SydsEastside Now Sharing Photos at flickr.com/motorcars/

Syd's Eastside has joined up with flickr and setup a small photo stream sharing resource at http://www.flickr.com/motorcars/.

Since the practice of showing off our used cars and trucks catalog online requires that we take some photographs of the vehicles, we have decided that instead of Copyrighting these photos and then keeping them all to ourselves, we will share them with the world. At first we were looking for our own web application to do this from one of our own websites, but preliminary trials on some of the applications available showed that most of the freeware and registered shareware open source software applications that are supposed to perform these duties are purely incapable of doing so. Almost every application we installed failed miserably (even the registered shareware we paid for a license for).

In our hunt for a manageable online photo album application, we found flickr.com, and so far it is offering us the most reliability. However, we are continuing to investigate other possible web application solutions that we can host ourselves so that we can utilize our photography to more fully promote our brands.

Although we are currently only just getting started at flickr, which is currently a Yahoo! property, I think I was able to upload a nice little assortment of cars that we have had listed for sale in our Used Autos: Cars & Trucks For Sale section of the website.

While we are still looking for a more configurable solution that we can control more fully as a web application on one of our online properties, it certainly is good to have this option available from flickr. Unfortunately, flickr.com also stifles its user creativity by limiting its membership to only 3 sets (albums) of photos each. This drastically limits the free membership's ability to categorize photos accurately. I suppose they have to do something to get members to the paid membership program, though.

I'm not sure if it will work here, but one nice feature of flickr is the ability to easily create a slideshow of your photos that you can share from your other websites. Let's see if Google will support it...



It appears to work, although I am seeing an error from the Adobe FlashPlayer 9. Perhaps there is some incompatibility issues here on the Blogger pages? For now, I'll just leave it up. If anyone has a fix for this, be sure to let me know, I would appreciate it. If the error gets too anoying I'll just put it on some other page and point a link on the blog to where I put it. ;)

Thanks!

-Syd's Eastside

Chrysler, GM Cross Shopping

Edmunds has a fascinating analysis of how customers who shop for Chrysler products cross-shop other makes. Read the whole thing here. For example, customers who shopped for Chrysler Town & Country minivans also shopped for:

Top Most Cross-Shopped Against the Chrysler Town & Country
1. Honda Odyssey 43%
2. Dodge Grand Caravan 33%
3. Toyota Sienna 33%
4. Nissan Quest 12%
5. Hyundai Entourage 12%
6. Volkswagen Routan* 9%

The conclusions that Edmunds draws from the analysis is that if GM bought Chrysler, they would want to kill off just about everything except for Jeep and the minivans, where they don't have as much presence. In segments where they do compete, such as mid-sized and compact cars, GM is a frequently cross-shopped brand. This means that if GM killed the Sebring, for example, it would expect to gain some of the volume for itself.

Top Most Cross-shopped Models Against Chrysler Sebring
1. Pontiac G6 13%
2. Chevrolet Malibu 12%
3. Honda Accord 11%
4. Nissan Altima 10%
5. Toyota Camry Solara 10%
6. Dodge Avenger 9%

Nissan is one of the least cross-shopped brands with Chrysler. This implies that a Nissan/Chrysler merger would make more sense for Nissan, because they would pick up more products they don't compete directly against. With the caveat that many of these products aren't doing well. But it might be an opening for Nissan to redevelop Chrysler's cars based on Nissan designs, manufacture them cheaply in Chrysler's plants, and play harder against GM and Ford in the competition for the "domestic" car buyer.

Honda GX Stonewall? Hardly.

According to this piece in TheAutoChannel by one Edwin Black, Honda is pulling an Evil GM (see: EV1) and intentionally limiting the number of Civic GX (compressed natural gas) vehicles it produces and sells.

For all the sinister insinuations, Black doesn't really have an explanation for why it would be that Honda might be producing Civic GXs in limited quantities. That's because Honda clammed up and won't talk to the press about it, which is not surprising. All he can come up with is that Honda is pushing its much thirster Pilot SUV. As if a mid-sized SUV would somehow be hurt by sales of a compact sedan?

There are a number of plausible explanations for why Honda, which is certainly interested in polishing its already good environmental credentials, would be cautious with the Civic GX. Here are a few that are obvious to me:

Quality. Honda is obsessive about quality, and they may want to roll their CNG Civic out slowly until they fully understand how it can fail in the harsh environment of real American drivers.

Cost. Honda may not be making money on these, in fact they could easily be losing money on them, perhaps due to supplier issues. Honda may be treating the program as more of a marketing and product research exercise (like the original Insight?) until they understand the market for CNG better.

