New Carnival Of Cars

A new auto blog on the block, Automedia, is hosting a Carnival Of Cars. Check it out here.

Grass Fed Kosher Beef!

I'm throwing this out there in case someone else is interested in the information.

The company that is supplying some Costco stores with kosher beef, Colorado Kosher, uses cattle that are grass-fed for the first part of their lives, then finished on a feed lot (e.g. grain) for the last 4 months or so. So they aren't 100% grass fed, but they are a combination. I got this information from the company, when I called to ask.

So, if you wanted to try the taste of grass-fed beef, and keep kosher, find out if you local Costco store stocks this brand.

Buy A Paper Poppy

Today, I went to a local market to buy some lunch supplies.  Out front was an old fellow in VFW gear, Chris, selling the wire and paper poppies.

I dropped a dollar in his milk jug, and thanked him for his service.  

On the way out, I stopped to ask him where he served.  "North Africa and Italy" he said, which made me pause--this guy was a WWII vet, probably about 90 years old.  I asked him what his job was in the army.  "Infantry--I carried a tommy gun, do you know what that is?".  Chris is short, about 5'6", with sharp blue eyes and a straight posture.  He has a firm handshake and a clear voice.  

"You must have seen so much, I can't even imagine what you went through", I said.  "I am reading Audy Murphy's memoir, and it is amazing what you guys survived".  

I hit a nerve.  Chris stuttered, and turned away from me, wiping his eyes. "Excuse me, I don't want you to see..." he said.  I was caught off guard, and felt ashamed for making an old man cry.  "There was a job we needed you guys to do... " I stammered "... and you did it."  He composed himself after a moment and turned back to me.  "We did it, what we had to".  I asked him about some of his experiences, based on Audy Murphy's book.

"I hear you guys were always hungry, sometimes really hungry" I offered, "that's not something we worry about much these days".  We were standing next to a vegetable display, piled high with tomatoes and cucumbers.

"There was this time once," he said, "when we were diggin in in Italy outside of..." (I missed the placename, rats) "...and one of the guys yells, 'Scallions!'.  Well, there was this pile of manure with scallions growing out of it.  We all dropped our shovels and ran over.  We plucked them out of the manure pile, brushed them off on our coats, and ate them."

"In this one town, we went through, and someone told us that we had to meet a local girl.  It turned out that she was from Brooklyn.  She had come back to Italy to visit her family, and they [the fascists] took her passport.  It was 1939, and after that, she was stuck there.  So she meets us, and she goes to the wall of her house, and takes a stone out.  Behind there is bunch of cheese, and sausages, she had hidden from the Germans.  She puts it down in front of us, we had a nice meal."

I asked him about the Germans, was it true that sometimes prisoners were not taken?  (In Murphy's book, there is a scene where the Germans tied a pair of captured American officers to the front of a tank, hoping to avoid fire.  The GIs hit the tank with an anti-tank gun anyway, killing their own men).  

"Not my company, but one that was to the right of us on the line, one of their patrols was captured by Germans.  The German officer killed 7 prisoners.  After that, well, there weren't any prisoners for the next several months."

"Later, in May, the Germans in Italy surrendered.  I was on guard by the side of the road outside of the village where my company had stopped.  A German jeep came up the road, with a couple of officers in it, holding a white flag.  If those guys had made a sudden move, I would have let them have it.  I told them to keep that white flag high, and showed them the road to the general, where they could surrender"

"I never kept that tommy gun on safe.  You had to be ready all the time. The whole time I was on the front."

I shook his hand, and held it for a moment.   "You should write this all down," I told him, "You should save your memories for your great grandchildren.  It's a treasure.  And it will keep your mind young."

"If I could get the money together,", he said, "I would go back to Italy.  The people are so wonderful, and the food is so fresh."

If you see an old guy selling poppies for the VFW, stop and say hello.  Thank him for his sacrifices, because chances are that he may have gone through hell to protect our way of life.  He may have lived in mud.  He may have been wounded, and watched his friends be blown to pieces.  He probably buried some of his friends in far away fields, the names of which we are forgetting.   Maybe buy a poppy, to help the old soldiers keep their memories fresh, and keep our history from fading.

Parents Magazine FAIL

Parents magazine has published its list of top family friendly vehicles for 2010.  But their screening criteria are full of fail.

"We've only included models equipped with antilock brakes and front, side, and side-curtain air bags. "

ABS?!?  

I can't recommend any vehicle which does not have ESC, particularly any vehicle with a tall profile such as most CUVs and SUVs.  

Mahindra Trucks, Waiting... Waiting...

Mahindra is not inspiring confidence.  After several delays, the news is that they are almost ready to submit EPA certification paperwork.  Which means that an actual approval to sell their trucks in the U.S. is still some time away, on the order of months.  Meanwhile, dealers are getting antsy.  Some of them have paid around $200,000 for a franchise,  plus much more for showroom remodelling, but don't have anything to show for it yet.  And Mahindra is clamming up, refusing to comment to Automotive News:

Repeated efforts to speak with top officials at Mahindra and Global proved unsuccessful. A spokesman for Global Vehicles said CEO John Perez was out of the country and unavailable for comment. A request to speak with other Global Vehicles executives went unanswered. 

Efforts to reach Perez -- a normally talkative businessman with a rich baritone that carries a slight trace of his childhood in Cuba -- drew a response from a U.S. representative of Mahindra & Mahindra in New York. The representative said that Goenka would prefer to handle discussions of the venture instead of Perez. But Goenka was not available for interviews. 

Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100329/RETAIL07/303299954#ixzz0msQyYrXJ

Pickuptrucks.com item here.

One of the reasons for the delay is that the U.S. importer asked Mahindra to make many changes to the trucks, to bring them up to American customer expectations.  This forced some re-engineering of the trucks, which then required re-testing.  

I am planning on looking one of these over, maybe test driving it, when (and if) they finally do go on sale.

It isn't easy to break into the consumer auto business.  There is a reason that only a few huge companies are able to do it, and (sometimes) make money at it.  The regulatory hurdles are very high.

Aptera Flounders On Lane Change

This is bad news.  If the Aptera, a supposedly well developed and carefully engineered vehicle, can't negotiate a Consumers Union lane change at a measly 45mph, they are in big trouble.  It probably has a lot to do with the tricycle design -- the rear end is likely to want to come around without strong ESC intervention because it has so much less grip than the front.  From CU's blog:

Watched by a large group, including many note-taking and video-taping team members, the three-wheeled Aptera car struggled to find a clean run. More than two dozen attempts were made, with the car routinely sliding enough to topple several cones. In watching, it seemed natural to question how difficult this test is to pass. However, all current production vehicles, from small cars to large trucks, can successfully negotiate this test. We expect the Auto X Prize finalists to do the same.

For reference, just about any mass produced four wheel car can easily negotiate a lane change maneuver at 45mph.

Automotive Companies Doing Business In Iran

The New York Times recently published a list of international companies who are doing business in Iran. Here are the automotive companies on the list which have joint ventures or licensing agreements with Iranian companies:

• Daimler -- Active
• Fiat -- Active
• Kia -- Active
• Mazda -- Active
• Suzuki-- Active

Any American who cares about our national security, and particularly anyone who cares about the state of Israel should think carefully before supporting any of these companies.

Mazda is most upsetting to me, because I have owned Mazda vehicles in the past, without knowing that they have a joint production agreement with Bahman of Iran. Bahman is, according to a Rand report, partly owned by the Iranian government.

I will discourage anyone I know from purchasing these brands until they stop doing business on the ground in Iran.