All About Cars

High Country Classics Car Club will host its fourth annual car show Saturday, July 19, in the parking lot of Watauga High School in Boone.

This show has become one of the area’s biggest and best events of its kind, with approximately 100 entries each year. Plaques are given to the top 50, trophies awarded to Best of Show, Longest Distance Driven, People’s Choice and Club Participation.

Goodie bags will be given to the first 75 entries, and everyone in attendance will have a chance at numerous door prizes, a fifty-fifty drawing and lots of fun, fellowship and good music with fellow car enthusiasts from all over the southeast.

Registration fee is $20 per vehicle; admission is $3 per person. Vendor spaces are available for $25 and sponsorship spots are still available and greatly appreciated.

Proceeds from the event will go toward helping local charities, in addition to the Watauga High School’s automotive technology class.

Registration begins at 8 a.m. and closes at 12 noon, with judging beginning soon thereafter. The show will end at 3 p.m.

Hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, drinks and all the fixin’s will be available on-site. The rain date for the event is scheduled for July 26.

The High Country Classics Car Club is dedicated to the collection, restoration, preservation and promotion of classic cars and trucks, as evidenced by the time and effort its members dedicate to their hobby.

Currently under the leadership of president Roger Dalton, the club is approximately 85-members strong and has been a supporter of such charitable organizations as Hospice, Santa’s Toy Box, Project Graduation and the Children’s Miracle Network, just to name a few.

As a civic-minded group, the club supports other car shows and related community events, sponsors Friday night Cruise-Ins twice monthly at the AF Bank parking lot in Boone (weather permitting) and travels as a group to both in and out-of-town locations for cruises or car shows sponsored by neighboring car clubs.

Many of the club members are experts on various techniques of restoration and preservation and are always willing to help others with questions or problems they may have with their own vehicles.

As a spokesperson for the club shared, “At classic car events, so many times you hear the phrase, ‘They just don’t make them like that any longer.’ The classic cars, just like antique furniture, are a part of our heritage and will always bring back fond memories of a more youthful and carefree time.”

Ownership of an old car is not required to join the club or attend the cruise-ins, just an appreciation for the classics. Regular meetings of the club are held on the first Monday of every month at 7:30 pm in the Fellowship Hall of Poplar Grove Baptist Church. Membership dues are only $25 per year, pro-rated for new members, and help cover the cost of the informative monthly newsletter.

Those interested are encouraged to mark their calendars for Saturday, July 19 and cruise on in to the parking lot of Watauga High School, located off N.C. 105 in Boone, though organizers have requested there be no bicycles, skateboards or pets.

Talk to anyone who has shopped on a trip to China and you’ll hear stories about high-quality knockoffs at bargain-basement prices. It seems everything from high-end watches to designer clothes have their Chinese equivalent tagged at fire-sale prices. This trend doesn’t stop there and includes big-ticket items like cars and trucks. Manufacturers have long complained that the Chinese business community has little respect for intellectual property rights, and a tour around the Beijing show is proof that the 120 or so local manufacturers vying for market share aren’t relying on in-house designs to get in on the action.

While some of the knockoffs are dead ringers, others are close enough. Such is the case with the Lifan 320, which borrows heavily from the Mini. The big difference between the two is that the Chinese variant has four doors compared to the Mini’s two.

In the exact duplicate category, there’s the Great Wall Coolbear. Cool name, not original looks. This time Great Wall uses the last-generation Scion xB as its template and copies it right down to the size of the badge, but with different graphics. Even the instruments, which are in the center of the Scion’s dash, is faithfully re-created in the Coolbear.

Many of the clones are meant for domestic consumption only, so most manufacturers, if they are aware of the clone at all, take a hands-off approach. However, the Shuanghuan Noble, a lookalike for the smart car, made it to the Frankfurt show last fall, where Mercedes-Benz, smart’s parent, threatened legal action if the Noble were sold in Europe. Perhaps it was the car’s motto “Smarter than the rest” that got Mercedes’ attention.

Another Mercedes knockoff comes from a company whose initials, BYD, stand for Build Your Dream. Well, they’re building someone else’s dream of a car with the BYD F8, which is a ringer for the Mercedes-Benz CLK. The cars share the same quad-headlamp look with a horizontal slotted grille. One difference is that the F8 has a retractable hardtop as opposed to the CLK’s soft top.

While the Shuanghuan S CEO looks like a BMW X5, enough so, that BMW also threatened suit if the vehicle were sold outside China, you’ll find that beneath the skin, it’s nothing like the original. Instead of unit-body construction with an independent suspension, you get a trucklike frame with leaf springs. As with any fake, caveat emptor.

Ford is suing the U.S. government’s Internal Revenue Service for $445,292,207 in interest on tax overpayments for 1983 to 1989, 1992 and 1994. Half a billion dollars isn’t much to the IRS, but it could prove very useful to cash-strapped Ford.

“We believe the IRS failed to pay the correct amount of interest,” Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans told the Detroit News. “We tried to resolve it at the administrative level without success. Because of the size of the amount and the dispute, we had no choice but to file.”

Ford recently made a number of key moves to raise much needed capital. The recent sale of Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover brought ford billions of dollars, and rumors continue to suggest Volvo is next. Another $445 million would likely help Ford in its quest to return to profitability.

“The IRS’ calculation of […] overpayment interest is not a simple matter of taking the tax underpayment […] and computing interest on that amount,” the lawsuit contends.

“Rather, the IRS recomputes the taxpayer’s account for the specific tax year by sorting all of the transactions in order of the dates they are deemed to be effective and computing interest on the account balance as it is affected from transaction to transaction.”

Among the many car makers, only Honda posted a gain in the month of June.
At Dick Hide Honda, the local car salesmen are having trouble keeping up with demand. Recently, the smaller models have been the hot sellers, including the Honda Civic and the Honda Accord–two of the best selling cars nationwide.

   Analysts are saying the struggling economy, as well as high gas prices, are taking its toll on the auto market. Employees at Dick Ide say that the two main factors for the surge in Honda purchases at their store are the gas mileage the cars get and previous success with a Honda.

GM, Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota sales were all down in June.