Passenger Cars

General Motors Corp. said it is recalling about 196,000 passenger cars for the model years 1982 through 1986 to repair potentially defective parking brakes.The problem, according to GM, involves certain 1982-86 Chevy Camaro and Pontiac Firebird cars and some Pontiac Fieros sold from 1984 through 1986. Only vehicles equipped with manual transmissions and rear disc brakes are affected.

A Pikesville man was killed Saturday in Westminster when the car he was in collided with another vehicle on Route 97, Maryland State Police said. Police identified the man as Terry Gail Clark, 58. The crash happened south of Hook Road about 1:30 p.m. Clark was in a Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Ethel Neta Maddox, 51, of Pikesville, police said. They were traveling south on Route 97 south when a northbound Ford Mustang driven by Michael Allen Smith, 55, of Highland, crossed the center line.

THE LARGEST sport-utility vehicle ever, Ford Motor Co.'s new Excursion, will be 19 feet long, nearly 7 feet high, weigh 3.5 tons and cost $50,000 (turning Ford a profit of $20,000). With a fuel rating of only 12 miles per gallon and a 44-gallon tank, critics dubbed it the "Ford Valdez," a biting reference to the 1989 oil tanker spill in Alaska.The excess may be laughable, but effects of this trend aren't.Road accidents involving light trucks in 1996 caused an estimated 2,000 more deaths than they would have had only passenger cars been involved, a recent study found.

A single car crash in Gambrills Monday has claimed the life of an elderly female passenger and critically injured the driver. The car was traveling down the driveway to an underground parking garage at about 4:50 p.m., when it struck a wall of the building in the 2600 block of Chapel Lake Drive, police said. Both victims, who, police said, are related, were taken to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the woman died. The elderly driver remains in critical condition.

WASHINGTON -- In a sign of the political recalibrations sparked by high gasoline costs, senators urged representatives of the auto industry and labor yesterday to back efforts to raise fuel efficiency standards that they have resisted for years. The lawmakers grilled Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta, berating him for doing too little to increase the gasoline economy requirements for the automobiles that burn about half of the oil consumed in the United States every day. "We're in a crisis.

From The Sun Sept. 3-9, 1845* Sept. 3: ICE -- This article has become very scare in the city, so much so that it is with much difficulty we can obtain it at any price. We believe even the Rockland Lake Ice, which has been so much admired for its solidity and clearness, has run out.* Sept. 4: We learn that since the first of January, there have arrived at this port, from foreign ports, upwards of 5,000 passengers, nearly all of whom were German, Irish and English immigrants.From The Sun Sept.

The end of the line has finally arrived for MARC's fleet of Budd commuter rail passenger cars, a fixture at morning and evening rush hours at Camden Station for the past 40 years. The aged rail equipment is to be retired and replaced in a matter of days.The silvery, diesel-motored rail cars were made by the E.G. Budd Co. in Pennsylvania and purchased by many U.S. and Canadian railroads in the 1950s. Strong on reliability, performance and speed, the cars have long outlived their corporate parent.

At the ripe old age of 20, America's only inter-city passenger-rail service, Amtrak, has a problem that it never expected when it was set up in 1971: more business than it can handle.Passengers often stand at peak travel times on the popular New York-Washington and Los Angeles-San Diego lines. Getting a sleeping compartment on Amtrak's western or Florida routes requires reservations months in advance. A record 22.2 million passengers took the train last year.This places a heavy burden on the government-subsidized railroad.

WASHINGTON - Rollover crashes involving sport utility vehicles claimed an increasing number of lives last year, while fatalities in passenger cars went down, the government reported yesterday. There was an 11 percent increase in SUV crash deaths and a 3.8 percent decrease in passenger car fatalities. Overall, 43,220 people were killed on the nation's highways in 2003, an increase of 405 deaths from the previous year, according to preliminary figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Here's an item you may have left out of your personal budget: The average cost of driving a car is now $7,834 a year. AAA released its annual survey yesterday about the average costs of owning passenger cars that are driven 15,000 miles a year. The average driving cost - a mix of expenses for small, medium and large passenger cars - works out to $150 a week. And that's not just because the price of gasoline is hovering around $2.50 in the nation. The AAA survey factors in gasoline at 9.5 cents a mile based on a $2.40 a gallon average price nationwide at the end of 2005.

