Auto-pedestrian stories are needed

The Utah State Health Department is looking for stories of people who have been affected by an auto-pedestrian crash.

Those with a personal story are asked to share it online with the Utah Health Story Bank at health.utah.gov/bhp /sb/. By doing so, citizens can increase awareness of pedestrian safety issues and encourage others to be safe, officials said.

Each year in Utah an average of 860 pedestrians are injured and 30 are killed in collisions with motor vehicles.

Utah police officers will conduct Operation Crosswalk Enforcement Campaigns in April and May to educate citizens about pedestrian safety. Officers dressed as civilians will walk back and forth in crosswalks while fellow officers watch for drivers who fail to yield the right-of-way (either by not stopping or stopping within the crosswalk).Last fall, officers in 17 jurisdictions issued 4,126 citations and warnings to both drivers and pedestrians who failed to obey pedestrian safety laws.

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The Right Subprime Car Dealer

Locating the right dealer for a bad credit car loan can be the most important step in the car buying process if you have bad credit.

Business trends

At Auto Credit Express, we’ve been involved with subprime car finance for the past 17 years. One thing we’ve noticed in particular is that over the past few years, auto dealer profits, especially those of the domestic car dealers, have been declining. In fact, it’s quite common these days for new car dealers to sell a vehicle for the invoice price just to move the unit and satisfy their sales targets with the manufacturer.

Another thing that we’ve witnessed: when auto sales are slow, dealerships look for additional ways to move more inventory off their lots. One of the ways in which to do this is to get a higher percentage of their floor traffic – especially those customers with bad credit - approved.

Special finance

That being said, many of these car dealers jump into the bad credit car sales arena without the proper training and, quite frankly, many of these dealers make a mess of it. With bad credit auto sales, the finance department has to do more work than it may be used to. As an example, it’s a good idea for dealers to verify employment and income before they finalize a bad credit auto loan. Here is why:

When a subprime lender first approves an auto loan, they assume all the information on the credit application is correct. After the car has been delivered and they receive the finance package from the dealer for funding, they begin the verification process. If the application was misrepresented, the lender may refuse to finance the vehicle.

When this happens, often a week or more after the sale, the dealer contacts the customer and asks them to return the vehicle (although in some states the dealer is now responsible for the loan). When it’s all over, everyone is upset; the dealer is mad because they lost the sale, the customer is mad because they wasted a lot of time and still have to buy a car, and the lender is mad because they had to return the deal (after spending a great deal of time and money processing the customer in their system).

Other mistakes

Dealers can also get tripped up even before they begin processing deals. When car dealers first begin bad credit auto sales, most do so with only a few subprime lenders. If you are a consumer with bad credit, it is much better to buy a car from a dealer that has numerous subprime lending sources at their disposal. The big advantage is that with a broad spectrum of lenders, you have a better chance of getting the best auto loan based on your credit (most car dealers that specialize in bad credit auto sales use special finance software to compare your credit profile and their new and used car inventory, against hundreds of subprime lending programs to get you the best deal possible).

The Bottom Line

If you have bad credit and need a loan to buy a car, make sure you do business with an auto dealer that specializes in bad credit auto sales. How can you accomplish this? You can either contact numerous dealers in the area until you find the one that that has the lenders and technology in place to best handle your credit needs or you can use a car buying service like Auto Credit Express.

At Auto Credit Express, our business is to help people with bad, blemished, bruised and tarnished credit buy cars and reestablish their credit at the same time. Our national network of affiliate dealers specialize in bad credit car loans. If you have any additional questions, our web site will help you determine how much car you can afford and, unlike other sites, our toll free number is listed on every page in case you have any additional questions.

http://www.autocreditexpress.com/blog/2009/08/27/the-right-subprime-car-dealer/

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Tire-testing facility seeks space in Charlotte region

A consortium of auto and motorsports companies has committed to finance a tire-testing facility in the Charlotte region that could require an investment of “tens of millions of dollars.”

The project, called Camber Ridge, will help drive research for the industry as it prepares for federal electronic stability control requirements. The new mandate hits the auto industry in 2011.

Carmakers and motorsports companies will have other needs for testing facilities such as Camber Ridge, says James Cuttino, director of the N.C. Motorsports and Automotive Research Center at UNC Charlotte.

“It’s driven specifically by the needs of industry,” he says. Cuttino is taking a leave of absence from UNCC to start the business.

Humpy Wheeler, chairman of Charlotte Regional Partnership, says the facility will become “another anchor for the development of the auto industry” in the Charlotte area.

