Author Archives: jeff

AutoCross May 6, 2013

Overview

Don’t wait for stories to appear in the store when you can become a member of Wheelbase Media’s weekly news service and save more than 50 percent while gaining instant access to the new features as they’re produced. Click here to get started.

If you are not a member of the media, but still wish to read this and other feature stories from Wheelbase Media, visit www.shiftweekly.com to subscribe to Auto Shift Weekly newsmag, available for your Apple iPad or for your home PC or laptop in pdf format.

Description

Use: Media professionals demanding top-quality automotive content for their print products and/or Web sites. Professional artwork, editing.

What it is: For the auto thrill-seeker, this is one of the most unique additions to your publication. The International AutoCross will test the knowledge of your readers with trivia that scours automobile parts bins, dealer showrooms and the history of people and places that have made the automobile what it is today. Retain readers and have them coming back on a regular basis for more. Like Wheelbase’s other features, International AutoCross comes to you formatted and ready to use.

Product specifications

Due to the highly complicated graphic nature of this product, we do not yet offer a version that can be played online. Instead, visitors to your Web site can print out the crossword and play it at their leisure. Vote yes to having a playable online version by clicking here.
High-resolution 300 dpi jpg CMYK file suitable for printand Web. Postscript file also included for even higher resolution and no bitmapping of fonts.

Please contact us to order this feature.

Toyota Avalon: 2006-’12

Overview

Description

First introduced for the 1995 model year, the Georgetown, Ky.-built Avalon became the successor to Toyota’s earlier large sedan, the Cressida. Originally created using a stretched Camry platform, the full-size Avalon looked as if it just rolled off a General Motors or Ford assembly line. New editions for 2000 and 2006 provided improved looks…

Please contact us to order this feature.

Shift! April.29, 2013

Overview

Use: Media professionals demanding automotive content on technology and vehicles designed to reduce pollution and save readers money.

What it is: The first “green” feature. One of our most popular new weekly features takes a look at the auto world from the unique perspective of fuel efficiency and technology as it relates to the environment, from hydrogen, hybrids, electric power and other alternative methods of propulsion. “Shift” is exactly that: a shift in thinking. What will the vehicle of tomorrow look like? Your readers can find out today in Shift. This predesigned module can be used as-is or reconfigured to fit just about any space.

Product specifications

Mac and PC page layout with accompanying text and art files for maximum work flexibility.
High-resolution artwork suitable for print.
Includes Photoshop layers file of main “Shift” art.
Multi-platform page layout opens with either Quark Xpress or Adobe Indesign.
Layout is 8″x13″, but can be reconfigured by your designer to fit most spaces.
PDF of layout included.
About 900 words: separate text file included.
Fonts are not included, but we attempt to stay with standard system fonts. If not, just change the fonts to match your style.

Topics Covered

Experimental flywheel saves fuel: Volvo has completed testing of kinetic flywheel technology on public roads and results confirm it to be lightweight, financially viable and fuel-efficient. Combined with a four-cylinder turbocharged engine, the technology has the potential to cut fuel consumption by up to 25 percent, Volvo says. Called Flywheel KERS (short for Kinetic Energy Recovery System), the system recovers energy generated under braking, causing a flywheel to spin at up to 60,000 revs per minute. It then uses the energy from the spinning…

Please contact us to order this feature.

We drove a British car . . . yes we were weirdos.

Overview

What is Auto Edit?

Welcome to AutoEdit, a new and slightly more irreverent weekly feature from Wheelbase Media.
Rather than your pages being a collection of random auto stories, the AutoEdit feature is intended to be the glue that holds it all together. Just as your editorial page is intended to be the pulse of your newspaper, Auto Edit can also be the pulse of your auto pages.

Auto edit runs 500-550 words and is all about your readers becoming more familiar with our key staff members via their personal views on the automotive world. Of all 18 of our weekly features, AutoEdit is the only one intended to provide weekly commentary. Journalistically speaking, this is just common sense since such commentary does not belong in our other news-type features.

Whether your readers agree or disagree with what’s written, they’ll know exactly how the writers of AutoEdit stand on their chosen topics. And, quite frankly, a little spirited debate is a healthy thing and that seems to be missing from more and more newspapers these days. AutoEdit is all about soul, getting back to the basics of solid content and showing readers that there are real people behind the nine-point typeface.

Story Intro

Most of us vividly remember the first car we owned or learned to drive.

We’re likely not as clear about the vehicle that our parents used to bring us home from the hospital, or the first car we recall riding in as a child. For that we have to rely on photographic evidence tucked away in an old album.

