How to turn $100 million into scrap metal.

This is a symptom of an overly litigious society, I think.  Instead of making a huge insurance claim, Mazda could possibly offset some of the loss by re-selling these cars at a steep discount but without, say, the benefit of a factory warranty.  It seems people are always looking for bargains, but the first time the brakes fail because the master cylinder was compromised will lead to a lawsuit that could cost Mazda a lot more than the loss on scrapping the vehicles (what kind of deductible is there on a policy that will pay a $100 million loss?).  So the company's risk aversion is probably higher than any potential consumers' anyway.

Still it's a little sad to read about nearly 5,000 new cars being ripped apart before they ever see a dealer's lot.  And maybe a bit zen, too:

Next stop: Schnitzer Steel, a salvage yard down on the waterfront that's home to an immense metal grinder. "You turn 7,000-horsepower hammers loose on them, and they're eaten in 10 seconds," says Jamie Wilson, Schnitzer's manager. A bemused smile spreads across his face as another load of Mazdas disappears into its maw.

Moments later, metal shards -- most no bigger than an ashtray -- sprinkle onto a mountain of scrap near Schnitzer's dock. There, a freighter prepares to take the scrap back to Asia where it will get recycled.

Mr. Wilson looks on and concludes: "It'll all probably end up coming back as cars."

Forget traffic jams.  Soon you may be able to use your nav system to avoid getting carjacked:

Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. will start a new system this week warning motorists when they are driving close to crime hotspots.

Based on information from the police, drivers will get an alert through Honda's on-board navigation system about areas where cars have been damaged, stolen or broken into in the past, Honda said in a statement.

For now it's only available in Japan, which doesn't strike me a country with a rampant auto-theft problem.  But I can also envision motorists in Detroit circling endlessly on the Interstate, trying to find one surface street that doesn't pass through a crime-riddled neighborhood.

As automakers scramble to meet consumer demand for more fuel-efficient cars (not to mention government mandates), they are abandoning large-displacement V-8s and V-6s in favor of miserly four-cylinder engines, often turbocharging them to increase horsepower.  But there is a side effect to forced induction:

At a time of record pump prices for regular gas, automakers are introducing more cars that use even costlier premium.

The number of new vehicle models that need — or at least run better on — the priciest gasoline has steadily risen from 166 in the 2002 model year to 282 this year, shows an analysis by Kelley Blue Book at the request of USA TODAY.

More may be on the way. Automakers are turning to smaller, high-performance engines, which use premium as a way to boost mileage without losing power.

Being able to boast of a couple more miles per gallon can be a selling point but won't quell the ire down the road of buyers having to put in the glamour gas, says David Champion, auto testing chief for Consumer Reports. "People really, really, really dislike putting premium into their car," Champion says. "You see the cheaper fuel right in front of you, and you can't use it."

This problem can't be solved by better engine design alone.  Higher compression ratios lead to more power, but the more you compress the fuel/air mixture inside a combustion chamber, the greater the chances for pre-ignition (aka "knocking").  Automakers solve the problem in various ways, but the primary consequence is that car owners must select premium fuel, which is usually at least 20 cents more expensive than the regular stuff.  So the irony is that you might negate any savings you'd realize from choosing a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.

Most high-performance vehicles will accept regular gas, but you'll lose some power and fuel economy.  Based on this, I'm not sure why anyone would be willing to pay a premium for a smaller, higher-performance car vs. a simple, non-turbocharged econobox, if fuel savings is the primary criterion.  It seems a hybrid or a diesel would be a better choice, although diesel fuel is very expensive at the moment.  So given the higher cost for diesel, assuming it averages about the same MPG as a gas-electric hybrid, your most economical choice at the moment would be a hybrid . . . if they weren't so expensive in the first place!

Screw it, just buy the Suburban.

Skyrocketing metal prices have led to roof panels disappearing from English churches (HT: Marginal Revolution):

For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the Reformation.

Instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near record price that lead — the stuff many old church roofs are made of — is fetching on commodity markets.

