Fear on Wheels: Why the Astro Van is the scariest car on the road

Freeway, surface street, I don't care. If I see an Chevy Astro Van (or GMC Safari for that matter) I'm running like hell. Here's 5 fantastic reasons why:

1. They stopped making them in 1996, which makes the average price of one now days somewhere around $800. I inherently don't like or trust anyone who wants a seven passenger vehicle that costs this little. It's not that I don't trust broke folks. I AM broke folks. It's just that there's a whole lot of you in there and this brings me to my next point.
2. The Astro and Safari ONLY came with tinted windows. You could be alone, you could be with a dozen of your buddies. I don't know and I don't trust that I don't know.
3. A 25 year old American vehicle will have some mechanic problems. No, scratch that, it will have constant mechanical problems. Not to mention that if you spent 800 bucks on a truck, you're unlikely to be Mr. Maintenance. If this big lunch box on wheels breaks down in front of me on the freeway, I don't like my odds.
4. It's fricken shady looking. End of. There's way more chance that, at this point in its life, the Astro has turned into the older son's shaggin' wagon or mobile stonatorium rather than shuttling kids around soccer practice. Together with all the pieces above, we can be sure that the driver of an Astro Van is up to no good.
5. For all its crappiness, these vans are actually built on an S10 pickup chassis. That means 4.3L V6 made of indestructibleness, rear-wheel drive and enough heavy metal to drive through a wall. Compared to today's flimsy, plastic, cup-holder laden front-wheel drive vans - the Astro is an urban assault vehicle ready to flee from crime scenes or haul stolen goods across the country.

More than any old van, the Astro now represents sheer, people-carrying menace. If you see one, don't get close. There's nothing good going on inside.

The Best Car Blog (this one) is now the best iTunes Car Podcast (or Vodcast if you prefer)

Apparently, everyone and their mother has been obsessively watching Alex's CARmageddon and my first mini car movie Top Gear thing - L.A. MPG OutSmarted. YouTube has clearly had a hard time handling all these billions of foaming audiences. That must be why they say only like three people have watched the 2 videos I've posted so far. But, not to worry, if YouTube's not your cup of car awesome, you can now see this latest episode, featuring street interviews about the Smart ForTwo in Los Angeles - on iTunes! Eat that other car blog guys! Alex's Carmageddon is now an iTune that you can get by clicking on that button there - it launches iTunes and you can subscribe to get the latest videos in high quality on your iPod or iPhone or iPod Touch or whatever else you got for Hanakuh. And, obviously, it's totally free (some people I know though podcasts cost money - those people are dumbasses)

Or, I guess, if you're boring, you can still watch it here as a uTube. You can also subscribe with your Creative Zen MP3 player (i'd make fun, but I used to have one) OR pretty much any other way you want. Check out AlexsCARmageddon.com for all your options. 

Basic Transportation Car Blog goes Video - with Alex's Carmageddon and L.A. MPG

Writing's dead, when you think about it. So, check out Basic Transportation's latest online-sibling!

A Cool Volvo? Thanks Galpin for your Custom C30

If you were at the L.A. Autoshow - you were probably dissappointed. A lot of the same old without many debuts. Generally, a lot of plastic, already-available cars for close to $30K. It left us wanting a restored Chevy Malibu and one of those eight dollar Margaritas they were peddling in the convention center.

But, if you'd stopped by the Galpin booth next to the Garage Envy Ford GT display, you saw something you have never seen before. A customised / hot-rodded Volvo. And not just any safety-obsessed Ikea couch on wheels - but the C30.

Shocking the world with a radical use of flat paint (like the Lexus, flat black, FiveAxis concept but not). This thing was purple, had a Galpiny white racing stripe and massive, color-matched purple wheels with white walls. So, what it looked like was a lead sled from the 50s but on a cutting edge Volvo hatchback. The car appears in Galpin's 2008 calendar but it's still in the Basic Transportation official car - so we're not sure which month. A hatchback that looks fast but not 'import scene fast'? Awesome! What do you think about the fast and furious C30? Comment at will!

