The Chinese automarket is hopping these days even though the rest of the world is having a horrible year sales wise.  There are many differences with the Chinese vehicles, but according to an article by Patrick Hong on yahoo autos, there are five vehicles that “could make it to the U.S.”  Here they are:

Brilliance GT - This is a sporty 2-door compact car with a 1.8-liter engine with a 167 horsepower and a 6-speed manual transmission.

Great Wall Gwkulla- This is an electric car that has about an 100 mile range between chargings. 

Great Wall Hover H7 -  This is a midsize sport SUV with a 3.0-liter V6 engine with a 6-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive.  It has a lot of high-tech stuff as well.

Roewe MG6 - Remember MG?  Well, this is an MG. Hong suggests that the company should consider a 4-door of this vehicle instead to entice more customers.

Roewe N1 Concept - This is a midsize sedan with sporty headlamps and many stylish details on the interior that would help make it stand out for sale.     

So, none of these are currently available in the U.S. and for that matter may never be, but these are just the Chinese vehicles that Hong thinks could make it. We’ll have to wait a few years and see if he is right on any of them.

www.hybridlane.net

Motor Trend Car of the Year is……the Ford Fusion.  The Ford Fusion beat out 22 other competitors to win the award of best car.  The redesigned Toyota Prius, BMW 7-Series, and the Chevrolet Camaro were some of the competitors.  Motor Trend said that they chose the Ford Fusion as the best because of its good performance, comfort, and fuel efficiency.  Ford was praised for offering several versions of the Ford Fusion, such as the hybrid and sporty V-6 versions.   Motor Trend has extensive road tests that are completed before determining the car of the year. What a great honor for Ford and the Fusion. 

So I posted a newsclip about a driver that put their $1.8 million Bugatti Veyron into a pond, because they were supposedly attacked by a pelican (by the way there was no evidence that a pelican was at all involved!)  Now I have another story about a fancy car and a dumb driver.  Let me set the stage: A Ferrari California  was being driven by Luca Montezemolo at the Ferrari World Finals in Valencia, Spain.  Some drivers were doing like a victory lap waving to fans cheering when all of a sudden, Montezemolo decided (for whatever reason) to make a sharp right hand turn into the gravel trap that is used to catch slow cars that are spinning out of control at high speeds.  Anyways, the Ferrari got stuck and kept spinning its wheels looking quite ridiculous. See for yourself on youtube.com. Really quite funny.

I found an article by Larry Printz of The Virginian-Pilot that gives the name and some description of 8 cars that will be disappearing in 2010 to “Rust in Peace.”  Some of these vehicles have been around a long time, so it’ll be hard for some to say goodbye, whereas others life have been short-lived.

Bentley Arnage 1966-2009

Chrysler Aspen 2007-2009 - this SUV never took off. This was Chrysler’s first SUV and last.

Honda S2000 2002-2009 - a great sports car that was the “victim of corporate neglect.” Personally, I never even heard of this vehicle.

Hyundai Entourage 2007-2009 - This minivan is gone as the Entourage, but it will be in Kia’s showrooms as the Kia Sedona. Therefore, we won’t really have to miss the Entourage, just its name.

Mercury Sable 1986-2009 - With the new Ford Taurus 2010, there is no room for the Sable.  Sad but true.

Pontiac G8 2008-2009 - This was considered the poor man’s BMW.  This car will live on as a Chevy Camaro.

Saturn Sky 2007-2009 - Yet again, never heard of this car.  Another sports car that can’t make it.

Toyota Solara 1999-2009 - People don’t necessarily want spice in their vehicles, and the Solara was alittle spicy, therefore leaving us.

It’s sad to say that me personally will not miss any of these vehicles, but I’m sure there are some of you out there that will and for that I’m sorry.

Way back when I might have wrote about getting paid to drive, but I thought with the economy the way it is and people looking for work, I would touch on this subject again.  So in case you didn’t know, you can make money by just driving your own car around town.  As much as $900/month, actually anywhere  between $300 - $900/month.  Not a bad gig for just driving. That’s definitely probably your monthly car payment.  So what do you have to do?  You need to “wrap” your car in a vinyl decal with some company and their advertisement on it.  Not too hard, right? It’s not, but you do have to drive around with your car looking somewhat ridiculous, but then again you are getting paid.  There are two advertising companies that do this - Free Car Media and DrivenMedia.  You can go to their websites and fill out a questionnaire if you are interested in this.  In this day and age, why not, right?  Make a few bucks.   Years ago, these companies would lease you a car with the advertisements painted on the cars, but it wasn’t financially smart, so now they just use 3M vinyl and put the advertisements on your car that way. The amount that you get paid depends upon where you live and where you drive in your area. The companies that want to advertise decide what they are looking for and then Free Car Media or DrivenMedia decide who fits the best.  Some of the brands that are looking for advertising are Proctor & Gamble, Coke, Tang, Lacoste, and Vault energy drink.  I think this is a great idea. Maybe I’ll have to try it! 