Note that while lead is currently fetching $2,750 per ton, the damage to one church will cost $20,000 to repair.

It might even be worse on this side of the pond:

Metal scrappers have attacked churches and ransacked homes in this Midwestern city [Cleveland, OH], leaving entire neighborhoods uninhabitable.

Saint Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral here lost its insurance after a thief stole copper panels from the roof years ago. Three churches in Cleveland Heights have been stripped of copper gutters. And in the last few months, three churches in the North Collinwood neighborhood were stripped of copper downspouts.

“Our neighborhoods are being pillaged, not by Vikings or Goths, but by modern-day barbarians,” said Mike Polensek, North Collinwood’s City Council member. Even manhole covers and sewer drains are being stolen out of streets to be sold as scrap metal, Mr. Polensek said.

Houses, however, are the greatest targets of commodity scavengers in the United States. Neighborhoods depopulated by the rising tide of foreclosures make easy targets.

The punchline is that the scavengers are choosing which houses to raid by going through government foreclosure listings.

SUVs are being targeted as well, as their catalytic converters are often easily accessible. The precious metals found in trace amounts in cats command very high prices ($1,900 per ounce for platinum alone).

Of course, if you're facing foreclosure or repossession, you may just want to take the good stuff with you (HT: LewRockwell.com).

An Indian automotive company seeks to put its country on (four) wheels with the $2500 Tata Nano.

Obviously styling is not the Nano's main selling point.  But it seats five, gets over 50 MPG from its 33-horsepower, two-cylinder engine, and meets Euro III emissions standards.  This is exactly the sort of cheap wheels that have revolutionized economies in the past (think the Ford Model T or the Volkswagen Beetle).  In this case the Nano may signal a sea change in Indian mobility, as most of the country gets around on public transportation, bicycles and scooters.

But that doesn't sit well with some environmentalists, who seem to believe it's the duty of Indians to remain poor:

The Center for Science and Environment warns more cars will only exacerbate congestion and smog-related illnesses in a country where 57 percent of cities already face critical levels of air pollution.

Tata counters that the Nano is cleaner than the scooters it will replace and claims the car's catalytic converter cuts emissions by 80 percent. The Nano supposedly emits 30 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, well below the 160 g/km average of Europe's cars and far less than the 130 g/km standard the European Union will adopt in 2012. Even if half a million Nano's hit the road and each of them travels 5,000 miles a year, they will be responsible for less than 8 percent of India's annual CO2 emissions, Economic Times reports.

Most of the hand-wringing over the Nano has focused on its environmental impact, but some are beginning to ponder what the car will mean for global energy supplies. There is mounting concern that increased demand for petroleum will boost prices.

First, it's not clear that the massive growth forecast in Indian auto sales mean higher prices at U. S. pumps.  The higher prices here are due as much to a lack of refinery capacity as to a surging demand in crude oil.

Second, economic growth is catalyzed by higher mobility.  People who depend on public transit or small scooters for transportation have limited ranges of travel.  They must live closer to work and shopping, leading to overcrowding, greater stress on infrastructure and higher crime rates.  Automobiles extend the range of travel and expand their owners' connections to work, school and markets.

It is galling to see Westerners wring their hands over the attempts of developing countries to improve the lives of their own people.  They seem to forget that we crossed this threshold decades ago and have reaped the benefits ever since.  For countries such as India and China to do the same doesn't herald the end of the world, but rather the start of a new one.

Random Friday linkage:

• Warren Meyer on why the labor market is largely immune to the minimum wage:
  
  

  Correcting for higher state minimum wages, but also adjusting for illegal immigrants (who are a special case with super-low bargaining power) and factoring in salaried workers (who by law to be salaried have to be making much more than minimum wage) one still finds that less than 2% or less make minimum wage, about half of whom are under 25.

  
  And here's another post (from Cafe Hayek) which suggests that the number actually earning minimum wage could be as low at 0.5% when tipped wage earners are taken into account.
  
