Month: May 2016

The Jarbridge Mountains of Nevada, where the Chretiens got stranded.. (credit: Chris M Morris)

One early morning in March 2011, Albert Chretien and his wife, Rita, loaded their Chevrolet Astro van and drove away from their home in Penticton, British Columbia. Their destination was Las Vegas, where Albert planned to attend a trade show. They crossed the border and, somewhere in northern Oregon, they picked up Interstate 84.

The straightest route would be to take I-84 to Twin Falls, Idaho, near the Nevada border, and then follow US Route 93 all the way to Vegas. Although US 93 would take them through Jackpot, Nevada, the town near the Idaho state line where they planned to spend the first night, they looked at a roadmap and decided to exit I-84 before that junction. They would choose a scenic road less traveled, Idaho State Highway 51, which heads due south away from the I-84 corridor, crossing the border several miles to the west. The Chretiens figured there had to be a turnoff from Idaho 51 that would lead them east to US 93.

Albert and Rita had known each other since high school. During their thirty-eight years of marriage, they had rarely been apart. They even worked together, managing their own small excavation business. A few days before the trip, Albert had purchased a Magellan GPS unit for the van. They had not yet asked it for directions, but their plan wasn’t panning out. As the day went on and the shadows grew longer, they were not finding an eastward passage. They decided it was time to consult the Magellan. Checking their roadmap, they determined the nearest town was Mountain City, Nevada, so they entered it as the destination into their GPS unit. The directions led them onto a small dirt road near an Idaho ghost town and eventually to a confusing three-way crossroads. They chose the one that seemed to point in the direction they wanted to go. And here their troubles began.

(credit: Megan Geuss)

NASHVILLE, TN—For the last several years, GM’s Chevrolet has remade itself deftly, rising from the ashes of bankruptcy to deliver cars that perform well, stretch for fuel economy, and judiciously incorporate new tech. The first Chevy Cruze was one of those cars. It hit car lots in 2009 and saw respectable sales—as of 2014, the Cruze line sold more than 900,000 vehicles in the US alone.

Now Chevy is introducing the 2016 Cruze, but the Detroit automaker stresses that this new model is a significant departure from the old line. This metamorphosis has taken place to accommodate a continued shift in priorities among car buyers these days, who value fuel economy and connectivity above all else.

Chevy swung for the fences to meet those two priorities. The new Cruze comes with 24GB or 24 months (whichever one runs out first) of data from AT&T, broadcast from an internal antenna to a 50 ft radius around the car. Chevy also says that its LT and LS models of the car will get a whopping 42mpg. That’s without a hybrid engine.