One of a kind: The Hackney Basecamp Expedition Vehicle.
Photos: Courtesy Douglas and Stephanie Hackney

by Stephan Wilkinson

Most of us rent a car, maybe even an RV, if we're traveling by road far from home.  Not Doug and Stephanie Hackney, who are two of the most intrepid and far-ranging travelers I know.

They built a BEV.

What's a BEV? Well, you're lookin' at it, but it stands for Basecamp Expedition Vehicle. It's a totally self-contained and autonomous global exploration module, at the same time a base camp and a traveling machine, designed to be self-sufficient and "self-extracting." Meaning that since you can't call Triple-A in the middle of Mongolia, you'd better be ready to winch or otherwise extract yourself from a wide variety of emergencies.

The Hackney BEV is equipped to voyage for two or three years without any outside support other than the necessary fuel, food, and routine maintenance, and to do it in the Third World, far from North Face outlets, Zagat Guides, Lexus dealers, airline ticket counters, high-test gas (or any gasoline at all, in fact) or HBO.

Here's what went into it:

Rambling about "The Iraq" and "U.S. Americans," Miss Teen South Carolina attempts to explain why so many of her countrymen can't find their country on a map.
Photo: The Associated Press/Patrick Prather

by Wendy Perrin

"Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?" asked a judge in the recent Miss Teen USA Pageant.  The brainless reply from Miss Teen South Carolina -- which millions of people have now viewed on YouTube -- was so incoherent that yesterday The Today Show gave her a second chance to answer the question.  Even after three days to mull it over, however, she still barely answered it. "I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education."  You don't say!

Any parent who's viewed the video may be wondering (1) how they can keep their kids from growing up so geographically challenged that they can't locate their own country on a map; and (2) how they can keep their kids from growing up to be Miss Teen South Carolina.

To that end, and just in time for Labor Day road or plane trips with the kids, I hereby offer up my five favorite geography-teaching games for youngsters:

(1) Sticker Set Play Scenes: both the Map of the USA and the Map of the World. I picked these up last month at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, and as a consequence my five-year-old now knows the location of every state in the U.S., as well as each state's capital. (Now if only he could tie his shoes.)

Charlie and Doug with Eartha, the rotating globe, at DeLorme in Yarmouth, Maine, Sept. 2006.

(2) Kids Travel: A Backseat Survival Kit: I found this at the DeLorme Map Store in Maine and now, thanks to the "Geography Bee" and "Life List of License Plates" sections, Charlie spends our car trips "collecting" license plates from as many states as possible and checking them off on the map.  Boy, was he thrilled this summer when he spotted a Hawaii plate!

Yes, conventional tires very occasionally go flat, but they're easy to fix.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Don't believe the hype about run-flat tires.  Tire companies -- and the car companies that sell them as an option -- would love you to believe that run-flats make you immune to punctures and blow-outs.  The truth is that expensive, rough-riding, fast-wearing, short-lived run-flats allow you to drive maybe 50 miles after a puncture, at a poky maximum of 50 mph.

And you'd better pray that somewhere within that 50 miles is a car dealer or a very well-equipped tire retailer with the expensive special equipment needed to dismount your run-flat, and hope that he also has a replacement for your tire.  (Run-flats often can't be repaired but must be replaced, and they can cost half again as much as the equivalent conventional tire.) If you're road-tripping in rural Wyoming or northern Michigan, say, you could be stuck overnight while your car is flat-bedded to a dealer and a replacement located and shipped.

Here's why I'm wary of run-flats:

There's a right way and a wrong way to perform every driving task, but a good start would be to consider a partially battery-powered car like this Ford Escape Hybrid.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Mother never told you...because she didn't know:

*Never drive onto the breakdown lane of a major highway -- or, far worse, one of those areas like the triangular no-man's-land between the Interstate and an off-ramp. Your chances of getting a flat or a blowout are greatly increased there.  These are the places where everything that has fallen off cars and trucks gathers -- wayward nuts and bolts, jagged pieces of metal, nails, broken bottles, old hubcaps, all blown there by the 80-mph passage of a steady stream of traffic.  Don't go there if you can help it, and if you can't, look very carefully where your tires are treading.

*If you see a car ahead waiting on a side road to merge with or cross oncoming traffic, keep your eye on its left front wheel, not the car itself.  You'll see that wheel beginning to rotate precious microseconds before you sense that the entire vehicle is moving forward because the driver doesn't see you.

Want more?  Read on...

Take your new Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG to the famous Nurburgring racetrack, which is open to the public.  Just don't crash.
Photo: Mercedes-Benz North America

by Stephan Wilkinson

If you're flying to Europe for a vacation this summer and it's time to replace your old Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Saab or Volvo, consider taking delivery of your new car at its factory in Germany or Sweden, using it for a few weeks on the high-speed highways and country lanes for which it was designed, and then having it shipped back to the U. S. for free.

