With GM’s recent announcement of $7.6 billion in profits for 2011, you would think that the taxpayers would get a nice chunk of those proceeds.

Well, we’re not even half way to that ship yet. UAW shareholders though are a different story. GM recently announced that they will cut nice thick checks in honor of their UAW shareholders. As much as $7,000 in certain cases.

This will indeed be GM’s largest profit sharing payout in history. The prior high? $1775 per UAW employee in the glory days of 1999. In the meantime Ford plans to fork over $6200 as a maximum. Part of that has been paid out already. As for Chrysler ? $1500.

Growth at the world’s second largest automaker, the Volkswagen Group, took a breather in January. As indicated by its passenger vehicle division a few days ago, growth at the Volkswagen Group turned to a 1.3 percent trickle globally. This was caused by a calendar-induced decrease in China, combined with a soft European market.

Volkswagen January 2012 By Market

Volkswagen becomes increasingly dependent on the Asian market, which approaches European levels. Volkswagen’s premium brand Audi continues to do extremely well in China, where it did beat all calendar odds by delivering 27,200 units in January, up 22.6 percent from the 22,200 sold in January 2011.

Volkswagen January 2012 By Division

Volkswagen keeps dominating Europe’s Top Ten list (as compiled by Jato) in January.  An 11.3 percent decrease of the Polo did not cost it its number two place, thanks to the number three Ford Fiesta dropping even more.

Passat sales remain strong, a very strong Octavia enters the Top Ten for the first time.

Jato hopes that Fiat’s new Panda and Peugeot’s 208 will shake up the Top Ten further in the year.

We advance into adulthood by degree, and every one of the degrees is a first time that cannot be duplicated or get a do-over, no matter how much we would like to change our personal history. So we romanticize the clumsy moments and brash decisions of youth as we get older and view our teenaged pasts in a nice golden hue. It may shave several layers of reality off the actual events but it makes our younger years more glamorous and heroic in a Paul Simon ‘Kodachrome’ kind of way.

One thing that never changes in my memories is my first car. We should remember our first cars with the same degree of reverence as other really big first time events from our youth. The kind not found on the pages of a collector car website.

However that first car led in a meandering path to those other big first events in young lives, because a car is the first tangible moment of freedom that you get in life. A car is the first step toward adulthood because it requires a sense of responsibility to own and drive a car.

The main appeal of a first car is the moment when you get behind the wheel and drive to any destination of your choice. You can choose any road that you want on the way, preferably the kind that interests a 16 year old female crowd when you are a newly minted 16 year male driver.

My first car was a 1954 Austin A-40 that I bought for 50 bucks off my brother-in-law after he purchased one of those new-fangled Datsun 510s as a second car. It was the fall of 1971 and I was the proud owner of my first car; an underpowered British sedan with minimal heat, power and brakes. I was thrilled with the idea of my first car-even a pretty un-cool car by early 70s high school standards.

The first thing I addressed on the car was the cool factor as visualized by a 16 year old kid with a limited budget. My older brother got involved in a trunk lid transformation that turned the rectangular trunk lid into a perfect British flag via careful masking and paint cans. It would later become the only reason that I got anybody to buy the Austin, and clearly the buyer was not from Northern Ireland in 1972.

I decided that the leather interior needed a spruce-up so I bought some Mac-Tac and put a cheap psychedelic pattern over the door panels. Remember, 16 year old mind at work here folks.

So I pretty much had it covered cosmetically, but I soon faced my first hurdle after I was faced with a bad cylinder head and a big repair bill. I got the job done by a local rebuilder who was saddled with my daily visits to their shop because I really wanted to get back behind the wheel.

It took almost a month for them to do the job, which is approximately a century in high school time. Then I took the project over to a buddy’s parents’ place because it was winter and they had a heated garage.

His father was also a plumber who dispensed some plumber advice for an automotive project: use gasket glue on the head gasket. It had predictable results when anti-freeze began to spray out of the non-seal.

Luck was on my side when a small garage in town had the last Austin head gasket in town because I had already purchased the second last gasket from him.

He told me not to listen to plumbers when it came to cars and we put the last head gasket in town on the Austin in my buddy’s garage-without the gasket glue. It worked and I was finally on the road again.

