Category: News

Filed under: Crossover, Hyundai

Hyundai began the first wave of media drives for the new 2010 Tucson today in California after unveiling its latest crossover at last week’s LA Auto Show. As part of the presentation before heading out, product planning chief Scott Margason announced that the completely redesigned model will have a starting tariff of $18,995 when they start rolling into showrooms in the coming days.

At launch, the Tucson will only available with the 2.4-liter Theta II four-cylinder, although a 2.0-liter four will join the lineup later in the year. The bigger four will be available with either manual or automatic transmission choices, both with of them six-speed units.

The base price gets you a GLS model with three pedals and front wheel-drive. All wheel-drive is optional, but not much else is. Hyundai has packaged everything into two trim levels, the base GLS and the upscale Limited plus an available premium package that includes a navigation system, sunroof, and other niceties for $2,850. A maxed-out all-wheel drive, automatic Limited with the premium pack will run $28,695 (*plus $795 in freight charges). Including the transmission and drive options, there are only ten buildable Tucson equipment combinations for 2010, not including color choices and dealer-installed accessories. The first batches of 2010 Tucsons are on the way to dealers now, but if you can’t wait, you can check out the softroader in our high-res gallery below and the official press release with pricing breakdown after the jump.

[Source: Hyundai]

Continue reading Hyundai prices 2010 Tucson crossover from $18,995*

Hyundai prices 2010 Tucson crossover from $18,995* originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve got any Mac users in your life who haven’t upgraded to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, we think it’s time you give them the nudge this holiday season. Snow Leopard is faster, leaner, and more intuitive. It’s also simple to install, and even hits the user back with some freed up hard drive space. The best part, though, is the price. Snow Leopard is just $24.99 at Amazon. Here’s the price breakdown:

• Snow Leopard Upgrade: $24.99 (14% off)
• Snow Leopard 5-User Family Pack: $43.99 (10% off)
• Snow Leopard Mac Box Set: $149.99 (11% off)
• Snow Leopard Mac Box Set Family Pack: $199.99 (13% off)

Tags:
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SEE LINKS TO PHOTOS & VIDEOS BELOW!

On November 30th, 2009, 10 years after the historic shut-down of the WTO meetings in Seattle, people again made their voices heard on many of the pressing issues we face today.  As protests, teach-ins, and civil disobedience took place around the country on Mobilization for Climate Justice’s Day of Action at Westlake Park in Seattle multiple groups rallied, demonstrated, and took action at noon for climate justice.  Street theater lampooned the current regime’s failure to include or empower people in solutions to the climate crisis, as the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen loom large, highlighting the need to organize globally and make those voices heard.

Much of the focus was on Chase and Bank of America, two of the major funders of the coal industry and the controversial practice of mountain top removal mining, and two were arrested after a lock-down civil disobedience protest at the Westlake branches of each bank, calling out both banks as “Climate Criminals” (for more information, see Rainforest Action Network’s great resources here).  The Yes Men supported an action exposing the truth of Bank of America’s stance on coal and mountain-top removal funding, as two official-looking bank representatives addressed the cameras and the crowd promising clean coal while reaffirming a commitment to their shareholders’ bottom line.

At 1:30, a contingent of fair trade activists marched to Rep. McDermott’s office with hundreds of signed postcards from constituents, encouraging him and other congresspeople to take a stand for workers’ rights worldwide by supporting the TRADE Act.  The TRADE act is an alternative to the failed NAFTA model of free trade, envisioning what a truly just trade agreement might encompass.

After more music and performance from the stage at Westlake, the Washington Immigrant Rights Action Coalition held a march to Pacific Place mall in support of about 100 janitorial workers who are being unfairly treated and fired by Seattle Building Maintenance. People entered Pacific Place to chant, sing, and express their disgust with the mistreatment of workers, and were escorted out by mall security.

You can see video of the climate justice actions here, here, and here, and some great pictures of the whole day’s events can be seen here and here.

Here’s a fantastic chart from Moody’s, courtesy of David Goldman, showing the ratings trajectory of various Western developed countries.

Basically, Switzerland is the only country not to be racing headlong into the purple — non-AAA — zone.

Says Goldman:

Under US government projections, debt service will exceed 10% of GDP by 2013, which means that by one measure the US will move out of AAA territory. But the UK, Germany and France will be headed in the same direction.

