Category Archives: Full Throttle

What you can’t see doesn’t exist, right?
Full Throttle March 14, 2016

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.

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

A drip is never a good thing. A little leak is even worse, because they never seem to stay little for long. Or so my landlord — who also happens to be mechanically inclined — politely told me after an unexpected knock at my apartment door. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice. But after months of parking right beside me in the lot, he shattered my unshakeable faith that no one else could see the growing black puddle under my car. How cruel.

Please contact us to order this feature.

Family fun cocooning in a K-car
Full Throttle March 7, 2016

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.

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

Every coastal city has one. That neighboring vacation village strewn with cottages and fry trucks, dotted with more ice-cream stands than drugstores.
My grandparents were lucky enough to live in such a village, bundled up cozily in a cottage my great-grandfather built himself. Every weekend in the summertime, my parents packed us in their K-Car for what then felt like an interminable drive to Gram and Gramps’. (The journey, including time in city traffic, took about a half-hour.)

Please contact us to order this feature.

Ignorance is ‘Bliss’ for distracted pedestrians
Full Throttle Feb 29, 2016

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.

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

The man on the radio caught my attention with the report of an accident, but not just any accident. He was talking about the first person, ever, to be killed in an incident involving a car. It happened more than 115 years ago in 1899, in New York City, apparently, to a man named Henry Bliss.
As a pedestrian struck by an electric taxicab after he got off a street car, he was the first person to find out the hard way what many pedestrians wandering the streets today have yet to learn: that flesh and blood loses to moving metal, every time.

Please contact us to order this feature.

Coin operated parking
Full Throttle Feb 22, 2016

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.

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

Why do I need an advanced-mathematics degree to use a coin-operated parking lot? It seems like every other lot or meter can be paid with an app on my phone, but not this one. Nope, the one I normally use will only accept one specific combination of nickels dimes and quarters. A combination so complex, it qualifies as a state secret. I can’t even tell you what it is, although I can tell you it’s definitely more complicated than the lot down the block, where the God of Parking will only accept his $4-per-day-maximum-sacrificial offering in the form of quarters. Sixteen of them.

Please contact us to order this feature.

What kind of drive-thru ideas do you have?
Full Throttle Feb 15, 2016

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.

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

I don’t spend enough time in my car. More specifically, I spend more time than I should looking for parking, doing the parking, walking in somewhere and waiting. You have to admit, those precious minutes can really add up. Drive. Stop. Park. Walk back three blocks to pharmacy/clinic/hairdresser. Discover that had you arrived 30 seconds earlier, you could have a) avoided the 12 people who appeared in line seconds before you; b) the doctor just left for lunch, and won’t be back for an hour; or c)Hairstyles-R-Us assumed you were a no-show and offered your appointment time to someone off the street.

Please contact us to order this feature.

A hint? Get the car fixed . . . before the date
Full Throttle Feb 8, 2016

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.

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

OK, it’s no shock that I hate taking my car to the shop. Mostly because I’m afraid it’ll come back in worse shape than when it went in, and/or it will cost me twice — or 10 times — as much as I thought to have it fixed. But this week, I realized having the car serviced is about more than that. I don’t do it for me, anymore . . . nosiree, I do it for the community. I discovered this higher purpose one day when I noticed the car grinding obnoxiously each time I turned the wheel.

Please contact us to order this feature.

Somewhere, sometime, life will likely
involve a minivan
Full Throttle Feb 1, 2016

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.

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

Penny’s dad called it Puff the Magic Wagon. We called it the gateway to our social life. Penny only had her beginner’s permit then, but she and I found a life and newfound (if quasi-) popularity, thanks to her family’s spacious silver-blue Chrysler. She was 16 and I was 15, and McDonald’s seemed hellishly distant from our suburban neighborhoods. Graciously, her parents gave up the van on week nights. Once she was allowed by the car licence gods (not her parents, though), she’d pack as many people inside Puff that would humanly fit, and away we’d go – cruisin’ and fast-food sampling.

Please contact us to order this feature.

My secret weapon? Surgical-strike shopping
Full Throttle Jan 25, 2016

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.

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

The other day I stumbled across a pointed warning on an Internet car-buying site: a car cannot be returned like items in a department store. Once you take delivery, it’s yours. Now, depending where you live, that might be the case. More importantly, however, being an exchange-happy, paranoid female, the remark seemed clearly directed at me. Perhaps my days of giggling at gift-shopping guys are over. Indeed, every Christmas Eve I’ve witnessed grown men – squinting, disoriented – standing at the perfume counter, surreptitiously sniffing the saleswoman’s neck.

Please contact us to order this feature.

If you ignore your ride, you’ll pay the price
Full Throttle Jan 18, 2016

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.

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

Vehicle breakdowns happen to everyone at one time or another, but this type of drama/trauma is easy to avoid with a little planning. You’re vulnerable at any time, of course, but, hey, at least you’re close to home, right? But what about vacation season when you’re on the road for weeks at a time in scorching heat and piling thousands of miles on the family wagon? Yes, indeed, according to auto experts, planning and preparation actually works.

Please contact us to order this feature.

Is your car stolen, or just lost
Full Throttle Jan 11, 2016

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.

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

The other day, my friend Julie casually mentioned that her little Toyota had been stolen. Right from her driveway. The funny thing is that she been out with other people so much that weekend that she had no idea when it had been taken. Saturday she was out. Sunday she was out. Monday she took the trash out and . . . “It was just GONE,” she moaned. “The police said Toyotas get stolen all the time. Even the old ones.” My reaction was actually less than sympathetic. “Last time you thought your car was stolen, it was at parked at your brother’s house.”

Please contact us to order this feature.