Cars And Trucks

Just before 2 a.m. on a quiet residential street in Parkville, one man's problems - missed car payments, default notice, threat of repossession - were about to boost another's bottom line. Tony Atkins deftly backed his Midnight Express-brand towing rig under a Chevy Impala. With a glance up at a row of darkened homes, Atkins pulled away, the car's emergency brake squeaking behind his rumbling truck. The capture took all of five seconds. "Hey, there's one," Atkins said, keeping score early on this recent frigid morning.

FROM BUGS to beads, cars to corn shellers, folks are creating whimsy, humor and elegantly functional pieces out of metal and glass.The Howard County Center for the Arts sponsored a tour of 15 local galleries this month, "Road to the Arts," to kick off the exhibition season.The brochure for the event -- shaped like a Maryland license plate -- sported "RD2ARTS" on its front cover."People think of art in Baltimore or Washington," said show coordinator Christina Manucy. "We wanted to do something to highlight art in Howard County."

Linda Percy doesn't want her Reisterstown neighborhood "turned into a used car lot."Robert Rybikowsky says he is just trying to sell his truck.Their neighborhood squabble is a prime example of why Baltimore County lawmakers are considering a curb on the widespread practice of selling cars and trucks by the side of the road, criticized as a traffic hazard and a blight on residential communities."

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, said its U.S. light-vehicle sales fell in April, declining 4 percent with both cars and trucks trailing the year-earlier month.Analysts had forecast an increase of about 0.4 percent from April 1998, when GM got a head start on rivals by raising incentives to lure buyers.Its results follow increases reported Monday by Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG and Toyota Motor Corp.GM shares fell $4.8125, or 5.1 percent, to $88.9375."Except for the new full-size pickup trucks, the foreign brands are eating their lunch," said Burnham Securities Inc. analyst David Healy.

Snipping strands of hair in his small Anne Arundel County barber shop, 70-year-old Bill Selby has a picture-window view of suburbia's nightmare traffic.Morning and evening, a wall of cars and trucks creeps past his shop on the corner of Mountain Road and Lake Shore Drive, one of the region's most congested intersections.At day's end, when Selby heads home, he's often trapped in his parking lot."I just sit there and hope someone lets me out of the lot," says Selby, who has watched traffic increase greatly during 33 years in business at the intersection.

"Frogger" is a new, 3-D version of a game that was popular in arcades 20 years ago.Just like in the original, the object in the first level of the game is to guide a frog across a busy highway and over a river. What starts as a simple mission gets complicated when tons of cars and trucks start whizzing by. Frogger is a surprisingly addictive game that is challenging and fun.Pub Date: 3/19/98

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- Chrysler Corp. became the latest U.S. automaker to hold the line on prices on its 1998 cars and trucks, saying yesterday that its new models will cost an average of 0.6 percent less than comparable 1997 models.The automaker said car prices will be 1.3 percent lower than in 1997, and prices on trucks, including pickups, minivans and Jeeps will be reduced 0.4 percent.Chrysler's reduction in sticker prices had been expected. It follows Ford Motor Co.'s announcement that its 1998 prices would be unchanged and General Motors Corp.

Car Corp. of America Inc., which will celebrate the grand opening of its first used-car superstore in Rockville this evening, will build its second store in the Baltimore area."

Maryland motorists continued their buying spree last month, but most of the wheeling and dealing was done on the used car lot.According to figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration, sales of previously owned vehicles jumped 16.8 percent when compared with January of 1996.At the same time, new-car sales were off 9.2 percent."Used cars are the buzz-words in our industry right now," said Robert C. Russel, president of R&H Motor Cars Ltd. in Owings Mills and chairman of the Maryland New Car and Truck Dealers Association.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Anne Arundel County.Odenton: Thieves drove a bulldozer and a loader from a construction site at Country Oak Drive and Strawberry Lake Way early Sunday onto a truck and drove off.Crofton: Vandals punctured tires on at least seven cars and trucks parked in the 1300 block of Peartree Court early Sunday. Joseph Moschetto, who lives in that block, told police he saw a man ducking behind several cars when he arrived home about 1: 30 a.m. He followed the man for a few blocks but lost him and had no description.