The winter of 1971-72 was a brutal one in my town. It was extremely cold and no place to drive a British car with no heat and questionable brakes, but I loved every minute of the short time behind the wheel of that car.

My English teacher called me “The 10 o’clock scholar” because I was always about ten minutes late for class so that I could avoid any traffic jams at the bottom of a long hill with two high schools in a one-block radius. I was unwilling to test my limited driving skills and those spongy brakes against heavy traffic.

One bitterly cold night I was stopped by the police. He could see that my car was completely frosted up, but I didn’t see his lights, so he hit the siren to get my attention. I pulled the car gently to the curb and into a snow window to slow me down so I didn’t have to pump the brakes.

He was impressed with my ability to use an ice scraper on the inside of my windshield, but he strongly suggested that I wait until warmer weather (called Chinooks in my neck of the woods) before I again drove the car.

I didn’t have the car very long because it blew up on a highway in January 1972. I was push starting my future sister-in-law’s Volvo automatic and it required serious speed that frigid night. I got us up to 70 mph, the Volvo started, and the Austin breathed its last because of a bent piston rod. The death rattle meant the end of a brief fling between me and the Austin.

The car and I parted ways when I sold it to a cynical biker type who subsequently became a legendary airbrush artist for murals on vehicles and bikes. I like to think that my British flag trunk inspired him.

I never really forgot the little Austin and I have looked at a few of them over the years. The decision not to buy one has always been tempered an obvious reality: you can’t replace the first one – in most things from youth.

For more of J Sutherland’s work go to mystarcollectorcar.com

Ah, the Malaise Era. By the late 1970s, AMC was on the ropes. The Jeep Cherokee still sold well, however, and the brains in Kenosha decided they’d go for the Acapulco Gold-smoking generation and throw a few square yards of decals on the truck. Golden Eagle!
I had forgotten all about the Golden Eagle, which was a classy trim level for the Cherokee, but the sight of this example in a Denver self-service wrecking yard made me remember how I thought these things were semi-cool as a kid. Going to junkyards in Colorado really gives you a sense of the history of four-wheel-drive vehicles in America; this junkyard has at least four more Malaise Cherokees in stock.
It’s got tape stripes.
It’s got extremely 1970s decals on the doors.
It’s got an AMC 360 under the hood.
It’s got denim seats, complete with jeans-style buttons. Not quite as cool as the Levis Edition Pacer, but still cool.
Most of all, it has a giant angry eagle decal across the hood. It must have been fun to see this thing out the windshield at all times.

Click for Larger Image

I’ve linked to this before from TTAC, but what the heck. It’s Friday, and we gotta get down on Friday — JB

She’d entered our dealer principal’s office as a coltish, blinking young woman, stepping awkwardly in new high heels. Almost six feet tall, impossibly thin, painfully beautiful, wearing a purposely dowdy pantsuit. It was always fun to see the new dealer reps arrive from Ford; without exception they were tall, good-looking young men and women with impeccable degrees from Michigan universities, earnest Midwestern faces, and a charmingly naive sense of the world. They’d meet the dealer, a hard-assed former B-17 pilot who had built the dealership with his own hands, and they’d meet the general manager, a hulking man with a Mafioso’s hair and the easy yet malicious attitude of a professional assassin, and those two old bastards would grind ‘em into the ground. We enjoyed the show. Sure, these kids were on their way to six-figure salaries, a home in Bloomfield Hills, and the outrageously hedonistic life of a Detroit executive – but before they could make the big money, they’d have to take a beating from our guys. Of course, things were slightly different this time. Our dealer principal had recently handed over the daily operations to his phlegmatic, fortysomething son, whose demeanor and physique had long ago earned him the nickname “Droopy The Dog”. Droopy had insisted on seeing the Ford rep alone, probably hoping that he could earn some respect among the sales staff by beating up a twenty-three-year-old girl. Rumor said this meeting was to discuss an extra “allocation” – the amount of stock sent to each dealer on an annual basis. We all knew what we wanted from this girl – we wanted extra allocation of PowerStroke diesels, we wanted more three-quarter-ton trucks, and we wanted to become an SVT dealer. With any luck, Droopy would get the job done.

