Archive for the ‘General Motors’ Category


Art Center College of Design’s main campus is nestled in a secluded residential Pasadena neighborhood in the hills above the Rose Bowl. The black glass and steel buildings are a masterpiece of Modern design by LA Architect Craig Ellwood.

Art Center Campus

Art Center Campus and Car Classic Pavilion

Art Center Campus - Car Show 2010 Registration Building

I first became aware of Art Center more than 35 years ago when a little orange ball decal appeared in the windshield of a friend’s screaming red, always mechanically-challenged, Triumph TR-4A. She was attending Art Center studying package design and her projects always caught both my imagination and my breath.

2010 marks Art Center’s 80th anniversary. Two years after its founding during the depths of the Great Depression, Art Center established its industrial design program that encompasses almost every tangible consumer and industrial product manufactured in our world today, including automotive designs from its world renowned Transportation Design Department.

Art Center Student Illustration - Porsche, I think

The Transportation Design Department’s alumni have been involved some of the most iconic designs of the 20th and 21st Century including the Disneyland Monorail, the ’57 Chevy, the Corvette Sting Ray, the Porsche Boxster, the Enzo Ferrari and hundreds of Hot Wheels toy cars. Graduates have positions at virtually major automotive studio in the world. It also helps that there are more than 23 advanced automotive design studios in Southern California – testament to the global importance of our trend-setting car culture. (more…)


The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed new window stickers for all cars/trucks sold in the United States.  The mandates come from a 2007 law (not implemented by the Bush Administration) that requires labels to put a new vehicle in context with the rest of the herd.  The EPA’s mandate must take into account (1) fuel economy, (2) greenhouse gasses and (3) smog-forming pollutants.  It also must contextualize your average car/truck with a gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine with EVs, hybrids and advanced clean diesels.

One of two new stickers assigns letter grades (remember elementary school?) from A+ to D-.   It’s pretty easy to guess which car gets the highest and lowest grades.  A pure EV (electric vehicle), like the Nissan Leaf, will get an A+ (117  mpg and higher) while my Italian friends, Lamborghini and Ferrari, would get the D-.

Proposed EPA-DOT Window Sticker with Letter Grade

Note that the sticker even has a QR Code™ that can be read by your smartphone to get even more information about the car and the EPA’s ratings.

A plug-in hybrid, rated at the equivalent of 59 – 116 mpg, like the upcoming Chevy Volt (it has an internal combustion engine that runs a generator to juice the batteries to give it an extended range) would get an A.   “Normal” hybrids like the Toyota Prius and the Ford Fusion would earn an A-.  Lesser hybrids, like the Nissan Altima, Ford Escape and Toyota Camry will have to sit in the second row and with a B+. (more…)