Buck Pimps out an Enclave for the 'Urban CEO'. Sounds suspicious.

If you really run a tech company, rap record label, hell, even an insurance company - you're not driving a Buick. But what if you want to spend 10 thousand dollars less than the price of an Hummer H2 - about 45 grand? Well, Buick has a suggestion they're debuting at the SEMA show. Autoblog has the details, but here's what we know. It's an Enclave, which is actually the least-sad Buick since the 93 Riviera - lowered, on big wheels and with a glued-on ground treatment that makes it look like a C student's Porsche Cayenne! And that's not bad! The 45 grand is the price of an Enclave, plus, let's say airbags, bumpers, sideskirts and rims. Let's say 50K - but you can build your very own 'Urban CEO Enclave' (it was better than calling it The Street Pharmacist Special.

Video: Oh My God, Your Car - The Hottest Ferrari Ever!

Have you ever been like, 'screw you, people with nicer cars than mine. Maybe you worked harder in school, but I bet you just have rich parents'. We at Basic Transportation have. And that's why this video of a beautiful and exotic Ferrari 612 flaming like a charcoal barbecue makes our heart smile. And why is an expensive feat of engineering excellence catching fire anyway?

Think about that...

Good news! There's one 612 (just one!) on eBay for $200,000

What's the Deal with Germans and Hydrogen?

Generally, we don't like the 7-Series. iDrive sucks and it's a lot ugglier than the model it replaced. But we don't mind alternative fuels and BMW is eeking closer and closer to offering us a Hydrogen-powered 7-Series, which takes balls. At the moment, they're only being used for BMW's PR around the world. They loaned some to NASA for about eight weeks and now, it seems they just go around the world, loaning them out to high-profile VIPs, business folks and especially politicians.

The halo fleet of super green cars is mmm mmm good PR when you're the company that's known for gas guzzlers like the M5 - close 300 g/km of CO2 emissions. The 750hL spews nothing but water vapor when running on hydrogen. Since you can't buy hydrogen very readily, the thing also runs on gas - which is what most normal folks would end up using in this now-heavier, V12 big boy.

All the hydrogen fuel cell stuff adds an extra 550 pounds to the already massive 7 and according to this Ben Lage article, just the materials in each of the 100 or so examples of the 7-Series 750hL costs around $400 grand. With the research, they're about a mil-point-five a piece.

The not-at-all-pompous-sounding BMW hydrogen technology researcher, Dr. Frank Ochmann explains,"We have no price on the car. We regard this as an offer to society to show society where we stand on clean energy."

"We have no price on the car," said BMW hydrogen technology researcher Dr. Frank Ochmann. "We regard this as an offer to society to show society where we stand on clean energy."

I can't help but wonder - how much will gas prices have to go up for you to give up the truck? Take the poll below!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

You Fricken kidding me? Jeep releases Jeep Brand House Paint!

It's not that we mind car brand branded stuff. I got a pair of Jeep jeans, they resist water (and beer) with some sort of Teflon-like beading action. Very cool, but even those were a gift. And I think I had one of those Jeep boom boxes, or at least really wanted one.

Now colors like Sahara brown will be available for your house - inside, outside, the basement, all of it. It's not that they're taking the time out of figuring out how to make the Commander even uglier to make paint. This is just part of Jeep's licensing drive. You can now buy clothes, toys, bikes even bed linens and 'grooming kits; that are Jeepafied - which usually means it's extra tough, or at least water resistant - or at least carry the logo. That's the first time we've ever said 'linens' here.

Next year, watch out for Jeep's own navigation system that also includes an MP3 player, a video player and is tough and cool looking. We're usually more cynical here, but that sounds kinda cool.

Jeep's so good at licensing, they've won an award from it from the companies that license their stuff association or whatever it's called (Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA).

