Diesel has gone for a facelift and it’s evident in the way that many car finance companies are opening their doors wider to customers who want car loans and adjusted bad car credit loans for the purchase of diesel-engine powered cars.  This trend is not just limited to car loan takers. I have a friend who works for the chattel mortgage department of a motor vehicle finance company and she said that people are beginning to actively pursue chattel mortgage rules for diesel cars. 

Because diesel is what works today, and if you’re sensible about the amount of cash and credit you pour into your car, diesel is what you’re going to be looking at as well.  As of now, not only are diesel cars phenomenally and magnificently quiet and speedy, they are also environment-friendly and a lot easier on the pocket. And for those of you who are shaking their heads and smirking as you read this, I suggest you check out the sporty appeal of the diesel BMW 320d. 

I had the chance to test drive the range toppers 3 series, the 325i a couple of months back when a friend was checking out cars since his old one had almost copped out and he had saved up enough to make a sizeable down payment and make the rest of the payment through chattel mortgage.  The experience blew me away with the car’s incredible petrol engine and we thought that things couldn’t possibly get any better than this, and imagine our surprise when we found ourselves blowing that theory to smithereens when we got introduced to the diesel 320d. 

BMW has always prided itself on its sporty diesels and the 320d does not disappoint in this regard.  The car gets a whopping 154PS of power from its 2.0 litre turbo-charged intercooled common rail engine.  The 330Nm torque peaks at 2750 rpm and that my friend puts the 320d very comfortably in the 325i’s class with a diesel engine.  All the folks who were smirking a paragraph up may now proceed and eat their hat.  I’m not joking, but the 320d’s 0-100 kmph time is just shy of the straight six petrol’s time – and that is seriously rapid.  The 1995cc four cylinder engine uses second-gen common rail tech where the rails carry pressures up to 1600 bar, multiple injectors and an exhaust gas turbocharger with variable geometry. 

Contd…..

IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE?

A challenge has been given to Mazda’s North American advanced design team to invent an advanced innovative means to enable emotions in vehicles whether they are just still or in moving form, they want to give machines emotional abilities. This is supposedly the dream of all the new inventors from Japan and other car manufacturing companies. They have received the copyrights on technology to allow all kind of vehicles to express emotions and sentiments. This invention could take another decade to come into existence. Car-centric is the new car language.

ALL THE HARD WORK

Automobile manufactures want to do something innovative to improve their skills and drive the world crazy. They have got their best technicians, expertise to work on this new innovation; they have got the latest machines, tools and equipments to make their dream come true. Imagine a human being talking and expressing feelings with a non-living communicating thing. It all sounds very interesting. This innovative method has come in to add social grace to technology. We have seen cars smiling and talking in animated kids channels on television, imagine it all turning into reality.

EFFORTS DON’T GO IN VAIN

Such an amazing technology has been invented to improve the communication skills of the vehicles to help the drivers on the road send multifaceted signals to the other vehicles around them. Now it’s possible only to honk or use the clutch and break, indicate to other drivers, use the head lights and tail lights etc. these are all very crude and unsophisticated. It is easier said than done to express your anger to the other driver when he/she would jump lanes, or honk unnecessarily, or not moving quickly at a signal etc. the new technology is going to be very helpful for the common man, its going to make complex situations easy. The route to this exchange of ideas is taken into consideration because of the human likeness for easily indentify with facials expressions and the body language of people. It is difficult for human beings to understand a few facial expressions even when machines imitate all those expressions. To express an emotion or display the body language so that the viewer understands, it’s not obligatory that it should be communicated with another human being itself.

This technology is not invented for just entertainment, its going to turn out better than expected. It could help attain road discipline and help the drivers get along well and express their own views about one another’s driving. This way the driver will be less frustrated, stress free and relaxed and be able to concentrate on driving. With the right technology they will be able to express their point better to the other driver.

Every year thousands of car buyers make the mistake of not properly going through their deal papers when buying a car or taking up a car lease or entering terms of chattel mortgage and hire purchase and end up paying more than what they calculated even after taking the scheme or sales offer into consideration. Each time, there is a fraudulent or misled car purchase made, the image of the auto industry takes a beating notwithstanding the number of fine dealerships we have in the country.

I can’t stress the importance of reading the fine print enough. It is where you must pay attention and figure out what’s going on. All the rest of it will not matter if you do not understand the tiny print at the bottom of the car lease agreement. The difference between a smart car buyer and someone who is negligent and careless about the way they conduct business and buy cars is primarily because of the importance given (or not) to the fine print that accompanies car leases.

