Tricking Your Car Out: Aftermarket Accessories To Make Your Car Rock!

As we spend less and less time at home and in the office, and more time trying to do, well...anything more enjoyable than work - we've developed a wonderful love affair with outfitting our vehicles with the best car gadgets possible.

Shiny things, loud stuff and stuff that beeps and talks. Whatever it is, we are determined to transform our cars and trucks into mini-roving Circuit City stores...

Plenty of products exist, between the manufacturers and the after-market suppliers, to make your new or used car the object of your affection - and the object of another's jealousy.

Here's my list of the top gadgets for your vehicle. Be careful. You'll want the items that you don't already own. Christmas isn't too far off though...

• Sirius/XM Radio - ~$30/mo.
• Sirius Satellite TV - $300 + monthly subscriptions
• Garmin Nuvi Navigation System - $1000
• Maestro Elite Navigation System-$1300
• Microsoft's Synch Connectivity System - $400 + monthly subscriptions
• Azentek In-Dash Intel Duo Core PC System - $2800 [personal fav]
• BlueLife Bluetooth Receiver = $30
• FLIR PathfindIR - $6000
• Cradlepoint EVDO WiFi [Using Verizon EVDO express cards] - $600
• MTX Audio Jackhammer Sub-woofer - $7500 & 370lbs.
• 6inch rear-view mirror, LCD monitor - $600+
• Solar Powered Tire Pressure Gauge - $15
• Wireless GSM Car Alarm w/Car Position Location Ability - $345
• Wide Angle, Rear View Color Camera, - $40
• 5 Light LED Battery Tester - $15
• Parametric Equalizer - W/USB + MP3 + iPod Compatibility - $60
• Power Inverter - Instant 300W AC Power
• Professional Grade OBD-II + EOBD Code Reader + Scanner - $80
• XBOX 360 Gaming System - $300

That should be enough to wet your appetite and on the road enjoying your ride. Be sure to get yourself a complete insurance plan as well. Enjoy the ride...

Eric Miltsch

Stumble It!

Fuel Costs and How They are Affecting the American Large Family: A Case Study

As of last Friday, August 8th, fuel prices at the pump had dropped for the 22nd consecutive day. They have continued to drop but on that day, I decided to ask my busy father of 5 friend, Robert Gonzalez, from Twitter a few questions about how the price drop is affecting his family this summer.

Robert and his wife have 5 kids ranging from 3 to 12 (aww! I always wanted my own basketball team!) and they are homeschooling them all. They have a Chevy Surburban for family trips and a Pontiac Vibe for Robert to go to his job. Now granted, they don't have to shuttle 5 kids to school which saves their fuel consumption but the kids do have to do activities outside the home as part of their homeschooling compliance, eg, physical education, music lessons, etc. And, family outings cannot be done in the more fuel efficient Vibe so the Suburban gets used a lot.

Now Robert is one of those incredibly smart and quirky fellows so when his wife decided that the old family minivan wasn't sexy enough to suit their family's lifestyle image in 2006, Robert started keeping all of his gas receipts for the then new Suburban. Brace yourself! When Robert y familia bought the 'burban, gas was $2.45 a gallon and it cost a mere $55 to fill up the tank. Flash forward to now and his tank last week was $4.11 and over $130 to fill up the tank.

So you might be saying to yourself "Yeh, so we are all adapting" but for the first half of this summer, what that meant for the Gonzalezes who can go through an 18 pack of eggs at breakfast time, everything gets affected and impacted. Now instead of days when they could do a nice outing all together, they have turned to attending free events in the parks. Robert and I both noticed that these kind of events are now overcrowded because gas prices are affecting everyone and that now, there is an increase in people just going to the malls, superstores and electronics stores just for entertainment, air conditioning and time outside the house. A recent and rare trip to Fry's Electronics that I just made showed me just that: people lining up to play the Wii's, XBox 360, watch the flat screen TV and no one in line actually making purchases.

Not a conspiracy theorist at all, Robert also noted that the increase in food costs that are supposedly the result of increased gas prices are, in his opinion, are the fuel companies giving commerce a reason to raise prices that people cannot question.

