Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

A glimmer of hope?

Some new pixelboard sign messages on the 401 today, including one that gave my heart a wee flutter:

"SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT".

By definition, this means if someone - ANYONE - is going faster than you, pull over to the right and let them pass.

It is the law, after all, clearly stated in two separate sub-sections of the Highway Traffic Act.

The signs (and the laws) also make no reference whatsoever to WHAT speed you're going. "Slow-ER" is a relative, not an absolute, term.

Just because you're obeying one law (the speed limit) does not give you the right to break two others.

The wording is not quite as strong as "ALL TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT" would be, or, as they say in Australia, "KEEP LEFT EXCEPT WHEN OVERTAKING" (their 'left', of course, is our 'right').

But I'll take anything I can get.

The sad thing, as regular readers know all too well, is that the people who design our highways don't seem to know the people who prepare the pixelboard signs (or the Highway Traffic Act).

So they keep designing the lanes such that the driving lane keeps disappearing.

This is illogical, dangerous, confusing, and Beyond Stupid.

And it's one area where the Australians are no smarter than we are - their driving lane keeps disappearing too.

What's wrong with these people? Why do only England and Germany (and Newfoundland, bless their hearts) seem to get this right?

And why can't I flush some of these highway designers out so they can try to explain to me why they keep doing it wrong?

Or so maybe I can beat some sense into them...

More on Melbourne Australia

As if the infamous 'hook' turns - making right turns from the left-most lane - didn't make getting around Melbourne enough of a challenge, some of the street names add to the confusion.

First, there seem to be almost as many Collins Streets here as there are Peachtrees in Atlanta.

And the first east-west street north of the 'main' Collins Street (the one in the CBD - Central Business District) is called Little Collins Street.

A bit further down, the first east-west street north of Flinders Street is called Flinders Lane.

It's not like Australia is short of military, sports or cultural heroes to name streets after. Why do they double up like this?

In general though, Melbourne is a delightful city. It's particularly easy for Torontonians to get adjusted, because the downtown streets are laid out in a nice, familiar, rectangular grid pattern.

And the water - the Yarra River - is on the south, just as Lake Ontario is for us.

We don't have bridges across our water though...

The city is remarkably clean. There's a nice mixture of wonderful old buildings like the Flinders Street station (left) which I'm heading to as I type in the clean and efficient electric train/subway/Metro system), and spectacular modern architecture (right).

The residents are at least as racially and culturally diverse as T-Dot, although a lot of them do seem to smoke. And everyone, even the security people at the Australian Open Tennis Tournament, is very friendly and, well, open.

I wonder if they have to dial up the 'tude if they work the up-coming Formula One Grand Prix?

I dunno - I've never been to that race.

It seems I'm not alone in liking this place, judging from the published comments of most of the F1 drivers, and the autographs on the competitors' sign-in board at the tennis event. The security guy was oh so pleasant in refusing to allow me to take a photo of it, although not nice enough to just look the other way for 1/125th of a second. Still not sure why it wasn't allowed - it seemed to be excellent publicity for the event and a 'humanizing' element for these ball-hawking automatons that are today's tennis pros.

And just half an hour from downtown, you can find some terrific roads upon which you can wring out something as potent as the Ford Falcon GT-P I drove today (more in a future edition of Wheels) and not even break the speed limit.

Which is a Good Thing, because Australia is littered with speed cameras, and the constabulary seems to have beaten all the testosterone out of the drivers, who all seem to meander along at a couple of klicks over whatever the limit happens to be. I only saw one guy driving really fast, in an older Ford Mondeo in a rather shocking shade of turquoise blue (maybe he was ashamed of it and was just trying to get it back in the garage).

That said, I didn't see a single traffic cop in three days of driving around here.

Australia has a very high seat belt wearing rate, but given their supposed interest in traffic safety, I'm surprised there is no Daytime Running Lights regulation here, and very few drivers turn their lights on all the time.

C'mon mates; time to get with the program.

And despite signs requiring drivers to keep left (our right) except 'for 'overtaking', their lane discipline on freeways isn't a whole lot better than ours. On twisty mountain roads however, they will pull over and let you pass. I was following a previous-generation Kia Rio four-door hatch on one of the above-mentioned roads. It was being driven probably as fast as a Kia Rio has ever been driven since Bob English ran one in Targa Newfoundland a few years ago. The guy clearly knew what he was doing, but realizing he had no chance against a supercharged V8 Falcon, he too pulled over to let me carry on. He deserved the jaunty wave I gave him.

In all, Australia is a fantastic place to visit - and, I bet, to live.

Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino live on

Did you ever wonder what happened to the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino?

(Unless you're of a 'certain age' you might have no idea what I'm talking about...)

With the car-i-fication of trucks and the truck-i-fication of cars over the past 30 years or so, you might have thought that a passenger car-based pick-up truck might be just the ticket.

