Blogcatalog Is No Longer For Bloggers, It’s A Personal Playground

Recently I wanted to upload a new blog of mine into Blogcatalog.com. This is a blog directory site for bloggers to submit their blogs. They have some criteria that a blog has to meet in order to be consider for inclusion, which is an acceptable practice for most directories that are worth anything. However, instead accepting my new blog, they decided to ban my account, even though I already had 3 other blogs, including this one approved on their system.

Infographic About How Car Insurance Rates Are Determined

The following infographic shows examples of how car insurance rates are determined and what goes into an individual’s quote. Looking at the graphic, there are a couple of case studies as well as some facts on what the average American pays for car insurance. There are a few major points that make up the biggest portions of the pie, but there also smaller things that we can do that can help reduce insurance costs and help us to save some money.

Ways to reduce car insurance costs based on the infographic:

What Cars Say About Us

The car a person drives can say a lot about the person behind the wheel.  Cars are a reflection of us in many cases and often people want to drive cars that reflect their personality or where they are at in life.   Looking at what car a person drives can tell us some things about the person, so let’s look at what cars say about us.

There are a few obvious examples of what cars say about us and where we are at in life.  A gray-haired older gent driving a brand new two-seat sport cars is most likely trying to recapture some of his youth, trying to break the every day mold, and looking to reclaim some of his childhood ambitions.  Whereas, a middle-aged person driving a new minivan is most likely right in the middle of life and trying to keep things altogether and managing kids, trips, and other obligations while trying to find every convenience as possible.

European License Plates in America – Los Angeles

While aimlessly cruising around Los Angeles’ South Bay area in my new loaner BMW 335 sport package (all in efforts to find unsuspecting marks to street race with my new-found 300hp kill time to beat the rush afternoon traffic from LA to OC ) I came upon this: A beautiful jet black E92 M3 driven by sharp white-haired grandfather and shotgun-sitting 10 year old freckled grandson. A lovely sight, and one I hope to replicate later in life when I have awesome grandkids and retirement funds spent on beautiful and expensive sports cars… But I digress, the coolest part of this threesome was the car, and the German license plates it carried!

Straight out of Germany (Munich to be exact, primer on license plates here), this 2010 BMW M3 sported non other than the standard German Zoll plates with the red stripe (versus the standard European EU blue stripe). Ironically I know less about U.S./California’s DMV license plates regulations than of its European counterpart, but I’m pretty sure that if you import a car here you don’t get to use the country of origin’s cool tags. Pity, because the other way around you can (I’ve seen countless Florida plates while driving in the summertime in Europe).

Are Electric Cars The Future

I’ve been reading a lot about electric and hybrid cars lately.  With Motor Trend recently naming the Chevy Volt as their car of the year, it looks like electric cars and green cars have finally found their place in the US auto market.  However, it might be some time before it’s really a viable product that can be sold to every American.

There are certainly many advantages for going with a green car, but there are also some disadvantages. The following are some basic pros and cons for buying and using an electric car.

Ford is no longer a Fix or Rebuild Daily Brand

I personally have never been that big on Ford cars and trucks. Unlike my father, who only buys Ford, I’ve never bought or would bu a Ford, until now.  Ford to me has always been one of those brands that you just don’t want to own.  All of my personal experiences have been bad, people I know that own a Ford have had lots of bad experiences, and everyone I talk with all say the same thing.  However, Ford has made a serious come-back and I’m the first to admit that I would actually buy a Ford car today.

Will Generation X Embrace Minivans

Since their decline from their peak in 2000, in which there was 15 different minivan models in the US market, minivans have generally been losing their market share to more SUV variations as well as crossover vehicles that are aimed to provide more styling options for people not wanting to drive around in a what is widely known as a soccer mom car.  Today there are only 8 minivan models in the US market and the sales have dropped by nearly half of their 2000 peak of 1.37 million to only 650,000 in 2009.  Does this data suggest the end of the minivans as we know it and will consumers continue to move away from them and into SUVs, or will car makers come up with ways to entice Generation X families to move back into minivans by making them more suited for Generation X.