msrpk.com blog

"NO Eggnog; Lots of Kielbossa and Time OFF"

We are getting ready for one of the most important visits of 2009--the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. We will need our "A" game for next weekend...so we took it easy over Christmas, and visited our good regional sponsor Frank Kacer in Waymart, PA for a bunch of his homemade, handmade kielbossa. Nothing like a heated piece of Frank's kielbossa on rye with real darker mustard and an adult soda pop--just the thing with which to enjoy football and watch our favorite name in all of sports (Ol' Miss head coach Houston Nutt) put a whuppin' on Texas Tech.

The long knives are out for GM...the talk about GMAC's bowl sponsorship is just the tip of the iceberg...the help for American LeMans, NHRA and of course, NASCAR will likely be next for those with the long knives and Mr. Magoo eyepieces.

Hybrids--my fellow auto journalists aren't doing an effective job in explaining how a hybrid works. And since we will see more of them from the General (GM), the Blue Oval gang (Ford) and the House of Mopar (Chrysler), the basic explanation will have to be repeated. And repeated. Some misconceptions: No, one does not plug in a hybrid. You drive it and it uses regenerative braking (putting on the brakes, coasting in a lower gear down hills) to charge a battery pack, separate from the one that starts the engine, that powers motors at the front or all wheels to drive the car on electric power. The battery pack is OK when it works and the battery has a lot of useful life. The replacement cost of a hybrid motive power battery is more than high...not a lot of aftermarket batteries to help drive down the cost--yet. Hybrids are probably better for around town driving...the mileage you can get is close to what's on the EPA sticker, if you are very careful on how you press the accelerator. The Altima Hybrid can, on level ground, go on battery power at 30 miles an hour...and stay on battery power for a while. That helps get the 35 miles per gallon that the E-P-A estimates. The more a hybrid runs on batteries, the better the mileage.

We'll update here with the name of our 20th anniversary contest winner on January 8, and our final plans for the North American International Auto Show. Here's a link to enter before the contest closes on January 6: http://msrpk.com/20thcontest.html

We're fine tuning our programs for 2009...some changes to the information we provide will begin with our first road test of 2009...the VW GTi which we'll drive later this month. Many of you download our podcasts. We may, from time to time, add some specials (as we did on Grant v NASCAR) on subjects like how hybrids work in the real world...some chat with drivers and newsmakers...and topics that you can suggest by shooting an e-mail to feedback@msrpk.com .