I've only seen this story on Chrysler's password-required blog, launched a month or two ago. It's not great.

To check out all the crazy Jeep crap you can ever possibly want to own, check out www.AllThingsJeep.com or www.JeepWorld.com

It's Coming! Dodge Challenger starts getting made! Cooler than Camaro? You decide!

All the car blogs are letting you know that Dodge is ready to auction off the first three, production Challengers! That means the tooling's done and we're ready for the oldest-looking, new muscle car yet! Meanwhile, Chevy is so close to the Camaro that they're already showing you the Convertible version at Frankfurt.

But only Basic Transportation lets you tell me which one you'd go test drive, haggle over, finance and drive to work!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Hell Yeah! Jeep Wranglers back in the Army with a Pickup to Boot

You know we love Jeeps at Basic Transportation. I've even owned one. And now the cheapest and best 4x4 is going back to where it all started. War! Jeep has announced the J8, a reinforced, diesel version of the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. And, for extra awesome, they're even making a pickup version called the JT. (Jeep Truck, 'tard). So, a 2.8-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine that produces 158 hp and 295 lb.-ft. of torque - that's a cool truck you can down with!


No word if the J8 will be available for regular, none shot-at people, but hard to imagine they'd keep it from us. Finally, back to simple, agricultural basics for the Wrangler and the long-awaited Wrangler pickup - though not really as cool as the Gladiator.

Check out the full story pic gallery and J8 press release on Jalopnik here.

Volvo gets an extra 4 1/4 mpg from the C30 with simple tweaks - why are they alone?

Fuel cells, hybrid drives and thousands of batteries. There's lots at the Frankfurt show to show off car companies as whale kissing, tree hugging, environmental freaks. Lots and lots of technology we might see in like ten years to help save the planet and help you score with hippie chicks.

For the moment, Volvo has decided to keep it real and, as Autoblog points out, simple as hell with the C30 Efficiency - a 1.6L Diesel Volvo that, by the way, already gets better gas mileage than Google's Prius Fleet (none-plug-in).

Tweaks (listed in another Autoblog post here) to the gears, undercarriage, even oil and tires and wheels and viola - 9 g/km (grams per kilometer you drive in it) less CO2 AND, AND, wait for it, AND 4.25 mpg more! That's savings you can take to the money bank and you can shit on Prius drivers, since - the new mileage I used a calculated, so I assume Basic Transportation - Car and Truck and Electric Vehicle (why not) blog brought it to you first. Click on title to see Autoblog's C30 Efficiency image gallery (not exciting, but efficient).

This Week in Gas Price History: California's paying less, Texas paying more, but we're all screwed

To be precise, we're screwed at a rate of 20 cents since last year, about buck since this week 2004. So, really, the long-term outlook for being able to guzzle as much gas as we want is probably on the decline. So, again, I gotta ask - how much is too much - remember this poll? Vote now!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Ford, VW and Suburu Want You to Have Kids and go to Ikea.

That's an IKEA bookshelf. Take a good look at it. Does it arouse? Do you love it? Do you want to marry it? Well, you must. Because you, computer-savvy, middle-class person can't seem to get your fill. Piles upon piles of these combined with shopping at Costco and fertility pills that make you have quadruplets are apparently spurring on all the cars guys to start thinking cargo space.

Why else would a VW Getta 'Sportwagon', a new Suburu Impreza and a brand new Ford thing called the Flex all be debuting in New York. Yes, it's the most boring car show of them all, since it takes place on 'enemy territory' among those foot using, whale kissers. Wagons are plentiful!

The great thing about wagons that, unlike SUVs, they won't start being uncool one day. Since the 50s, surfers and, later, straight-up gangstas have made wagons cool.. The Flex shows some of that potential for being tweaked into coolness. Some custom paint (plenty of room to express yourself on a wagon). Some rims and a cargo area filled with subwoofers, longboards and a mattress - and you've got yourself a wagon that doesn't look like it's your mom's!

