While the government of Dubai is testing in Chevy Tahoe Hybrids as taxis, ordinary drivers aren't being quite so conscientious. So far record high prices for crude oil aren't being felt at the pump by drivers. While Americans are now paying over $4/gallon for gasoline, people in Dubai are paying only $1.36. Dubai itself has limited oil supplies and is getting only six percent of its revenue directly from crude. Nonetheless, the high price of oil benefits Dubai as people from more oil rich areas of the Middle East invest and spend their money in the emirate. That means residents of Dubai have cash to spend and manufacturers of big powerful vehicles are the beneficiaries. GM may be having trouble moving HUMMERS and Escalades in the US but they are still extremely popular in Dubai as are big Mercedes, Bugattis and Nissan GT-Rs. Sales of full-size SUVs grew 40 percent in the Middle East in the first quarter of 2008. Unfortunately for GM, the absolute numbers are still far too small to keep the U.S. factories that build those big trucks running.

[Source: International Herald Tribune]

After recently compiling a dubious list of the most technologically advanced green cars, Forbes is at it again. They've produced a list purporting to be the least efficient luxury cars. This bottom ten list actually numbers twenty-one cars including most of the Audi S models, BMW's M-fleet and Mercedes AMG bombers. The only car on the list not originating from the land of the autobahn is the Cadillac STS-V. They came up with so many cars by including rides that were tied with the same mileage as one position on the list. While being on the list is undoubtedly somewhat embarassing for these three German brands, the list is unfortunately incomplete and fails to include some even bigger offenders. The editors failed to catch the entire lineups from both Maybach and Bentley. Then there are of course the exotics from the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini. Maybe next time.

[Source: Forbes]

If you thought trading in your old gas-guzzling car or truck for a shiny new hybrid or subcompact would help the planet by taking it off the road for good, you'd better think again. Shipping those old road warriors south to Mexico is now a big business. According to the Los Angeles Times, the armada of Detroit iron flooding across the border is large enough to sustain 25,000 families via the used car trade in Juarez City alone.

Because of high tariffs on used American cars, it used to be that that this was a rare practice. However, since trade barriers began dropping under NAFTA in the middle of 2005, the former black market trickle has been transforming into a legal-market tsunami. The influx of 3,000,000 cheap, used American cars in the past several years may be at least partially responsible for large dropoffs in Mexican new car sales, especially in the less costly subcompact class.

What can be done? The article notes that as the tariffs for more recent model years come down, those newer, more efficient vehicles will help displace some of the smoke-spewing heaps now steaming their way across the border. Somehow, that's not very comforting. Maybe we should be recycling some of these clunkers before they can continue to do their damage elsewhere.

[Source: Los Angeles Times]

File under: damn, that was fast.

According to two online car buying research sites – Cars.com and CarMax – consumer searches for larger vehicles (trucks and SUVs) rose in September. National average for gas prices have dropped from over $3 a gallon in August to around $2.30 a gallon today, according to the Energy Information Administration and that's all it took for car buyers to change their habits. Fickle shoppers.

Over at Cars.com, fuel-sippers like the Prius, Yaris and Insight topped the list of vehicles with the largest decline in search volume over the past month, while Cars.com users increased their searches for gas-hogs like the Hummer H2 and H3, Cadillac Escalade and BMW X5. At CarMax, small cars remained popular searches in September, but vehicles like the Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford F150, and Ford Expedition, all got more searches in September than August, said Tom Folliard, president and chief executive officer of CarMax.

[Source: Cars.com and CarMax, Inc]