A veteran of both GM and Toyota, Robert also pointed out that the cars being made today are the cars that would have been okay 4 years ago. His family is sticking with its Suburban because it is functional, supports their lifestyle and with fuel costs dropping, he is hoping that they will be able to resume normal activities that they enjoy doing together. As for his Vibe, he said that if a new car doesn't get at least 32 mpg, he wouldn't even consider replacing it.

It seems that the idea that the recent fuel crunch would cause people to change their buying and driving habits isn't as big as what was previously predicted. Although 50% of the cars sold in the US in June 2008 were 4-cylinders, the drive to keep filling the American dream for the sexy car that suits is continuing.

Michelle Naranjo

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Buying A Commuter Car & Keeping the Truck or SUV

Buying a car for commuting?

So here is a fairly common situation: You have a truck or SUV and suddenly find yourself deeply affected by the rise in gas prices… but there is little you can do. You simply may need the utility offered by your truck (you have 4 kids to take to soccer games on weekends, you tow a trailer, you’re on a first-name basis with the staff at the local Home Depot, etc.). You also have to drive to your regular job every day, which is usually done alone or with one carpool partner, but you only have the one vehicle.

You may even have been tempted enough by fuel prices to try to sell or trade-in your truck for something more efficient for your commute. But, you find that nobody is buying large trucks and the value has dropped to the point that you owe much more than it’s worth.

What about keeping your truck for the times you need it and buying something else… a dedicated car just for your commute? After all, you don’t need that big utility all of the time, do you?

I’m not talking about going out and buying a new car, I’m talking about taking advantage of the improved quality and reliability of the automotive fleet over the past decade and buying a used car. I aim to show that you can find a good used for less than the first-year of depreciation on a new Camry.

I decided to take a look online to find some recent sales which fit this criteria: A purchase price of less than $7,000 (approximately one fourth of the average purchase price of a new car), less than 100,000 miles (still a mental barrier for me), model year 2000 or newer (I like driving classic cars, but in this case let’s be pragmatic and look for a car with working air conditioning, a CD player, and modern safety equipment). I’m using eBay Motors here because it’s one of the only places to see what cars have actually sold for as opposed to dealer asking prices. As you can see, appliance cars are out there if you keep an open mind. Some of them are even fun to drive.

Some recent finds:

• A 2002 Saturn Vue with 67k miles for $6,300 Yeah, it’s an SUV, but it foregoes all-wheel drive and a thirsty V6 engine (who needs a lot of speed when you’re stuck in rush-hour traffic anyway?). The manual transmission gives you a bit more oomph and it’s certainly large enough for kid hauling duty and occasional stops at the big-box store on the way home from work.
• Red and sporty 2002 Saturn SC2 with 50k miles Leather, automatic, sunroof, plastic fantastic Saturn sports coupe for $5,100. Ah, you see a trend here… cars that lack the premium brand names but still offer reliable service are great buys used. You’re looking for an appliance, here, not something to impress your neighbors like a shiny new BMW (or a Honda, for that matter). Frankly, late model cars are almost all good and, in fact, better than even the best cars of 20 years ago. They are reliable, inexpensive to operate, and if maintained properly, if they do break it’s most often something minor like a window motor or radio.
• Hyundai XG300… never heard of it? Well, most people haven’t. It was Hyundai’s first big car and offered a ton of features. Here’s one loaded with features, less than 75k miles, and it was sold by a dealer for less than $5,800.
  
• Ford Focus… one of the most popular cars in Europe never really got the respect here in the States that it deserved, despite positive reviews from journalists. Here’s a loaded sedan, complete with leather and low miles for $4,500! Personally, I like the looks of the old Focuses (Foci?), especially the hatchbacks, better than the new model. Yeah, the new integrated iPod stuff is great, but based on my Windows Vista experience I really don’t want anything from Microsoft running my car.
  
• If you like the Focus, for a few thousand more but still under my price cap, is this rare Focus SVT… the factory hot rod sure to make your commute a bit more lively.
• Wow, $4,500 for a car with less than 30,000 miles on it. Kia Rio, just tint the windows and think how cheaply you’re driving!
• A Passat Wagon with the lively and efficient 1.8T motor with 43k miles for $6,200… Hmmm, stop me now.