Car shows generate many an epiphany, too. Other than the obvious oohs and aahs from viewing retina-searing levels of chrome and sharp fins, much car-show chatter involves recollections along the lines of, “my parents used to own one of these!”

Please contact us to order this feature.

2014 Fiat 500L

Overview

Description

Fiat means business and that means making the 500 more appealing to North American small-car buyers by giving them more of what they really, really want. That’s where the all-new 500L enters the picture.

Sure, the original “Cinquecento” two-door hatchback and its semi-convertible Cabrio and Abarth offshoots are kind of adorable. But let’s face it; any car that’s half a foot shorter than a Mini Cooper is bound to be a tight fit, especially for anyone occupying the back seat.

Please contact us to order this feature.

AutoCross April 29, 2013

Overview

Description

Use: Media professionals demanding top-quality automotive content for their print products and/or Web sites. Professional artwork, editing.

Product specifications

Due to the highly complicated graphic nature of this product, we do not yet offer a version that can be played online. Instead, visitors to your Web site can print out the crossword and play it at their leisure. Vote yes to having a playable online version by clicking here.
High-resolution 300 dpi jpg CMYK file suitable for printand Web. Postscript file also included for even higher resolution and no bitmapping of fonts.

Please contact us to order this feature.

It’s spring, so where did all the road salt go? – Full Throttle, April. 29, 2013

Overview

Use: Media professionals looking to diversify their automotive readership with women authors who provide their views on a wide variety of topics.

What it is: Courtney Hansen, America’s favorite Garage Girl and the former host of The Learning Channel’s Overhaulin’ auto makeover show, a new-book author and the host of Spike TV’s weekend “Power Block,” has teamed up with Wheelbase Communications for this exclusive column. If you’re looking to build more regular readership and to bring more women into the pages of your print publication and Web pages with the help of a friendly and outgoing automotive celebrity, this bi-weekly column that alternates with our own Rhonda Wheeler is a must.

Product specifications

About 800-900 words; Word text file plus high-resolution art files for print and Web use.
Mac and PC layout with accompanying text and art files for maximum work flexibility.
High-resolution artwork suitable for print.
Coming soon! Multi-platform page layout that opens with either Quark Xpress or Adobe Indesign.

Description

When you think of pollution and cars, what do you think of? Probably the stuff that comes out the tailpipe, like carbon dioxide.
Of course it’s much broader than that. The miles of rusted cars in junkyards, the oil and gas leaching into the ground, oil spills in oceans and the taking of natural resources from the earth to build cars.

Please contact us to order this feature.

The Octane Lounge – The Octane Lounge – April 29, 2013

Overview

Description

Just how important has China has become to the global automotive marketplace? All you have to do is look at the recently concluded 15th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, which drew an estimated 2,000 exhibitors from 18 different countries, as well as 1,300 or so cars.

Please contact us to order this feature.

WordSearch April 29, 2013

Overview

Description

Use: Interactive content for media professionals looking to bolster recurring readership and increase the amount of exposure time for their products, whether print or Web.

What it is: Why are auto publications so dry and so serious? We’re living proof that car nuts have a sense of humor and want to have a little sugar on their Corn Flakes. Your readers will have fun with the “Driver ’s Seat” Word Search as they unearth people, places and events. Driver ’s Seat is just one step in making your auto product more interactive, which provides more exposure for advertisers and more revenue for all.

Product specifications

Due to the highly complicated graphic nature of this product, we do not yet offer a version that can be played online. Instead, visitors to your Web site can print out the crossword and play it at their leisure. Vote yes to having a playable online verion by clicking here.
High-resolution 300 dpi jpg CMYK file suitable for print and Web.

Please contact us to order this feature.

The Auto Sleuth – April. 29, 2013

Overview

Use: Voted the best automotive news column available: you need it.

What it is: If you could have only one automotive feature, this should be it. At Wheelbase Communications, we’ve chosen to stay away from providing an automotive-news column until we could do it in a non-traditional way. And here it is: the Auto Sleuth. Our worldly gumshoe has his ear to the ground, digging up the latest news on everything from product launches and updates to names in the news. The column is solely driven by reader interest. No boring statistics or auto-company pap here, just the straight goods peppered with the Auto Sleuth’s commentary and speculative, gossipy-style.

Product specifications

Mac and PC print layout with separate text and art files for maximum work flexibility.
High-resolution artwork suitable for print.
Multi-platform layout opens with either Quark Xpress or Adobe Indesign.
Layout is 8×16 inches (newspaper), but can be reconfigured by your designer to fit most spaces.
PDF of layout included.
About 850 words: separate text file included.
Fonts are not included, but we attempt to stay with standard system fonts. If not, just change the fonts to match your style.