On the Road with A Toyota Sienna

I made the 10-hour slog from South Carolina to Delray Beach, Fla. Thursday with some of the Wednesday-Night Irregulars from Peddler Steakhouse. As someone who has made that trip solo more than a dozen times, doing it with a car-load of people is a culture shock. Anticipating several unscheduled pit stops for the ladies, we left Greenville at 7 AM to ensure we arrived at City Cellar in West Palm Beach to meet up with South Florida friends at 5:30PM. My fears, however, were unfounded. We only made one pit stop that wasn't mated to a fuel stop. We walked into the Cellar at 5:15.

A few local friends were there to meet and greet us, including future-Greenville resident Erick. In fact, Greenville, SC was the theme of the long weekend as we spent time intentionally or accidentally with all sorts of folks with Greenville connections. This 90-minute diversion completed we headed to Delray and the home of part-time Greenville residents Bob and Meg, where we bunked for this trip. The evening was capped with a lasagna dinner and copious amounts of wine.

My first choice for a trip vehicle was one of GM's long-wheelbase SUVs, like the Suburban. A few years ago this request would have been effortlessly met. No so these days. GM doesn't have such a vehicle in its East-coast press fleet. My fallback vehicle was a Toyota Sienna minivan. This turned out to be an ideal substitute. It's more than 16 cubic feet of cargo space with the third-row seat in place was more than enough to swallow the luggage five of us would need to see us through four days.

Moreover, the third row seat has about 30-inches of legroom, which is plenty to accommodate an adult. The EPA-rated fuel economy is 22 mpg on the highway. With five of us and our luggage the Sienna delivered 21.5 mpg. It turned out to be an excellent road vehicle.

Our three-day drinking contest will come to a close on Sunday when we make the drive back to sub-20-degree temps. All good things must come to an end….

Read More

Chevrolet Malibu: Better Than Good Enough

GM got serious about the midsize sedan market with the Chevrolet Malibu. It does everything it needs to do to qualify as world class. It may not be the best, but it's certainly good enough to go toe-to-toe with the segment's top-flight competitors. Read my review at www.car-data.com/chevy-malibu-go-hard-or-go-home-p1048-100.htm.

Read More

Seven Cars for Lottery Winners

There is nothing wrong with dreaming a little and in that spirit, I have assembled seven cars to consider if you win this week's big lottery. I only included cars with a 2011 model-year designation. You may disagree with my choices, but hey, this is my dream. To see the list, go to www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/7-luxury-cars-for-a-lavish-lottery-winner-1.aspx.

Read More

First Impression: 2011 Hyundai Elantra

Received my first taste of the 2011 Hyundai Elantra at its press preview in San Diego on December 3. Here's the 411: It's big enough on the inside for the EPA to classify it as a midsize car; yet by its outside dimensions, it's still a compact. The tongue-in-cheek theme of the press program was "Save the Asterisks." This to highlight that every new Elantra earned an EPA highway mileage rating of 40 mpg without any equivocation. That is, there are no asterisks leading you to tiny mouse print qualifying the 40 mpg claim. In fact, fuel economy is up 18 percent over the last generation Elantra.

Reflecting Hyundai's "Fluidic Sculpture" design concept, Elantra's skin is a collection of angles and chiseled lines. Likewise the interior is a far cry from some of the cookie-cutter cabins in this segment. It is handsomely styled and well assembled.

Leading the segment in power-to-weight ratio, the Elantra uses a peppy 148-horsepower 1.8-liter inline four-cylinder engine to turn its front wheels via a six-speed transmission. The tranny can either be manual or a driver-shiftable automatic.

Some key highlights include four-wheel antilock disc brakes with traction control and stability control, Bluetooth cell phone connectivity and voice recognition, six airbags, available heated rear seats, and a six-speaker Audio system with CD player, iPod integration and auxiliary input jacks.

Read More

Midnight Train from San Diego

I'm not a fan of red-eye flights; I doubt that I hold the minority opinion on this. Although I have no trouble sleeping on flights and am often asleep before the plane is finished taking off, I can't sleep on a plane at night – even on a red eye, even when seated in first or business class. Coming back from Asia, coming back from Hawaii, coming back from California, I can't sleep. So when faced with a red eye back from San Diego, I chose to get sufficiently lubricated to put myself into a chardonnay-induced coma.

I was at the press launch of the redesigned Hyundai Elantra (more on it to come). The Hyundai travel folks made arrangements for me to stay in my room until my 8:30 PM limo to the airport. They also kept the hospitality suite open until 7 PM, a perfect storm.

The bartender in the hospitality suite was a chatty character. I carried a glass of wine back to my room and got a little work done. That glass polished off, I returned to hospitality for another, and carried it back to my room. My work finished, I headed back to hospitality and Michael opened a new bottle. I was the only journalist there. He admonished me that once a bottle was opened, he had to charge Hyundai for the entire bottle. I wanted Hyundai to get its money's worth. During the next hour I finished it. By this time he had broken down the bar and it was about 7:45. I went to my room, retrieved my bag and proceeded to the lobby to catch my limo. So far everything was going according to plan.

