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We spent a lot of time crisscrossing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania this winter as we followed my daughter's high school basketball team around. Our last regular season road trip was a 501 mile overnight extravaganza and this past Friday they made it to the quarterfinals of the state playoffs, where the season ended. So you might think that the road trips will stop...

The decline of the prominence of Detroit might be traced to this date back in 1973 when the Honda Civic was introduced to the United States market. It was fortuitous timing for Honda as we were in the midst of an "oil crisis" and people were starting to think about fuel economy. Early Honda advertisements boasted "The Honda Civic...

Sort of an interesting anniversary today. Eighty-six years ago today the one-millionth Chevrolet rolled off the assembly line. Now we're talking billions of dollars each month just to keep GM's head from going under the water...

There have been, and always will be, many different scams that people have fallen for over the years, and it doesn't take an Einstein to recognize when the wool is trying to be pulled over your eyes. Three card monty, lose weight with no dieting or exercise, and get rich by resonding to that email from Nigeria come to mind. There have always been useless automotive ideas as well from gas pills and magnets for your fuel line, to one of the current follies, HHO kits...

Imagine that, you start to give out money and pretty soon everyone wants a handout and you have to wonder where the end is. U.S. auto suppliers are seeking $25.5 billion in federal aid as falling sales and production cuts push more towards the brink of bankruptcy...

So the big game is over and we've seen all the ads. Were any of them memorable? Likely to start a trend?..

Don't you just love the way the media reports things that have nothing to do with each other as if they do? Kind of like when there's a local bus crash in some remote corner of the world but your local paper has to add, "No residents of [insert your hometown here] were injured" to somehow connect the story to you even though there's no connection at all. At the moment, everyone wants to get an angle on the automotive bailout, even the NY Times music section: The Jonas Brothers, above, the pop group that has elicited screams from countless girls who are too young to drive, is doing its part to help bail out the teetering American auto industry...

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye weighs important decisions and considers the consequences of different actions by thinking, "On the other hand..." Decisions being made about the future of Detroit have seemed to have a lot of "other hands" as well. The Congress couldn't get a bill passed to send money to the companies formerly known as the Big Three, so now the President is considering using part of the TARP money to provide bridge loans to the auto industry. On the other hand...

There sure is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and grandstanding going on about what's going to happen with the Detroit automakers. Do we bail them out, don't we? Do we let nature (capitalism) take its course, or do we try to set up some refuge where we keep Detroit alive like some endangered species displayed in a zoo?..

We're getting ready to face another week of the news, so it's important to take time to relax and enjoy simple things like a Sunday drive in the snow. November auto sales are going to be announced on Tuesday. November sales are always slow, but there's a bright side. Industry watchers are expecting are a slight improvement over October's total of 838,156 vehicles Nothing goes in one direction forever, and neither will the decline in car sales...