The new StickyCup windshield mount detector accessory from ESCORT. (Photo: ESCORT Inc.)

WEST CHESTER, OH – ESCORT, Inc. has announced the release of its new windshield mount detector accessory fittingly named “StickyCup.” The new StickyCup is a full-featured bracket mount that includes a semi-sticky gel ring on the cup surface that improves cohesion and detector support on the windshield.

StickyCup works with ESCORT’s category leading products including the…

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Tire Recall Exposes Need for Tire Destruction

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ – Kumho Tire’s recent scramble to find thousands of recalled tires that were resold to used tire dealers, instead of being scrapped, underscores the need for a total destruction system for unsafe tires, says the inventor of CompacTire.

Last week, the Korean tire company and Liberty Tire Recycling, one of the nation’s largest scrap tire processors, were working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to locate nearly 8,000 recalled tires sold to wholesalers in Texas, New York, North Carolina and Puerto Rico. Kumho had originally recalled some SOLUS KH25…

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Ultimate Car Dock Android app allows hands-free texting

MIJAS COSTA, Spain – Using the phone while driving has been rightly discouraged; distracted driving is a serious hazard. However, app development company “Apps on Toast” has introduced an ingenious way to keep one’s eyes on the road, and hands on the wheel while making phone calls, or responding to text messages. Ultimate Car Dock is a voice recognition Android app, which is now available for a free, 7-day trial on Google Play here:

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Ford says its Fiesta subcompact is seeing better than half of all its European buyers take SYNC with Emergency Assistance and roughly 25% choosing the 1.0-liter, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine that is headed our way this fall.
According to the official Ford press release, European customers purchased a new Fiesta every two minutes in the month of March, moving a total of more than 41,600 off dealer lots for the month. So far in 2013, the release said more than 77,800 Fiestas have been sold in Europe. Of…

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Subaru put a brand-spankin’ new, 300-mile Forester XT in our hands for a week and told us to have fun. Boy, did we take them up on that order.

The Forester is a lot of wagon/crossover/SUV for the money in base form, with an MSRP just shy of $22,000. Our test XT rang the cash register at $28,820 after destination fees and taxes, but came with a lot of stuff th base Forester doesn’t have– chiefly, the 2.0-liter turbocharged boxer four-cylinder engine. Lesser Foresters make do with a 2.5-liter non-turbocharged four-cylinder boxer engine. While I don’t doubt that engine’s practicality– it is rated at 32 MPG highway compared to the 28 MPG highway rating of the turbo engine, after all– it surely can’t compare to the fun that little spool provides.

For what basically amounts to a tall-greenhoused wagon with full-time  all-wheel drive, the Forester felt lighter on its feet than it had any right to feel. Throttle response was snappy in the car’s regular drive mode, though if I wanted to get downright hardcore about it, the car’s SI-DRIVE select buttons on the steering wheel offered the option to dial in S or S# modes to ratchet up that throttle response even more. Steering was light, but not devoid of…

Continue reading Fun with Forester: We Find Out the Subaru Forester Is More Nimble Than Its Size Suggests

General Motors is the first automaker among 40 major U.S. companies to sign a “Climate Declaration,” collectively asserting that responding to climate changes is good business. The campaign is organized by sustainable business advocacy group Ceres and its Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy, or BICEP, coalition. (Ceres Image courtesy General Motors.)

General Motors says it is the first automaker to sign a so-called “Climate Declaration” that, in so many words, basically says responding to climate change is a good idea.

The climate declaration was organized by Ceres, a sustainable business advocacy group, along with…

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Automotive lighting is big business. (PHOTO: Hella)

DALLAS, TX -A report from MarketsandMarkets says the global market for automotive lighting is expected to grow from $19.47 billion in 2013 to $25.36 billion by 2018, with a CAGR of 5.43%. In this, halogen technology is expected to occupy the major share, when compared to xenon/HID and LED for the next five years.

The report “Automotive Lighting Market: By Position (Front, Rear, Side, & Interior), Technology (Halogen, Xenon/HID, & LED), Vehicle Type, & Geography – Global Trends & Forecast To 2018“, defines and segments the market with analysis and…

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Parker parking guidance app for iPhone (PHOTO: Streetline)

FOSTER CITY, CA – Streetline, Inc. has unveiled a new release of its parking guidance application, Parker by Streetline. Parker 4.0 is now available for the iPhone and features a clean, updated design; an easy-to-use side panel menu; and one-click turn-by-turn voice navigation—further enhancing the hands-free capabilities of the app.

Parker displays open on-street parking in real time, as well as available parking at garages and nearby parking lots, by tapping data from Streetline’s real-time sensor network in more than 35 locations globally and parking garage and lot data for more than 23,000 off-street locations. Since the app was first introduced in December 2010, Parker by Streetline has recorded more than 100 million parking “events” and was recently named Best Mobile Innovation for ‘Smart Cities’ at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Streetline introduced the world’s first parking guidance app in 2010 and has since continued to spark the imagination for how technology can change the way we think about parking,” said Zia Yusuf , president and CEO of Streetline, Inc. “With this latest release of Parker, Streetline…

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(Lyndon Johnson photo)

Our Nissan Titan PRO-4X was a behemoth, as I covered in a previous piece about it. It was also equipped with a very useful backing sensor array and camera.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: I’m not accustomed to driving vehicles this large. The Titan is already a large truck, as big as any of the half-ton trucks on the market today. With the PRO-4X package’s crew-cab configuration, four-wheel drive, bigger all-terrain tires, and jacked up Rancho suspension, that size seems magnified from behind the wheel thanks to your even more-elevated seating position.

This all can tend to make parking a chore for someone like me who is used to driving much smaller vehicles that can just be whipped into a parking space. Even the Lexus RX350 F-SPORT I had just before the Titan– itself no small fry, as midsize SUVs go– was comparatively easy for me to put between the lines. But the Titan PRO-4X required me to slow down and be very observant when parking between two other vehicles or near obstacles like curbs. I had such nightmares of curbs, largely unseen because of…

Continue reading Truckin’ In a Titan: Of the Nissan Titan PRO-4X Backing Sensor

The 2014 GMC Sierra’s driver seat will alert you via haptic seat technology GMC is calling the Safety Alert Seat whenever you’re in danger of leaving your lane or rear-ending the vehicle ahead of you, GMC says. (Photo courtesy GMC.)

GMC says its 2014 Sierra full-size pickup truck will bring haptic seat technology it calls the Safety Alert Seat. The truck manufacturer says it’s a first for the full-size pickup segment.

According to the official GMC press release, the Safety…

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