How important is this stuff? Let’s put it this way: In September 1999, the Federal Trade Commission fined Mazda $4.05 million, the largest civil penalty ever from the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in the United States of America, for messing around with the fine print in its TV lease ads and not making things crystal clear to the customers as they ought to be.

The Mazda ads flashed the information concerning security deposits and the total amount due at lease-signing in print that was too-small, for too short of a time, amid distracting sounds and images, says Sally Forman Pitofsky, a senior attorney at the FTC. She called the ads “deceptive” because the company was banking upon the customer reluctance to read the fine print and also encouraged the use of disturbing images and sounds to nullify the effect of the small print. So that the message in the small print was effectively suppressed by using diversionary tactics.

“Consumers may have been misled as to what was actually due at lease-signing,” Pitofsky says.The rules differ in their details for auto leases and loans, but the underlying idea is the same — if a dealer brags about one part of a financing deal, the other parts have to be revealed, too.

I know that I used to be very confused about certain terminology that would be taken for granted by every auto finance agent I met, while I would be struggling to keep up with the conversation. Since I’ve been in the vehicle finance sector myself, I have educated myself about these terms, so that I can project and present an informed and knowledgeable answer to questions posed by anyone who wants to know about these terms in connection with their particular circumstances.

Regardless of the business, it is very important to understand the language and the terms in which that business is being conducted or else you could find yourself in a very embarrassing and financially unstable position because you were unfortunately not aware of the power of the ideas you were speaking about. Every car aficionado should learn the meanings, context, and purpose of car finance terminology early in his or her interest.

I will make a series of blog posts where I shall discuss various terms and phrases that crop up in vehicle finance agreements and discussions. I will try to provide as much information about these terms as possible but please remember that this shall at best be a sort of glossary of terms and meanings to which those terms may correspond. I will of course try and include as many specialized terms as I can find, however, if you do find what you are looking for here, mail me or ask mea question and I will gladly get back to you.

Shall we begin then?

Alright! Starting out:-

Chattel mortgage – What is chattel mortgage? Very simply put, chattel mortgage is a legal term applied to a contract adopted by certain states that have adopted the English law system. According to the law, under a chattel mortgage, the purchaser (person making a purchase) takes a loan upon an article of movable personal property (which is known as the chattel) and purchases the article of movable property from the lender. The lender then proceeds to secure his loan with a mortgage over the chattel. With me so far? The chattel is legally transferred to the purchaser at the time of the purchase and the loan is considered repaid, the mortgage upon the chattel is taken away. Thus, when you take up chattel mortgage, you borrow money to buy a car, and secure the loan by giving up a mortgage. You are given legal possession of the car, and your mortgage is taken off when you repay the loan in full to the person from whom you have bought the car via chattel mortgage.

Hope this helped!

What seemed a bit weird was confirmed when a spectator went backstage to just check up on things. And he found that the snazzy looking mean machines being called Ferraris were actually dolled up, painted versions of Toyota MR2s. The Ferrari V8 engine is conspicuous for its glass covered engine, allowing you to look at the engine closely. But these cars had the engine covered up, making it clear to the whole arena that the polished, red tinted cars just weren’t Ferraris.

The glamour just died after that, and people demanded to be told what was going on since they hadn’t signed up to see Toyotas do what any Ferrari could have managed but looked way cooler doing, not to mention the fact that watching three Ferraris worth well over a million dollars going up in smoke as they were plummeted across the stadium asphalt would be so much more satisfying.

Let’s not forget that back in the day when Ferrari still manufactured the 360, it was worth $400,000.00 whereas the Toyota MR2, although a great car in its own right, I mean it was chosen to become the Ferrari’s double, is a very poor cousin at almost $50,000.00 new.

The trick hasn’t done a whole lot to boost the image of Top Gear in Australia. The grand-daddy of all car shows has lost the halo that sat around its head as the show’s producers thought nothing of reducing mean machines to dust by vigorous driving. But, the rules have been bent for a Ferrari it seems, where do we go from here? Crash driving the Ferraris was a bit too daring for the show, was it? The sound of the feebler Toyota engine was droned out by the loud music playing in the stadium, another trick that has Aussie car freaks up in arms.

