The Cranky Driver

Yikes! Is it that time of the year already? (My 2007 coverage is here.) I got lucky this year and got a Willy Wonka ticket to the show. Some of our customers bailed out, so one of our sales guys gave me a shiny industry preview ticket. There are about 1/8 as... Read more

Get 50 mpg -- in your own car Back in June, when I first wanted to write this article, Michigan gas prices were at an all-time high. Right now, our prices aren’t too far off from those highs. You might want to book mark this page for quick access when gas... Read more

....and I don’t like it. The Detroit Free Press had an article last week that stated that we had the highest gas prices in the country. At an average of $3.53/gallon, Michigan beat out Illinois ($3.52), California ($3.42) and Hawaii ($3.40). That’s right. We had higher gas prices than a state with... Read more

So there I was, driving down to my local Target store. It has two entrances from the road, the main entrance, and the driveway in the back of the store. When I’m coming from the my house, I normally take the back entrance, as it’s closer than the more commonly... Read more

ExxonMobil, the Irving, Texas-based company, posted the largest corporate profits in U.S. history. Its earnings of $39.5 billion for 2006 on revenues of $377.6 billion exceed the previous record of $36.13 billion in 2005, also posted by ExxonMobil. Other oil companies posting best-ever profits for their companies include Chevron ($17.1 billion),... Read more

“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” --Henry Ford Ford announced recently that it had losses of $12.7 billion for 2006, its largest loss in history (although still... Read more

“The average human has about one breast and one testicle.” --From Statistics 101 (If you’re one of my anal-retentive engineer friends, please don’t e-mail me about that last quote. I know that men technically have breasts as well, even if they’re not the pert, firm type—unless we’re talking about Ricardo Montalbán’s. The... Read more

After many years, Michigan has changed the design of its main license plate. Gone is the blue background with the white text. This has been the only license plate from Michigan that I can remember. In the 1970s, the blue was a very dark blue (maybe it was black—the past... Read more

[Update 2007-01-16: Added photo slide show of auto show models.] I’ve been going to the Detroit auto show almost every year that I’ve been in Detroit. Its official name is the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), but since most Americans can’t find North America on a globe, I’ll refer to... Read more

I consider myself to be a gentle, easy-going, control-freak type of person with compulsive-obsessive tendencies. In general, as long as you do as I say, agree with all of my opinions, and have the same interests as I do, we’ll get along just fine. “It is the mark of an educated... Read more

I’m really just an ordinary, normal guy. I work, I pay taxes, I have a wife and a daughter. And I have simple needs—I just want to drive like Speed Racer all the time, but I would settle for people getting the heck out of my way. I could to... Read more