My point here is that there are a variety of great fuel-efficient used cars out there that can be had for less than ¼ the price of a new car. You’ll save on depreciation, save on gas, have a much lower insurance bill than you would on a new car (and might even realize a multi-car discount on the SUV you already have). Instead of taking a $6,000 charge to get out of your SUV, keep it and find a used commuter car instead. Happy shopping.

Some more examples on Mota!

Steve Haas

Stumble It!

How to Stay Cool and Save Gas

With American drivers suddenly looking for every way to save on the cost of driving, I thought I would revisit an old question,

“Which is more efficient, air conditioning or open windows?”

I first ran into this question while in college at the University of Michigan. I had a roommate who had heard that the refrigerant used in air conditioning systems was bad for the environment so he went the whole hot and humid summer without turning on his car’s air conditioner. Of course, he didn’t realize that Freon (this was before it was replaced with R-134a as a refrigerant in cars) isn’t actually released into the atmosphere when you run your A/C. Air conditioning runs in a closed loop and the environmental concern about the chemicals comes when some is accidentally released during servicing or if the system develops leaks… ironically most likely to occur after long periods of disuse. Running the A/C system distributes lubricating oils to the seals in the system so an unused air conditioner could develop leaks.
Of course, when faced with this information he changed the topic to say that it was more efficient to drive with the windows open because air conditioning makes the engine work harder. Ah, perhaps he had a point? Frankly, I didn’t have an answer.

Years later, I was working on the GM EV1 (electric car) program. If you didn’t know, this was the most aerodynamic production vehicle ever offered for sale with a coefficient of drag of 0.19. Since the car carried so little energy on board (the 1,200 lbs of lead-acid batteries provided the energy capacity of about ½ gallon of gasoline… providing about 60 miles of driving range) every step was taken to minimize the use of that energy. Besides weight savings to conserve energy when accelerating, air drag is the biggest, well, drag when driving at speed. As an example, I was once told that they didn’t use a mast-style radio antenna because it would have cost nearly a mile of range.

Anyway, we often had to drive the cars around Los Angeles and Phoenix for various events and the question arose whether we were better off using the A/C or opening the windows for maximizing range. There was no hesitation from the engineers: They said that we should make ourselves comfortable and use the A/C with closed windows when driving over 55 mph. I wish I had this information at hand when I was sweating in my roommate’s car on a 90 degree Michigan day!

Why is this the case? Well, while running the A/C does put a drag on your efficiency, running with the windows down does as well. It isn’t that simple, though. The aerodynamic drag varies with your speed. Air drag increases exponentially as speed increases, so driving 75 mph requires much more energy than driving 55 (sorry, Sammy Hagar).

At freeway speeds, this drag becomes greater than the cost of running the air conditioning compressor.

While perusing the web, I came across a study by the Society of Automotive Engineers (PDF) that looked at this exact question. They found that at high temperatures the cost of running the A/C was between 5% and 10%. However, the drag caused by running with the windows down at 68 mph (110 Km/h) varied from 8% to 20%. The lower number was for SUVs… basically, cars with bad aerodynamics in the first place suffer less from the effects of opening the windows. The 20% number was for a regular sedan. Though they didn’t disclose what type they used, they do indicate that it was a large sedan with a V8 engine. A really aerodynamic car like a Honda Insight or a sleek coupe would be effected even more.

So the bottom line is that around town, you are better off with the windows open but once at speed you should close your windows even if it means turning on your air conditioner.
If you drive a Hummer or a Mercedes G-Wagon with the aerodynamics of a brick… well it doesn’t really matter. Just go buy Exxon stock.

Of course, driving while suffering from heat stroke isn’t good either, so here are some other hints about staying cooler if you must run your air conditioner around town:

• Try to park under cover or use a window shade. The cooler your car is when you get in the less you’ll need to run the A/C to cool it down.
• In the same vein, if your car is hotter inside than the outside air, open your windows before turning on your air conditioner.
• Max A/C (a.k.a. recirculated air) isn’t always the best way to cool down. Again, if the air inside of your car is hotter than the air outside, you’re just running super-heated air through your A/C system. Use the fresh air setting until the interior temperature is lower than the air outside.
  

Steve Haas

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