Is the new "cash for clunkers" law really a vehicle for replacing gas-guzzling cars and trucks with the next generation of clean, green machines - or is it just a pretext for moving slightly less thirsty guzzlers from dealers' lots onto America's driveways? If the federal agency with the mission of overseeing the law does its job well, we'll find out quickly - and well before the automakers show up again on Capitol Hill, tin cup in hand, asking Congress this question from Dickens' Oliver Twist, updated for 2009: "Please, sirs, may we have some more billions?

WASHINGTON - -The Obama administration will unveil rules Tuesday that will require vast reductions in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and gas mileage improvements over the next seven years, changes that will mark a potentially pivotal shift in the battle over global warming. After decades of political sparring, legal challenges and scientific arguments over climate change, three of the central players - the federal government, major U.S. car makers, and the state of California - have essentially concluded that the time has come to suspend hostilities and make a deal.

Just before 2 a.m. on a quiet residential street in Parkville, one man's problems - missed car payments, default notice, threat of repossession - were about to boost another's bottom line. Tony Atkins deftly backed his Midnight Express-brand towing rig under a Chevy Impala. With a glance up at a row of darkened homes, Atkins pulled away, the car's emergency brake squeaking behind his rumbling truck. The capture took all of five seconds. "Hey, there's one," Atkins said, keeping score early on this recent frigid morning.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Major automakers will close their books today on what is expected to be the worst year of car sales in almost a decade. December's likely retreat has done little to inspire hope for a broad turnaround in the coming year, according to Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Barry, who predicted double-digit declines from a year ago for both General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. Barry is looking for Ford Motor Co. to fare the best of the domestic competition, but only because December a year ago was so weak.

Maryland's bid to make its own stand against global warming has been blocked by federal resistance. But pressure to surmount that barrier is building as nearly half the nation has now joined the cause. Maryland's "clean cars" legislation, aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas production in the state by 7.8 million tons per year, has run up against the Bush administration's stubborn campaign on behalf of the automobile industry to prevent states from regulating tailpipe emissions from vehicles sold within their borders.

CHICAGO -- Of all the ideas on how to combat global warming, few have more obvious appeal than producing cars that get better mileage. The Sierra Club says a boost in fuel economy standards "is the biggest single policy step" the government can take. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois went to Detroit in May to advise the auto industry that this change would "help bring it into the 21st century." And last month, the Senate voted to require that each automaker's fleet of cars and trucks average at least 35 miles to the gallon by 2020.

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. will build fewer cars and trucks next year as it reduces sales to rental companies and analysts expect consumers to keep buying fewer of the models that Ford sells. Ford said yesterday that it would cut North American production of new cars and trucks by 8 percent to 12 percent in the first half of 2007, but increase production in the remainder of the year by 5 percent to 10 percent. The news follows Ford's historic production cut of 21 percent in the last three months of this year, which has caused temporary plant layoffs in several states.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the biggest U.S. automakers, sold fewer vehicles in March as they tried to rely less on fleet buyers such as rental agencies. That led to the industry's first monthly decline this year. Toyota Motor Corp.'s sales increased 6.9 percent from a year earlier and DaimlerChrysler AG's rose 2.9 percent. GM's drop was 14 percent and Ford's was 4.6 percent, the companies said yesterday. Sales rose 0.2 percent at Honda Motor Co. and decreased 2.6 percent at Nissan Motor Co. "GM is falling further behind competitors," said Sean Egan, managing director of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. of Haverford, Pa. Industrywide sales slid 2.9 percent as GM and Ford sought to reduce sales to fleet customers, which generate little or no profit.

Toyota Motor Corp. reported an increase in U.S. auto sales in October as General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. posted declines, accelerating the Japanese company's push to become the world's largest carmaker. Toyota, the world's No. 2 automaker by sales behind GM, said yesterday that U.S. consumers bought 1.3 percent more of its cars and trucks in October compared with a year earlier. GM said its U.S. sales fell 22.7 percent in October from a year ago. Ford reported sales down 23 percent.

DETROIT - Anxiety is growing about the shape and size of Ford Motor Co.'s next round of cost and job cuts, which executives have promised will be announced by the end of the year, as at least half a dozen spokespeople were dismissed this week. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that white-collar job cuts were discussed at a manufacturing division meeting last month. Workers said the cuts could be as steep as 30 percent of the salaried work force, or more than 10,000 jobs - nearly a third of Ford's white-collar employees, the newspaper reported.