Specifics of financing, location, size and employment were not disclosed. One source suggests Camber Ridge’s search in the region would be for a site that could accommodate a 50,000-square-foot building.

Cuttino says he expects the first tests will be run in the facility in two years.

Ronnie Bryant, partnership president and chief executive, says the building and site will need room for expansion. He also mentioned that Camber Ridge may need only about 5 acres to build the facility.

Cuttino says automaker and tire manufacturers need a test laboratory such as Camber Ridge because no single manufacturer could afford to develop it. Initial investment will involve “tens of millions of dollars,” he says.

Entities that Cuttino calls his affiliates will provide financing. He declines to name those financial partners.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that mandating stability controls on cars will save up to 9,600 lives annually and prevent as many as 323,000 crashes.

The controls take over braking and other automobile capabilities when a vehicle skids or tips on the highway.

Cuttino says he’s spent the past 18 months investigating the need for such a test facility. Wheeler says Camber Ridge’s computer-driven equipment will in some cases replace a need for auto test sites that cost up to $150 million to develop. Such automobile-research facilities include test tracks that can measure seven miles.

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Cash for Clunkers needs more speed

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Dealerships across the country are waiting for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in government reimbursements for the $4,500 in cash they award each customer who trades in an gas guzzler for a more fuel-efficient model.

Car dealerships blame slow paperwork at the Department of Transportation for the cash-flow bind. Some dealers are so concerned about getting paid, they're pulling out of the program, which ends Monday.

However, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told CNN Money.com that the government is putting more people on the task of processing paperwork and "there will be no car dealer that won't be reimbursed."

This conundrum raises other questions, too. What if the reimbursements don't come quickly enough?

Also, while putting more fuel-efficient vehicles on the road will help the environment, what about the practice of smashing the trade-in clunkers, some of which are only a few years old? Doesn't that incur some financial and environmental cost itself?

There is a bright spot. General Motors just announced it will build 60,000 more cars and trucks this year to replace dwindling supplies due to sales generated by Cash for Clunkers. It also promised to provide cash advances to its dealers for the rebate amounts they're owed.

While it may be unfair to judge a program's success after only three weeks, it's worrisome to see a program of this magnitude, one that began with such promise, mired in the predicable red tape.

http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20090821/APC0602/908210497/1003

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State Auto Financial Corp. is selling the business management software

State Auto Financial Corp. is selling the business management software it created nearly 15 years ago to another company in Columbus.

The insurer this week said it will sell its Strategic Insurance Software business to NuGrowth Solutions, a 20-employee software sales and business development operation. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but State Auto spokesman Win Logan said the sale won’t be material to the company’s financial results.

The sale is expected to close Aug. 31.

Shedding Strategic Insurance marks the end of what was a major step for State Auto when it created the business.

“We’re not a software company, and when we did this years ago, for us it was a new venture,” Logan said.

The software, whose clients are mostly State Auto agencies, allows users to track and manage clients, insurance products and business transactions. The operation is run out of an office on Morrison Road in Gahanna and has 16 employees.

The deal came out of a move State Auto made last year in hiring NuGrowth to market the software, a practice that had been challenging for the insurer, Logan said.

“The business was fine. The product was fine. It’s the marketing of it,” he said. “That’s something NuGrowth does well, so we struck a deal.”

State Auto CEO Bob Restrepo said the transaction allows the insurer to focus on its business.

“State Auto is an insurance company and that needs to be our singular focus,” he said in a release.

The deal to acquire Strategic Insurance represents the first acquisition of its kind for NuGrowth, spokeswoman Carol Williams said. Strategic Insurance’s employees will remain at the Gahanna office until a lease expires this year and they will be moved to NuGrowth’s headquarters at Arlingate Plaza.

NuGrowth declined to comment further on the acquisition until the deal closes.

State Auto Financial (NASDAQ:STFC) has about 2,200 employees and in 2008 lost $31 million on $1.2 billion in revenue. State Automobile Mutual Insurance Co. owns about two-thirds of its stock.
http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2009/08/17/daily25.html

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Peak Oil: Bugatti Makes a Car for the Ages

You want to buy a camera? We can pit it against three others with nearly indistinguishable features, no problem. Blu-ray players? We'll compile a three-axis matrix that triangulates the perfect combination of image quality, connected functionality and price. But if you're considering the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, we can't do much for you.

Comparing it to any other car is pointless, because there is nothing else in its $2.1-million (based on current exchange rates) class.

That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout.

