The Good Oil: Subaru leads the way

.

Wally Dumper reckons the Subaru is one of the "coolest" cars in the country. Dumper would say this - he is the general manager of Subaru New Zealand. He and his team are also coming off a successful 1999, where sales of 1684 cars were up 23 per cent on 1998. This gets Dumper going: "None of the other major players in the market bettered a 16 per cent improvement over their 1998 result. Our policy of concentrating on the lifestyle and performance niche areas of the market is continuing to reap dividends." The Subaru Legacy was the Herald's 1999 Car of the Year.

Footing it with new pedals

It's been said many times before: the modern car has more computing power than the spacecraft which landed Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969. But we ain't seen nothin' yet. Ford in Detroit, mindful that we are all built differently and that some drivers, in order to reach the pedals, have to sit too close the steering wheel, has come up with power-adjustable accelerator and brake pedals. With a touch of a button in the new automatic Mercury Sable sedan, both pedals can be moved about 8cm towards the driver. This helps optimise the driver's position relative to the steering wheel. Carmakers recommend that drivers in a car equipped with an airbag shouldn't sit closer than 20cm from the wheel.

Bye, bye American pie

Americans bought 16.9 million new cars and trucks in 1999, speeding past the old sales record of 16 million set in 1986. By comparison, just for the hell of it, New Zealanders bought 72,241 new vehicles last year. But, says Fortune magazine, General Motors, Ford and the Chrysler half of DaimlerChrysler, didn't do as well as the figures suggest. "They have been so busy keeping up with demand, especially in pick-up trucks and sport-utility vehicles, that they've gotten lazy about watching developments in the rest of the market. As a result, competitors from Germany, Japan and Korea are eating their lunch in established market segments, beating them into new ones, and snatching the young buyers that Detroit desperately needs," said the magazine.

We are the world

* A thief had to jog to a police station in Hanover, Germany, handcuffed to the police car. Apparently, his body odour was so bad police insisted he remain downwind and outside the car.

* And down the road in Stuttgart, identical twin sisters, aged 20, were caught speeding in a convertible car by a roadside camera. They escaped a fine because both denied driving and police couldn't prove which was at the wheel.

* Drunk driver Rebecca Escobar was ordered by a judge in the United States to walk around her home town wearing a sign that reads: "I am a convicted drunk driver and as a result I took a life."