When she walked out of his door, the awkward young volleyball player had become a triumphant Valkyrie. She grinned at the assembled sales staff and strutted to her cream-colored Town Car Cartier. From colt to racehorse, in one meeting flat. Our general manager frowned, went into Droopy’s office, and slammed the door. Hushed voices turned loud, and before long the two men were screaming at each other. The rest of the salesmen had melted away by the time the door banged back open, leaving me to face the general manager alone. He looked at me and said,

“Aerostars. Aerostars! The bitch made him take four AEROSTARS!.”

In a previous Avoidable Contact, I talked about the division between manufacturers and dealers in this country. As you now know, dealers are independent businessmen who spend their lives making their manufacturers utterly miserable through crookedness, greed, and sometimes just plain stupidity – and there’s very little the manufacturers can do about it. Actually, there’s only one thing the manufacturers can do about it: they can work the allocation.

Most people think the car business works like so: We, the people, decide what cars we want. We go into a dealership and buy ‘em, and then the dealers ask for more of those popular cars, and the manufacturers build them. The real situation is almost precisely the opposite. Every year, the manufacturers take a look at their plant capacities, their union and supplier contracts, and their P&L statements, and they decide what they’re going to build. After making that decision, they send their reps out to give the word to the dealers. There’s a bit of negotiation, as each dealer fights to get the allocation which will enable him to pay for his son’s trips to Vail, his wife’s outrageous shopping sprees, and his own coke habit. Shortly after, the cars start hitting dealerships. In the modern era, this process actually happens once a quarter, but it works exactly the same way.

Once the dealership has its allocation, it starts working to sell you, the customer, a part of that allocation. Sure, dealers can and do trade between themselves, and they’ll also order a car for you if you’re willing to wait, but in general, it’s critical that dealers sell from their own current or immediately incoming inventory. Meanwhile, the manufacturers are dealing with a variety of their own issues: oversupply, undersupply, parts availability, the ever-changing demands of their workforce, and random acts of fate. You see, the lines must keep running at all costs. Sixty years ago, Ford/GM/Chrysler really only made one kind of car each, in different trim levels, and much of the business was customer orders, so there was no need to predict the future. You simply looked at your order sheet and you told your plant what to build. But today’s customer won’t wait for a car. He expects the model, trim level, and color to be readily available. This leads to all sorts of stupidity. Some Hollywood starlet will be seen in a blue Denali, instead of a black one, and all of a sudden the black Denalis are poison and the blue ones are impossible to get. The customers are pissed-off, the dealers are pissed-off, and GM is faced with the terrifying decision: do we run fifty thousand blue Denalis off the line? Maybe they do. And then David Letterman makes a joke about “the blue Denali whore-mobile”. That sickening “thump” you hear is the sound of fifty thousand blue Denalis hitting the dealer lot and Just. Sitting. There.

Luckily for GM, the trucks won’t just sit there forever. The dealers will move ‘em. That’s their job. The next soccer mom who comes in eight grand upside-down on her current mommy-mobile will be told that, “Well, the black Denalis are hot right now, but we can make this deal happen on that blue one.” The fleet managers will work the phones, and all of a sudden the Regional Sales Specialists of a shampoo company will all receive blue Denalis. Country-club parking lots will start to flood with blue Denalis as all the dealer’s wives find them under the Christmas tree. Think this is an exaggeration? Then consider the fact that Buick once decided to survey the owners of Reatta convertibles to see what they wanted in their next car, and the number-one occupation listed in the survey responses was “spouse of dealer principal”.

Eventually, the blue Denali inventory problem will fix itself thanks to the dealers. Mark my words, though – the dealers won’t do it for free. And that brings me to the story of the beautiful young woman and the oh-so-homely Ford Aerostar. Back in 1995, the PowerStroke diesel was the hottest ticket in Ford-dom. We sold every one we got. We sold ‘em ahead of time. Three or four times a week, I would pick up my office phone and there would be somebody on the other line asking when they could come in and pay MSRP for an F-250 diesel. Most of the time, the answer was “No time soon”. The engines were made by Navistar, and Ford had guessed wrong when they told Navistar how many to build, and that was that. Until the day the Ford rep showed up. We’ll never know exactly how the conversation went, but based on the results, I suspect it went like this:

Droopy: We need more PowerStrokes this quarter.