But don't. Buy a Grand Sport. Even if there were another 253-mph drop-top with more luxury appointments than a Bond villain's boudoir, you wouldn't want it. You'd want this exact car, because more than being a blast to drive, it is the greatest gasoline-powered vehicle that has ever been, or will ever be, built. Seriously.

Take a moment and consider what Bugatti has done: Because a handful of billionaires demanded that the fastest car in the world be available topless, the Volkswagen-owned ultra-luxury automaker essentially broke the laws of physics. Again.

The first Veyron is an engineering marvel. That's the one with the massively reinforced roof that helped keep the rest of the body from deforming into an amoebic tangle of graphite composite and exotic metal under the joint stresses of lateral acceleration, horsepower and wind. It stands as one of the greatest achievements of the petroleum age. It required the intellectual might of one of the largest and arguably smartest car companies in the world to birth a car that was not only faster than anything on the road, but easy enough to pilot that anyone could drive it. ("It killed my husband" is not the kind of country-club buzz that sells cars.)

To make the Grand Sport, Bugatti's engineers had to do the same thing, only with a giant hole in the middle. It was like designing a picture frame to break rocks.

They had to bolster the floor, doors and B pillars (where the back edges of the windows rest) with acres of carbon fiber. They had to turn the topside air scoops into structural supports for protection during a rollover. Then they had to sacrifice 100 virgins and have the production facility in Molsheim, France, blessed by druids.

The result is the most structurally rigid convertible in the world, which, miraculously, weighs no more and goes no slower than the coupe on which it is based. With the transparent roof removed, air resistance limits the Grand Sport to 217 mph, but you'd want that roof on for a top-speed run anyway; the wind could rip your face off at around 245.

By now, the Veyron's stats are legendary: 1,001 horsepower from a mid-mounted, 8.0-liter, 16-cylinder engine that gets air stuffed down its ravenous gullet by four massive turbochargers. All-wheel drive. A seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission that switches gears faster than a state staffer ducking questions about the Appalachian Trail. Depending on how you define "production car," it is the fastest in the world. In the quickest Lamborghini ever produced, the Murcielago LP640, you can hit 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. In the Grand Sport it takes a hair under 2.5. How does it feel to command that pace? Godlike.

The acceleration is so immediate you can feel your eyeballs deform under the G-forces. It's a sensation of isolationist joy, an out-of-body awareness that you're moving faster than the world can react. Bystanders vaguely remember seeing a flash of expensive paint a few seconds after you disappear over the horizon; entire generations of insects die on your prow. Passing other motorists becomes a dangerous entitlement that has you resenting oncoming traffic for hogging your "VIP lane" -- especially when you realize that you can outrun not only the 5-0's cruisers, but their helicopters, too. If they wanna catch you, they're gonna have to dust off Airwolf and drag Jan Michael Vincent out of rehab.

But this isn't just some dumb auto-jock that takes off from stoplights in a hail of shredded asphalt, molten Michelins and screaming revs. If anything, the exhaust note is a bit tame, and the power is manageable. Unlike driving, say, a Viper SRT-10, you're not in constant fear of accidentally going around a turn ass-end first because you blipped the go-pedal a half-inch too deep. Though the Veyron has almost twice as much power as the super-snake, its all-wheel-drive and 14-inch-wide tires grip the ground with the tenacity of a junkie clutching a five-dollar bill.

A lot of factors contribute to this prodigious hunker-down: the aforementioned tires (Michelin developed them specifically to accommodate the Veyron's top speed) and AWD; the giant mid-mounted engine, placed to provide perfect 45/55 weight distribution; the insanely advanced aerodynamics and suspension, which automatically change the shape and ride-height of the car to provide an extra 800 pounds of downforce when you exceed 137 miles per hour (they'd be illegal in Formula 1 competition, incidentally). And then there's the sheer mass: Though its power-to-weight ratio bests the Ferrari F430 by almost 50 percent, the Veyron, at 4,400 pounds, is still more than half a ton heavier. And gravity is one tenacious bitch. This car sticks to the ground like 1,000-horsepower gum.

Push the Grand Sport hard, and the rear-biased AWD will start to feel looser, making the car light and nimble through the twisties. But even when attacking some seriously hairy turns from deep in triple digits, the Veyron never gave up its grip. And when we almost blew it on a butt-puckering downhill double-apex, the all-wheel-drive system put power in just the right place to pull the car back in line. All while we sat comfortably in bucket seats that made our couch seem fit only for the waiting room of the DMV.

