Classic cars

Don’t you just hate what depreciation does to your old trade in? If you don’t put a lot of miles on your car, a classic car  will hold it’s value in a recession and maybe even increase enough to recover it’s price and carrying costs when it’s time to sell.

A roadster will hold it’s value better, but they are trickier to buy, maintain, and insure than conventional cars; harder to sell, too, but  if you work things right, they will never be worth less than you paid for them. Why? Old cars don’t have air conditioning.

Roadsters and cabriolets that once sold  for under a thousand dollars fifty years ago now sell for tens of thousands of US dollars on eBay and online. Even musclecar convertibles that just got their first classic license plate sell for many times their investment and carrying costs. Plus the occasional freight  and  towing charge that  their owners  incur to sell  their car and buy another.

Buying a Car

Financing Mistakes – Cash is your best deal. The dealer’s finance and insurance plan is never your best deal. Have your own loan and Insurance arranged beforehand and show him your numbers before he shows you his. Why waste time?

What about the Warranty? – Have a quote for a third party warranty also. Ask if they can beat the total. You may want the coverage or you may not. Check the policy exclusions page for expensive or hard to fix stuff, especially if you drive hard and often.

Convertible Top Troubles Again

Older convertibles had soft plastic rear windows that scratch and crack after a few years, or tiny glass rear windows that severely limit rear and side visibility when the top is up.\par

A few decades ago, even the best convertibles came equipped with thin, uninsulated tops and poor seals that leaked rain in thunderstorms and cold air – even snow – in winter. Many still do.\par

And then there is the security issue. A fabric top parked on the street in a rough section of town just seems like an invitation to any low life with a knife. In fact, many convertible owners buy cheap stereos and just leave their car unlocked, since a couple hundred dollar stereo is easier to replace than a couple thousand dollar fabric top.\par

But that all changed for many owners of retractable Hardtop Convertibles like the Pontiac G6 and Volvo C70.  Towing a new retractable Hardtop Convertible with the roof stuck halfway up is not for the faint of heart.  The car must be hauled on a flatbed with the nose to the rear so the wind doesn’t tear the metal top off and sail it into the SUV behind the tow truck. The most it should do is collapse it into the passenger compartment.

Elon Musk talks about Biofuel vs Electric Cars

Elon Musk, founder of Telsa Motors makers of the first modern all electric roadster, talks about cars and the environment. When asked “Do you think biofuel will be able stand a chance against electric?”, he said:

 

“My motivation behind Tesla is really to do as much good as possible for the environment and the electric-vehicle revolution.”.

 

I think for high-value applications like jet fuel, it ( biofuel) makes a lot more sense than it does for cars. Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good. The current cultivated land is what’s needed to provide food for about 6 billion people. The energy used by a car is much greater than a person. A person might use 3,000 calories in a day, but a car would use 300,000. Cars take a lot more energy than people do.

 

It’s obviously tricky to convert waste cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

 

But in general, crops are not a very efficient way of turning sunlight into mobile energy. A solar panel from SunPower is probably 20 to 22 percent efficient, but if you look at the actual efficiency of plants, if you take the sunlight incidence and then how much of that gets converted into plant matter and then what it takes to take that plant matter and convert it into ethanol or some other energy source, it actually ends up being well under 1 percent efficient.

Clean and Green Diesel

Along with hybred cars, we may start driving new diesel powered cars. North American refiners will soon be making ultra low sulfur diesel fuel. This will help to reduce the sulfur content from 500ppm to 15ppm.

No more smoke.

In Europe low sulfur diesel is a very big deal and there are several diesels that offer better acceleration and economy than
their gasoline counter parts. BMW’s 120d has 163bhp, goes 0 – 60 in under 8 seconds, and achieves 49.6 miles per gallon.

Benz offers the C320 CDI SE that has 224bhp, and
over 360 lb foot of torque. This car gets just under 48 mpg on the highway, with an acceleration of 0 – 60 in under 7 seconds.

You won’t find a gasoline engine that offers this kind of blend of fuel economy and excellent performance.