SHENANDOAH -BY PT CRUISER

If you leave Chantilly, Virginia and head west towards Front Royal, consider yourself very close to Shenandoah National Park. The Skyline Drive heads south from Front Royal until the park ends and you enter the George Washington National Forest. You can soon consider yourself on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which will take you around Roanoke and into North Carolina. Skyline Drive , from the north at Front Royal to the south at Rockfish Gap, runs 105 miles (170km). However, you are not driving the typical highway speed of a mile-a-minute, nor do you wish to.

We were definitely enjoying the space of a Chrysler PT Cruiser. There are a few quirks I could do without in the tall retro hatch, such as window controls above the stereo; underneath the clock. Didn't I adjust? Not quickly, and even after 12 days the adjustment seems ridiculous. Besides, once home, there was no adjustment required for the normal position of window controls. Overhead lighting was under the sole jurisdiction of the driver at all times; and placed far in toward the wheel on the left control stalk. Awkward.

Radio reception was abysmal. When I say abysmal.... I mean... abysmal. One drive in another automobile, seven years the PT's senior, made clear that the radio difficulties were not peculiar to the mid-Atlantic states. Relative to the four passenger doors, either I was stupid (along with The Good Car Girl and brother) or the door design was poor. For instance, leading up from the side mirror to the highest point of the door edge was a terrible curl. My head is not prepared for that. We predict straight edges or something somewhat akin to straight. Thud, crack, bang, ouch. At least twice a day.

Cupholders were way to low for easy access. While driving, one's right arm would need a dose of Go-Go-Gadget to reach the drink and still have a head that was anything close to watching the road.

Whine whine whine, complain complain complain. There are specific circumstances in which these complaints surface. Impossible to read map on a busy and dark Virginia highway trying to find our hotel? Blame the overhead lighting. Driving the Skyline and wishing the camera could extend out the window just a bit? Try finding those window switches... grr. Want some hoppin' music for such a beautiful drive? Not gonna happen. I mean, not gonna happen. Out and in and out and back in the car taking pictures on the 3500 ft high overlooks in Shenandoah? You'll soon be concussed. Want your drink? Be sure not to drive off the side of Signal Knob while reaching.

But always the optimist, I discover these things. The Chevron at Elkwallow only charged $2.97 a gallon for regular gas, cheapest we saw all trip. The PT Cruiser was only gently sipping, which, in spite of the low speed, seemed impressive considering the mountain climbing. We were sitting in remarkably comfortable seats. Must've been inspired by the former Benz dominance in the company. The Chrysler had no trouble pulling up to overlooks at Gooney Run, Jenkins Gap, Hogwallow Flats, Gravel Springs Gap and Little Hogback. From the very high point near Little Hogback, we began to descend back to the 2304 feet at the Thornton Gap Entrance Station.

Exiting the park we headed for the caverns at Luray, west of Skyline Drive. 500,000 people do a 2 km walking tour underground each year. Of those 500,000 visitors and their many tour guides, some throw substantial amounts of money into one specific underground pool. Over the last fiftyish years, $623,000 has been collected from that pool and given to charity.

That pool is not the best reason to travel to the Luray Caverns. Clearly, it will inspire you to drain your pockets after already paying the $19 entrance fee. T'would be far better to pay attention to the stalagmite and stalactite formations; breathe in the cool, moist 14ºC air; listen to the stories of the discoverers; and check out the small car museum next door. Home to one Hispano-Suiza; one Bugatti; a couple Model T's; and at least one ancient Rolls-Royce. The PT Cruiser's fenders fit in quite well.

Before we left the D.C. area we considered driving back to the hotel by way of the main highway. Having already done over 30 miles on the Skyline Drive, we were positive in our resolve to experience the reverse drive with different lighting and angles and the low speed limit. There would be something sweet about a 10/10ths drive on the Skyline, but not your first or second or even fifth time through. We'd have missed so much.

