Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Video

In the first two installments of Cars.com’s Mileage Challenge, we took you through our daylong city drive to see what sort of real-world gas mileage various hybrid cars serve up. Each hybrid in our challenge had a battery of displays to convey instant and cumulative fuel economy. Some also had power flow displays or mileage history readouts, while others had meters showing the amount of electric boost or how much braking energy was recharging the battery. That’s a lot of information, and each car had a different take on how to convey it. Naturally, some did better than others.

Check out our video to learn more.

Chrysler, GM Struggle to Manage Truck Incentives

By now, the slumping economy is no secret, and neither are gas prices. Separately, each "crisis" would be bad enough; together they create a hugely damaging environment for a traditionally popular automotive segment, trucks.

A cursory look at truck incentives (or the Cars.com Top 10 list, where five of the entries are trucks) reinforces that point. Trucks almost always offer the highest incentives, but rarely are those incentives this high; select California Dodge dealers are offering up to $13,000 off the MSRP of popular trucks in an effort to get huge backloads off the lot. The clock is ticking, too, because those 2008s need to move before the redesigned 2009s come in.

In the meantime, GM dealers are clamoring for more incentives to sell their load of trucks, but the Detroit automaker seems a little less willing to take Chrysler's must-sell-now approach.

The question remains: Would you buy a truck in this climate? How much cash back would it take? Or are you going to wait for the new designs?

Today on MotherProof: 'Iron Man's' Audi and the 2009 Dodge Journey Reviewed

A car can embody the qualities of its driver, and Kristin Varela has found that the Audi R8 — with its sleek, futuristic styling — works perfectly as the car of choice for weapons-dealer-turned-superhero Tony Stark in the new film ‘Iron Man.’ Also, Kristin takes a spin in the Swiss Army knife of crossovers, the 2009 Dodge Journey.

2009 Dodge Journey Review (MotherProof)
Audi R8 is 'Iron Man's' Automotive Soul Mate (MotherProof)

Question of the Day: Are There any Hybrid Cars With Adjustable Pedals or Telescopic Steering Wheels?

If you want to join the ranks of fuel-conscious drivers but also need adjustability in the driver's seat to accommodate your height or build, your choices will be limited to a few vehicles. Ask.cars.com found all the hybrid vehicles that have telescoping steering wheels, but only one also comes with adjustable pedals. Click on the jump to find out the answer.

Are there any hybrid cars with adjustable pedals or telescopic steering wheels? (Ask.cars.com)

Reader Review of the Week: 2009 Hyundai Sonata

Our reader reviewer set out to buy a new car and figured he would go with a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry, but wanted to test-drive other vehicles in the midsize sedan segment. After taking the new 2009 Hyundai Sonata for a test drive, he was impressed enough to purchase one. A month into owning the car, he's very satisfied with his decision. Read the full review, and check out our own first-drive impressions. Post your own reader review here.

Chrysler Promises Cheap Gas

In exchange for buying one of its vehicles, Chrysler wants to render the unfathomably complicated fluctuations in the global oil market irrelevant. Beginning tomorrow and running through June 2, anyone who buys a Chrysler vehicle will get a "Let's Refuel America" card that will fix the price of gas, diesel or E85 at $2.99 a gallon for the next three years.

As gas prices flirt with - and in some areas surpass - the $4 per gallon mark, Chrysler has certainly found a highly marketable incentive as a way of bolstering languishing sales.

Customers will pay $2.99 a gallon with their card at participating stations, and Chrysler will pay every cent of the difference. So if gas hits $5 a gallon, Chrysler's out $2.01 a gallon. With a 20-gallon tank, that's a $40 hit.

We have to wonder if Chrysler was thinking clearly. All it would take in the next three years is a rebel coup in Nigeria, or Hugo Chavez feeling ornery, to cause the price of gas to explode and turn this promotional gambit into a real boondoggle.

Also note that Chrysler is still offering a choice of incentives. According to Beverly Thacker, Chrysler's manager of sales communications, customers will have a choice between the gas deal, a special APR rate or more typical cash-back rebates. With the gas incentive it wants to give customers a sense of stability by trading those initial, traditional incentives for long-term peace of mind at the pump. Of course, figuring out if this is a good trade-off would require a solid idea of how gas prices will behave over the next three years. We wish you the best of luck.

PickupTrucks.com Joins Cars.com Family

In the greatest partnership since peanut butter and chocolate — OK, nothing is that good — PickupTrucks.com has joined the Cars.com family of websites. Editor Mike Levine has been reporting on the truck segment for more than a decade and brings his considerable expertise to a family of sites that also includes MotherProof.com, KickingTires and Ask.cars.com.

Check out the site here and let us know what you think in the comments below. 

Welcome to the family, Mike!

Drunk Driving in GTA 4 Gets MADD, Well, Mad

Mothers Against Drunk Driving issued a statement condemning a feature in the new hit video game Grand Theft Auto 4 that allows players to drive drunk. In the game you can enter a bar, get soused, and then hit the roads, careening around the streets of a replica of New York City in a car that's nearly impossible to control.

In the statement, MADD said, "Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes… Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable." The organization called for the game's distribution to be halted until it was reclassified as an Adults Only game.

Given that drunk driving is one of the least objectionable activities you can engage in while playing GTA 4, and choosing to drive while drunk in the game almost always attracts the attention of police, the chances of this actually happening seem pretty slim. We'd still like to know, though: What's your favorite vehicle from the new Grand Theft Auto?

MADD: Drunk Driving Content Should Result in Adults Only Rating for GTA 4 (CrunchGear via Jalopnik)

At the Track, Via Twitter

I’m at a special event for Midwestern journalists up at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the next two days. Automakers unleash all the new models — over 90 this year, including things with M, AMG and Gran Tursimo in their names — for us to test on the Road America track and local streets. Follow the cars I’m taking on the track via Twitter or in this post as the updates stream live.

Twitter Updates

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Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 2

Yesterday, we introduced the four fuel-sippers — a Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid and Toyota Prius — we schlepped through Chicago traffic early this month. We took pains to drive as we normally would: No nursing the gas pedal to stay in electric mode or purposely coasting to regenerate more braking energy. Just ordinary stop-and-go driving. Faced with some wonky fill-up numbers at a gas pump on the fritz, we took our results from each vehicle’s onboard mileage readout, which we reset at the beginning of each new leg. Read below for the numbers, along with some postgame analysis.