The O'Malley administration plans to announce today that it has negotiated the purchase of 13 double-decker rail cars from a Virginia railroad as part of an effort to reduce crowding on the MARC system, where capacity has been strained by an influx of riders escaping high fuel prices. The Maryland Transit Administration is scheduled to bring the almost $22 million contract with Virginia Railway Express before the Board of Public Works this morning. Approval is expected. MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld said the passenger cars, which are similar to 50 two-level cars already operated by MARC, will likely be brought into service in November after refurbishing is complete.

WASHINGTON -- In a sign of the political recalibrations sparked by high gasoline costs, senators urged representatives of the auto industry and labor yesterday to back efforts to raise fuel efficiency standards that they have resisted for years. The lawmakers grilled Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta, berating him for doing too little to increase the gasoline economy requirements for the automobiles that burn about half of the oil consumed in the United States every day. "We're in a crisis.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Here's an item you may have left out of your personal budget: The average cost of driving a car is now $7,834 a year. AAA released its annual survey yesterday about the average costs of owning passenger cars that are driven 15,000 miles a year. The average driving cost - a mix of expenses for small, medium and large passenger cars - works out to $150 a week. And that's not just because the price of gasoline is hovering around $2.50 in the nation. The AAA survey factors in gasoline at 9.5 cents a mile based on a $2.40 a gallon average price nationwide at the end of 2005.

Sales of sport utility vehicles ran out of gas in September, giving General Motors and Ford dismal results for the month while the Chrysler Group and major Japanese brands gained ground. With gas prices topping $3 a gallon in most parts of the country, sales of Chevrolet's full-size Suburban and Tahoe fell 56 percent last month. The Ford Explorer and Expedition were down 58 percent and 61 percent respectively as buyers migrated to more efficient "crossover" SUVs and passenger cars. For the industry, sales fell 8 percent last month to 1.3 million vehicles.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum received $1 million from the state yesterday to help restore its South Passenger Car Shop, which was built in 1870 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The check from the Maryland Department of Transportation matches a $1 million bond from Baltimore City and adds to $400,000 in contributions from the museum. This new money is in addition to a $30 million restoration project that began after a 2003 snowstorm collapsed the ceiling of the B&O museum's roundhouse and damaged some historic locomotives.

A teenager was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in prison for killing the driver of the moving car in which he was a passenger - a man he said was as close to him as a "big brother or an uncle" - in a fatal shooting that his lawyer blamed on a mind-bending mix of drugs and cog- nac. Ervin Demontray Montague, 18, tearfully apologized to the family of Aaron Kirk Howard, 33, saying, "I pray my words rest on your heart." Then Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Michael E. Loney sentenced Montague to 25 years for second-degree murder and the minimum five years for use of a handgun in the killing, which occurred April 20 last year on Admiral Drive outside an Annapolis-area condominium complex.

A tractor-trailer loaded with frozen goods overturned and was dangling precariously on the Interstate 95 overpass near White Marsh last night, forcing state police to close all southbound and northbound traffic on the highway.Three people were injured, one critically, officials said.Sgt. Sandra M. Kestner, of the JFK barracks, said the crash occurred at the I-95 overpass at I-695 about 8:50 p.m. Police said the tractor-trailer collided with three passenger cars -- one of which was a disabled vehicle on the shoulder -- and flipped over.

Sales of sport utility vehicles ran out of gas in September, giving General Motors and Ford dismal results for the month while the Chrysler Group and major Japanese brands gained ground. With gas prices topping $3 a gallon in most parts of the country, sales of Chevrolet's full-size Suburban and Tahoe fell 56 percent last month. The Ford Explorer and Expedition were down 58 percent and 61 percent respectively as buyers migrated to more efficient "crossover" SUVs and passenger cars. For the industry, sales fell 8 percent last month to 1.3 million vehicles.

WASHINGTON - Rollover crashes involving sport utility vehicles claimed an increasing number of lives last year, while fatalities in passenger cars went down, the government reported yesterday. There was an 11 percent increase in SUV crash deaths and a 3.8 percent decrease in passenger car fatalities. Overall, 43,220 people were killed on the nation's highways in 2003, an increase of 405 deaths from the previous year, according to preliminary figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.