Cyclists, hikers, and bikers abounded. The adjoining picture shows that some people had muscle cars which would have savoured an aggressive drive. The collective enjoyment of everyone we saw was an impressive thing to behold in itself. Plenty of oohs and aahs at the overlooks. Many impressive automobiles being used solely as seating and air conditioning units to effectively transport humans to the next overlook.

The PT Cruiser fulfilled its role on the only exclusive Virginian day of our trip. The slow and easy Skyline Drive would be met - within hours - by metropolitan Washington's rush hour. Hold on tight.

D.C., VA, MD, & PA.... by PT

The Good Car Guy had a birthday almost two weeks ago. Hold the congratulations and the birthday wishes. Oh... I guess you can sing to me if you really want to.

Better than the song was the gift from TGCGirl. An absolute surprise tour through Canada's capital city, America's capital city, and plenty of driving through Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Twelve days in total, with nights spent in Chantilly (very near D.C. but in Virginia), Gettysburg - home to THAT battlefield - Pittsburgh, and another back near Chantilly in Sterling, VA.

Top right, the northern part of Shenandoah
National Park. Below, underneath the
Pittsburgh sun.
In the upcoming days, GCBC and its affiliates at Good Value Bad Value and Good Talk Bad Talk will offer up articles directly related to this trip. Transportation was provided by Air Canada, through Air Miles Rewards, as well as Ottawa's bus service, Washington's Metro train/subway, a Chrysler PT Cruiser and an older Volvo S70.

Our PT Cruiser gave us fuel economy of 30 US mpg. Impressive.
Parking at the Vienna/Fairfax station cost only $3.75 a day. The PT Cruiser traversed the Appalachians around the Shenandoah Valley without difficulty. The OC Transpo in Ottawa, Ontario was the best bus service I have ever had the privilege of enjoying, even if it was for just a day. The roads from Gettysburg that led to the Penn Turnpike offered up magnificent views and crazy corners.

While in the States I never once saw a license plate from outside of the USofA, and can therefore say that Americans' complaining about fuel prices is not reflected in their driving habits. You'll understand what I mean in a few days.

GVBV will be discussing $ inside the airports, the contrasting prices of tourism-related activities, and the weight of food in Pittsburgh. GTBT is raring to attack airport security, profiling around the White House, and the knowledge that individual American's have when it comes to the rest of the world.

GCBC, however, will stick to the automotive universe. There are a lot of amazing drives to be found in North America. The leading road through the Shenandoah National Park must now rank near the top of your must-drive list. Read more tomorrow.

TO WHET YOUR PALETTE

After 12 days of State-side vacation, Good Car Bad Car is up and running again. You may have noticed a few posts in the last two weeks and realized that there was nothing new discussed. So before the real roundup of articles start, here's a taste of TGCGuy on GCBC stuff to get you revved up for eight days worth of PT Cruiser in Virginia, DC, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. This is some of the issues to watch.

Speculation is running rampant that BMW wants Volvo, and that Ford may want the cash infusion that would thither follow. The last major exchange between Ford and BMW was in the year 2000, when Ford bought Land Rover from BMW for $2.7 billion. I just did some tire kicking on an older Volvo in Pittsburgh last week, but I have no intentions to spend the billions required.....

Remember the story mentioned here regarding John Schneider's Dukes of Hazzard car, the General Lee? Well, that all that furious eBay bidding that drove the price to $10 million apparently came out of a hacked-into account. So Bo Duke gave it another go-round on eBay Motors and one bid reached $100,000. Niot enough for the General Lee, so Mr. Schneider will head for the next Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona where, with 725 bhp, Viper brakes, the Charger will likely fetch a killing......

GM is a confident car company right now. Saturn dealers will soon have a Toyota Camry in their showrooms. Or perhaps a Honda Accord. Chevrolet dealers might soon sit a Camry or Accord right beside the new Malibu. General Motors will encouraging you to sit and steer both, and feels that they compare more than well with the Japanese. Hopefully the sales consultants know well enough not to hammer the Camry/Accord when it is the goodness of their Aura/Malibu that will make the sale. Nobody will believe you when you start attempting to defame the two best selling cars in the USA.....

