MacNeil Automotive Products. What Splatters on You?

From the Just Scratching Head Files: Anybody out there buying those Made in America floor mats from MacNeil Automotive?

Chances are if you read any major automotive magazine, fully 1/3 of the pages are owned by MacNeil. Floor mats designed to drain a Brooklyn block's worth of water from your boots and channel it off to the nearest Mississippi tributary are the firm's staple, though some little J.C Whitney-ish doodads like smoke-tint window gutters are offered in case you didn't step into your car wearing the entire weather system on your boots.

Your Unhumble Car Czar lives in a climate that is at times drowned in every form of precipitatory nastiness for days on end, however not once over the decades has he wished for floor mats modeled after the canal grid of Venice. The factory rugs do just fine.

But somebody ... a lot of somebodies ... must be buying these flowmatsters, or Mr. MacNeil is draining more than boots buying up all these car mag pages.

If you're reading this and you buy MacNeil sole drainage products, please weigh in and tell us what you're wading through on the way to your car each day.

If you're not reading this, never mind.

In any case, thanks for supporting the best in dead tree automotive media, Mr. MacNeil.

P.S. We miss the hot wife from the early ads. This mistressy-looking Botox floozy in the current ads is soooo cliché.

-TCC

Brian Barnhart Speaks Again ...

"It wasn't a challenge to these highly talented drivers." -- Brian Barnhart, 12/15/11

"It wasn't a challenge to these highly talented drivers." -- Brian Barnhart, 12/15/11

"It wasn't a challenge to these highly talented drivers." -- Brian Barnhart, 12/15/11

"It wasn't a challenge to these highly talented drivers." -- Brian Barnhart, 12/15/11

"It wasn't a challenge to these highly talented drivers." -- Brian Barnhart, 12/15/11

RIP, Mr. Wheldon

Carding VW's TDI

Volkswagen's new Ameri-sized Passat is by all accounts a hit.  With more leg room than an Audi A8, Teutonic road manners, and equipment levels that shame absolutely everything from the Old Continent for Accord/Camry money, the wisdom of letting the Germans invade the foothills of Tennessee is well on its way to confirmed.

And while the big six competes well and the not-long-for-this-world five gets by, its the turbodiesel four that makes the most compelling case for buying a big V-dub over a big anything else for use in the land of wide-open mountains, deserts, and plains.  With its enormous 18.5 gallon fuel tank and easy 43 mpg+ highway numbers, coast to coast is yours in under four tanks.

Classic diesel shove is always under foot with 236 foot-pounds on-tap from 1,500 rpm, so unless you're into stoplight drag racing, you'll never be inconvenienced by the piddly 140 horsepower supplied in the interest of keeping consumption in check.  Authoritative getaways and mid-range punch that you'll never get out of a gas four are just a poke away.

The current large disparity between the price of unleaded and diesel stateside (up to a buck a gallon at this posting) is the only gotcha in the whole deal.  Shop around and you might gap down to fifty cents, but the range of surprises you might find on a cross country trip could quickly ruin your diesel payback numbers.

Since VW is the largest purveyor of passenger car diesels in the USA and its right-sized, right-contented Tennessee Teut is the opening volley of the brand's bid for world domination, maybe a VW TDI-branded generous-percentage-back-on-diesel credit card would be in order.

Just sayin', VW.

I am the Car Czar, and I'm here to help.