From Miss Mota Mouth this week comes a shocking revelation that we find especially crushing...

Which cars are getting crushed?
Some cars are squeaky clean, have leather seats, full navigation systems, V6's or V8 engines with far less than 30,000 miles on them. They still have that new car smell and in some cases, will still have bits of protective film covering the interior parts. For the most part they could never be considered damaged except for the odd scratch or ding that comes from brushing against the car or pulling a suitcase out of the trunk.

Continue reading this sad tale on Miss Mota Mouth's blog

From Travels With Children comes some great advice about finding a hotel room for larger families:

Finding a room that will accommodate a family of six is no small task.  Here are some places where we’ve had good stays

Continue reading on Travels with Children

Popular automotive writer Michael Banovsky shared his idealized version of the recently unveiled Nissan Cube with his Twitter followers this week.

Yes, that is a Smart Car outperforming a Ferrari on a drag strip. It's actually a Smartuki, a Smart car with a Suzuki GSX-R 1100 CC 4-cylinder "Hyabusa" engine installed.

Smart cars are the laughing stock of the car world right now, overpriced, undersized and underpowered, with embarrassing 0-60 times, Premium fuel requirements, and a clownish demeanor. New in the US for 2008, they've been running strong in Europe for a few years now. So some enterprising Brits figured out that the Smart's entire drivetrain bolts right out and one can with little pain drop in a 10,000 RPM screamer from a sportbike.

Now I know this is a family car magazine, and the 2-seat FourTwo doesn't really have much relevance to us even in its' 50-hp stock capacity, so what interest do we have in the 180-hp overstuffed screamer? Every! It's a marvel of modern technology! It's a go-kart with a phonebooth on top! It does wheelies and can burn rubber all day! It simply looks like it's a lot of fun, and my mid-life crisis is inching closer and closer...

The atmosphere was a little somber but the LA Auto show still held much to see. Tons of concept cars, and an honest move towards green. Trends noted included suicide doors (interesting in this market), rear/side view mirrors being replaced by integrated cameras, and more ways to piggyback smaller, more eco friendly vehicles onto your car. There was a definite downtrend in oversized SUV's and a veritable crossover vehicle explosion.

Many of today's new cars come with all the in-car entertainment options we demand: Navigation, Backup Cameras, MP3 player interfaces, Bluetooth, Rear seat DVD/TV, Satellite and HD Radio, etc.  

For those of us with older cars, those integrated features are a pipe dream and we're left with a cluttered dash of power cords, stick-on gadgets, and compromising features.

Unless you go the route of a custom PC install in your vehicle.  when we think of PCs in cars the image that comes to mind is the state trooper with a laptop bolted to the console, but there's actually a growing subculture of people using common PC and Mac computers to achieve the same goals.

I had an opportunity to look at one such installation and I was blown away. In addition to a sizable MP3 collection, decent Nav system, XM and HD radio tuners, bluetooth integration and video capability, Eric Mindte's Honda Prelude also has access to full on-board diagnostics, wi-fi internet and anything else you want to run in Windows XP™!

So what do you need to get a PC setup going in your dash? A 7" touch screen is a good place to start, as is a Micro-ATX PC case that looks like an amplifier with big heat sinks. Then you'll need a motherboard, processor and memory. A hard drive, a radio tuner card, and then pretty much everything else is plug and play USB componentry. The Logitech diNovo Bluetooth Mini-keyboard is a necessity, as is the Grippin PowerMate remote volume knob.  Centrafuse software is the best of the available offerings that I've tested, and all told Eric's project ran him around $1000. That's not bad considering the price of a navigation system in most vehicles, especially at the lower end.

Intrigued? There is a wealth of information on the subject at  http://www.mp3car.com

If only there was an easier way to navigate the treacherous waters of car shopping. Finding your automotive mate can be stressful, particularly if you are not a big car enthusiast and up on all the latest car info. It's intimidating out there. Going to a dealership can be as stressful as a blind date.

Enter Car Zen.

Car Zen is an online matchmaker. But not for couples. For you, and your car. Rather than spend the next six months scouring the web for news, you can now click on over and in mere moments, fill out a compatibility quiz that will match you with the most ideal vehicles, based on your wants and needs.

Skeptical? Go and check it out. This is not just another clinical survey system that matches you based on how many people you need to move. It takes the subtler points into account too - such as your sense of style, how many carseats you have and whether you have issues with buying American cars. This is a search engine for the quirkiest of car shoppers. It sorts cars in ways that you would not have even considered. And in the end... you have an extremely time saving potential list of first dates that are worth the test drive.

Car Zen was designed with women and families in mind and I think they have done a stellar job. We recently bought a car after weeks and months of research and many test drives. I took a car search quiz before writing this article only to find that the car I bought, was indeed #1 on the list. I could have saved so much time with this site on my side a little sooner!