Ford Girl: We might be able to work something out, if… (stretching seductively) you can do something for me.

Droopy: (leaning over with intense interest) What might that be, little lady?

Ford Girl: (in a throaty voice) Well… I do have some allocation I need to move, and… (Winks) How’d you like a couple of Aerostars?

Droopy: Oh, no. They’re poison. It took us eight months to sell our last one.

Ford Girl: What a shame. It’s just that I need you to have my Aerostars. I need it so badly.

Droopy: (confused but aroused) Keep talking.

Ford Girl: If you helped me with these Aerostars, I could be your friend. I could really be your friend.

Droopy: And… what do friends do for each other?

Ford Girl: Friends…. (in an all-business tone) get one additional allocation of light-duty trucks, F-250 or F-350, excluding Crew Cab variants but including up to two F-350 4×4 Regular Cabs and any other option mix scheduled for this quarter, with PowerStroke diesel option, build priority 2… (licks lips, lowers voice) for every Aerostar they order, with delivery in four weeks.

Droopy: (mentally calculating the five-grand-plus guaranteed profit on each one, versus the misery of “floorplanning” Aerostars) We’ll take… four.

Ford Girl: Oooh, you’re such a big, strong dealer!

It really made perfect sense. By 1995, the Aerostar was well past its sell-by date. Virtually nobody wanted ‘em – but Ford still had a line to run, employees whose kids needed to eat, and supplier contracts that had to be met. Why not squeeze the dealers a bit? Luckily for Ford, they had something to offer in return – an unequal share of those rare PowerStrokes. And that, dear readers, is how I ended up being charged with the responsibility of selling four Aerostars. I had a bit of a reputation in my shop for selling tough allocation to difficult people, so I became the “Aerostar guy”.

Believe it or not, most people who go to a dealership don’t really know what they want. Sure, they might have an idea, usually based on what their neighbor drives or something they’ve seen on television – but most people aren’t like gearheads. A gearhead shows up with option codes, invoice pricing, and thousands of IntarWeb forum posts under his rather girthy belt; a regular person comes in and says they want to see an SUV. With a little salesmanship, it’s possible to make the customer buy what the dealer needs to sell, rather than what the customer “wants” – which isn’t well-defined anyway. So for the next three months, every customer who walked onto the lot was shown an Aerostar.

Customer #1: I’d like to try the new Windstar. I’m really interested in buying a new minivan, and I love the idea of having good traction in the winter thanks to front-wheel-drive.

Jack: Really? Well, I’ll show you one, but first why not take a look at the Aerostar? It’s been proven to be durable.

—

Customer #2: I’m really excited about owning a new car. I like the Taurus. I have two kids.

Jack: Two kids? In a Taurus? The last customer I had like that ended up trading in for an Aerostar. Let’s check one of those out, too.

—

Customer #3: I just got back from the Army, and I’m ready to get a Mustang GT Convertible.

Jack: Well, sure… if you’re a wussy who likes girl cars. For real manly RWD tire-smokin’ fun, the Aerostar is the one to have.

Eventually, I sold ‘em all. I even convinced one customer to order his Aerostar in “Rose Mist”, which turned out to be very, very close to “Just Plain Pink” when it came off the car hauler. Did I mention that it was an all-options XLT, with an MSRP of nearly twenty-seven grand, at a time when a new Taurus was sixteen grand, and I sold it for $250 off sticker? That sale made me a legend —in my own mind, anyway. I became obsessed with selling pink cars and vans to people who didn’t want them, finally reaching my greatest triumph when a color-blind man… Oh, that’s a story for another time. The point here is that we sold those Aerostars. Nobody came in looking for one, there were no Aerostar ads on TV anymore, the truck was a solid five years beyond the point where anybody would have felt proud to build, own, or drive one, but they still got sold. That is how the dealer system makes up for its many terrible sins in the eyes of the automakers. They move the metal.