I just thought I would post this for you guys to see what happens when you have the fastest supercar out there and a really dumb driver.  The car I’m talking about is a Bugatti Veyron that has a 16-cylindrer, 250 mph horsepower engine.   The driver was clearly not paying attention and dealing with a cell phone, when the Bugatti veered into a lagoon. If it isn’t bad enough that he had to get towed out, it’s on Youtube.com, then I just saw the story on the main page of yahoo.com. How embarassing! Check it out. 

I found another article on AOL autos that gives in their opinion the best deals for buying a new car this month.  If you are interested, read the full article and see why they pick each vehicle. I thought I would just give you a list of the cars in each category and then you can read further if need be.

Compact Cars -   Mazda3 (Editor’s Pick,) Toyota Corolla, Ford Focus, Chevy Cobalt

Midsize Crossovers - Mazda CX-7, Hyundai Santa Fe, Ford Edge, Chevy Equinox

Midsize Cars - Mazda6, Chevy Malibu, VW Passat, Mitsubishi Galant

Fullsize Cars - Chevy Impala, Ford Taurus, Cadillac CTS, Kia Amanti

Pickups - GMC Canyon, Toyota Tundra, Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado

Lots of Mazdas, and several vehicles that were on the top 10 searched vehicles. Interesting.

So, I guess you can take this information for what it’s worth, but I found the top 10 searched vehicles on AOL autos, and thought I would share them with you.  I know this information is just 1 site and you can probably find a completely different top 10 on another site (well maybe not an entirely different top 10,)  but I still think it’s interesting to see what vehicles people like and are interested in at least interested enough to search them.  So here they are (in no particular order:)

Ford Taurus                                             Honda Accord

Chevy Camaro                                         Honda Civic

Chevy Equinox                                        Toyota Corolla

Kia Soul                                                   Toyota Camry

Smart Car                                                Dodge Challenger

I’m not surprised with several of these searches, but a few (Dodge Challenger?) are interesting choices for me. 

Do you own a dirty vehicle?  One that has low gas mileage and gives off high tailpipe and greenhouse gas emissions?  Well with all the talk about green vehicles and high gas mileage, we still have many vehicles on the lots with problems, I guess you could say.  Chrysler is the worst automaker for dirty vehicles with 6 (Jeep Commander, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Durango, Chrysler Aspen, Dodge Ram 1500, and Dodge Dakota) last year and 5 this year.  Just another problem for Chrysler. They can’t seem to do anything right these days.

Here are the top 5 dirtiest vehicles driven in the U.S. these days: (I wouldn’t be too proud to be on this list or driving one of these vehicles for that matter!)

Jeep Grand Cherokee

BMW M5

BMW M6 (Sedan and Convertible)

Chevrolet Trailblazer

Mercedes-Benz CL600

Tough go for these vehicles. Maybe they will figure out what is wrong and correct it sooner rather than later, though the Cherokee has been on the top of this list for quite some time.  Oops.

Here’s something you probably never thought about. The new hybrid electric cars are not only cutting down on air pollution but also noise pollution. That’s good right?  Well, it is, but then there is another problem.   Silent electric cars are some what of a problem for the blind.  Congress is considering federal regulations for electric cars.  I can see their point. Yes, the driver of a vehicle should take responsibility and not hit somebody, but that doesn’t always happen, and a blind pedestrian has no chance if there can’t hear the vehicle.  So, Fisker and other automakers as well as toying with different ideas to decide how to have the electric cars alittle noiser.   Fisker will emit a sound from speakers that are in the bumpers.  BMW was thinking of allowing the customer to choose their own sound for their vehicle.  Some are thinking maybe a ringtone that you could manually push on your steering wheel. Whichever way the automaker chooses, it sounds like electric cars will be getting louder.  I guess a quiet car cannot completely happen after all.