Bugatti offers seven different seat shapes, to accommodate the seven known varieties of billionaire: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Each is based around a carbon-fiber shell and available in whatever animal skin the laws of your kingdom permit. Our test car was fitted with caramel-colored leather. It was nice, but the light hue reflected quite a bit of glare off the steep rake of the windshield.

Other luxury touches include a stereo, we're told. The CD player is custom-designed by Burmeister to operate skip-free at 250 miles per hour. We never turned it on. With the carbon fiber and polycarbonate roof removed, you have the only soundtrack you need: the engine's growl (could be louder) and the roar of the twin air intakes, which suck air like a ■■■■■■■ two rolls of quarters ■■■■■■■■■■ quart of Sterno ■■■■■■■ Las Vegas.

There's also a navigation system. It might be the finest example of passive aggression ever assembled; Bugatti's engineers clearly don't want you to use it. You can only program the system with a separate, 2005-vintage PDA. If you can stomach the Windows Mobile interface long enough to set your destination, you get to view your route guidance in a tiny screen in the rearview mirror. Theoretically. As long as it's nighttime. It's invisible in the daylight, and the Grand Sport is a convertible.

But even if its nav system shouted insults at you, it would be hard to complain about this machine. It is not perfect -- no car will ever be. But it's close. And it will likely remain as close as a car with a gasoline-burning engine will ever get. We're at the end of the petroleum era, the end of a golden age of supercars where speed can be sought regardless of consequence. It's highly unlikely that a major automaker will ever be able to justify spending the time and money to develop a fossil-fuel-powered car that can top the Veyron's combination of power, speed, handling, driveability and flat-out luxury. The Grand Sport is the worthy successor to the Ferrari F40, the Lamborghini Diablo, the McLaren F1 and every other Texas tea-drinker that ever owned the title "world's fastest." And its high-level swank takes that prize with style points nonpareil.

Maybe we'll idolize maglevs next. Maybe Tesla will have its day on a Trapper Keeper with a juice box that tops 250. But whatever we're drooling over next year, whatever makes its way onto the dorm-room walls and man-children's screen-savers, it won't run on petrol. Unless it's still a Veyron: the last king of the gas-guzzlers, forever the greatest. All hail.

WIRED Best car in the world.

TIRED No cupholder.

• Body Style: Convertible, Sports Car
• Engine Type: Gas
• Manufacturer: Bugatti
• Price: $2,100,000 (as tested)

http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_veyron_convertible

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Auto-Loan-Backed Deals Make Up Bulk Of Issuance This Year

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Bonds backed by auto loans make up the biggest chunk of asset-backed deals issued so far this year.

This helps consumers shopping for cars as they can get loans at lower rates because banks can offer them more attractive deals. Having lower monthly payments also means borrowers are less likely to default on their loans as they juggle bills in a sour economy, with the constant fear of a job loss.

Issuance of asset-backed securities stood at $77 billion on July 24, down from $126 billion at this time last year, according to Asset-Backed Alert, a trade publication. Of this, nearly 40% of issuance - worth about $28 billion - is in the auto sector, up from about 29% at this time last year, according to Citigroup analysts. Credit-card-loan-backed deals have fallen to second place this year, comprising about a third of issuance, down from 46% at this time last year.

The heavy issuance of auto deals reflects the "backlog of auto deals left over from late 2008," said Darrell Wheeler, head of securitization research at Citigroup.

A substantial portion of the deals that were sold this year were eligible for cheap funding for investors through the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF. Issuers this year include Ford Motor Co. (F), Honda Motor Co. (HMC), Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY), Volkswagen AG (VLKAY) and Chrysler Group LLC.

By offering these cheap loans, the central bank has given a boost to the securitization market and helped ease the credit situation in the economy.

"If a consumer cannot get a competitive loan to buy a car, there isn't much of a point in saving the car manufacturers," said Jim Harrington, an asset-backed securities portfolio manager at Ryan Labs Asset Management in New York. "There was a break in the chain."

Auto-sector loans represent about 20% of all consumer-asset-backed securities issuance in a typical year. The deals represent a relatively safe investment: From 1986 through the first quarter of 2009, auto ABS accounted for roughly 20% of all the upgrades and only 1.1% of the downgrades, according to a note from Citi.

"A vehicle ranks highly in the consumer's hierarchy of needs; therefore the loan purpose is also a positive attribute," the Citi note said, because consumers "will prioritize paying their monthly vehicle loan payment, even in hard times."

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200907241415DOWJONESDJONLINE000729_FORTUNE5.htm

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