Oh, I can hear you out there. “Sure, Jack, you guys might have had to do that at a Ford store, but Toyota/Nissan/Honda/Porsche/Aston Martin don’t do that crap and it would never happen to me.” O RLY? Call your local Honda dealer. Tell them you want a base, five-speed Accord Coupe with no options. As Katt Williams says,

“Go ahead… I’ll wait“. Hmm… Are you back? Good. How’d that go? What? You can’t buy what you want? Fascinating. Honda’s been cutting back the availability of “DX” cars for a long time at the dealer level. The dealers don’t really want ‘em, and they don’t make money for anybody. Meanwhile, Porsche plays all sorts of games with its dealers. I happened to see a car hauler at a Porsche store recently, and it was dropping off a full load of spanking-new Caymans and Boxsters. Did I mention that it was snowing at the time? Why do you suppose the dealer agreed to take ‘em? It wasn’t because they looked forward to “floorplanning” – which is to say, paying interest on the loan which covers their inventory – for five months. It wasn’t because people like to buy Porsche convertibles when there’s six inches of snow on the ground. Instead, I suspect their Porsche rep told ‘em that taking ten mid-engined cars in the dead of winter might help them get a 911 GT3RS or two. Could it be? We’ll never know – but if you want a new GT3RS, I’d look around for Porsches with a lot of Boxsters under half a foot of snow, because those are the guys who can get ‘em.

Never forget that the real customer for an automaker isn’t you, and it isn’t me. It’s the dealer. Given enough time, the dealers will move whatever they’re given, whether it’s an Aerostar or an Aztek. We’re just the saps who take ‘em off the lots. So how can you get what you really want? The answer is simple: if you want a particular car, place your order and bide your time. Legitimate customer orders usually take priority over allocation, unless we’re talking about buying a Ferrari. But if you want a deal, then find a dealer who has the car you’re willing to take right there in his inventory. It’s costing him money every day, and he’s about to get two more like it off the truck. That’s how you can get the best deal, every time.

Speaking of deals… I might have been a little unkind to ol’ Droopy earlier. I might have underestimated him a bit. ‘Cause that Ford girl kept coming back, and pretty soon she started bringing a friend or two. And shortly after I left the dealer business to become the manager of a bagel store (don’t ask), Droopy closed that old rural dealership and opened a massive superstore off the Interstate, much to everyone’s surprise. It turns out he’d been making a bit of a proposition to that Ford girl, and it had less to do with her long legs than her ability to plead his cause before the big dogs at Ford’s corporate offices. When that superstore opened, there were three-quarter-ton trucks, diesel engines, and SVT Cobras as far as the eye could see… but there wasn’t a single Aerostar. You see, in the long run the dealers get what they want. Ford got what it wanted, too: a strong retail presence in a growing area. In this business, everybody ends up making up, and everybody ends up making out. Make sure you get what you want next time you’re shopping, okay?

GM’s track record has been less than stellar. First we had the Saturn Vue Green Line, a very “mild” hybrid that paled next to competitors like the Ford Escape. Next came the extraordinarily expensive 2-mode hybrid system used in GM’s pickup trucks and full-sized SUVs, which cost far too much and delivered far too little. Finally, we have the Volt – ’nuff said. No wonder GM’s latest hybrid endeavor has come to market with little fanfare, no “hybrid” logos on the vehicle and no hybrid branding from GM. Can we honestly call the 2012 Buick LaCrosse eAssist a hybrid?

While the LaCrosse’s styling is dominated by slab sides and FWD proportions, the overall look is handsome, even elegant. Compared to the ES350, the Buick looks a touch more sedate while looking less like its kissing cousin the Chevy Malibu. The fairly high belt-line and increasingly popular four-door-coupe roof-line give the 16.5 foot long Buick an almost modern flair (without being so modern as to drive away traditional Buick shoppers.) Despite the modern styling, Buick has stuck to their dubious “ventiports” which make even less sense now than before with our 4-cylinder LaCrosse sporting six portholes. Maybe port 5 represents the motor and 6 is the battery?