Not so's you'd notice.

Volkswagen gave it a shot with their Rabbit pick-up, as did Dodge with the Omni-based Rampage.

I guess the Subaru Baja sort-of qualifies too. Chevy Avalanche and Honda Ridgeline aren't far off, but those are really SUV-based, rather than car-based.

But with very few exceptions, these all shared one attribute - nobody cared.

Here in Australia, however, the concept carries on in the form of the 'ute', short for 'utility'. They aren't as prevalent as they once were, but you still see a lot of them.

Actually it doesn't just 'carry on', it seems to have been invented here.

It may be an urban legend, but Ford's story and they're sticking to it is that back in 1932, a farmer's wife wrote to Ford complaining about riding to church in her husband's farm truck, which, needless to say, was a bit, er, ripe.

Apparently, banks would finance farm trucks but not cars. People could typically only afford one vehicle, so a truck it was.

"Why can't you make a vehicle which can take the pigs to market on Saturday, and us to church on Sunday?" she wrote.

Maybe there were no PR people to shuffle this letter onto in those days; in any event it led Ford to graft a pick-up box onto a passenger-car chassis, reinforce it appropriately, and thus was born, officially, the 'coupe-utility'.

My local sources say the true nick-name for these things - what the people who buy them (largely in the rural north) call them - is 'tilly', suggesting a marketing tie-in with a certain Canadian hat-maker is but one letter and some dangling corks attached to the brim away...

Only southerners and marketing types call them 'utes'.

The concept became wildly popular, and major competitors soon followed suit. The one shown here is a fairly new General Motors Holden, gussied up well beyond any pretense of being a farm truck.

Today, a big chunk of the 'ute-tilly' business is being taken away by SUV-like pick-ups, akin to our Ford Explorer Sport pick-up thing.

But they do live on.

I have yet to find out if the Aussie utes spawned their mid-'50s North American cousins or if, like much of Australia's flora and fauna, the North American models evolved separately.

Guess I'm gonna have to Google that...

Getting the hang - and the 'hook' - of driving in Melbourne

What is wrong with this picture?

Other than the fact that both the gray car and the tram are on the wrong side of the street?

(This is in Australia, where they do drive on the left.)

Well, doesn't it look as if said gray car is trying to make that right turn from the left lane, having narrowly missed being T-boned by said tram?

But if you can spot the black-on-white traffic sign in the upper left-hand corner of the picture, you'll see that's what you are supposed to do.

(If you can't read it, it says, 'Right Turn from Left Only'.)

This is called a 'hook' turn, and both from my own personal experience and from information gleaned from the locals, it's a Melbourne exclusive.

But only within the 'CBD' - 'Central Business District' - and only at certain major intersections, not all of them.

Confusing?

Sure looks that way, especially if you're an out-of-towner.

And doubly especially if you're a visitor from a 'drive-on-the-right' country, where right turns (equivalent to our lefts) are already fraught.

Apparently, this system was introduced to accommodate those trams, so their progress would not be impeded by cars trying to turn right from the centre lane where the trams travel.

Cheaper and more space-efficient, I guess, than building a separate right-of-way for the trams.

Still, wouldn't it make you want to take a taxi?

Car safety makes it to aircraft

Maybe you've seen this, but it was new to me - a three-point seat belt in a commercial aircraft.

It was like the older three-pointers in cars, with the shoulder portion hooking in to the lap buckle, so you didn't have to wear the shoulder strap if you didn't want to.

Now, if you auger in to a cornfield at 700 km/h, I don't know that the additional safety provided by this shoulder belt would make much difference.

Frankly, no belt would make any difference in that instance. Belts on planes really only help much in ground 'events' or to reduce injuries due to in-air turbulence.

But I guess every little bit helps.

What's next - air bags?

A V8 Bi-Turbo snowball?

Somehow, you wouldn't think snowballs would be a huge issue here on the edge of the Anza-Borrego Desert in California, a nine-iron shot from the Mexican border.

You'd think that if there ever would be snow around here, late January would be the time. There were a few traces in the shadier parts of the woods and a nearby elevation sign did read, '6,000 feet', so it must happen sometime.

Maybe it's so rare that when it DOES happen, the locals can't resist.

But you'd also wonder if they'd even think of it if this sign didn't remind them.

Would you like a piece of pie?

Maybe a slice of cherry, that delicious Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG parked in front of the Julian Pie Company, about 45 minutes east of San Diego.

Actually, Julian is more famous for their apple pies - I'm tucking into a slice of 'Dutch Apple' as I type...

More on the car in next week's Wheels.

Idiot driver of, well, maybe the year - and it's only January...

