LA Auto Show is happening now! Also, DNA cocoon cars!

The always lovely LA Auto show will be happening in the Los Angeles Convention Center starting November 19th and running through November 28th, including Thanksgiving weekend. What better way to celebrate stealing land from the natives by showing off how environmentally friendly we can be after 125 years of the automobile. Attending manufacturers include Fiat (thanks for saving Chrysler), Toyota (nobody cares about the new Corolla), Jeep (they usually bring a 4x4 course with them - always fun), Chevrolet ("Buy a Volt"), Fisker ("We're better than Tesla we swear"), Volvo (who designed an air-powered car for the design challenge), and Porsche (Yes, the Panamera looks like a Photoshop job, but it's legit).

The big brouhaha this year is the design challenge, which will include German and Japanese entrants for the first time ever. The challenge is always based on a theme, and this year I like the choice:

"The theme this year addresses society's shift toward minimizing consumption of the earth's resources. The objective is to envision an efficient, light-weight, four passenger vehicle (not to exceed 1,000 lbs.), that is both comfortable and safe, while delivering satisfactory driving performance without sacrificing the styling consumers demand."

-taken from the LA Auto Show website

So that means to the wonderful people at Maybach to throw some Segway parts into a rickshaw. No, really. They're even calling it DRS; Den-riki-sha. Also, it's grown from a DNA cocoon. I'm not making this up.

Whatever floats your boat.

Mildly interesting cars parked in Evanston 1

In this pilot issue of Mildly interesting cars parked in Evanston, we
have what appears to be a 2006 or 2007 Mercedes-Benz SL 550 (feel free
to correct me if I'm wrong). All I know about this car is that it has
a big engine - great for getting around Chicagoland's tiny roads in
the winter when you can't get any traction anyhow - and that it was
pretty common for a piece of metal to fall into the fuel tank, causing
a mystery clanking doing until you write the Germans a check and they
replace your whole fuel tank. Also a seal failure in the rear window
would sometimes cause the roof retractor electronics to fail, which
was also not cheap to replace. Other than that however, the SL class
is not that bad looking, especially in this picture where you can't
really see it.

Don't park there!

The city of Evanston is getting mad happy towing cars on Haven st.
Literally 7 tow trucks were there this morning. Among the towed were a
recent model Audi A4, a VW Golf GTI, and a waste-of-space Toyota
Corolla ca. 1990. Those Evanston meter maids like their job a little
too much.

Mobile blogging wut

Here's an epic shot of the Nurburgring to test out this new mobile
blogging feature I just discovered.