While the new LaCrosse’s interior is not class leading in any way, it is uniquely styled. Personally I’m not a fan of the steeply sloped doors but the 40-inches of rear leg room may compensate for that. The dashboard in our tester sported Buick’s new “stitched” dash which is an injection molded plastic dash that has “cuts”  molded in and is then stitched with thread to give the look of a stitched dash without the cost. Overall, the effect works, but the acres of fake wood are less convincing. I understand the need to differentiate between Cadillac and Buick, but the lack of real tree in the LaCrosse is a problem when Buick’s self-proclaimed Lexus competition having plenty of burl-forest standard.

While many hybrid vehicles ditch the folding rear seats due to the battery pack’s location, the LaCrosse continues to offer a pass-through – although it is about 50% smaller than the V6 model’s hole-in-the-trunk. Also on the list of complaints is a trunk that has shrunk to 10.7 cubic feet and is still hampered by trunk hinges that restrict the cargo area. The lost space is given to the hybrid battery pack and associated cooling ducts. Instead of a spare tire in the trunk you’ll find an empty cavity with a tire inflation kit. Why not toss the battery into the unused spare tire space?

The first generation Belt-Alternator-Starter or BAS system GM used in the Saturn Vue and Chevy Malibu “hybrids” was unloved by the press, ignored by shoppers and euthanized after a short time on the market. Instead of trying to resurrect the fantastically expensive “two-mode”  system, GM went back to basics and fixed what was wrong with the BAS hybrid in the first place. GM threw out the ancient 4-speed automatic and replaced it with a new 6-speed unit. The two extra gears allowed Buick to change the final drive ratio for better “hybrid” performance while still having a fairly broad range of lower gears for passing and take-off. Next, they ditched the low-capacity 36V NiMH battery replacing it with a modern 115V lithium-ion pack. The transformation was finished off by a liquid-cooled motor/generator packing three times the punch of the previous generation (15HP and 79lb-ft of torque). In addition to being more powerful, the motor and electronics are designed for nearly continuous use allowing the hybrid system to operate over a broader range of speeds and conditions. The result is a 0.2 second improvement in the LaCrosse’s 0-60 time and a 25% improvement in fuel economy over the outgoing un-eAssisted LaCrosse. Despite the improvements, GM decided to take a cautious approach and is not calling the new system a hybrid, nor are they including the motor’s assistance in the 182 horsepower or 172 lb-ft torque numbers. The ES350, on the other hand, is inexplicably unavailable as a hybrid.

The addition of a battery and motor alone didn’t achieve the 25 MPG city and 36 MPG highway numbers – the Lacrosse eAssist relies on  active grille shutters, altered gear ratios, low rolling resistance tires, a new trunk spoiler, and aero improvements under the car to help get these numbers. The combination of eAssist and the other improvements are what increase the all-important combined economy score from 23 mpg to a 29 mpg. The highway figure of 36 mpg is possible due to the new final drive ratio, which allows the 2.4L engine to spin at a leisurely 2,000 RPM at 70MPH. Without eAssist, this would be a problem upon encountering a slight rise in the terrain as GM’s 6-speed auto is notoriously reluctant to down shift. Fortunately, the 79lb-ft of torque provided by the BAS motor enables the LaCrosse to deal with freeway overpasses and gentle rolling hills without downshifting or slowing. In comparison, the Acura TL delivers 20/29 MPG, the ES350 is less efficient at 19/28 and the Lincoln MKS rounds out the bottom of this pack at 17/25. The Buick is by far the least powerful in this group and some might rightly compare it to Lincoln’s premium hybrid, the MKZ, which returns 41/36 MPG, but the MKZ is a smaller vehicle.

Our LaCrosse averaged 29.9MPG during our 674 mile week with the car. While the start/stop system helped keep the LaCrosse from sipping fuel at stoplights, the system has to idle the engine to run the air conditioning so your mileage in hotter climates is likely to vary considerably. If you value MPGs over cool air, there’s an “ECO” button which tells the car to sacrifice cabin cooling in the name of efficiency. The transmission is fairly smooth, but to aid energy-regeneration, the 6-speed unit is programmed to be as eager to downshift when slowing as it is to upshift when accelerating. No matter what the engine and transmission are doing, the cabin remains eerily quiet due to some extensive work on the sound insulation. This car isn’t just quiet for a near-luxury car, it’s quiet for any car, period. Serenity does have a downside, as my better half was quite put off by the engine start/stops and downshifts when stopping, which were made somewhat more prominent by the silence. Personally, they didn’t bother me at all so be sure to get in a good road test before you live with the car.