I arrived at Delta's ticketing, and not finding my flight on the departure board, bellied up to the counter. I was told my 10:45 flight had been canceled. What! Why didn't Delta call me? I asked. They have my contact info. The counter agent, Yolanda, told me she didn't know why I had not been contacted, but should have been. She went on to tell me that because fog was expected that night, Delta canceled the flight. Despite having a load on, I was smiling, jovial and much more pleasant than Delta had any reason to expect. I told her that I had left a paid-for room at the Lodge at Torrey Pines to catch this flight. Had Delta notified me, I would have happily stayed there and come to the airport in the morning. She told me I was booked on the 7:35 AM flight. I asked her what Delta expected me to do for the next 10 hours. She responded that Delta bore no responsibility for my being stranded because it was a weather incident. I gave her my best "you've got to be kidding" look.

Yolanda excused herself and disappeared through the door into the back. The minutes ticked by. She finally returned about 15 min later. She gave me a voucher for the airport Sheraton and another good for $7 toward breakfast. OK, it wasn't the Lodge at Torrey Pines, but it sure beat trying to sleep in a chair in the airport. The Sheraton was better than decent, the bed comfortable and the room quiet. I slept like a baby.

Upon arriving at the airport the next morning, I stopped at McDonalds for my free Egg McMuffin and decafe. I already had my cup of high test in the hotel room. I was in the aisle seat in the very last row of the plane. No biggie. After spending the flight out with a little kid kicking the back of my seat, I was happy that no one was behind me. I even managed to talk a free vodka and orange juice out of the flight attendant assigned to the back of the plane. I'm going to arrive in Greenville about 9 hours later than originally scheduled, but there are worse things. In the meantime, I'm going to write Delta a letter that will convey my displeasure at not being notified of the canceled flight and then praising Yolanda, whose employee number I coaxed out of her. Ah, the tribulations of a frequent flyer….

Read More

Flying Infants

I spent four and a half hours on a Delta plane from Atlanta to San Diego yesterday. I was first disappointed that security at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, where my travel originated, hasn't changed. I knew there wasn't going to be a "happy ending" involved, but I was looking for my federal government-sponsored foreplay at the hands of a TSA agent. No such luck. I had donned clean underwear yesterday morning in anticipation of being manhandled in the security line. Please, touch my junk! Anyone? Anyone?

I suppose I'll have to wait for my return flight from San Diego this evening.

What prompted this writing, though, was the family occupying the row behind me on the Atlanta-San Diego flight: a mom, dad, a boy of maybe 4 years and a sub-two-year-old of in-determinate gender. Had this been a white-bread family from Dayton, I probably could have made a stab at whether the younger child was male or female, but this was a family of India descent and the kid was dressed in a way that didn't allow for someone unfamiliar with their traditional garb to make a gender guess. Gender is really irrelevant, but I strive to be accurate.

Of course the younger child spent the trip on the laps of Mom and Dad alternating from one to the other. Thus he/she occupied the four and a half hours – five hours if you count taxiing – alternately kicking my seatback and the seatback of the lady sitting next to me. Truth be told, this lady suffered less than I did based on the six times I had to get up to let her go to the bathroom. She probably spent 45 min of the flight powdering her nose. But I suspect I dealt with the problem for about 2 hours.

This episode aggravated one of my pet peeves: Kids 2 years old and under flying free on the lap of an adult. According to FAA rules during take off and landing, it is too dangerous for a woman to hold her purse on her lap; or for anyone to hold a five-pound laptop computer (even stowing it in seat pocket in front of them is verboten); yet, it's perfectly safe to hold a 20-pound squalling, struggling 2-year old. How does that work? How is that justified? Isn't a child just as likely as a laptop to fly out of someone's arms during a rough landing?

And finally, as someone who clocks a lot of air miles each year, I can't figure out how it is right that someone who paid nothing for a ticket gets to annoy someone who did for the duration of a flight? It's outrageous enough that some 400-pound, impulse-control-challenged tub can buy the seat next to me with his rolls of fat cascading over the armrests, pushing me into the aisle or against the bulkhead; but at least he's a paying passenger. Maybe he should be paying more, or I should receive a discount for sitting next to him, but he is a paying passenger. This projectile in waiting, kicking my seatback for two hours, didn't pay a penny, not a single penny, to be on the plane. I take issue with that.

Every passenger, regardless of age, should have his own seat. Period.

Read More

2011 Chevy Cruze: First Impression

Just finished a four-and-a-half-hour round-trip slog to Atlanta for a GAAMA board of directors meeting. That's the Greater Atlanta Automotive Media Association for the uninitiated. It was a bit of a culture shock. I drove over in a 2011 GMC Sierra 2500 HD Denali Crew Cab. A 397-horsepower 6.6-liter V8 turbodiesel percolated under the hood that generated 765 lb-ft of stump-pulling peak torque. This truck is a beast by any yardstick.

I made the return trip in the all-new Chevy Cruze. It was the top-of-the-line LTZ version. With $870 worth of options, including the upgraded 9-speaker Pioneer audio system, it was priced at $23,565. I was more than impressed by its quickness, ride quality and stability. Oh, and it's quiet, too. GM's 138-horsepower 1.4-liter Ecotec 4-cylinder turns the front wheels via a 6-speed automatic transmission. A neatly styled cabin had leather seats and automatic climate control in addition to full power accessories and a leather-wrapped tilt/telescopic steering wheel. Loaded with quality materials and neatly assembled, the cabin would be right at home in an Acura. Fuel economy is an impressive 24 mpg in the city and 36 mpg on the highway. Sweet!

Read More