69 percent of Americans want better fuel economy when they purchase their next car. 52 percent said they would be willing to drive a smaller car to make that happen, while only 41 percent said they'd sacrifice performance for fuel economy and 45 percent said they'd take less lux for more bucks saved at the pump. You want to complain about fuel prices and then you tell me this? I think I'm going mental......

News of Toyota's new Tundra V8 having camshaft problems could hurt. Twenty of their biggest V8's - and I mean big and powerful 5.7L V8's - have camshafts which cracked and failed. Toyota's execution and marketing of this truck seem so good, but crash ratings are worse than Ford's F150 and the reliability is already being scrutinized. Incentives have begun.....

Hyundai has upped the cost of entry on their Sonata. By $200.00. However, you can actually get into a V6 for less money now..... Renault has a new Twingo, on sale in a couple weeks. Unimportant to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, of course, but an event in Europe. Renault has sold 2 million Twingos since 1993. A little car with a little power makes a lot of sense in France. The UK gets their own right-hand drive model this time around.... By 2010, you should be able to buy RWD cars called Pontiac G8, Buick Park Avenue, and Chevrolet Camaro. GM seems to offer some assurance....

Recaps, stories, and issues from 12 days away start soon. Check back.

WATCH THE POWER GROW

Corvette evolution never ceases to amaze. Overlook technological revolution, without ignoring it altogether, but steadily improve the breed by tweaking and tuning. Every few years give us a major overhaul, but without breaking away from the past.

Give us overhead valve engines of massive displacement even as others offer tidy six cylinders and V8's that rev to the moon. Stick with a balsa wood floor when all around is new material. But, make that V8 of your own rev higher than any human thought possible and mix in some magnesium and carbonfibre when you can.

Show the Europeans that amazing performance does not necessitate out-of-reach pricing. But... do go ahead and make the car more and more expensive. Stick with the annoying skip-shift manual, but eventually (fiiiiiinally) offer a 6-speed automatic for the pretenders.

But most of all, when all vehicle engineers seem to be forced to concentrate on fuel economy, give us an increasingly more powerful sportscar that can, and will, return high-20's on the MPG scale. Increasingly powerful? Oh yes.

The 2008 Corvette makes gains of 30 horsepower (to 430) and 24 lb-ft of torque (to 424) by using a 0.2 litre larger engine. There is no replacement for displacement. Want some more noise? Opt for the dual-mode exhaust and you gain six more horses with the better breathing.

We're still on the C6 Corvette, but remember that the fifth-generation opened with 'just' 345 bhp. The previous-gen Z06 closed with 'only' 405. The old but famous ZR1? A piddling 375 horsepower. The old C4's ended around 330.

Check out CorvetteGuys.com and

their large inventory of Z06 Wheels

Interestingly, the new Corvette's power level still does not look impressive when put shown as horsepower per litre. At 70 bhp/litre for that free-breathing '08 and 72/litre for the Z06, the Vette can't compete with the old M3 which produced over 100 horses for every litre of displacement. Granted, the new hi-po Mustang, Shelby GT500, doesn't touch the old or new M3 either. And that's with the aid of a supercharger.

What doth it matter? The Vette is constantly improving in every way.

FORD&DIESEL, HYUNDAI ADS, ASTON MARTIN OFFERS, & SMART DEPOSITS

One Ford spokesman has voiced an odd feeling coming out of Ford's executive compartments. He said that Ford cars available in Europe as diesels aren't sold here, and the market is too small for them to develop U.S.-only diesels.

Uh-oh.

Ford, rarely one to spot or start a trend, may be letting this one pass them by. A few thoughts come to mind. For starters, don't most engines get used across the board of an automaker, or automakers? So the cars you sell in Europe; with diesels of course; aren't available here. Can you not just take the diesels; just some of them; and fit them to the cars you have here? And didn't CEO Mullally recently mention that some of those Euro-only Fords would be great on the continent anyway? The big luxury guns from Europe are a'preparin and a'executin their diesel plans. Even Honda and Hyundai are getting ready. Ford might want to keep the beat.....