If I am correct that economic weakness continues unabated through the next couple of years, the situation will be considerable worse than the Moody’s graph suggests, and governments will have difficulty funding themselves at today’s extremely low interest rates.

This should be good for the dollar, and good for gold.

Alternatives to the dollar will start to look worse, and alternatives to currencies (namely gold) will start to look better.

Read the whole thing >>

Don’t miss: 10 Contries Most At Risk Of A Sovereign Default >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Moody’s Says US And UK "Test" The Limit Of Their AAA Ratings — Pound Tanks .4%
• Deutsche Bank: Beware Sovereign Defaults And The End Of The Dollar Carry Trade In 2010
• After Dubai, Is Greece Next?

Filed under: Audi, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Lexus, Toyota

J.D. Power has released its 2009 Sales Satisfaction Index, and 29 of 38 brands improved their standing versus last year’s numbers. The industry watchdogs at Power say that sales people improved the most over 2008, which isn’t surprising given the fact that fewer vehicles are flying off dealer lots and every customer is a precious commodity. Even with the improved standing versus 2008, J.D. Power says that brands still lost 12% of sales on average due to poor service at the dealer level, a statistic that could have automakers cringing.

Jaguar took top luxury honors for the second straight year with an 898 index score, beating second place Cadillac by a scant five points. J.D. Power says Jaguar excels in both salesperson interactions and the handling of the dreaded financing/paperwork. The top five rounds out with Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Land Rover. Audi performed most poorly of any brand studied, while Infiniti and Volvo also fared poorly.

Mercury was the top non-luxury make with a score of 867, followed by Smart, Buick, Pontiac and Chevrolet. Mercury reportedly scored well on all five categories tested, though we’re a bit puzzled how Mercury could beat Lincoln by four points in spite of the fact that the two makes usually share a common dealership. Japanese and Korean brand-dealers scored poorly in the survey as Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Kia and Mazda all scored below the industry average of 832.

General Motors and Ford dealers fared very well in the survey, with all of their brands except Lincoln coming in over the industry average. Chrysler brands, however, did not do as well, with all three makes falling under the industry Mendoza line. Mitsubishi was by far the worst dealership to deal with, with an industry-low 778 index score. Hit the jump to read over the J.D. Power press release and click on the gallery below to view the survey scores for both luxury and mass market offerings.

[Source: J.D. Power]

Continue reading Jaguar, Mercury tops in J.D. Power 2009 Sales Satisfaction study

Jaguar, Mercury tops in J.D. Power 2009 Sales Satisfaction study originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s that time of year again – time for holiday treats, Christmas cookies, big retail sales and jingle bell-centric music. It’s also time for Baking Bites 2nd Annual Holiday Cupcake Contest! I kicked off this contest last year and enjoyed seeing everyone’s creative holiday entries so much that I’ve decided to make it a tradition.

All you have to do to enter the contest is take a photo of your favorite holiday-themed cupcakes and submit it to the Baking Bites Holiday Cupcake Contest Flickr Pool (accounts are free, though you do have to sign up). You can submit multiple entries and any holiday-themed cupcake is eligible, whether they’re homemade, made by a friend, seen at a coffee shop or from a favorite cupcake bakery. Look for anything festive, from reds, greens and blues in the sprinkles and frostings, or santas and snowflakes as decorations. Good photos of tasty cupcakes are what we’re looking for here. If you bake your own, or know the recipe that was used, link back to the recipe in the comments of your submission so others can try it out.

There will be one Grand Prize and one runner-up prize, both great gift baskets of baking related stuff! All submissions must be in by December 23rd at midnight, so that gives you a couple of weeks to track down every holiday cupcake you can find. Winners will be chosen by an anonymous panel of judges.

Filed under: Classics, Convertible, Performance

We recently drove a Superformance Cobra MkIII R and loved it. The looks, the power, the feel – just a wonderful, special vehicle. Perfect? No, and we said as much. “[T]urning the wheel reminds you that the chassis layout dates back to the 1950s, if not earlier.” Still, we were tickled by the straight line thrust. Truth be told however, we’ve experienced faster. If only someone would build a Cobra with even more power (remember the MkIII R has “only” 520 hp) and modern suspension.

