to re-enter in front of him from pit-lane in 2017 before burning away to victory while the pole-sitting Briton was blocked by traffic. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team had miscalculated the margin between the cars during the safety car period. "We thought we had enough margin," he told the BBC. "It must have been a software bug in the system that caused us to get it wrong. We are digging deep now to understand where we had a problem." "I don't understand what's happened." Hamilton, who cockily spoke of "wiping the smile off" Vettel's face with his pole lap on Saturday, battled to keep positive. "Even now I don't understand what's happened," the 33-year-old told reporters. "I did everything I believe I was supposed to do." After the pit-lane setback, Hamilton drove hard to reel in Vettel and battled back after taking a slide at a corner that blew out the lead to nearly three seconds. But he finally waved the white flag in the closing laps to preserve the car for future races.

Foreign automakers pay from $38 to $65 per hour to non-union workers

As leaders for the United Auto Workers gather in Detroit for their Special Convention on Collective Bargaining to work out the negotiating stance for this year's new labor agreements with the Detroit 3 automakers, what they most want to do is figure out how to eliminate the two-tier wage scale. However, the lower Tier 2 wage has allowed the domestic automakers to reduce their labor costs, hire more workers, and compete better with their import competition. As it stands, per-hour labor rates including benefits are $58 at General Motors, $57 at Ford, and $48 at Fiat-Chrysler – a reflection of FCA's much greater number of Tier 2 workers. The Center for Automotive Research released a study of labor rates (including benefits) that put numbers to what the imports pay: Mercedes-Benz pays the most, at an average of $65 per hour, Volkswagen pays the least, at $38 per hour, and BMW is just a hair above that at $39 per hour. Among the Detroit competitors, Honda workers earn an average of $49 per hour, at Toyota it's $48 per hour, Nissan is $42 per hour, and Hyundai-Kia pays $41 per hour. The lower import wages are aided by their greater use of temporary workers compared to the domestics. Automotive News says the ten-dollar gap between those foreign camakers and the domestics turns out to about an extra $250 per car in labor, which adds up quickly when you're pumping out many millions of cars. That $250-per-car number is one that, come negotiating time, the Detroit 3 will want to reduce, as the UAW is trying to raise both Tier 1 and Tier 2 wages. Another wrinkle is that the domestic carmakers are considering the wide adoption of a third wage level lower than Tier 2. Some workers who do minor tasks like assembling parts trays kits and battery packs already make less than Tier 2, but the UAW will be quite wary about cementing yet another wage scale at the bottom of the system while it's trying to fight a bigger battle at the top. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req., BloombergImage Credit: AP Photo/Erik Schelzig Earnings/Financials UAW/Unions BMW Chevrolet Fiat Ford GM Honda Hyundai Kia Mercedes-Benz Nissan Toyota Volkswagen labor wages collective bargaining labor costs