The biggest draw of the car show had been its seemingly irreverent behaviour and attitude towards godly cars such as the Ferraris. The reluctance of the show’s producers to actually engage in the act of perhaps destroying three specimens of the very pricey, very haute Italian mechanical splendour has blown the Aussie enthusiast’s love and trust of Top Gear to smithereens.

Mounting pressure to inquire into the incident has the show organisers in a tizzy. Even the local director of the event has admitted that he thought that the Ferraris were real and that he would have to check things out with the show producers in the UK.

The plot thickens…..

I don’t know if you ever think about the cars in certain movies, not think about them in the sense that you can’t think of anything but the car at all times, but think why this particular car and nothing else was used for this movie. Because ultimately, regardless of how gorgeous the cars are, they have been inserted into the frames of the movie for one reason alone – business. Product placement in movies, TV shows is simply done to glorify the product by associating it with stars or characters you like and love, and if it makes more of us get up and line up for vehicle finance to obtain any car loan or car lease to buy that car, then the trick has worked and as we stand, cooling our heels at the car finance company, the moviemakers and the car makers are laughing all the bank.

Products find spots on popular TV shows and upcoming action flicks (there’s not much you can do with a car in a romantic comedy that will make a girl get out and get a car loan to buy it), so we stick to action flicks that show the entire range of the car’s charms in high-speed chases, or lounging about next to the shimmering blue seas of Miami, (who cares if half the guys that own them are drug cartel lords) the LIFE is by the car and of the car. The car makes the life and the life gets the car. Capish?

More blatant instances in recent times:

1) Eva Longoria in Desperate Housewives – dresses up to the nines in a cocktail dress and tries to sell a Buick Lacrosse to the discerning audience in a mall. What follows is a recital of ad copy by Longoria but if you think anyone dared to switch channels, you’re wrong. Maybe she should offer car finance tips as well. Nobody would bother checking the fine print.

2) In Heroes, Nissan made sure that the Versa and the Rogue both got honourable by-name callouts by characters. If it messed with the story line (Why does Hiro need a car if he can teleport?) the carmakers pretended not to notice.

3) Transformers – Ford made sure that all the nice “fluffy” robots were Fords, the evil one was a Saleen.

4) Iron Man – The cast of Iron Man turned out in Audis. a shot in the arm for the automaker as every kid above the talking age could manage only two intelligible words after watching the movie…”Ironman” and “Audi”.

Needless to say, the Secret Service is delighted. Nicholas Trotta, the assistant director for the Office of Protective Operations quoted in their press release that “although many of the vehicle’s security enhancements cannot be discussed it is safe to say that this car’s security embellishments and coded communications system make it the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world.”

We don’t doubt it. In fact, we wouldn’t put it past the Americans to make the President’s Cadillac more akin to a fighter jet than a car, and we need not kid ourselves, by the time they’re done with that car, it could probably survive a rocket attack.

Yes, the men in black are grinning from ear to ear behind their face masks, because Cadillac One gives them a sort of glorified tank inside which they can keep the President and be certain that, at least inside this armored car, no harm of any sort can come to the President. I’ve always wanted an armored car, I wonder how seriously car finance companies will be willing to view my claim if I request ‘armored car’ as my reason for applying for one of many car loans (to support my own Cadillac One).

Among the many specifications for President Obama’s presidential limousine are bulletproof glass, an armoured body, separate oxygen supply and a sealed interior to protect against chemical attacks. That is some list, and of course there are also those specifications which will not, unfortunately be specified no matter what the protest, request or entreaty you make.

When he was asked, David Caldwell of General Motors restricted his remarks to a pithy one-liner, “One of the specifications is that we don’t talk about the specifications.”

Well now, isn’t that surprising?

‘The Beast’ as it’s called made its inaugural appearance in public during President Obama’s inaugural parade. As it rolled past, I’m sure many of the blokes standing in the crowd started thinking about having a car like this themselves, after the initial moment of chest swelling pride. If such thought be swirlin’ in your mind fellas, this might be a good time to check out your motor vehicle finance options, may be through a chattel mortgage or a  solid car finance scheme on your side….well you won’t get Cadillac One, but some other beautiful car can surely be yours!

We hope that by now all of you fine, upstanding individuals would have stolen a glance across President Obama’s fine Cadillac One. And we also hope that the green-ish tinge has washed out of your skin, since that limousine is one piece of mechanical, electronic, and technological splendor. No amount of car loans and vehicle finance, or even chattel mortgage would bring you even an inch closer to this car.