Dealerships. Since the CNG Civic has a specialized fuel system, different engine software, and perhaps other changes, special tools and training are required to service it. Since Honda doesn't (can't by law) own dealerships, dealers may have to put up significant capital to get CNG certified. Or perhaps Honda foots the bill, in which case Honda pays significant money for each dealer.

Honda isn't going to spread CNG dealers around the country, if there aren't enough fuelling stations, or customers for that matter, for it to make sense. They will pick a few entry markets, like California and New York, and go there.

And since Honda is obligated to service their CNG Civic, they obviously aren't going to want to sell them in places where they don't have a dealer certified for it yet.

The market is shifting rapidly this way and that. At first, pundits thought diesel was the new way--then the price of diesel shot up so that there was not much of an advantage over gasoline. The ethanol pendulum is swinging one way now, but could swing back the other way again if a backlash builds up. Oil is starting to look cheap again.

Honda isn't being sinister, they're eing cautious in an unpredictible and dangerous economy.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 Vista Bug

I'm posting this to help others find the answer to this bug.

Vista is running fine, but Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 had me pulling my hair out... after patching it up to v5.0.2 like Adobe says, and importing my catalog from my old computer, like Adobe says... the Organizer application wouldn't run. It showed me a splash screen, then disappeared.

Task Manager told me that it was running, but it wouldn't open a UI.

After much fooling around, un-installing and re-installing PSE, I finally found this article on Adobe's support site.

Apparently, the file monitor service breaks Organizer on some Vista sysems (like mine). To fix it, I simply turned off the service. From Adobe:

Solution

Turn off the Active File Monitor service.

1. Choose Start, type msconfig in the Search box, and then press Enter.
2. On the Services tab, deselect Adobe Active File Monitor V5.
3. Click OK, and then click Restart.

Note: You may not be able to use the Watch Folders function if you turn off the Active File Monitor service.

This fixed my problem, but now the Organizer won't be able to find new photo files that are dropped in disk folders.

Toyota iQ sports car on the way?

Intriguing rumours brought via Carscoop and Auto Motor und Sport today - that of apparent Toyota plans to show a concept study of a roadster based on the iQ city car at the Tokyo Motor Show around this time next year.


Image: Auto Motor und Sport
Early news indeed, so as of yet it's best to take the information with a pinch of salt, but it's promising nonetheless. The car would be perfectly placed to take up the gap in the market left after the tiny Smart Roadster departed and would prove a competitive rival to the Daihatsu Copen, the only other tiny sports car on the market at the moment.

Like the Copen, the iQ "Spider", as it's likely to be called, would be front-wheel drive, using the 1.0l and 1.3l engines and powertrain of the city car. This also means the car could potentially use the 1.4l diesel pencilled in for the regular iQ.

The regular iQ is due on sale January 2009 from around £10,000.


Image: ©Tarmac 2008

WIndows Vista: Not So Bad

I needed to buy a new PC, and I found a pretty good deal on a Dell Optiplex 330 (dual core, 2GB ram, 160GB HDD). I decided to take a risk and get Windows Vista (Business), even though I read all kinds of horror stories about how unstable, slow, annoying, buggy it is.

Here is my experience so far (after using it for a few hours)

Good:

• UI is nice. Lots of eye candy, Aero interface is a bit blingy but effective. Decently organized. Lots of options for different views.
  
• Boot time is OK for me (my old XP machine took about 45 seconds to boot up, the new one takes about 30)
• Ubiquitous search boxes are neat.
• Sidebar is neat.
  
• Lots of built in goodies like scan/fax, system backup.

Bad:

• The User Account Control thing, the box that comes up and asks you "are you sure" for every little thing is annoying. I appreciate the added security, but I am tempted to turn it off.
• If I ran Windows XP on this machine, I bet it would boot in like 20s.
  

I also heard that much of my old software would not work in Vista. Not true, so far all this stuff seems to be working fine:

• WordPerfect Office 12 SP1 (but SP2 won't install!) I may break down and upgrade to the latest WP Office anyway.
• Microsoft Office XP
  
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 (with patch)
  
• FireFox 3.0
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Ad-Aware
• Antivir Free Antivirus
• Quicken 2007 (with patch)
  
• Roxio Media Creator 10
• Apple iTunes

Software that won't work:

• Epson Smart Panel (don't care, Vista has nice built-in scanning functions anyway)
• WP 12 SP2 won't install.

Considering how blazing fast the new machine is compared to my old Dell 3000 (P4), and that it cost all of about $500, I'm very pleased.