     Advantages: 1/Some companies (BMW and Mercedes-Benz) throw in a two-tickets-for-the-price-of-one airfare voucher, and Volvo includes two free round-trip tickets in their deal. 2/No rental-car cost while you're vacationing, and all six companies throw in 15 days of free European insurance. 3/You can have the car built and optioned to your exact desires rather than having to buy the blue one without cruise control that the local dealer happens to have  on his lot.  4/The process is hassle-free, since the purchase is handled through your local dealer, and transatlantic shipping is entirely in the hands of the factory (and they've all been doing European-delivery schemes for decades, so there are no surprises).

     But there are negatives as well...

You don't need a hybrid to chop these numbers by 10 percent or more.  All it takes is some thoughtful but simple measures.

by Stephan Wilkinson

There's a certain amount of baloney being sliced by auto advisors about fuel-saving measures, and I'm particularly amused by the suggestion, "keep your engine tuned." Nobody has "tuned" a car engine since carburetors and mechanical ignition distributors went away in the early 1970s, and it's a silly piece of advice that even the Government's FTC posts on its fuel-economy web page. With today's technology, if the "check engine" light isn't on and you're adhering to your vehicle's maintenance schedule (replacing engine oil, filters and sparkplugs when specified), your car is as tuned as it's ever gonna be.

Here, however, are some useful and do-able ways to save gas:

Small wonder: the Garmin Nuvi 680, little bigger than an iPod but filled with everything from a talking navigator to a multi-language translator to a currency converter.

by Stephan Wilkinson

The silliest expensive option you can buy in a new car is an in-dash GPS navigation system. Not because GPS isn't useful but because the portable aftermarket alternatives from such manufacturers as Garmin and Magellan are far less expensive, vastly more useful, and way more sophisticated. I recently spent a week in our Volvo wagon driving around with a Garmin Nuvi 680 GPS suction-cupped to the windshield. It's a micro-chipped miracle not much bigger than an iPod but that probably could run the Space Shuttle. I'm a card-carrying Luddite, but damn, I want one.

Think about it: a car manufacturer has to elect a specific GPS receiver and display for its new model, then design and engineer the complex installation. Three years later, the car comes to market. Meanwhile, hand-held GPS technology  has  leapt two generations and  half a dozen software iterations, but you're stuck with an antique bolted firmly into your new car.

Tell me more, you say? Read on.

Would you rat on the red Porsche or the beige Toyota?
Photo: courtesy of Porsche Cars North America

by Stephan Wilkinson

Here's a highway-safety program that deserves to die a quick death: more than half of all states have established and encouraged formal systems by which drivers can report by cellphone, land line or the Internet anything they consider to be illegal, reckless or even simply bad driving, by anybody whose license plate they can read, and misguided enthusiasm for such programs is on the increase.

(Didn't the Third Reich have something similar? Hey, just asking...)

Nor are these programs open only to drivers. Nosy stay-at-homes with a view of the road, and passengers who've never held a driver's license are also welcome to play.

Here's why this is a lousy idea:

Electronic miracle or urban legend?  Try it and see.

by Stephan Wilkinson

It's a claim that's been making the rounds of endlessly forwarded e-mails and YouTube postings, but the answer is NO   . . . unless you use the cellphone to call a locksmith.  I wish it were true, because I still remember the day I locked a Hertz Mustang convertible's keys inside the car when I was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, looking forward to an evening of stylin' in LA with my cool ride. It took me several hours, many dollars, and a taxi back to the rental office to retrieve a spare key. 

Here's the bogus claim: if you've locked your keys inside the car, simply call home and get your spouse or one of the kids to find the spare remote-opener keyfob. (Surely you have one?) Have them point the magic fob at their phone and push the unlock button while you hold your cellphone next to the locked car's door. Presto!  Open Subaru!

Uh, not so fast...

 
Here's a Toyota "Energy Monitor" display, this one from the Lexus GS450h
sport-sedan hybrid. Photo: courtesy of Toyota

by Stephan Wilkinson

Curious what it's like to drive a semi-electric car? Avis has just announced that it's adding 1,000 Toyota Prius hybrids to its rental fleet in Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and throughout California. Enterprise Rent-A-Car already has 3,000 Priuses available throughout the U. S., and Hertz is adding 1,000 more Priuses to the 1,000 already in its fleet

Avis will be charging $69.95 a day and up, depending on location, day of the week, phase of the moon and all of the other mysteries that determine rental-car rates. Hertz says a Prius will cost renters $5 to $10 more than a comparable gas-engine car

I've put a fair amount of mileage on a number of hybrid cars, ranging from the Prius and the Ford Escape hybrid all the way up to the $104,000, 438-horsepower Lexus LS600h L super-hybrid limo--including a Conde Nast Traveler "Great Drive" in a Prius--and I can tell you that driving a hybrid is more fun than you might imagine.