We actually like the Flex. It's a wagon that doesn't try to hard, and that's always meant 'classic'. Unfortunately, the Flex is Front Wheel Drive (FWD) - as in - not cool or sporty. It's got lots of glass, so it'll be light. Which is good. And it's got a shiny metal-looking thing on the tailgate - which is wagoony. It's even got a white roof like the FJ Cruiser. Yes, they're calling it a cross-over - but forget all that. Check out their (still not-quite-done) microsite for the Flex.

Check out some of these old school, rear-wheel drive wagons show how it's done.

The Ford Galaxie - a blood relative of the Flex. Notice the guy even shaved off the doorhandles along with the nice Woody Woodpecker touches. Matte paint and red wheels are enough to make this big, bad bastard kick ass!




The Chevy Caprice Wagon was massive with customisers. My guess, it was the 5.7L bad-ass sitting under the hood. Plus, you could bolt on 96' Impala SS parts. Plus these were cheap after just a couple years!


When dead people just plain refuse to stay dead - who is it that you might consider calling? You god damn right, it's the Ghostbusters and their 1959 Cadillac Ambulance - officially called the Ecto 1 - since it's 'ectoplasm' that ghosts are made of. Also check out the fiends at Grim Rides Hearse Society to see more of these awesome 'wagons'.

From Cool Cheap Cars - Really, really disgusting new Scion.

Lots of people didn't much like the Scion xB when it came out. Based on the Japanese Black Box, it just wasn't how L.A. people (where the first Scions were releases) looked at cars. L.A. folks want big trucks, or at least convertibles. Your car is who you are - and not a lot of people saw themselves as a slow refrigerator box. But the xB was cool enough to win over a lot of fans. With its impossibly massive interior (seriously, it's like an old Chevy Astro van in there) - and its low, low, low price - it was actually an OK way to go, car-wise.

But almost a decade later, Scion felt the pressure to do something new to the xB - so they made it ugly and more Toyota-like. Behold, the above picture of the uglified crap mobile that is replacing the beloved all box. It's rounder, its front end vaguely resembles Toyota vans and it's coming at you soon for $15,650. Look for the new Scion xB in Second Life too, it's even uglier.

A Chinese Chevy: How can You Lose?

If You're Under 25, you must be a DJ!

'Young people. With their music and their long hair. Get a damn job, you useless bastards!' That's just about how GM executives talk, we'd assume. Executive people are about the age to have teenage kids and who's more in touch with youth than their parents!

So, in a desperate, desperate death spasm of attempted coolness, Chevy has just shown off some shiny, new, teeny, tiny concept cars at the New York Auto Show. Needless to say, with how New York feels about cars - debuting very small and very slow rides simply must be done in walking capital of the United States.

But wait! It's not that all three of these little bastards might make it to production. Instead, like any good dad, Chevrolet has provided us with choice! Even you can go to http://www.vote4chevrolet.com/ and vote for the Beat, Groove or Trax as the concept you hate least. Also notice how they all have DJing related names, for that extra bit of small car funk.

Apparently, spinning some mad, phat vinyl is what all young people do all the time. They are the same exact people that, apparently, just crave the very hell out of tiny little cars. Witness this closeup of an orange Toyota Aygo, from last year's Paris show - with the hydraulic-powered rear(that's something we can all enjoy) that comes out on to reveal two turntables and a microphone. So play that funky music! (as long as you're not very tall)

Eewwww. First open source car looks like diarhea

Yeah, so we've been off the air for a while. But now, the 'Common', created by everyone - a little ugly bit at a time - just jolted Basic Transportation back to life. Created through 'open source' where a community shares innovations and troubleshoots together to create something - usually an operating system - this thing is part of what Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment is calling the OScar project. Look at it and tell me everyone involved isn't high as all hell.

