You have to admire the fact that Kia chose a few months back to begin publishing a blog to it’s English speaking customers. Unlike some other corporate blogs that are written by the professional spin doctors, Kia’s BUZZ blog is written by employees, complete with the occasional translational gaff. I love it!
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Welcome to the Christmas Eve edition of the Carnival of Wheels. Ok, so it’s a day late. Again. There is just so much going on in The Garage these days as we get things ready for the other fat man to arrive. You know the one, the guy in the red suit. Let’s take a few minutes before we start into the egg nog and go for a quick lap around the blogosphere.

The last few days in Ontario have seen a complete turn around in the weather, with temperatures well above freezing and the rain threatening our white Christmas. Until this morning that is, when the temp dropped to -5 Cel (23 far). With that in mind, Mike at Hybrid Car Review takes a look at the cold realities of driving a hybrid car in the winter.
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When one is working to grow an online entity, becoming part of the community is key. Partnerships with other online outlets can also play a big part in hitting the big time. Using that concept, partnering with the big guys should skyrocket traffic.

The friendly folks over at Fast Lane Daily have been hard at work producing some great quality, daily automotive video news coverage. FLD has teamed up with viral video site Veoh to get the word out with the following documentary. Viewers get to meet some of the FLD team and see what goes into making an episode.

Nice work as always guys & girls.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

It has certainly been a busy weekend here in The Garage. We had a visit from Grandpa Bud, which was a great thrill for the kids. It isn’t often that Bud and I get to hang out together, as he lives way out in British Colombia. It was great for me too, as there is nothing better than hangin’ with the old man, drinking far too much wine and hearing stories of the early days of racing in Canada. The next time we get together, I think we’ll take some video of the conversation and drink a little bit less so that I actually retain all the details. As for today’s CoW, submissions are a little on the light side, but that’s a good thing considering my fuzzy state today. Did I mention there might have been some wine last night? Anyway, enough about my hangover, let’s get on with the Carnival of Wheels.

There are many different views of electronic technologies being used in a car. For some, they are considered the root of all car accidents. For others, productivity on the go is what keeps their business alive. CoW newcomer Sagar Satapathy has a post at bootstrapper listing some of the tools available to create a truly mobile office. My personal fave is the Targus WiFi scanner. This cool keychain gadget will tell you what WiFi signal is available and how strong it is, before you even fire up your lappy.
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As you may have noticed, we’ve changed things up a bit here in The Garage. Thanks to our techie guru Jaimie, we’ve got a cool new header and a cleaner look. The new look is more than just a few ad blocks and a new header image though. There are some cool new features in this new format that will make The Garage a more useful place for you, the reader.

First off, maybe the coolest feature is the ability for readers to change the page size to account for aging eyesite. When you are in The Garage, hold down the control key and then you can resize the page with the + & - keys. It works best in Firefox, but it also works in Explorer.

For those who want to keep track of their fave scribe, each bloggers content can be seen by clicking on their name at the top of a post. Coming soon will be a bio to go along with these pages.

Another new function is called asides. This feature will allow us to post those occasional, simple, one or two line thoughts that aren’t worthy of a full post.

As you can see, we now have some ad blocks built into the sidebar. We work hard to bring you a quality read here in The Garage and a few ads here and there will help keep the great stuff coming. If you have something to advertise, be sure to drop me a line at gary at blairvalleymedia.com

Keep a sharp eye, as I have a feeling there are a few other exciting little changes that are going to pop up around here soon.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend up here in Canada and that means falling leaves, drizzle and soon the scent of turkey wafting through the house. We have a lot to be thankful for here in The Garage this year and we fully intend to enjoy our long weekend with friends and family. Now that the early morning hockey practice is over, it’s time to take our weekly hot lap around the auto blogs, so grab a coffee, strap in and get ready for some reading.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any really good tech stuff in the CoW, and this week Henry from The Pansy Patrol comes to the rescue. Henry’s Protege has been a bit sloppy of late and installing a new set of Energy lower control arm bushings was just the ticket to keep things pointed in the right direction. Henry walks us through the install with a few helpful tips along the way.
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Good morning everyone and welcome to the lazy Sunday morning, I slept through the start of Turkish Grand Prix edition of the CoW. It must have been the excitement of being at the track yesterday, or maybe just the residual soggy feeling, but I just didn’t want to get out of bed. The coffee is ready though, so let’s get rolling through another big honkin’ Carnival of Wheels.

First up, the folks at Automotive.com are all excited that Top Gear has found it’s way to BBC America and it’s a damn sight better than Pimp my ride. If you’ve never seen Top Gear then you owe it to yourself to give this a look. It’s damn good TV. The Brits manage to do the crazy things we just wonder about. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could blow up a limo to see what would happen? These guys do it. Now if we could just figure out a way to get it back on BBC Canada.
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With all the changes that are going on at Chrysler these days, one of the biggest might just be the addition of a blog to the new Chrysler website. The Voices of Chrysler blog is already sporting posts from Tom LaSorda, Jason Vines and even Robert Stanley who designed the original Pentastar design.

Let’s hope they can keep this blog up to date and not let it die like GM has with Lutz’s blog. The transparency that the blog adds to a big, faceless company goes a long way towards building credibility for the team. Hopefully, that transparency can also give the people who count a window to what the consumer really thinks.

Oh yeah, Nice tie JV!

First up on the new team roster is Andrew Lee. Andrew comes from a slightly different background than most of us here in The Garage to date. He quite literally grew up with the import tuner hobby and has seen everything that scene has to offer, both the good and the bad.

The street scene gave way to organizing track days and even working with the Toronto Grand Prix. Lately, the drifting bug has caught Andrew’s attention. Having been through an apprenticeship program, he’s even pretty handy with the wrenches.

Now, I suppose I can turn it over to Andrew to introduce himself! Welcome aboard, we are looking forward to seeing your spin on this crazy hobby.

Finally, I’ve got a chance to sit down and get to work on this last week’s Carnival of Wheels. It was a crazy week that finished up with the eldest kid having a great final race yesterday. I’ll tell you all about that later, but for now buckle up and we’ll take a hot lap around the auto blogs.

With all of our running around these days, I haven’t had any time to keep track of any NASCAR rumblings. Brian at RaceDriven does keep tabs on the good old boys though and it seems that they’ve entered their silly season. You’ll have to visit to get all the details on the driver moves that are coming. It’s good to hear that our boy Smoke finally won a race again! Come on boy, get your stuff in gear and take a run for the top 12.
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