Car finance customers who have ever wished that Aston Martin would one day launch its cheapest, smallest and still the most enduring car around, then this year the Tooth Fairy came early. The V8 Vantage Coupe is the model with the highest volume that has been launched so far. The makers have launched such a model to vehemently compete with the Porsche 911, The Audi R8, The Carrera S, The BMW M6 and The Mercedes SL550. The hallmark about the car is that it still manages to stand out from all of them and appear as the showstopper. Lighter than the M6 and more dexterous than the SL, the V8 exemplifies panache coupled with elegance something that is unlike the macho R8 and the hardcore 911. The vehicle is priced at around $110,000 and gives potential buyers a chance to hound banks and financial institutions for car loans, auto loans and car finance. Chattel mortgage and hire purchase also seems to be a fine option if vehicle is being used for business purposes.

The V8 Vantage Coupe contains a naturally aspirated 4.3 litre V8 engine, which produces 380 horsepower at 7,000 rpm. The V8 is convincingly mated to a transaxle, one from the pair that is furnished with a slight differential. The first one comes across as a traditional manual, which has six gears in the forward mode while the other manual is a six speed automated one with pro-drive technology. The shift speed is around 200 milliseconds and the amalgamation boosts the 4000 pound sports car in 5 seconds to 60 mph, something that is blatantly claimed by Aston Martin. The auto brand also claims that a top speed of 175 mph is achievable and the 49/51 front/rear weight distribution makes sure that the handling is smooth. So just in case you wanted to know about the mechanics, here it is.

Sticking with the quintessential image of the brand, the tiniest Aston Martin is also packed with luxury and is equipped with high quality leather used on the seats. They also contain alcantara inserts and headliners along with electronic climate control and a system to monitor tire pressures. The 160W audio system, which can house six disks has the ability to play audio from mobile phones, iPods and USB connections. The 19 inch wheels will blow you away with just one glance and the satellite radio, the HID headlights and Bluetooth are other salient features. So, are you still waiting? By now, you should have your wheels in motion and be preparing to apply for a car loan, auto loan or car finance to get your hands on this beauty. Go for it.

One of the largest auto makers in the world has not been dethroned from its position despite the melting economies. Toyota continues to do what it is best known for and that is producing cars. Even as economies are sinking and auto-makers are whining about the low sales, Toyota is yet to see tough times as the loyalists are going in for car credit and car loans to purchase a Toyota. Car loans are being easily made available for those who have a preference for Toyota cars because of the brand’s equity in the market and also its sustainability during such a tough financial epoch. For those yearning to buy a Toyota car, it becomes imperative to maintain good car credit as the ones with an awful car credit rating might not be able to get a car loan in today’s environment.

Toyota witnessed a good year in sales in 2008. It managed to sell more than 10 million units globally, in the process nailing nearest challenger General Motors. This has been a very instrumental factor in establishing Toyota as an honourable brand which has made car finance and getting a car loan easy, for those buying a Toyota car. In this financial crunch spanning the globe, Toyota lucratively ate into the market share of its other successful rivals, thus escalating its market capitalization and in the process making car loans easily available for potential buyers courtesy of its brands integrity. Even those who had a record of bad car credit managed to sneak in with a bad credit car loan and bought Toyota cars.

The Japanese auto giant showed immense resilience even when the world kept wobbling from recession. Times when obtaining car finance became increasingly tough. Toyota survived rough waters and stationed gross revenues in excess of $230 million, miles ahead of its nearest challenger. Such astronomical numbers have made Toyota a ruthless brand in terms of holding up against and not giving into market pressures. In the last fiscal, Toyota Motors reported an increase of 9.8 per cent increase in net revenues in comparison to the earlier fiscal. The operating income augmented to 1.4 per cent while the net income ascended to 4.5 per cent marking a historic end to the financial year. Such figures made getting car finance and car loans on Toyota cars comparatively easier to other brands.

Toyota cars have stridden through continents by posting momentous sales. In Europe, the Auris and the Prius sold like hot cakes despite the market feeling the heat where as the Camry and the Avensis clobbered Eastern European and Russian markets. Asian markets also saw Toyota ruling the roost with the Corolla, the IMV and the Yaris while the Latin American market witnessed domination by Toyota through the Camry and Corolla.  

So it was a year when Toyota walked the talk when it came to selling cars and post momentous sales.