RAC: Scrap cars over 18 years old?

For a body that is often found fighting for the rights of the motorist and the car itself, the RAC's subsiduary, the RAC Foundation, has just released a confusing report suggesting that cars older than 18 years should be be scrapped in an attempt to "clean up" the roads. 18 years ago was the general time that the majority of cars started being fitted with catalytic converters. First impressions seem to suggest that cars older than this, then, are "dirty".

Whilst the RAC is not suggesting by any means that all cars older than this should immediately be destroyed, the report is still worrying, in that a body such as the RAC has a voice that can be heard by the government. The government aren't known for the subtlety by which they execute ideas, so I'm sure I'm not the only petrolhead who has images of a bill being passed through the Commons making all cars made before 1990 illegal.

Much of the RAC's report, available here (.pfd file) makes sense, but they worryingly refer to the scrapping plans increasing demand for new cars. This, in my eyes, has a few problems.

Firstly, the sort of people who own cars this old are either people who consider them classics, and therefore have deliberately bought them instead of buying a newer car, and those who struggle to afford even a car half that age so buy an older car through sheer necessity. Consumers in the first group are likely to be better equipped to keep their cars, under grounds that they're likely to be well-maintained and not too "dirty" anyway. Even if they do end up having to go to the scrapper, they might be in more of a position to afford something newer. Consumers in the second group might not be so lucky. Even with the small financial incentives that will be offered should any sort of scheme go ahead, they may not be able to reasonably afford a newer car. Many of either group might struggle to afford a new car, which is what the scheme is incentivising.

Secondly, the RAC keep referring to pollution as the CO2 figure (a trend echoed by the government). CO2 is directly proportional to fuel efficiency, so a car made in 1990 that does 30mpg will be producing roughly the same CO2 as one that's been made in 2008. The RAC provide figures showing that average CO2 has decreased by 16.4% since 1997, but this is much more indicative of the trend towards diesels than it is the trend for less polluting cars. And diesels produce very different particulates than the petrol engined cars that were more prolific back in 1990 anyway.

If we're to compare like-for-like, a 1990 BMW 318i should do around 35mpg in normal useage (and capable of much more), judging by various owners' reports found around the internet. The model that followed (91-98) did... 35mpg. The following model did a whopping... erm, 35mpg. The latest model (05-) does 38mpg according to official figures. Only the very latest version released this year, thanks to BMW's Efficient Dynamics program, climbs significantly to 47mpg (though it remains to be seen whether this is achievable in day-to-day use). The bottom line is that the CO2 rating will have stayed roughly the same for a good 17 years.


Old: 35mpg; New: only 3mpg better
This brings me onto the third point - that a car that's been well engineered in the first place (like the early 3-series above) and well maintained throughout its life will likely be kinder to the environment than many badly engineered and maintained vehicles half it's age. Not to mention that subsequent users aren't adding to the global carbon footprint by buying used, wheras new buyers are each contributing to the share of CO2 that the production of their car has caused, before the key has even been turned for the first time. Now obviously, it's unrealistic to assume that we should stop buying new cars to cut down on global CO2, but at the same time it's clear that scrapping anything older than 18 years is the answer either.

I'd personally be suggesting that pollution from any age of car could be reduced by additional driver training to enable people to extract the maximum efficiency from their chosen vehicles, but that's another subject for another day.

If you're the owner of an older car in the UK I wouldn't get worried just yet, but don't let that stop you thinking of some good excuses either...

Video: Motorcycle Wreck On Board

I don't think the guy was seriously hurt, maybe he learned a lesson?


Crazy Motorcycle Crash Caught on Dash Cam - Watch more free videos

More Thoughts on GM-Chrysler Merger

A few more thoughts on the possible merger of GM and Chrysler.

It sounds preposterous because it would add even more brands to GM's already confusing portfolio.  Consider:

• Cadillac - Luxury
  
• Saab - Euro Luxury
  
• Buick - Soft near-luxury
  
• Saturn - Euro basic / near luxury
  
• Pontiac - "Sporty"
  
• Jeep - Rugged go-anywhere SUVs and some rugged looking cars
• Hummer - Rugged go-anywhere SUVs
• Dodge - "Sporty" cars, manly trucks
  
• GMC - manly trucks
  
• Chevrolet - full line of basic transportation from small cars to trucks
  
• Chrysler - full line of basic transportation from small cars to trucks
  

Chop too many brands and you starve your dealer network.  Keep too many and you get a big badge engineered mess, or lose efficiency.  The new religion in the industry is to be lean, simple, agile--picking up more brands is like going back to the 1990's.  