Pickup Spot: Expensive gas, now James Inhofe and Korea - are Trucks screwed?

First, a bit of poli-sci background. James Inhofe was, until just after the mid-terms, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Because he doesn't beleive in global warming, American drivers have cheerfully been left alone when it came to cutting down on ice cap-melting V8s. And that was pretty good...for us, not the ice caps. Screw those.

Now, James, who compared Al Gore's whale hugging, tree kissing, flick to Hitler's Mein Kompf, is gone. And a democrat is taking his place. Good for the environment, bad for big, fat, fun trucks. Are trucks in trouble? Will we still be able to highlight the quality with which we f*ck using the immense size of our truck? We'll see.

In the meantime, here's the latest in truckdom:

We've been looking forward to the H3T - based on the concept GM showed off like three years ago, before the H3 was even out (left). Now, it looks like we're getting closer to production. And the pictures just posted on AutoBlog (below) made our mouths fill with vomit, as dreams of our new Hummer H3T pickup fizzled away. Might as well just get a Ranger.



Jeep, meanwhile, also gave up its concept truck ambitions and settled for a bit of welding to chop down the Wrangler into a Wrangler with a pickup bed. Again, the concept - cool. The actual truck we'll be seeing soon? Well, you have to really like the front end of Wranglers (as I do) to give a crap. We've got high hopes for the extended cab. There's no room for stuff behind the seats in this one Plus, let's home a real-Jeep-style soft top is coming too. The convertible Dakotas are getting pretty old, we need a convertible truck! (SSR is not a truck)

Finally, check out what the Koreans are threatening us with now. No, it's not a brilliant white light being the last thing we all see before being vaporised. That's a different Korea. South Korea just plan to nuke America's truck industry. As opposed to Jeep and Hummer, this is the real demilitirized zone right here:

Instead of playing soldier, the concept sketches from Kia and Hyundai look like Titan-style pickups where you sit on leather watching big screens not playing G.I.Joe in a truck based on another truck based on a civilian version of an army truck.

Yeah, We're Half Way There.

My man, Bob, at Cars Cars Cars says the Volvo C30 won't be out until 2008 or 9. I say, that's crap. Why would you still care in two years? When Mini wanted to make a longer Mini, for no reason at all, they just did it. And yet, shopping the ass-end of a S40 takes 3 years? By then, Focuses will fly, Scions will turn into robots and Minis will come with about twelve doors, including four as the rear hatch.

All I'm saying is, if you have a cool car, just make it already. This is the only Volvo that doesn't look lame, almost ever (I do like the 544 from the 60s). And, come to think of it, that's a cool Volvo hatchback that's already out. With less than 100 horsepower but tons of coolness, you won't beat the 544 - and, for around 5 grand, you're probably better off. The C30 looks good in the pictures, but in real life it's as pretentious and vaguely effeminate as any Volvo.

basic transportation Celebrates new logo with customized, International® CXT GigantoTruck.

Well, we wish. There are trucks and then, there's the real thing - with a air horn, the kind with a string to pull, and big pipes coming out the top. There's a bunch of good reasons to study hard in school, and affording a real truck is probably the best. Go to http://www.internationaldelivers.com/mycxt to design your very own International CXT and stay in school.

Caught in the Crossfire...'s lameness.

Remember the Crossfire?

Yeah, no one does. And yet, if the desperate housewife on your street didn't go for its mid-life crisis tackling appeal - maybe this thing will do the trick.

Maybe this is the dad version. After slamming doors and screaming about his wife doesn't really understand him - he can storm out and get into this, Hemi-powered, 1.5 ton Viagra bottle . Cause that's what this is. It's even called the Firepower - to remind you that you don't shoot blanks. The idea of this sort of sporty Chrysler actually makes the Corvette seem like it's for young people. Check out the story on Car's awesome new website - fun fact: Car's been a hair away from publishing my Escalade test-drive for 4 months. I'll let you know how that goes.