Meet the CB/1. First thing’s first: under the fiberglass hood sits a twin-turbocharged/intercooled Ford 385 V8 good for – get this – 650 horsepower and 640 pound feet of torque. Put that in your ZR1 pipe and smoke it. Speaking of smoking it, all that fury iS routed through a Porsche 930 5-speed transaxle. And the whole enchilada weighs just 2,600 pounds. The results? Zero to 60 miles per hour in a blistering 2.85 seconds and the quarter-mile in 10.5 at 135 mph. Whoa doggie, right? And the suspension is more than up to the challenge, pulling 1.15 lateral Gs. Full specs, after the jump.

[Source: Bell Engineering | Photos: Jeff Hartman]

Continue reading CB/1 Cobra replica demands stronger adjectives

CB/1 Cobra replica demands stronger adjectives originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The U.S. should take a cue from China and replicate whatever secretive “Cash 4 Clunkers” program they’re using, because the auto industry is booming in China.

(Oh right, their secretive program is called being a gigantic emerging market with nearly 10% GDP growth)

Sales of passenger cars are up 98%….in November alone:

WSJ: November’s passenger-auto sales rose 98.2% to 1.04 million units, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers trade group showed Tuesday.

The robust growth was also the result of a low comparison base. In the same month last year, passenger-vehicle sales fell 10.3% from a year earlier to 522,800 units, the steepest decline for 2008.

Overall vehicle sales in China last month rose 96.4% from a year earlier to 1.34 million units.

Read the rest of this story >>>

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See Also:

• China Executes Rogue Trader
• What Hangover? November Auto Sales Actually Solid
• Ford Will Open A Third Chinese Auto Plant (F)

Just a quick note to announce a new Silver Sponsor of the SharpBrains Summit, and link to a couple stimulating online conversations.

The Institute For the Future is an independent, nonprofit strategic research group with more than 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of our work is identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. We provide our members with insights into business strategy, design process, innovation, and social dilemmas. Our research spans a broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from health and health care to technology, the workplace, and human identity. The Institute for the Future is located in Palo Alto, California.

I have been collaborating informally with IFTF projects for a few years, and it is exciting to collaborate on the upcoming Summit and related work.

Now, two stimulating links:

1) Encyclopedia Britannica Blog is hosting an online conversation on Multi-tasking:

“Multitasking—remember when that was something computers did? They were supposed to do it for our benefit, to make our lives easier, but somehow it hasn’t quite worked out that way. With fast computers, the Internet, and smart phones in our pockets, today we’re always tethered to The Network, and sometimes it seems we’re doing its bidding instead of it doing ours. There’s so much to do, it comes at us so fast, and it all has to be done now. The solution: forget what you were taught about doing one thing at a time and start doing several things at once. Call your office from the expressway. Bring that Blackberry to the meeting. Answer e-mails over dinner. Multitask.

Of course, whether multitasking really is efficient is a matter both of public debate and clinical research, and it’s just one of the questions we plan to get into next week in a new forum on the subject here at the Britannica Blog.”

You can participate Here.

2) For extra brain & mind reading, you can visit  yesterday’s Encephalon edition at The Mouse Trap. Enjoy!

The first piece of art from the recently-announced Dead Space 2 has hit the ‘Net thanks to Game Informer. See, the mag’s going to feature the game in its next issue. Hit the jump to see Isaac’s

Over the past month we’ve been running our Pwnedface Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 giveaway, asking you guys to use Shoot It! to send us postcards of your best pwnedface. What’s a pwnedface, you ask? That would be the face you make when you get pwned in a game, or when you are doing the pwning. We got a ton of entries, and finally selected our random winner – that’s his entry above.

We’ve chosen some of the shots that we thought were pretty funny, and put then into our pwnedface photo gallery – we definitely loved seeing all the entries come in, and a lot of laughter was had. A big thank you goes out to the folks at Shoot It! for sponsoring the giveaway. All the postcards you see? They were generated by our readers using the Shoot It! app on their iPhone or BlackBerry devices, right on their phone.

The giveaways aren’t done! Be sure to enter our HP Envy 13 notebook giveaway, which is currently ongoing!

Gallery: And we have a Pwnedface COD:MW2 Xbox 360 winner!

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Bank of America/Merrill Lynch has released its “Ten Themes for 2010” and this one really runs the gamut.

MarketFolly has the report.