Heading to the Detroit Auto Show a couple of weeks ago. It was a Bright, Sunshiny Day (thank you, Johnny Nash) heading westbound on the 401 just west of Chatham around 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon, so the sunlight was right in my eyes.

This is why my Dad always told me to live east of my work. He did; I work mostly at home - not much of an issue.

So, polarized sunglasses on - check. Sun visors deployed - check. I'm having to squirm around a little as the road curves to keep that sun hidden by something.

(Whatever happened to those dual sun visors we saw for a while? The original Ford Taurus was the first I recall with those. Or even the extendable telescopic kind?)

Anyway, I caught up to this flaming idiot driver in a silver Toyota Matrix.

No, it wasn't his car that made him a flaming idiot.

Although, he only had his DRLs on. No taillights, and with the car back-lit like this - plus the fact that his car was all alone going slowly in the left lane - it was clear we were not dealing with a rocket surgeon of a driver here.

But what qualified him for the Idiot Hall of Fame?

I still have trouble believing this - as I passed him on the right, I saw that he had allowed his passenger to hang something (a towel, jacket, sweater, it was difficult to tell) to block the sun.

NOT covering the right side window, which is dangerous enough, but nearly the entire right half of the windshield!

Blocking fully HALF of his forward vision - on a high-speed freeway!

How does someone like that have enough functioning brain cells to fall out of bed in the morning, let alone pass a driver's test?

OK, so it was uncomfortable for the passenger to have his nap compromised by the sun.

Boo Hoo.

Wear sunglasses.

Get a long-peaked baseball cap.

Or one of those little sleep masks you get on airplanes - you can also buy them in travel stores.

Or sit in the back seat.

But fer cryin' out loud people, don't drive totally stupid AND half-blind too.

Need I remind you all again, the life you save - might be MINE.

Montréal has an Auto Show?

There’s a pretty big auto show going on up-river in Detroit.

But as we type, there’s also one going on down-river in Montréal.

Normally, Montréal, well, occupies the aft-most position when Mother is feeding her babies (can’t use the real expression in a family news-blog) because given the similarity in timing of the two shows, most car makers will choose the more massive Detroit venue to get their stories out to the press, and subsequently to the public.

This year, however, due to a variety of specific circumstances, Montréal actually has a few North American premieres, cars that for whatever reasons were not in Detroit.

Chief among them, sales-wise anyway, is the Hyundai Accent. Not sure why this car wasn’t at Detroit; maybe it was because Canada, and specifically Québec, is a huge market for this car, and perhaps Hyundai USA wanted to concentrate on the Sonata and Elantra, which are bigger deals down there.

Regardless, the Accent is as attractive in its segment as Elantra and Sonata are in theirs - this company really is at the top of its game right now.

Status-wise, the BMW X1 Crossover probably tops the Montreal roster. Why did BMW pick Montréal for the X1's North American debut? Seems this vehicle has been very popular in every market where it has been introduced over the past few months, to the extent that production in the Leipzig (formerly-East) Germany plant cannot keep up with demand. As the volume slowly ramps up, there will be sufficient numbers to satisfy the expected sales in the Canadian market over the next few months, but not for the larger United States market. So the corporate decision was made to launch the X1 in Canada first; the US will follow either in late 2011 or early 2012.

Chevrolet chose Montréal to introduce the Orlando seven-seat compact crossover for the very good reason that the US has decided not to import the car, reversing an earlier decision. GM figures things like the Equinox can handle the compact family-bus duties in the US, which gives such as Kia Rondo, Ford’s new C-MAX and the new Mazda5 one less competitor to worry about in Canada. (By the time I got to the Show, the floor GM was on was closed to prepare for the 'charity preview' night, so I don't have a photo of the Orlando for you. Sorry about that.)

Speaking of Mazda5, Mazda calls the Montréal appearance of the Mazda5 the car’s ‘Canadian premiere’. Maybe to the general public, but the rural Milton public saw this car a couple of weeks ago because I had one on test just before Christmas - more details in the print edition of Wheels next week.

By the way, did you know that the French (well, Québec-French) translation of ‘Zoom-Zoom’ is ‘Vroum-Vroum’? Language police, come on…

So, Montréal is doing pretty well against Detroit this year. Still, it views its main competition as Toronto. It has a built-in advantage of being a month ahead of Toronto, and with these North American debuts, you can forgive the show organizers for being just a little bit proud.

2011 Detroit Auto Show

Detroit may not be as important to the automobile industry as it once was.

But it is still "Motor City", and its annual Auto Show still ranks among the most important in the world.

Once again, Wheels will have what we believe to be the biggest contingent of journalists covering this event of any publication - the Detroit newspapers don't cover this thing like we do.

This year we're trying something new. Instead of John Le Blanc and I commenting on each press conference as it happens in our own blogs, we're contributing to a common 'rolling blog' on the Show here.

Please join us!