Here's why:

Keep the surfboard, but don't bring the car back early.
Photo courtesy of Alamo Rent A Car

by Stephan Wilkinson

     Our compatriot Christopher Elliott runs the excellent travel blog elliott.org ("first aid for travel"), but he called one wrong in a recent post. 

     A reader wrote in griping that she and her husband had been charged extra by Alamo for a rental car they returned three days early because her husband's grandmother died, necessitating an early end to a vacation. "If anything, Alamo should be offering you a refund for bringing one of its vehicles back early, thereby allowing the company to rent the car to someone else," Elliott opined.

     It's not that simple.

     Cars in an enormous fleet such as Alamo's (200,000 vehicles worldwide) don't just get driven around, then parked to await a new renter. Rental cars are almost as tightly scheduled as airline seats, and when a car suddenly shows up three days early, that might well mean three days of lost profit for the rental company. Far from "offering a refund," Alamo had every right to charge a penalty -- as specified in the contract the renter signed -- and renters need to be aware of this. 

     Whether Alamo should have been more compassionate about the death or should have charged a lesser penalty -- they upped the renter's rate from less than $22 a day to more than $73 a day -- are different questions, but don't think you're doing anybody a favor by bringing your rental ride back to the barn early.

The gold standard--a $399 Valentine 1 with directional arrows to indicate exactly where the police radar is located as well as laser-sensing capability--in my quarter-century-old Porsche 911SC.

by Stephan Wilkinson

You just suction-cup the magic radar detector to the windshield and turn it on, right? And then you're as invulnerable to speeding tickets as an Aztec warrior was to Conquistadores' bullets?

Slow down, leadfoot. There's a trick involved, and lots of new detector owners aren't aware of it. Those of us who frequently flirt with speed limits know that we need a "rabbit"--a car somewhere out front to set off police radar hiding behind the shrubbery. If you're the only car on the road and you're speeding, the best radar detector in the world will simply tell you that you've just gotten a ticket when it lights up.

Here's why:  Used to be that police radar units were always on, always hot. Since it took them a few moments to warm up, cops left them running all the time.  Savvy speeders could drive with detectors on their glareshields and they would easily warn of upcoming hazards as soon as they sensed the microwave energy continually pouring out of a patrol car. Which happened well before the speed-trap bully could draw a radar bead on you.

But times have changed, and if you aren't aware of it, an expensive radar detector is simply extra dashboard clutter.  Why?  Read on...

A Hudson River scene by Louis Comfort Tiffany, from the Corning Museum of Glass. Photo courtesy of the Corning Museum of Glass.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Faithful reader MissCarmichael asks, "My husband and I and our infant son want to take a one-week road trip in July, and we live in New York City. Any suggestions?"

Absolutely!  I've spent most of my life in New York and at one time or another have driven every mile of the roads I'm going to suggest, and if you stay in the Empire State, you won't need a Connecticut passport or a Cape Cod visa, and you'll avoid at least some hysterical summer traffic.

Get out of the city as fast as possible--the New York State Thruway northbound--but ditch it as soon as you get to Harriman, and take Route 17 northwest.  (In the mood for shopping? Right there is the famous Woodbury Common designer-outlet mall, its bargains so highly regarded that Japanese tourists fly from Tokyo and take buses straight to the mall from JFK.)  Route 17 is a fun-to-drive, albeit heavily patrolled, widely divided four-lane through beautiful and lightly populated Upstate hill country.

But we've only started.  The rest of the route comes after the jump.

I did a triple take when I passed this cement-and-tile "tree" -- it's the only foliage you'll see for most of the drive along Interstate 80 in Utah.
Photo: Jerry Kendrick, RoadTrip America

If my recent cross-country road trip and WHERE'S BROOK? Contest inspired you to hit the road yourself this summer, check out RoadTrip America (thanks for the tip, Johnny Jet!). You can wander around the site gathering advice about solo road tripping, traveling with pets, and the like, but the best feature is the RoadTrip Forum. An impressive crew of editors is quick to answer questions about the best route between any two points in the U.S. And for a chuckle, check out the Funny Sign Gallery.

"Professional driver on a closed course": me in my 1983 Porsche 911SC on the track in Lime Rock, Connecticut.

By Brook Wilkinson

If you're planning a road trip this summer, take note of a study recently released by George Mason University. Two of its findings:

* When pulled over, out-of-towners have a 51% chance of getting a ticket, compared to 30% for locals.

* The farther from home the driver is, the more likely he or she will be ticketed, and the higher the fine will be.

I believe it -- I'm living proof, in fact. If you've been following the WHERE'S BROOK? contest, you know that I recently drove across the country along I-80. What I didn't mention is that I got a ticket in Wyoming for doing 86 in a 75. It certainly didn't help when a cousin of mine, a Wyoming native, expressed surprise that a cop had pulled me over for what he considered a minor infraction. I'm pretty sure the state trooper simply saw my New York plates and knew I'd never be back to contest the ticket.