Speaking of Hyundai, there is a great contrast between their Santa Fe/Land Rover commercial and Volkswagen's Passat/5-series commercial. We had possession of a Santa Fe for quite some time and enjoyed it thoroughly, and the brief time I had with an LR3/Discovery was a pleasure as well. I have no bias.

These vehicles aren't competitors. Even so, Hyundai has a mocking ad comparing the Santa Fe and LR3, with the Santa Fe being a quicker accelerator, quicker around the slalom cones, and $22,000 CDN cheaper. No joke.

I think it's interesting. It does a good job of pointing out that high-value vehicles can offer performance equivalent to or better than the high-end stuff. But if this is the new kind of ad we'll be forced to see, I feel that I must protest. Compare a car-based soft-roader that squeezes in 7 seats with a very spacious heavy-duty go-anywhere off/on roader? Nonsense.

Ford Mustang GT's are faster around a track than Bentley Conti GTs, but nobody is suggesting that as a justifiable reason to buy a Mustang instead of a Bentley. Therein lies the problem with the Hyundai ad: they really expect me to take it seriously. The VW ad has two guys in a car, the Passat driver comforting the BMW driver for being able to 'take him' on the highway. It's comical; fun. It humours me, rather than causing feelings of annoyance......

The Kuwaiti section of the Aston Martin ownership group has already received offers for its stake. Along with Prodrive's David Richards, somebody's rich uncle in Texas, Kuwait's Investment Dar bought Aston Martin from Ford - which still holds $77 million worth - just two months ago. Two months in and opportunity to make a 50% profit must sound nice, especially when the offers roll in "every day", like they do for Investment Dar, says executive VP Amr Abou El Seoud....

Roger Penske's United Auto Group revealed on Wednesday the 9th that 12,600 are quite eager to get their hands on a smart fortwo in the USA. UAG offered first dibs to people who put down $99 deposits. The money was refundable, but it puts you at the top of the waiting list and makes you a smart 'insider'. Only 50-60 dealers will sell the smarts, even with UAG's massive network of mostly-import dealerships. smarts will likely have a base MSRP under $12,000 in the States. The smart is oh-so-small is rated highly in crash tests.

Combine rising fuel prices with something unusual like the smart, and you may have a winner. UAG thinks they may sell out the first year's allotment before they even have vehicles on their lots, even if not all deposit-holders go through with the sale.

"YOU WANT CRAZY , WE'LL GIVE YOU CRAZY" - VW

Volkswagen, as people's carish as they might be, have always been a bit... out there. To their credit, a rear-engine car that looked like a bug was a fair success. I acknowledge that adding a turbo and supercharger to the same engine has worked out well.

And so it would be foolhardy to suggest that VW would never consider building the GTI W12-650. If I say they'll never put the car into production, and then they build 25, I'll get rude emails.

This car is out there. Somewhere out there. Very far away from here. It is likely one of the coolest Volkswagens ever beheld - certainly one of the most visually striking. Volkswagen Rabbit/Golf GTI's traditionally come with a 4-cylinder engine. The current production GTI has a small four with a turbocharger to create around 197 bhp and more than 200 lb ft of torque. The R32 is a four-wheel drive Golf/Rabbit with a V6 engine that does indeed go faster, but also carries more weight.

Then you have the GTI W12-650. W12 signifies the engine configuration, a 12-cylinder in a 'W' formation, not unlike the 12-cylinder used by the Phaeton, Bentley Conti GT, and Audi A8. Also significant is the 650. Whereas the A8 and Phaeton limos make around 450 horsepower and the Bentley 552, the GTI has 650 thoroughbreds on its side. The numbers 553 may have been a bit much to add to the badge - GTI W12-650-553, but there is 553 lb ft of torque nonetheless.

