There was a man who spent 17 years building a Lamborghini from the ground up in his basement. Unfortunately in order to get the car out of the basement he had to smash a hole in his house.

Voluntary Jeep Cherokee Recall by FCA

After receiving information that a Jeep Cherokee caught fire due to faulty lift-gate mechanism Fiat Chrysler Automobiles began an investigation as to what caused the SUV to catch fire. They found that the power lift gates could be inadvertently exposed to water which can lead to a fire. FCA has voluntarily recalled 164,000 Jeep Cherokees model year 2014-2015  to have shields installed to keep  water away from the power mechanism. There have been no reports of accidents or injuries related to this issue.

A New Recall for the Ford Escape

Another recall for the Ford Escape this is the 16th recall since the Escape was redesigned three years ago.  According to Ford this latest recall is for a problem with the instrument panel specifically the start up warning lights, chimes and messages that may not work. This is a violation of Federal Safety Standards. The recall affects more than 200,000  2014-2015 Ford Escapes.

Bugatti Veyron

If someone were to drive the Bugatti Veyron at its fastest speed (253 mph) in just 19 minutes the entire gas tank would be drained. That’s a 26.4 gallon tank. I suppose if you can afford the Veyron gas mileage would not be a concern.

Funny Bit of Info

Did you know that President Lyndon B. Johnson was quite the prankster? He loved to scare his guest by taking them for a ride in his Amphibous car, right into his lake while screaming  the car had brake failure.

Resourceful Use of Old Gm Volt and Nissan Leaf Car Batteries

Did you know that after the batteries of Chevrolet Volt are the end of their useful life there can be up to 80% of it storage capacity remaining? GM has found a way to repurpose those old batteries. At their Milford Proving Ground campus five batteries provide power for the IT administration building. GM connects five batteries to a solar grid and along with twin wind turbines which not only produces enough power in a year to equal 12 households the batteries can also store power when not needed that can be used in case of a campus wide power outage for up to 4 hours.

Nissan has recently partnered with 4R Energy Storage to utilize the used batteries for their Nissan Leaf for commercial energy storage. 

Automated Valet and Parking Service in the Works for Daimler and Bosch

Daimler, Bosch and car2go have developed a joint pilot project where with use of your smart phone you will have the ability to tell your car to locate an open parking space and then when you are ready to leave you can tell your car to come and pick you up, this feature will depend on the intelligent infrastructure of parking garage. Dr. Dirk Hoheisel, Bosch board member “fully automated parking will be ready for mass-production before automated driving”.

Did You Know?

Did you know that in addition to developing the DeLorean DMC-12 (back to future 80”s movie time traveling car) John DeLorean developed the Pontiac Grand Prix, Firebird, GTO and the Chevrolet Vega?

Interesting Bit Of Information

Here's a surprising bit of information, an American University conducted a study and found that the Honda Accord with 76% and the Toyota Camry with 78% had more domestic content than the "American" Chevrolet Camaro which only had 68% domestic content. Something to think about...

More Vehicles Recalled for Faulty Takata Air Bag Inflators

A staggering 5.1 million Honda's are being recalled by American Honda Motor to replace faulty Takata air bags the official  NHTSA announcement was made after an earlier announcement by Honda. There is some confusion as to the total number of vehicles equipped with the faulty Takata dual stage, driver's side, front air bags.  A news agency has reported some of the vehicles that had the air bags replaced may need to be service again due to faulty replacement parts.  An official from the NHTSA stated that is up to Takata to "demonstrate to us that the remedy parts are safe for the life of the vehicle." A priority now was to determine which of the replacement parts "are suspect and need to be replaced".

Interesting Car Fact

Here's something interesting about the Subaru WRX. Insurance.com conducted a study regarding the most ticketed cars in America and among the top cars was the Subaru WRX, 33% of the car owners reported being recently ticketed the overall average of car owners is 19.9%, Subaru WRX's overall rank was #1.

Record Highs for New and Used Vehicle Loan Terms

The Ireland based information service company Experian reported record highs for new car loan terms in the first quarter a record 67 months. 29% of new car loans had terms of 73 to 84 months up from 24.9% in the year prior. In addition used vehicle long term loans reached record lengths with terms of 73 to 84 pay-back months, 16% up from 12.94% from the year before.

Experian’s senior director for automotive finance Melinda Zabritski stated, “While longer-terms loans are growing, they do not necessarily represent an ominous sign for the market”.

 Interesting Car Fact

Here's something interesting about the Subaru WRX. Insurance.com conducted a study regarding the most ticketed cars in Americaa and among the top cars was the Subaru WRX a third of the car owners reported being recently ticketed. The Subaru WRX  33.6% with tickets the average for all cars is 19.9%, overall rank was #1.