On the tech front, our LaCrosse was equipped with the standard 8-inch touchscreen radio and optional navigation system. I found the user interface considerably easier to use than the system in the Cadillac CTS, and was amused by graphics and colors reminiscent of Star Trek The Next Generation. Buyers not willing to spend $1,345 on the optional nav system, can still get turn-by-turn directions via OnStar, although only the first 6 months of the service are free. iPhone and iPod integration are easy to use, and the user interface is very responsive. Unfortunately the maze of physical buttons are not as intuitive as the on-screen menus. Even after a week, I was unable to stab a button in the dark without taking my eyes off the road. Buick offers blind-spot monitoring on the LaCrosse in a $1,440 “confidence package” which also includes steering xenon headlamps and GM’s vacuum-fluorescent heads up display. You can see some images of the HUD in the gallery below. The monochrome display shows basic navigation instructions, speed and a digital tach but falls well short of the polish BMW’s HUD possesses. Absent at any price is adaptive cruise control or collision warning, features available in a majority of the competition including the ES350.

Out on the road the LaCrosse handles just like you’d expect from 3,835lbs of Buick; it squats, dives and serves up plenty of body roll in the corners, but then again so do the Lexus, Hyundai Azera and Lincoln MKS. If you want sporty and can handle the looks, roll into an Acura dealership for a TL. Buick has set pricing for the LaCrosse eAssist at $29,045 for the base model. Should you step up to the “LaCrosse with Convenience Group” at $29,600, you can choose between the 303 HP V6 or the eAssist drivetrain for the same price. AWD LaCrosse models are available only with the 3.6L engine. While Buick is quick to call the engines choice a “no-cost option”, the eAssist base model is $2,830 more than last year’s base four-cylinder model. At essentially 30-large, the base eAssist LaCrosse compares favorably with the $36,725 base price of the ES350.

As our week with the LaCrosse ended I was more confused about eAssist than I was when it started. This confusion has nothing to do with the actual system itself which worked flawlessly and had a decent impact on fuel economy, it had everything to do with GM’s naming conventions. Somehow I’m not be surprised that the first hybrid viable hybrid from GM, mild or otherwise, would receive little fanfare. While the LaCrosse will never set your heart alight with excitement, it combines an excellent ride, cabin noise levels that Rolls Royce engineers are probably trying to replicate and decent fuel economy with a $35,195 as tested MSRP. While I’d probably still buy the more expensive ES350 ($41,240 similarly equipped), the Buick is a solid product with decent mileage at a compelling price.

