Bob Lutz of GM is a crock of sh*t

I have a 13 year old car that has 335,000 miles on it. It's my third car. My second car lasted about 9 years and had around 175,000 miles on it. My first car stretches back to 1981, so there's another 5 years.

My point here is that I have an increasing trend of driving cars into the ground. Part of it is that I'm one of those rare people that, even though I am a guy and a Mechanical Engineer, I'm not really torqued about new cars. Don't get me wrong, I can get excited about automotive engineering, and I appreciate classic lines, but I am more impressed by longevity than flashiness.

I got it from my father, who also had a habit of driving cars into the grave, but also from the military. We had lots of Viet Nam era equipment in my unit in Panama during the late 80s. These were big complex, rare things like 20 ton cranes, asphalt laying equipment, and two quarry crushers. I learned that you can keep anything going indefinitely as long as you maintain it. I had a friend in the Army that liked to buy and restore 60s cars. He had a 1969 Grand Sport and later a couple of sweet Mustangs. These cars were really old and beat up, but if you spend enough money, you could make any car look and drive like new.

So don't get me wrong, it's not a matter of being cheap and not wanting to make a car payment, because older cars start costing more and more to keep up. It's a matter of familiarity and comfort and connection with your machine. And, I have to admit, it's a matter of loyalty. I know that the car can't feel anything, and wouldn't care if I sold it or took it to the junk yard, but it just feels disloyal to abandon it after all the adventures I've had in it and all the wonderful places it has taken me.

My current car is nearing the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced soon. So my first priority is to get another car that will last a long time. It has to be rugged and dependable. If I'm going to be driving this car 8 to 10 years from now, one thing I cannot imagine is driving something that gets 20 miles to the gallon. When gas is $6 a gallon and rationed because we are at war with Iran and the cold war with Russia is in full swing, and Venezuela refuses to sell to us anymore, and global demand has gone through the roof with a billion more cars in India and China, 20 miles to the gallon will not make any sense. Maybe 35 or 40, but I'd really like something that has a little more of a flex fuel capability and a plug-in hybrid possibility. Don't get me wrong, I believe in global warming, and that we are responsible for it, but that's not the primary reason to look for fuel efficiency. Reason #1 is the expense, and right behind that is not to continue to enrich Muslim fundamentalist that hate us.

My dilemma is that the idiots that run American car companies (and I am one of those buy American types) can't pull their heads out of their orifices long enough to see what's coming and plan for it. They say it's impossible to get better mileage, that there is just this physical limit. I say they can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag and they don't deserve to share the title American Engineer with the geniuses and heroes that won WWII with unbelievable productivity and innovation, invented the atomic bomb (it's horrible, I know, but it's also a triumph of science, design, and engineering), and PUT MEN ON THE MOON. My message to US Automaker Engineers: You're pathetic. You don't deserve your diplomas. We should take away your licenses and give you the only thing you have earned, which is membership in the Diaper Club. I've listened to these lame excuses for 20 years about why we can't have a more fuel efficient automobile. It's a "can't do" attitude that is so against the grain of everything American stands for that I wish the government would take away your companies and give them to someone that deserves them, and give you a baby bonnet and a jail shaped like a big crib.

OK, that was fun. That said, my dilemma remains. So while I ponder this problem, this morning I see this article: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/02/13/gms-bob-lutz-global-warming-is-a-total-crock-of-sh-t/ where GM chairman Bob "No Can Do" Lutz says that global warming is a crock of sh*t. Bob, I know you're just saying that because for some reason a scientific fact, a global trend that can be proven and documented just happens to also be politicized. Nowadays, if you're a conservative Republican, you're not supposed to believe in global warming because it's a fairy tale concocted by crazy environmentalists that just want to bring rich and wealthy people down, and want to stop people from doing whatever they feel like whenever they feel like it.

Hey Mr. Rich bastard, you've got about 4 or 5 more years to sell your outdated crappy cars to your dinosaur friends before your whole empire comes crumbling down around your ears. Actually, if you're like most of your rich and narrow minded friends, you'll probably be sitting in your mansion with your 9 figure severance pay and your fat pension and your immense stock dividends - completely unconcerned that you drove your company and an American icon into the ground. So I don't understand why what people think about global warming is your problem or concern. You're so insulated by your wealth an priveledge that you can laugh all the way to the bank. Maybe you feel the cold hand of reality creeping in to destroy the system that annoints individuals like yourself without brains or talent to be the caretakers of our giant American corporations.

I think I'll by a Toyota Prius. Long live the Japanese.

Impact

Jake Brown was competing in the X-Games this week and fell 50 feet to the floor after a mishap with this skateboard. He walked away from the fall. You can check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBvCrSjpx9I

Apparently, the only injuries he has are a minor fracture on a vertebra, a broken bone in his wrist, and some liver damage. Watch the video, that's amazingly light damage for the fall that he took.

At the same time this week, reporters were talking about how a lot of people in the Minneapolis bridge collapse fell 65 feet and not only survived, but walked away uninjured. Many of them went to the hospital 2 or 3 days later, finally complaining about their aches and pains, but still, a 65 foot fall is supposed to be fatal.

So how did these people walk away for falls that are supposed to kill you?