Wondering how all this transpired? For starters, the engine is where the kids normally sit and the driven wheels are now the two rear most, rather than the front axle. It is safe to assume that just about everything you can't see underneath the body of this car is very different from a garden-variety GTI. Even what is visible has been changed indelibly. A gaping mouth; massive fenders; scoops ahead of the rear wheels - everything more aggressive and pronounced.

Verifiable top-speed numbers haven't been tested for yet, but Volkswagen says the W12-650 is safe for 202 mph. Theoretics say that you could travel 7,800 km in a day, without fuel stops and regular diesel Golfs hogging the passing lane.

This isn't the first time a middle-sector automaker has gone crazy with their bread-and-butter hatchback. Up until recently Renault sold the Clio V6. Renault's Clio is a tiny little car, and its performance editions are widely regarded as the best hot hatchbacks you can buy - if you live outside of North America. The typical Renaultsport Clio 172 was not enough for some of the crazier French engineers, so they converted the Clio chassis to rear-wheel drive, put a V6 where the rear seats were, and sold the car for about five years in two slightly different forms. Renault did the 5 Turbo back in the 80's as well.

Before MG Rover was sold to Chinese manufacture Nanjing, they converted the 75/ZT from the typical front-drive, four/six cylinder into a rear-wheel drive V8. Taking a Ford Mustang engine and slotting it where the engine originally rested, but switching the drivetrain to power the rear wheels created a pretty decent car. It was nothing near as crazy or extreme as what enthusiasts had hoped for.

Volkswagen has stepped it up a notch. Double, even triple the number of cylinders. Triple the power. One reason for making such a wild concept car include Martin Winterkorn's desire to revive the image of the brand. Another reason could well be, "We just wanted to have fun."

MAGNA'S ROUGH WEEK NOT ALL THAT BAD IN THE END

Canadian auto-parts manufacturer Magna International has lost out on some seriously handsome business opportunities in the span of one week. Reports were running rampant that Magna, based in Aurora, Ontario, was the top bidder for the Chrysler Group. DaimlerChrysler was already one of Magna's largest customers, so the splitting of one conglomerate to make another seemed a ripe opportunity, no?

But as you've heard, Cerberus came out as the winner of that battle, and Magna was left to say, "We desire and support the solution that is best for DaimlerChrysler and the Chrysler Group, who are among our largest customers. Magna respects the decision reached by Daimler and is confident our long-standing and mutually beneficial relationships with Daimler and Chrysler will continue."

That's a really sweet thing for your spokeswoman to say when your feelings are hurt. Sadness. A Magna subsidiary in Austria, aptly named MagnaSteyr, has also suffered the hurting of many feelings at the hand of another big German. BMW has effectively cut 45% of MagnaSteyr's automotive production by announcing that the next X3 will be built - by BMW - in South Carolina. MagnaSteyr has also been building two Chryslers, two Jeeps, two Mercedes and a Saab, as well as older Benz's, VW's, and Jeeps. Even Audi and Fiat have been clients.

To put it all into perspective, figure it like this. Belinda Stronach - Liberal Member of Parliament for Aurora; former cabinet member; former girlfriend of Canada's current Foreign Affairs Minister; former candidate for the Conservative party leadership; twice divorced and at times considered to be the ladyfriend of one of hockey's toughest men; and the former CEO of her father's company - recently announced that her political run is coming to an end. Her father's company, you say? Oh yes, that'd be Magna International. Belinda begins to concentrate on Daddy's new opportunities, and things go about as well for her as it did for her party in the last election. Lose out on the bidding for Chrysler. Lose the manufacturing of a BMW. Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. Ouch. Sadness. Feelings... hurt.

The positives: Magna shares rose this week in light of quarterly earnings reaching higher than the forecasters predicted. Magna sponsors a soccer team in the Austrian Bundesliga, FK Austria Wien, which was league champion in 05/06. The company has 81,000 employees. Magna assumes full ownership of New Venture Gear, to become Magna Powertrain, this year.

Every cloud has a silver lining. The X3 is not even close to being considered BMW's best vehicle and Chrysler would have emptied Magna's pockets of over $7 billion. It's been a terrific day in the office, then.