On the radio this morning, I heard an interview with the guy who broke the story in the New York Times, Bill Vlasic.  One theory, mentioned in the paper,  is that GM may be after a cash-out deal, where they get a pile of cash along with Chrysler.  This may make short term sense, but it would leave GM with the albatross of Chrysler's crummy products, legacy costs, UAW contracts.

Another possibility is that, somewhat like a star expanding into a huge red giant as it begins the final stages of its life, GM may be trying to grow into a company so huge it can not be allowed to fail.  The government would have to come with support, or risk an economic supernova (or black hole?).   

Also, it would make strategic sense in the long run for GM to off a major competitor.  By removing capacity from the system, it may ensure more business for GM in the future.

Video: Old Guy Backs Up Onto Cop Car

A 70 year old guy in Illinois is upset that he got a speeding ticket. He intends to speed away, but is in reverse, and winds up backing up onto the hood of the cop's car.


How To Get Jail Time For A Speeding Ticket - Watch more free videos

GM Acquiring Chrysler?

The WSJ reports from unnamed sources "familiar with the matter" that GM was in talks with Cerberus to trade the rest of GM's stake in GMAC with Cerberus for the car (not finance) part of Chrysler.

This seems like a bizarre idea to me. GM would be picking up a big portfolio of non-competitive products (Sebring, Caliber, etc.) and redundant products (Ram). GM would also get lots of deflated real estate, such as the sprawling Auburn Hills headquarters, not to mention the plants, such as Belividere, which make the weak products. GM would also wind up with more UAW workers, and more UAW pension obligations. And GM would wind up with Chrysler's dealer network, compounding the problem of having too many dealers making too little money.

But GM's management would have some business reason to want Chrysler, what would those reasons be? Here's my theory.

1) Minivans. GM got killed in the minivan segment, and this would put them back in the game.
2) Truck dominance. GM could kill off the separate Ram platform and sell a Ram based on the Silverado, taking the truck sales crown from Ford once and for all.
3) Jeep. Even though Jeep has been watered down somewhat by Chrysler's attempt to grow Jeep into small crossovers (Compass), it is still a strong brand.

But all of these strengths are in the light truck and SUV sector, precisely where GM is already too heavy. With the coming tightening of CAFE rules, what business case would there be for GM to acquire more trucks and SUVs?

The idea just doesn't make much sense to me, as the armchair CEO.

Chrysler Hijacks "Volt" Keyword

Heh, I noticed a little bit of web advertising sneakiness on the part of Chrysler. On my own blog, no less. Take a look at the Google Adwords panel in this screen capture.

The New eBay Motors Scam

There's a new scam going around, which is a slightly more sophisticated variation of a fake escrow trick.

Scammers post for sale ads in classified services such as Craigslist or AutoTrader, with a too-good-to-be-true price. Here is one example I found: 2005 Honda Accord.

"Email me for more details : brendapharell@ymail.com .The car is in a perfect cosmetic and engine conditions, and meticulously maintained. No damage, no scratches or dents, no hidden defects, never been into accidents and it is as advertised. Email me for more pictures at : brendapharell@ymail.com . I cannot get in touch with you if you use the "Email this Seller" option because my email address on autotrader is full so please e-mail me directly at: brendapharell@ymail.com"

The car is a real car--in the sense that they borrowed some photos and a VIN from somewhere, so if you run it through CarFax it will check out as a real vehicle.

If you respond, they send you a fake invoice from eBay Motors, along with a fake "Vehicle Purchase Protection" service email.

Here are examples, cick for larger view:


It isn't a perfect fake, but it may be convincing to someone who doesn't know much about eBay. The real eBay Motors does not operate an escrow service, and they explicitly don't allow MoneyGram payments! Also note the fake eBay email address, "ebay@support-center-vpp.net".

The scammers want you to send a non-traceable payment (MoneyGram, Western Union) to a "payment agent", who is probably some idiot who signed up for a "work at home" job "processing internet payments". That guy cashes the payment, and forwards it on to the scammers.

I tried to make contact with the scammer, but he was being very careful--he wouldn't give me a phone number. He stopped respoding to my emails after I pointed out that eBay doesn't allow Moneygram payments, and asked if he could take a PayPal payment instead.

Update: I am starting to see reports of this scam spreading out into Canada and the UK, using other services such as Moneybookers. The rules are the same. If the price is too good to be true (way below market) or the guy wants you to buy a car without being able to look at it, it's not real.