Buick provided the vehicle, one tank of gas and insurance for this review

Specifications as tested

0-30 MPH: 2.8 Seconds

0-60 MPH: 7.9 Seconds

1/4 Mile: 16.22 Seconds at 85.7 MPH

Average Fuel Economy: 29.9 MPG over 674 miles

My 1966 Dodge A100 Hell Project has been in semi-hibernation since the summer, but now it has a rebuilt front end and I’m ready to get back into turning it into the 8-track-equipped custom van of my dreams. Since I bought my van project, the toughest problem has been finding junked A100s to provide a bunch of bits and pieces needed to get everything working properly. Alex Kierstein of Hooniverse grabbed a window latch from a Seattle junkyard and shipped it to me, which was a big help, but my van still had some bad glass and an annoying assortment of missing pieces. Then, last week, I got word that an A100 had appeared in a self-service yard a few miles from my house.
Unfortunately, I heard about this find late Wednesday night, and I was heading to the airport Thursday morning to fly out to the Yeehaw It’s Texas 24 Hours of LeMons. I knew that the vultures might well pick that rare van clean by the time I got back, so my only choice was to get up early, dash to the junkyard, pull the parts, and then rush to the airport. Bundling up against the 15-degree cold in many layers of Homeless Choice™ brand clothes, I threw my tools in my cargo-hauling Civic and burned rubber to I-25.
The #1 item on my list has been a replacement driver’s-side windshield panel; the one on my van was badly cracked and has the look of a piece of glass that wants to disintegrate into my face at highway speed. The one on this ’69 A100 (in fact, it’s the long-wheelbase A108 version of the A100) was in fine shape, and I actually cackled with glee when I saw it.
The ancient weatherstripping was dried-out and shrunken, in addition to being frozen rock-hard by the Denver winter air, and the locking strip was fused solid in its channel. This meant I was in for 45 minutes of chipping away at rubber the consistency of pine with a putty knife. Fortunately, the glass in these vans is absurdly thick, so there wasn’t much danger of cracking this windshield as I worked.
In a few areas, the glass had fused to the rubber with such tenacity that I had to use my Junkyard Hammer™ (Vice-Grips) to get the blade to bite.
Got it!
Another problem with my van is the window in one of the rear doors. It broke at some point, so a previous owner replaced it with a piece of Lexan. That worked OK, but the plastic has become very scratched and hazy, essentially opaque when the sun (or headlights) shine on it. This A108 had excellent rear door glass, complete with dark tinting.
This weatherstripping was quite flexible, so removing the glass was just a matter of slicing it with a utility knife and peeling the rubber away.
Three minutes later, the glass was out. Good thing I did the difficult glass-removal operation first, because my hands had become thoroughly frozen by this time. Mechanix gloves are great, but not really made for insulation.
Got the glass! Now to harvest some more stuff before my plane leaves DIA.
The A100, like many Chrysler products of the 1960s, used a foot-pump-operated windshield-washer squirter, with a plastic reservoir on a metal bracket. This system was missing most of its parts in my van, but this A108 had the entire setup in perfect working order. It’s almost impossible to find the black plastic washer-fluid reservoir in good shape, so this was quite a score for me. A few twists of the screwdriver and the whole mess was mine.
The heater blower motor in my van is bad. Here’s the replacement.
The instrument cluster in my van is extremely cool-looking, but only the ammeter functions. I’m considering modifying a 1961 Citroën ID19 cluster (which I own) to use in the A100, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a spare Dodge unit in case I want to rebuild the factory cluster. The 1969 version isn’t as vintage-looking as the ’66, but the innards are identical. Four screws and it’s out.
I also grabbed the horn button assembly, a taillight lens, some seat mounting pins, a side-view mirror, a door strap (which keeps the door from swinging open too far and bashing the bodywork), an engine-cover prop rod, and a bunch of small hardware I need. I had pulled all this stuff quickly enough that I had time (barely) to run back home and drop everything off before heading to the airport.
When I got back into town on Monday, I went back and got the other half of the windshield and the other rear door glass, plus some more small pieces. You never know when you’re going to need spare glass for your 46-year-old project!

No gullwing or “falcon wing” doors here. Ford’s new B-Max MPV has a unique solution to the problem of getting into a minivan without making a fool of yourself – pillarless sliding doors.

Rather than include a B-Pillar, Ford is using a new high strength steel that is strong enough to withstand the stresses that would normally require a B-pillar. The upside is 5 feet of unobstructed space that can be used for easy access to the rear seat, or for loading large objects. Only world markets will get the B-MAX, but this technology should filter down to other vehicles in the future. Once the B-MAX is unveiled at the Mobile World Congress Geneva Auto Show, we’ll have more information on how Ford pulled this off.

Once upon a time, Volvo built the V40 at the Nedcar plant, alongside the Mitsubishi Carisma. Volvo ended that partnership in 2001, but the Dutch managed to pull one over on Volvo, leaking early pics of their new V40 compact in advance of its Geneva debut.

The V40 will apparently be the first Volvo built on their new modular platform, and will underpin an S40, C40 and XC40 (count on the last one to be the most likely candidate for a spot in the future lineup). Different variants will underpin the “60″ and “90″ series vehicles as well. The V40 is said to be 2.2 inches shorter than the outgoing V50, making it a foot longer than a Volkswagen Golf. City Safety collision avoidance will also be standard. The Dutch Autoblog article mentions 1.4L and 1.8L engines, but that doesn’t jibe with Volvo’s new modular engine strategy which calls for 500cc per cylinder (and thus a 2.0L 4-cylinder). We’ll see what’s really going on in a couple of weeks.