• Some people just never learn, and now German researchers have discovered genetic proof.
  
• Freakin' cool: a working model of a V-12 engine made from paper.
  
• Praise Allah and pass on the left: Saudi Arabia is set to lift the ban on women drivers.
  
• Tightening emissions and fuel-economy standards prompt Chrysler to kill its legendary Hemi engines.
  
• More problems solved in Zimbabwe: the central bank issues a $10,000,000 note to battle hyperinflation.  Now you just need $5,000,000 more to buy a hamburger (about $6 US at black-market exchange rates).
  
• Novels composed on mobile phones and read by other mobile subscribers top Japan's bestseller lists when published on dead trees.

I starred so many Autoblog entries in Google Reader today that I decided to roll them up here:

UPS is optimizing its "Package Flow" route-mapping software to minimize left turns, which could save it millions of dollars in fuel costs every year by reducing the amount of time trucks sit waiting to make left-hand turns.  (Hopefully they reverse the parameters for their UK and Japanese operations!)

Knight Rider is returning to the tube, and KITT has been reborn . . . as a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR.

. . . which most likely will not have these tires installed as standard equipment.  Yes, they actually give off a lavender scent after they're warmed up.  These would be a good for a joke at the drag strip one time, I think.  "W00t!  11.5 ET and he smelled lovely in second gear, didn't he?"

If you paid more than $100,000 for a sports car, wouldn't you want a transmission that, you know, works?  Apparently Tesla doesn't think so; they're having such difficulty building a gearbox that can withstand the full-on torque of an electric motor that they're considering shipping Roadsters with transmissions that they know will fail within a few thousand miles.  The idea of course is that they would be replaced once the beefed-up transmission is ready.  That will be a great source of comfort to the first Tesla owner stranded in the mountains when his car pukes it cogs onto the road.

That was the tagline of an article in Car and Driver introducing the 1987 Buick GNX.

A dealer in Texas is selling a legendary example of the GNX—number 359 in fact (out of 547 total that were produced).  What's special about this particular number is that it has never been titled and has less than 10 miles on the odometer.  It's still a new car, nearly 20 years after it rolled out of the skunkworks at ASC McLaren, which transformed it from a Regal Grand National (itself a pretty bad-ass car) into the evil machine that was the GNX.  Buick rated the turbocharged and intercooled 3.8-liter V-6 at 275 horsepower, but the GNX's 4.7-second 0-to-60 time put the lie to that figure.  350-375 bhp is probably more like it.

This example still has the factory battery (which had been removed and stored), the OEM Goodyear Eagle "Gatorback" tires, and its original sticker, which lists its MSRP at $29,290 including the GNX package.  Although few of them were actually sold at that price, it still wasn't a bad value for a car that could seat five comfortably and eat unsuspecting Ferraris for lunch.

Of course the GNX's rarity has pushed its value far higher.  The current bid for #359 stands at 90 large, although it hasn't met the reserve price.

I've never been a big fan of domestic iron aside from the original Mustang and pocket rockets like the Dodge Omni GLH, but I lusted after the GNX.  It was just nasty, plain and simple.  No other production sedan (and few sports cars) of the day could match its straight-line performance, and with its all-black paint and trim it looked like Dante's personal ride through the Circles of Hell.  It was also the last example of Buick's once-vaunted reputation for performance, as the following year the G-body platform on the which the Regal and its corporate siblings (the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Oldsmobile Cutlass and Pontiac Grand Prix) were built was scrapped in favor of a front-wheel-drive design as part of GM's effort to downsize its cars and raise fuel economy.

If I had the scratch, that GNX would be so tempting.  And I'd probably horrify collectors by driving it every day.

A Pueblo woman is arrested for selling her 5-month-old baby to another couple for cash and a down payment on a Dodge Intrepid.

Someone on denver called it "sickening", and I completely agree.  It's truly sickening to waste your money on a piece-of-shit Dodge.  When she sells her next baby, I hope she buys a real car.