Jake Brown actually had time to think about it and was able to twist around to control his landing to minimize the impact. They interviewed him and he claims he thought about the fall of a friend of his while he was falling. His friend fell from a lesser height than Jake, but broke both legs. So he probably thought it through before he was in trouble. He said in an interview after the accident that he planned to fall the way he did. I heard that Army Airborne parachutists hit with the impact of someone jumping off a 2 story building. The way they are trained to survive the fall is to hit on their feet, crumple by collapsing their legs, and roll out across their side, taking up the rest of the force. I think Jake did somthing similar to this. He hit on his feet and that probably took a great deal of the impact. I still wonder why the legs didn't snap under him.

The people that were in cars on the bridge when it fell claim that there were a series of jolts rather than one long fall. Even though the bridge looks like it drops pretty fast, it wasn't freefall, it was getting hung up on the way down, slowing the fall.

Americans used to drive around without seat belts. Car accidents used to kill around 65,000 people a year in the 60s, and I believe we're down to around 40,000 a year. That's with something like twice the total miles travelled for cars, so I'm guessing we've reduced the fatality rate to 1/4 what it was. We finally decided that enough was enough back then and started developing safety features in cars, starting with the seatbelt.

The way the seatbelt works is by making you part of the car. Before seatbelts, accidents were a series of 2 collisions. Your car hit an object and then you flew forward in the car and hit the windshield or steering column. The second little mini collision between the person and the car is what injures the people inside. When you strap yourself in, you become a part of the car, and it takes the brunt of the impact.

A moving object requires energy to stop. In a collision, that energy is used to deform the car. Think of crushing a soda can with your foot. In an accident the car gets hurt, not the person. When engineers started understanding this, they started designing "crumple zones" into the car. Those are places that the car is designed to smash down safely and not smash the people inside. In most cases, this is the frame in the front, below the engine. They also reinforced the cab so that the area where the people are is less likely to crumple. Two other features they designed were a seat that supported your head and airbags to cushion your forward motion. This impact is supposed to be like being smashed between pillows.

In the case of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the cars are falling straight down while upright. This is not the way a car is designed to impact, but it is the way a car, and the driver in the car, are designed to be supported. I suspect that many of the cars on the bridge would have flat tires (quite a cushion there, like 4 air bags)and probably snapped axles. That would take a lot of the energy out, and then the people are sitting upright in cushioned seats that would take up the rest.

That's just my theory. This is not something you ever want to really test.

First Car

This is close to what my first car looked like. Somehow, this doesn't look quite right. OK, I remember. Mine was a 4 door hatchback. The grill may have been a little different, too

It was a Chevy Chevette, I think from 1980. My dad bought it for me when I went to college. I remember that I didn't get it until after the 2nd or 3rd week I was up at school. I'm not sure how I got around campus before that.

I loved that car in some ways, hated it in others. It was a cheap car, not cool or sporty or racy. I think Dad paid about $2,500 for it. He bought it used. It had no FM radio, no AC, and no power steering. It really needed floor vents on the summer, the area around your feet would get really hot. On the plus side, it was light (easy to push), easy to fix, got good gas mileage, and it didn't cost me anything. You could fit a lot of cargo in it, surprisingly, in the deceptive spacious hatchback. An unexpected bonus was that it was pretty good off-road. It's short wheel base meant that it had pretty good clearance. I took it on some really rocky and rutted country & farm roads while I was in college.

I had a battery problem for most of one year, so I parked it on hills and roll started it. It was fun learning that trick. I would start the car by getting it up to speed and popping the clutch. I had to replace that clutch cable once, it was a $29 part and I put it on myself. The shocks were shot for the last year or two I had it. The piston on the hatch failed at some point and I used a vice grip on the piston rod to hold it up.

One time, I drove it with a friend up to Bluemont Hill in Manhattan Kansas, and it slid sideways on the rough road and put a foot long dent in the driver's door. I got out, inspected the damage, and smacked it with the heels of my hands at either end of the crease. The metal popped back into shape like it had never been dented.

When school was winding down, I figured that I was going out into the world and going to be getting paid and that I would get a serious car. So I bought my first Jeep, which turned out to be a lemon (until I replaced a lot of parts on it). I took that fuel injected new Jeep overseas to Panama when I was in the Army. They only had leaded fuel down there, which fouled and plugged the Jeep's fuel injectors. I realized that if I had just kept the cheap little Chevette, I would have been better off.

It was my college car, so in some ways it holds a lot of special memories. I think my dad's attitude was that a teenager doesn't need, deserve, or appreciate an expensive vehicle and it's crazy to go into debt just to get them a fancy car. I think he was right about that. It was a measure of comfort to know that if I did screw up my car, it would not cost a lot to fix or replace. But I took really good care of it and it took me anywhere I wanted to go in return.

The summer after basic training (for ROTC officers, it was called Summer Camp), I loaded up the Chevette and took it to Colorado with my 12 or 13 year old little brother. I had taught him how to drive, possibly before that time, and I believe he kept asking if he could drive (this may have been the next summer). He was so excited to be going on this trip that he babbled the whole way out to Colorado and was driving me crazy. At one point, I stuck my head out of the window and yelled at the top of my lungs. It was funny. Overall, we had a great time.

I wonder how long the old car lasted before it finally died? Knowing my old cars, it's probably still out there, still going. At least it is in my memories.