First, the list:

1. Government balance sheet risk
2. Rising taxation
3. Alternative yield strategies
4. Financial sector rehabilitation
5. Corporate cash flow beneficiaries
6. Rising global growth
7. The emerging market consumer
8. Commodity price inflation
9. The return of active management
10. Alternative energy

A few of these are quite obvious. With the federal deficit where it’s at now, taxes will undoubtedly be increased.

Market Folly: From Bank of America Merrill Lynch comes investment strategy in the form of ’10 themes for 2010.’ Keep in mind that these represent their opinion so take everything with a grain of salt. They feel that next year will be “a genuine watershed” in that it will reveal whether or not this ‘recovery’ is real or whether the fundamentally drawn out weakness typically associated with bear markets will rear its ugly head.

Their Research Investment Committee thinks that the printing of money through quantitative easing and record budget deficits will help the country on the road to recovery but think inflation will remain low throughout 2010, thus providing a bullish environment for stocks and commodities. As with many other market pundits, they feel emerging market demand will fuel commodities (especially gold). On the contrary, they dislike government bonds.

Read the rest of this entry >>>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Who’s Buying Up America? Meet The Top Ten Sovereign Wealth Funds
• How To Bet On Emerging Market Banks
• Jim Rogers: Commodities Will Go Up No Matter How The Economy Performs

Over a decade ago, Sun founder Scott McNealy famously said “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” Apparently former McNealy protege, Eric Schmidt is now taking the same basic view in his current job as CEO of Google. In a recent interview he suggested that people pushing for privacy are the one’s at fault:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

This sounds suspiciously like a reheated version of “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” that’s trotted out by law enforcement types when pushing for stronger laws to violate individuals’ privacy. It’s an odd statement for someone like Schmidt to make, especially given the incredible level of scrutiny given to Google for the view it has into people’s lives. To folks who are worried about such things, it sounds positively dismissive, which isn’t the position that Google should be cultivating with those who are concerned right now. Furthermore, given Schmidt’s own thin skin when reporters posted some personal info (found via Google to prove a point) that resulted in a “ban” on talking to reporters from CNET for a bit, it’s really out of place.

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2009Dec8: “The year 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization” (WMO).

Reference: World Meteorological Organization http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_869_en.html

Image Description: Global Surface Temperature Trend: Result from three Global datasets: NOAA (NCDC Dataset) , NASA (GISS dataset) and combined Hadley Center and Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UK) (HadCRUT3 dataset). Image Location: World Meteorological Organization http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_869_en.html Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

Ripley’s museums have a total of 26 vampire hunting kits, but does anyone really know how to kill the sparkly ones?

(via io9)

Filed under: Videos, Toys/Games

Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce, part of the Forza 3 Hot Holidays DLC – Click above for image gallery

So, you think the new Forza 3 is pretty awesome, huh? Well that’s because it is. But it’s about to get a little bit awesome-er thanks to the combined miracles of the holiday season and the internet.

That’s right, the internet is the modern equivalent of Santa Clause – just as tangible and bearing more gifts – and here’s what it’s got in store for us this year: the Hot Holidays DLC Car Pack from Turn 10 Studios, the game company behind the Forza Motorsport franchise.

The package includes ten new cars, and Turn 10’s already confirmed eight of them (one for each night of Hanukah, if you ask those dreidel-spinning journalists among us): the 2010 Audi S4, Nissan GT-R SpecV, Ferrari 599XX, Ferrari 458 Italia, Mercedes SLR McLaren Stirling Moss, Lamborghini Murcielago MP670-4 SuperVeloce, Jaguar XFR and Porsche Panamera Turbo, plus two of the most devastating Le Mans prototypes – the #2 Audi R15 TDI and #007 Aston Martin Lola. (All links go to gallery of screen shots.)

The car pack is downloadable as of today (December 8) for 400 Microsoft Points directly on XBox Live, a magical place (headquartered at the North Pole, we gather) where no one gives a hoot if you’ve been naughty or nice. Check out the video after the jump and the screen shots in the gallery below, then try to figure out which car you’re most stoked about taking for a virtual test drive.

[Source: Forza Motorsport]

Continue reading Forza Motorsport 3 releases Hot Holidays Pack with 10 new cars [w/VIDEO]

Forza Motorsport 3 releases Hot Holidays Pack with 10 new cars [w/VIDEO] originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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