Drivers Under 50 See Biggest Premium Hikes After Tickets

Drivers Under 50 See Biggest Premium Hikes After Tickets
Enter the 2015 AutoGuide.com Compact Car Playoffs
Chevy Brings Video Ads to Print Magazines
2016 BMW 7 Series M Sport Spied Testing
Toyota Mirai Engineer Doubts EVs are Key to a Sustainable Future
How You Can Buy a Focus RS in America This Weekend

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Younger drivers are more likely to see their insurance costs go up after a ticket.

According to insuranceQuotes.com, drivers under the age of 50 are three times more likely to see their insurance costs rise after a ticket than drivers aged 50 to 64. Most insurance carriers check in on younger drivers every six months to look for new infractions, while older drivers go unchecked as they have a reputation for being safer drivers.

But contrary to popular belief, it isn't the youngest drivers who receive the most tickets. Drivers between the ages of 30 and 49 are actually the most ticketed demographic in the U.S., followed by drivers aged 18-29.

Making more money doesn't help either, as households that make over $75,000 are the most likely out of all the income brackets to have received a ticket in the last five year.

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Enter the 2015 AutoGuide.com Compact Car Playoffs

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Do you love cars? Do you love betting against strangers on the Internet? If so, we've got news for you that might as well be an automotive Double Stuf Oreo.

Welcome to the first-ever AutoGuide.com Compact Car Playoffs. We're asking you to predict how a series of head-to-head shootouts with 12 cars from 11 manufacturers will end up by filling out a betting bracket.

How Do I Play?

It's easy. You download the bracket, fill it out and send it to contest@autoguide.com. Make sure to fill all the boxes because we will ignore incomplete submissions. We're opening the floodgates to accept submissions today and keeping them open until midnight on April 30, 2015.

DOWNLOAD THE BRACKET HERE (Right click and choose "save target as")

What Happens After That?

Starting on May 1 and for the nine following Fridays, we will publish one of the comparisons in the series. Don't worry if you forget to check on your progress because we will send you a reminder when the stories go live. We won't share your email address with anyone and you will stop getting notifications after the final three-way shootout comes out at the end of the series.

Gimmie The Loot! (not to scale)

Free stuff is great, free junk not so much. With that in mind, we have a bunch of prizes that we would actually buy for ourselves. If you manage to submit a perfect prediction, you will be eligible to win a set of new Toyo Versado Noir tires. We write "eligible" because there's a chance we might have a tie for "most accurate prediction." If that happens we will pool the tied contestants in an dirty old baseball caps and pluck a winner. If nobody submits a perfect guess we will give the grand prize to the person with the closest guess.

If you don't qualify for the grand prize, we also have nine Meguiar's New Car Kits and one Dual Action Polisher attachment to give away to the 10 next most accurate guesses. If you still don't qualify, we also have 20 pre-loaded gasoline gift cards. They're each worth $20, which is enough gas money to run a run a Tesla Model S FOREVER.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo:

Like all contests, we have rules and you should probably read them.

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Chevy Brings Video Ads to Print Magazines

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Chevy's latest ad for the Colorado introduces the digital age to the world of print.

About 10,000 subscribers each to Esquire and Popular Mechanics will receive a May issue that includes a small video player embedded into a full-page ad for Chevy's new midsize pickup truck, allowing them to watch three short videos. The subscribers who receive the digital ads were specifically targeted by Chevy as the most likely to buy a Colorado.

"We had these awesome digital films that we created for the Colorado launch and we thought, why not … put video in print," said Jill Mida, manager of Chevrolet truck advertising. Chevy wouldn't disclose the cost of the ads, simply saying that "the unit is obviously expensive."

This may be a first in the auto industry, but it isn't the first time a magazine has been sold with videos in it. Back in 2009, video ads for CBS were included in Entertainment Weekly.

[Source: Ad Age]

Discuss this story at our Chevy Colorado Forum

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2016 BMW 7 Series M Sport Spied Testing

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BMW is preparing to launch a redesigned 7 Series and the company is busy testing the car.

New spy photos show the 7 Series testing in M Sport guise, a package which adds a sportier bumper, different side skirts and unique M wheels.

The new 7 Series will be the first BMW to ride on the company's new 35up scalable architecture, which will help the car lose weight thanks to its use of aluminum and carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is also said to be used in the roof, hood and trunk lids to help take pounds off the car.

Powertrain options should include a V8, a plug-in hybrid, a diesel engine that will be available in the U.S. and possibly even a four cylinder that likely won't come to the States. An all-wheel drive M version of the car is also said to be in development and will likely use a twin-turbo V8 for motivation or possibly a V12 sourced from Rolls-Royce.

Watch for the new 7 Series to launch at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. It should be on sale in either late 2015 or early 2016.

Discuss this story at our BMW Forum

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Toyota Mirai Engineer Doubts EVs are Key to a Sustainable Future

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Toyota doesn't think electric vehicles are the way of the future.

Proponents of EVs claim that if charging infrastructure is improved and charge times are shortened, electric cars are a viable option to replace traditional vehicles, but Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota's hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Mirai, disagrees. Tanaka says that fast charging times will actually defeat the purpose of electric cars.

"If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km (310 miles), for example, you're probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses," said Tanaka. "That totally goes against the need to stabilize electricity use on the grid."

Tanaka doesn't completely discredit the idea of electric vehicles, saying that EVs are best used when charged overnight during off-peak hours and then driven short distances during the day. But for a zero-emissions alternative to gasoline, Tanaka believes that hydrogen power is the only way to go.

He points out that hydrogen can be extracted from many different sources, like sewage, a source that one fueling station in southern Japan is already using to fill up to 70 Mirai fuel cell cars a day.

[Source: Automotive News]

Discuss this story at our Toyota forum

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How You Can Buy a Focus RS in America This Weekend

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The Ford Focus RS is one of those things that car geeks in America tend to hold in especially high, but totally unfounded regard.

I know nothing of what it's like to drive one because I've never been behind the wheel. I'm told it's a thrill ride, but much like the miles of commentary on the McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Seat Ibiza, I'm left taking an opinion from someone else – usually in an English accent – about how they drive. Tragic as that might seem to me, I'm as likely to own a European Focus RS as I am an HSV GTS Maloo. Money doesn't solve all of life's problems, but it does a fine job of dispatching its inconveniences and this weekend, the unfortunate fact that there wasn't ever a business case to sell previous versions of the Focus RS in America won't matter.

That's because someone went to the effort of importing and legalizing an MKII Focus RS and now it's about to cross the Barrett-Jackson auction block in Palm Beach.

Lot number 99 is a 2010 Focus RS with 13,553 miles clocked on the odometer. It has half leather Recaro seats, black wheels, green paint and a bunch of performance modifications. In stock form, the Volvo-sourced five-cylinder turbo already makes 301 hp and 325 lb-ft of torque while the turbo crams air in at 20.3 psi. This car has an even bigger turbo and what sounds like the right modifications to make use of the extra boost. For example, it has an external wastegate, 1,000 cc injectors, larger valves and a new exhaust manifold, a beefier clutch and a better intercooler among other modifications. The description doesn't say what sort of power this thing is kicking to the wheels, but you can bet that it's significant. It's being sold without a reserve and the first auction starts tomorrow.

Photos courtesy of Barrett-Jackson

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Car Reviews

Thursday, 16 April 2015